Ironically, the site's typical reader is better described as "The Cement Head"
I don’t want to seem ungrateful: it is usually a welcome discovery when I find a popular website sending readers to Ethics Alarms, as has been the case the last two days with a site called The Spearhead. Nor do I have any ethical objections to The Spearhead’s theoretical mission, which is to stand against “misandry,” the mistreatment, cultural denigration of and discrimination against men. The phenomenon The Spearhead and its various bloggers rail against certainly exists in the U.S., as Ethics Alarms most forcefully pointed out after ABC’s Christiane Amanpour led a male-bashing roundtable on her Sunday show and did so as if she was having her guests name the state Capitals.
Unfortunately, the tone of most of the articles on The Spearhead is decidedly paranoid, misogynist or worse, echoing the dialogue in old movies and TV comedies in which rejected (and often repulsive) men would band together in a “Woman-Hater’s Club.” Its article (“Waitress Reacts to Insult With Online Lynch Mob”) that linked to Ethics Alarms, for example, weighing in on the Victoria Liss affair in which an aggrieved waitress used Facebook to invite Internet Avengers to heap abuse on a cheap and insulting customer but carelessly fingered the wrong man, took this from the episode:
“How many men would be so petty, so vindictive, and so morally depraved that they would launch a personal vendetta over a minor slight suffered in the course of a day’s work? Very few, obviously — such men would be instantly fired, and likely castigated by the courts (if not jailed) for harassment.”
Thus Victoria, in the view of the author, isn’t merely one inept Facebook user and an unusually vindictive waitress, but a typical representative of her gender and proof of the fairer sex’s inadequacies when compared to men. This is bigotry. But the real ugliness arrived in the comments to the article, most of which heaped abuse on Liss and hatred on women generally, condemning the waitress not only for what she did, but for her appearance. Thanks to the site’s like/dislike feature, it was possible to gauge which of the comments were representative of the majority. The verdict does not speak well for The Spearhead. Here is a representative sample:
- “In today’s America, it is assured one will get undeserved shit, for speaking Truth.The customer spoke truth about her fatness, and now, the fat one is the one indignant…with a crowd of supporters defending her uncontrolled behavior. America = truth avoidance”
This endorsement of gratuitous rudeness and cruelty was approved of by the readership by a margin of 56 to 9.
- “Fat women have feelings?”
- “This incident shows why some of us choose to post under nom de plumes. We do not need random hate-filled misandry flooding our mail box (there’s plenty of that available for free in the world) and generally getting in the way. Plus in an era where false rape allegations are cost-free for women, the possibility of some feminist using the police as her personal enforcers is non zero. Were I the man in Texas, I would be implacable. I would seek summary judgement for willful libel against every web site, every media outlet, where the lie appeared. I would seek as big a financial judgement against the fat waitress as possible; that she can’t pay it now is unimportant, that she have tens of thousands of dollars in judgement hanging over her head for decades would be instructive for her and others like her. Get a better job? Great! Pay me more money. Get married? Great, he pays me more money. She’d be living like a divorced man…”
Liked by 45 readers, disliked by 1.
- “And you can be sure she’s used to belittling men on a regular basis. I wonder how many men she’s insulted, about the size of their manhood or the size of their bank balance or whatever. All well and good she thinks, but when a man dares do the same to her stand back, her precious feelings have been hurt.”
- “I wonder if she “weighted” the pros and cons. In any case, I think she went very heavily into revenge mode. Maybe miss Rotunda got rolling and… couldn’t stop..! Give this lady a truckload of Big Macs!
Vote: 21-2 in favor.
- “I always understood that the word Tip was an acronym, ‘To Improve Performance’. It is a voluntary gratuity usually paid at 10%. Clearly Mr. Mayer did not see much improvement. I blame the restaurant for employing the overweight, indecently-dressed tart in the first place.”
- “Pay with cash. Then fat, entitled, Special Snowflake princesses like Victoria Liss won’t be able to track you down and vent their temper tantrum on you when you pay them the tip that their crappy, ill-mannered service deserves.”
40-1 positive.
- “Anyone registered her yet?”
23-1
- “You know people like that freak have the right to vote. No wonder Obama got elected…In a sane society, childless, unmarried women over the age of 30 wouldn’t have the right to vote or go outside without the escort of a senior male and they certainly wouldn’t be able to press charges against anyone in court. Society is endangered by those hormone crazed cunts.“
27 liked this, 6 did not.
- “ I think what stung this woman the most is the casual nature of the insult. Guy just doesn’t tip, leaves you a little rude note and saunters off with his life. It also hits a bit of insecurity you’ve got – i.e. you’re a fattie and maybe, just maybe, it’s not totally OK and fat acceptance is slightly silly. I doff my cap to this man, detached Zen master of the deep cut insult. Surely his results speak for themselves?”
19-0!
