Fox News lends a hand to the White Men’s Rights Movement
Suzanne Venker: White Men’s Rights Activist
In a case of spectacularly bad timing, Fox News happened to choose the day before the Zimmerman verdict was handed down to publish an op-ed proclaiming “the White American Male” to be the most oppressed creature on Planet Earth. In a piece entitled “Men — The New Second Class Citizens,” professional antifeminist Suzanne Venker declared that
From boyhood through adulthood, the White American Male must fight his way through a litany of taunts, assumptions and grievances about his very existence. His oppression is unlike anything American women have faced.
What is revealing about this quote, besides its complete disconnection from reality, is that Venker makes no other references to race in the rest of her piece, which runs through a number of tiresome and oh-so-familiar MRA talking points about the alleged oppression of men.
Venker complains about schools being biased towards girls, from grade schools that force students to sit still to colleges with their infernal Title IX. She whines about “sit coms and commercials that portray dad as an idiot.”
Quoting antifeminist psychologist Helen Smith, a friend of and sometime contributor to A Voice for Men, she suggests that women can get their boyfriends or husbands locked up on a whim just by claiming abuse.
I’m surprised she didn’t talk about the evils of “friend zoning.”
But when Venker refers to “men” in all of these complaints, she is evidently thinking only of white men — why else would she switch so seamlessly from talking about the alleged oppression of “men” to proclaiming “the White American Male” the ultimate victim?
There’s really no other word for this than, well, racist.
The day after Fox published Venker’s nonsense, we were of course reminded (as if any of us really needed to be reminded) of the very real oppression faced by “the Black American Male.”
Trayvon Martin didn’t die because he happened to see a show featuring a bumbling sitcom dad. He died because George Zimmerman saw a young black man in a hoodie walking home from the store and assumed, apparently because Martin was young and black and wearing a hoodie, that he was up to something sinister.
Trayvon Martin didn’t die because he was male; he died because he was a black male. His killer walked free not because his victim was male, but because his victim was a black male.
Suzanne Venker did us all a favor by revealing the unconscious racism underlying so many Men’s Rights complaints. The Men’s Rights movement is not only a movement that is overwhelmingly made up of white men; it’s a movement that’s almost exclusively about white men, and their largely imaginary oppressions, as well. We might as well call it the White Men’s Rights Movement.
Posted on July 16, 2013, in a voice for men, antifeminism, FemRAs, imaginary backwards land, imaginary oppression, irony alert, ladies against women, misogyny, MRA, on the tv, oppressed white men, racism and tagged antifeminism, fox news, men's rights, MRA, racism, suzanne venker. Bookmark the permalink. 665 Comments.
Goddamnit! Just when I’m about to go to bed, he drops this gem — “Men who go off to battle are haunted by it forever”
And you would know because…of a work of fiction it seems. Excellent.
Why exactly do you think you’re qualified to comment on what ALL veterans experience? And you do get how claims about ALL anything can be disproven by just one counter example, right?
——
In other news, after a small Word related snafu, the survey may be up in the very near future.
“Warren Farrell got me into men’s rights.”
“A Voice For Men does a lot to help men and I respect them a good deal”
…
And you expect us to take you seriously?
@Melody – Again, that’s fiction. And it’s a form of wish fulfillment for most men, who’d love a new woman every week and don’t get one. It’s not real life. And even in the movies, it’s James Bond running towards danger and protecting the women from the same danger. In the movies he emerges triumphant, of course, but that’s not what happens in real life all the time.
Ah, there we go – now you’re being disingenuous!
I used that as an example of one of many venues that deals with men’s issues, on some level – you know damn well what I meant. Would you prefer I point out, say, The Good Men Project? That generally deals more with various personal issues. Point is that, like those two things, men’s issues are not as “invisible” as you claim.
@Ally – https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
“On some level” is key. Not on the deep level that I’m talking about. We as a society have acknowledged the ways in which women’s feelings can be hurt by gender roles. If a man tries to talk about the same thing, he’s laughed at.
