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ryking:

unknowablewoman:

I don’t particularly care to rehash all of the garbage he spewed on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to briefly showcase some of the most disturbing messages that Tumblr politics tag editor Alexander Ryking posted on a public forum last night. I just have one question: is this mature, professional behavior? Is this the type of person you want curating your tag content, Tumblr? Reblog if your answer is a resounding NO.

In order, here’s just what we’ve got in the screencap—he says similar things on his personal Tumblr all the time, but I thought it was important to point out that his troubled behavior is now spilling over to other media:

• calling women morons, feminazis and cunts
• equating the denial of “misandry” (a concept that is overwhelmingly rejected by everyone who understands gender politics) to denying scientific consensus
• stating that women who dislike him must have “daddy issues” 
• again with the “daddy issues” thing, which IMO is the most grossly sexist part of this entire tirade
• equating women to dogs
• telling feminists to go die

This isn’t about removing him from the position of editor because of political disagreements; after all, Ryking isn’t a conservative! This is about baseless personal attacks against women specifically (although non-women who disagree with him about “feminazis” have incurred his wrath as well) and for no reason other than they identify as feminists. I cannot stress enough that these attacks take place in an internet culture where being an outspoken, visible woman online will routinely earn you death threats, sexual harassment, and acts of intimidation. Here we have someone completely oblivious to the way his words contribute to that atmosphere, and yet we’re supposed to trust him to edit the official politics tag? How can we believe that this man’s raging misogyny doesn’t spill over into that? It’s absolutely unacceptable.

Now let me explain something to you. Everyone can go to my Twitter stream and see what kind of garbage I was replying to, so let’s not pretend you and your three friends are beyond reproach. Further, for the most part I have never provoked any of the fights I’ve been in on Tumblr or anywhere else. I have merely stated my opinions and was then attacked and bullied by a segment of so-called “feminist progressives” who are anything but feminists or progressives.

So-called feminists have subjected me to white-bashing comments (even though I’m Hispanic) and sexist attacks impugning my manhood (slash-fiction scenes featuring me and heterosexual men; being called faggot; being told to man-up; insults about my body;) by people who don’t realize I’m gay. After nearly two decades online, I learned early on that when you’re attacked, you defend yourself by attacking right back and just as viciously, if not more so. And that’s what exactly what I’ve done.

You of all people have no room to whine about me being mean to you when you’ve been flaming me for days and started doing so without provocation. And what did you do when I stopped insulting you last night on Twitter and instead started pointing out flaws in your arguments as well as your hypocrisy? You decided you were going to walk away from the discussion. Very privileged of you. Then you went back to Tumblr to start flaming me again.

What’s really at issue here is not my rude behavior but that you and others like you want to punish any man who refuses to conform to your rancid, misandrist orthodoxy by discounting everything he says and using his gender and race as the excuse for doing so. I’ve been a target for some time of such radical “feminists” and seen this done time and again since I had the audacity to argue in favor of the 19th Amendment against a so-called feminist who called the amendment giving women the right to vote a crock of shit. (And if that doesn’t show the sorry state of feminism these days, I don’t know what does.)

You don’t want me stripped of my editorial privilege based on my behavior but because I reject your sick, bigoted, misandrist (per)version of feminism. Well here’s a news flash for you: When Tumblr asked me to be an editor, I was told to find ten posts a day in #Politics that were good posts, and no one said that I had to follow some code of conduct or conform to anyone’s ideology but my own while doing so.

There are 40 million blogs on Tumblr; you and your tiny band of man-hating bigots are a drop in the bucket. But keep screeching, keep attacking. You prove my points about your “feminism” every time you do so. — Ryking

what an absolutely disgusting human being ryking is