- “Judging by the down votes at the top of the comments it looks like them hoes came over to see a picture of the pig they are fighting for. Conventional wisdom would say that a woman with that built would be friendly and give good service to make up what is lacking in physical appearance. But …in the world of feral woman logic goes out of the window. Pretty girls are nicer because they can be; they just need for you to treat ‘em like shit to get to enjoy their kindness. Unattractive hawgs as shown above act like bitches to display how valuable they are. Feral women measure their status and worth by how big of a burden they can be on everybody else. She made herself too much of a burden for voluntary taking of her shit. And got her feelings hurt so she went public to get everybody to a firm her value. All she has done is show herself as a delusional pig… [Here the comment becomes obscene.]”
90% approval (9-1).
And so on.
Whatever the theoretical mission of your website or blog may be, if it is attracting fans like this, it is time to change writers, change direction, or do something else with your time…something that doesn’t make society meaner, cruder, and nastier than it already is.
Ethics Alarms 
“In a sane society, childless, unmarried women over the age of 30 wouldn’t have the right to vote or go outside without the escort of a senior male and they certainly wouldn’t be able to press charges against anyone in court.”
Yipes!
““And you can be sure she’s used to belittling men on a regular basis. I wonder how many men she’s insulted, about the size of their manhood or the size of their bank balance or whatever. All well and good she thinks, but when a man dares do the same to her stand back, her precious feelings have been hurt.”
Now how can he possibly know that?
When I was a waitress I was pawed,had lewd comments made to me in addition to being called names. Depending on where she works and what shift it’s a hard life for a waitress. But I guess since I’m a woman I deserved it all.
Well, now at least we know where the pool of potential rapists hang out. The comments are indeed scary–where does this hatred of women come from?
I would guess for some of these guys it comes from being deeply hurt. The same happens with women whose love was spurned. Or they might have had an abusive mother. As for the rest I haven’t a clue.
Propaganda from OTHER misogynists/misandrists?
That’s a good guess, Chase. I think this stuff–all bigotry, really—i contagious.
So maybe this ignorant segment of our society is sick and tired of all the sit-coms wherein the husbands are the morons and the wives run the household (and them). And maybe they are angry as well because over the past three decades society has discovered (again — as it did, by the way, during World War II [N.B. Rosie the Riveter], that women actually have minds in addition to bodies and are making scientific, mathematical, political, and educational contributions that Spearhead contributors can’t even define. So resentment runs strong among insecure males who are expressing this through bigotry and hatred, as the “other” gender threatens their historic hegemony (Spearhead readers, get out the ol’ dictionary). The days are over when having a scrotum meant one had power (or intelligence, for that matter). Tough luck, you jerks. Go after women one at a time, as you have and surely will continue to do, but you can’t get us all and with any luck, the gene pool will eventually weed you out.
Note to the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI: Check out Spearhead contributors for your potential rapists and abusers.
Have to give them credit – they have a perfect logo.
If they are linking back to your posts, it must be very selectively. I understand visitng sites that send you traffic – but this is not one I hope I never need to travel to again.
That last sentence was bad – even for me. I meant, “I don’t want to go back there again!”
Hi Jack, noticed the post, and have to say I’m a little disappointed.
Your article on Amanpour was indeed quite good, and much appreciated.
But I’d like to point out that The Spearhead is very lightly moderated, and therefore many of the comments are indeed very radical. Additionally, those who comment and rate the comments are the most radical of all — less than 5% of readers are regular commenters. This always happens on any politically oriented board with a large readership, so it should be no surprise.
Feminist sites, on the other hand, are very heavily moderated, so of course the site will look bad by that criterion. Perhaps I should give in and start manipulating the comments, but for some reason it simply doesn’t seem any more “ethical” to do so, and might even be a bit deceptive.
Finally, when you quote me, you suggest that I am simply impugning women relative to men and miss the real point: women and men are held to different ethical standards in our society, and that is why Liss felt that she could get away with her over-the-top vengeance. Would men do the same if similarly privileged? I’m sure some of them would, but they aren’t.
Finally, it has emerged that Liss previously erroneously accused two innocent men of felony malicious harassment — Washington state’s version of a hate crime. The two men did time in Jail and were charged by the prosecutor before she recanted and admitted that they were not “the same guys” (if indeed the original story was true at all).
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/10/victoria_liss_bartender_in_wro.php
With that kind of casual abuse of innocent men, I wonder why it surprises you and your commenters to see such angry men out there. Personally, I think there’s a serious ethical problem with the contemporary state of affairs, in which innocent men can be destroyed on a whim, and, actually, I think to sweep it under the rug and moderate the very real outrage out there may well be unethical in itself.
But if you have suggestions as to how one could effectively balance propriety with urgency, I’d be happy to hear them, and I mean that sincerely.
Bill,
how is that different from the Taliban in Afghanistan, who held men and women to different standards in Afghani society?
Thanks, Bill, for the feedback, and these are points worth making. I’m putting this up as the Comment of the Day, and will have some more reactions myself there.
Oops, two “finally”s. Pardon the lousy editing.