FFS, Jason, I was mocking you, not saying that you’re wrong because you like Warren Farrell and AVfM. Yet another MRA who has no idea what an ad hominem is.
James bond is a male fantasy. Rich, classy, gets laid, gets to exotic location, is invincible ect.
You started this whole fiction story with you hero statement and your comment about how males aren’t allowed to have feelings. You don’t get to back out and claim I got off topic.
You keep backing out of EVERY statement you make when people point out you are wrong. You don’t know marxism. You don’t understand the definitions of the words you are using. Stop trying to school us on terms YOU don’t understand.
@Ana – It’s funny you mention that many pacifists have been feminists. Because I can give a counter example to that and attack the voting rights argument all in one: Emmeline Pankhurst. She wanted suffrage for women (well, rich women, anyways) but when World War I started, she went around giving white feathers to teenage boys to shame them into fighting. Not such a problem with gender roles when she was the one benefiting, eh?
And every group that got suffrage before women, whether you like it or not (and I certainly don’t), got it for their willingness to die in war.
@Melody – And does James Bond ever have PTSD?
By the way, there is female wish fulfillment. Twilight. And that has a disposable male, too. Mike Newton (remember him)? He’s an ordinary guy, not a vampire or werewolf or anything, so he doesn’t get any love.
@Jason
No one is responsible for how Paul Elam conducts himself other than Paul Elam. His silencing tactics, slurs, and erratic behavior make him very unpopular with me and I feel no need to excuse his bad behavior when I see it.
As someone who has worked with mentally ill men, I am all too aware of the behavioral restrictions placed on men like shaming for showing “weakness”. However, that’s not misandry. That’s a rigid gender role.
“What happens in real life? Blown off limbs and PTSD”
Seriously, just fucking stop. I’d ask, but I can guess the answer — yes you are dense enough not to see that you’re playing right ingot the tired old troupe of veterans being broken men. Which is nothing like supporting them.
Make your points about here’s in media without playing into a different set of tropes, and maybe just never, ever, anywhere, use veterans to prove your points.
It’s about as much misandry as women being “damsels in distress” or “keepers at home” is misogyny, deal?
Twilight? Where the guy watches her in her sleep, tells her he wants to kill her several times, abandons her, ect?
There is NOTHING wrong with wish fulfillment. It is just you are trying to use James Bond as a victim ect.
You keep ignoring half my argument.
For. Fucks. Sake. Stop!
Not every veteran comes back with PTSD, and acting like they’re all inherently broken doen’t fucking help.
Argenti, my friend, I don’t see what I’ve done wrong. Used the pain and suffering of veterans (99% men) to argue for a male gender role issue? While you feminists use the pain and suffering of rape victims (something like 90% women) to argue for a female gender role issue.
Women lacking agency,being disposable ect is on the same level as a male power figure?
No. I won’t agree that is the same.
Seriously, guys, this is one of our old faithful blog herpes trolls with a new sock, which is why he’s repeating the same arguments that have been made eleventy billion times before. Why bother engaging him?
(Unless it’s fun for you, in which case chew away!)
Jason: I don’t think we were afraid of Japanese women and children being spies for their country
That’s why they didn’t get sent to Manzanar.
Oh, wait, they did.
Shit, that theory is shot to hell.
@David – I’m not arguing that black men face more racism.
Nope, you are arguing that misandry is at least as bad (someone earlier was all upset that “feminism says women are as oppressed as blacks were…” this seems to be parallel in structure. Wonder when that dude will call it out as an unjust comparison).
Jason: Feminists have questioned the notion that a firefigher should be a man. They haven’t done anything to question the notion that a gunperson should be a man.
Dude.. you are thick. Feminists argue for women being given all the same options as men in the Army, i.e. to be in the Infantry. It was fear of women being allowed into Ranger School, (late 90s) which caused it to be reclassed as an Infantry course, not a Leadership course… why? Because feminists were arguing that all the non-combat courses needed to be open to women.
When people try to stereotype the women of a marginalized group, they usually try to make them as manly, and unfeminine as possible.
Which is why we hear about the ugly Russian women who.. no wait, we hear about how “Eastern European women know how to treat men”.
