7

The Semantic Quo

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As well as wasting your time, assholes want those specific lists so they can move on to their second front: wasting more of your time. They'll try to disprove your points with all the obsession and specificity of someone proving Green Lantern could totally beat Superman. But less connection to reality. They'll apply more minute attention to detail than the search for the Higgs boson, and act like their results have more massive effects on reality.

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6

Saint or GTFO

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This imperfection attack is digging through someone's Internet history to see if they've ever said anything less than perfect. Because the only allowed options are immaculate saint or total asshole, and the antifeminists have the asshole side locked down. They're the Asshole Emperors, defending their rule by defecating over everything and everyone who's made the mistake of facing them. They'll extract something sort of stupid said several years ago, usually by ripping it more dangerously out of context than the core of an atomic warhead, and wave it around as if it was exactly that powerful.

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5

Accusing Victims of Faking It

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Anyone denying the existence of sexism can go to any YouTube video with a woman in it, read the comments, and fuck off. Victim-accusation isn't an impartial quest for truth or "hearing both sides." It's piling extra pressure on the victim as standard operating procedure.

While accusations of sexism apparently require a Supreme Court ruling as a cited source, accusations of faking sexism need no support whatsoever. "I'm just looking for proof," smiles the scumbag. "I'm just calling every woman a liar and acting like that's the unbiased course of action, instead of proof of the problem I'm denying, and if there was any justice in existence I would cease to do so."

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These magical conspiratorial women would have to be faking more electronic output than the Matrix. And that's a movie where they killed almost every major female character. Sometimes twice! Demonstrate a specific example of someone clearly receiving threats of sexual violence and they'll say, "Oh yeah, but she deserves it." Which means that all accusations are either false or deserved, or, in other words, there is no such thing as an attack on women that this asshole will not find justified. Which is the worst possible truth someone can have.

4

The Nicer Detonator

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Assholes act as if anger in response to centuries of systematic oppression is equal to centuries of systematic oppression, and the two cancel out. "Maybe if you were nicer about asking," they say, and it's impossible to respond properly, because only comic characters can scream so loudly it ruptures their eardrums and pulps their skulls.

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"Maybe if you were nicer about the constant stream of poison you're subjected to, I'd consider not pissing into it." Someone being aggressive in reaction to sexist abuse isn't attacking anyone. Someone being aggressive in reaction to sexist abuse is reacting to sexist abuse. The tactic of getting women as mad as possible and then acting innocent was developed by studying 6-year-old boys. No, sorry, being 6-year-old boys.

It's another way of reframing an urgent discussion of sexual equality as a patriarchal indulgence. "Asking nicely" is for a child who wants more ice cream: an inferior petitioner begging the favor of a stern authority figure for something they don't really need but think would be nice.

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3

Feminazi vs. Boogeywoman

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"Feminazi" is a real timesaver, because someone saying that just freed you from listening to them ever again. It's such a specific strawman that it has its own name. But the term "feminazi" is far too evocative and powerful a phrase for this phantom. I suggest the term "boogeywoman," reducing the concept to the appropriate level of maturity and power.

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Those who fear the boogeywoman claim feminism is a crusade of man-hating assholes, instead of a struggle against a patriarchal system that damages men as well as women. But don't worry, there's a useful quick check to find out if someone's an asshole, and it works on both sides: Ask them how they feel about transgender people. That'll identify who truly cares about equality and who's just being an asshole real quick.

Even if a woman is mean to you, boohoo. You can't dismiss an entire concept because one supporter is an asshole. If "one of them was a jerk" was reason enough to censor entire concepts, men would have become extinct long ago, along with every political and sociological concept ever conceived. I've met dickhead professors of quantum mechanics, but that doesn't mean my computer stops working.

2

Ignorance by Induction

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"How can you be complaining about this when there are starving children in Africa? Starving children I'm doing less than nothing to help, because merely nothing would be ignoring them. But I'm specifically pointing out that I know about them to use them as underfed weapons against things I actually care about."

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I'm not saying you should punch people who use this tactic in the face, steal their wallet, and spend all the money on charity donations and sweet victory whiskey. Technically, they're saying that, since by their own argument nobody is allowed to complain about anything if they're not reincarnated into one of the worst situations on the planet.

Nobody is allowed to complain about anything except the young and starving, and they're not allowed to complain about anything unless they're the youngest and most starving, all the way down to one tragic soul who can't help but notice that nobody's actually bloody doing anything about the situation. (If you want to do something, Kiva is a great way to do that.)

1

Equalist Equals Asshole

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