@NightShadeQueen – The problem is, Howard Zinn is a Marxist. Marxism is all about conflict. Who’s the oppressor, and who’s the proletariat? Those are the questions Marxism asks of every dynamic It’s a very limiting worldview, and it does apply to some aspects of society, but not to gender. Applying Marxism to gender is a capital mistake. The rules of gender are very, very different.
So why did you do it? Because trimming the tail end off doesn’t stop it from being a Marxist argument: since Zinn made it.
. I am arguing with the notion that Andrew Carnegie’s wife didn’t have it every bit as good as Andrew Carnegie.
Then you are stupid. Could she vote? No. Could she own property? No. Could she enter into contracts? No.
She therefore did not, ‘have it every bit as good as Andrew Carnegie.” QED.
Men who go off to battle are haunted by it forever. If they survive, of course.
Says the dude whose never been.
You are wrong. If you won’t take my word for it, Lyn MacDonald did an excellent series of Oral history based books on WW1. It’s a lot of reading, but you’ll discover that your myth is false. “The Soldiers’ Tale: Bearing Witness to a Modern War” by Samuel Hynes will tell you why you suffer from this idea of war as something which haunts one forever.
That’s just the thing – Twilight plays directly into traditional gender roles. And those suck for men, too. (Just not the men you see in the story. Mike Newton disappears pretty quickly. And, I hope, becomes a vampire hunter.)
Yes, James Bond is wish fulfillment. He is very, very far from being a reality, for most men.
I see we have drifted to male disposability. Someone should ping Dave.
Oh, and Jason….Women suffer more from PTSD than men (american psychological association).
I’ve been saying…
Okay, guys I gotta go. I can’t do this right now. I need to go to bed and this is not helping me sleep.
There used to be posters back in the day: “Women, tell your husbands to vote for so-and-so!” Candidates wouldn’t have made those posters if women didn’t have some influence. I expect Mrs. Carnegie has a similar level of influence in her household – and she didn’t even have to work, like her husband did.
Earlier in the thread, when you declared that getting hit on in an elevator is the only form of oppression women have ever faced in history, I was wondering if you’d forgotten about little things like not being able to vote. Turns out you remember them; you just don’t think they’re a big deal.
I think you need to work on that empathy thing.
Jason, your inability to distinguish the difference between enforcing a gender role and misogyny astounds me.
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women. It can manifest in a behavior such as enforcing a gender role.
And BTW “Damsels in Distress” is a trope based on the gender role which says women are necessarily helpless and require a man to save them.
Come on, now. You at least have to try.
It’s about 20%, probably a touch higher versus about a third for rape victims.
So fucking stop it already.
Mrs. Carnegie may have had fewer rights, but she also had fewer responsibilities. Feminists have pushed for more rights for women, but they haven’t pushed so hard for more responsibilities. Why aren’t you pushing hard for women to be drafted? If you care so much about women in the army. If you think war is a cakewalk. And by the way, you’re wrong on veterans. More have committed suicide than died in Iraq – isn’t that factoid well enough? My father writes music, and he wrote a song in honor of one.
And every group that got suffrage before women, whether you like it or not (and I certainly don’t), got it for their willingness to die in war.
Women have always been willing to die in war. Men told them they weren’t allowed to do so.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Women-Who-Fought-in-the-Civil-War.html
http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_First_World_War
Not Emmeline Pankhurst, she wasn’t. The glorious suffragette was happy to hand out white feathers to young boys to shame them into dying for her right to vote.
“The least that men can do is that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word to women.”
“Argenti, my friend”
I am not your fucking friend!
And yes, you’ve done wrong. You’re stereotyping a group you do not appear to be part of to prove your point. Moreover, you’re stereotyping veterans as all being “haunted”, missing limbs, PTSD…excepting the physical injuries, these are things that are already stigmatized. Acting like it’s inevitable just increases the thought that you’re unfixible.
(Hey guys, or those of you who don’t already know, I had a fucking LOVELY conversation with my psych today! I’d still be pissed by everytime I try to go to bed a click bug crashes into me, so I’m a bit distracted [this is three today alone])
. Used the pain and suffering of veterans (99% men) to argue for a male gender role issue? While you feminists use the pain and suffering of rape victims (something like 90% women) to argue for a female gender role issue.
War affects more than men. So that’s one piece of bullshit (or do you think the girl Achilles was whining about not being given as a prize was a combatant?).
Two, women have fought. at present they make up about 15 percent of the US Army, and a bit more than that of the casualties (not fatalities, they are different).
So you are wrong again.
If you gloss out the women who suffer when war rolls through, yeah, you can do a lot, but if you don’t, they bear the brunt of it (because they aren’t in a position to fight back: there is a reason pillage is married to rape).
Mrs. Carnegie may have had fewer rights, but she also had fewer responsibilities.
Goalpost moving. You said she had it every bit as good as Mr. Carnegie. She didn’t. You lose.
Sorry, full quote: “The least that men can do is that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word to women, and to make ready to do his best, to save the mothers, the wives and daughters of Great Britain from outrage too horrible even to think of.”
There’s feminism for you.
See, if you wanted us to think you were here in good faith, you’d know when to make a tactical concession of your mistakes.
But you don’t; which means you aren’t actually here to have a discussion, but to score points and claim victory.
“Acting like it’s inevitable just increases the thought that you’re unfixable.”
Again, like you feminists do the survivors of rape?
Someone has emailed David, right? I swear, we need big pharma to get to work on developing a cure for blog herpes.
Damn it! I have not made enough sacrifices to the blockquote monster. Here is my sacrifice blockquotes monster:
We don’t say that rape is inevitable, so your comparison makes no sense.
Jason, seriously, your ignorance of mainstream feminism is mind-boggling, especially since there are so many resources out there for understanding mainstream feminist ideas.
Men are still subject to be drafted. If America were attacked, men would have the right and the responsibility, women would have the right and no responsibility. And that’s just it. Rights balance out responsibilities. Men have traditionally had more of both. The man dying in a trench might have happily traded his place with a woman…
You say that the permanent damage caused by rape is inevitable.
I didn’t know Emmeline Pankhurst represented all of feminism.
Oh wait, she doesn’t.
Not even that, nope. Some people act like rape always causes permanent suffering that can’t ever be alleviated, but you won’t find many feminists treating survivors as a monolithic group.
Isn’t she a great feminist hero, though? I mean, she fought for women’s suffrage. She represents you somewhat better than Paul Elam represents me, I’d say…
Feminists have pushed for more rights for women, but they haven’t pushed so hard for more responsibilities. Why aren’t you pushing hard for women to be drafted?
They are, when they aren’t pushing for the (non-existent) draft to be ended totally.
. And by the way, you’re wrong on veterans. More have committed suicide than died in Iraq – isn’t that factoid well enough?
Tell me about it. One killed himself at Camp Dogwood while I was there. Another killed himself in Mologne House the weekend I arrived.
This isn’t news.
But guess what, there are pushing a million people who’ve been in theatre in the past 12 years. Do a lot have PTSD, yep. Do they all? No. Are we all “haunted” by our time in combat? Not by a long shot.
And while your daddy may have written a song, you aren’t singing it. You are using the dead, the wounded, the maimed to push an agenda that hurts people, by abusing them.
Way to show your respect.
“Isn’t she a great feminist hero, though? I mean, she fought for women’s suffrage. She represents you somewhat better than Paul Elam represents me, I’d say…”
I don’t like Emmeline Pankhurst. Don’t tell me what feminist represents me, whatever that means.
Jason is hopelessly brainwashed.
And Pankhurst is not the end all and be all of feminism, nor does she represent the last word on war and the draft. Got any new material?
@Jason
““Acting like it’s inevitable just increases the thought that you’re unfixable.”
Again, like you feminists do the survivors of rape?”
Tu Quoque Fallacy Alert.
Pecunium, can you please? I got enough of that shit already today. Ah fuck it, I’m not sleeping without more sleeping pills anyways (don’t worry folks, I start at a half dose of my original dose, so doubling it is totally fine)
First, fuck you, fuck the horse you rode in on, fuck your bullheaded beliefs, fuck your desire to use other people’s pain to further your agenda, and just for good measure FUCK YOU.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way…
Because you have so much fucking experience with either feminism, or being raped. Cuz see…I do. And you know who doesn’t act like it was my fault, doesn’t treat it like something I should be ashamed of? Feminists.
While the rest of society acts like it means your tarnished forever, spoiled goods, were asking for it, must be totally broken forever…feminists act like it’s a Bad Bad Thing done by Bad Bad People, and the blame rests on them. And if you’re still affected by it, that’s nothing to be ashamed about, and if not, that’s awesome, good for you!
I’d ask if you see the difference, but like I said, you’re one dense motherfucker.
I find the trolls who inform us of what we believe to be the most mystifying of all. Surely I’m the foremost expert on what I, personally, believe?
Ah, the great moral crusader Precunium. I never said that ALL veterans suffer from PTSD. When arguing with a pack of feminists, one must be careful with one’s words, and that includes avoid all-or-nothing statements.
About the White Feather Campaign:
So whose idea was this shaming of men?
A man’s.
@Jason
There is no draft at the moment. You are referring to the selective service. However, until women are allowed into full combat AND there is a draft enacted, there can be no injured party to take a lawsuit to court to challenge said inequity and therefore Feminists cannot challenge the DOD’s decision to keep women from being drafted.
Well, when you feminists talk about rape, the Bad People tend to be men. All men. What else does “rape culture” signify?
Then you should have clarified because that’s precisely what you said, you dumbass.
Do you white guys have any idea how whiny you sound when you go on about how hard it is that everyone treats you as intelligent, strong and capable, and that you see people like you portrayed as awesome heroes everywhere you turn? This is how the rest of us know you’re not actually oppressed.
And it was a damn clever idea, too, using women’s power over men to manipulate them.
Men are still subject to be drafted.
Nope. Look at the recent wars.
We were attacked. The Army wasn’t staffed as needed. The Guard, and Reserves were called up. People who had “critical skills” weren’t allowed to separate. Multiple tours were forced on people (some spent more time in Iraq than Germans did during WW2).
But there was no call-up.
The draft is a dead letter.
A rather odd comment for someone who’s pretending to be new here, no?
I don’t know if I can make the same arguments again and again, my points from earlier still stand and I think they’re clear enough that you all are more than capable of understanding them.
No, when you talk statistics rapist tend to be men, because e vast majority of racists are men.
You really hate logic don’t you?
And regarding suicide rates? Seems I borked my citations before, but from the one about rape victims —
And the one I failed to link to — http://www.veteransandptsd.com/PTSD-statistics.html
And back in 5 with the suicide rate among veterans. Because raw numbers are pretty meaningless for demographics.
@Katz
Silly Katz. You’re just a woman, how could you possibly know what you believe? Only alpha men can truly know anything. :P
/sarcasm
She represents you somewhat better than Paul Elam represents me, I’d say…
I wouldn’t. None of us mentioned her. You did mention AVfM.
So Elam represents you, more than she us.
Dude, just no. You continue to show that you have zero understanding of even basic mainstream feminism. You don’t even fucking know what rape culture is. Hint: it’s a culture that trivializes, condones, and supports rape. It’s not “all men.”
If you actually took your damn time to do some reading, you would know this. Take a fucking break from your arguments and try to learn about mainstream feminism for once if you want to stop being seen as an obtuse douchebag.
Why would I pretend to be new? I am new, I usually have better things to do with my time than read the archives of Manboobz. Precunium is acting like a giant moral cruader to shame me into silence, so that’s why I said that.
Identify him by hinting at his real name and he loses his power and runs away. It’s all very Campbell-esque.
Rape is one of the most hated crimes out there. Our culture does not support rape by any stretch of the imagination. If a few people make jokes about rape, that’s nothing. People make dead baby jokes too. We don’t have a dead baby culture or anything like that.