Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the locals are pig-biting mad about racism. Are they organizing vigils for murdered black teen Trayvon Martin? Are they challenging the Hunger Games fans who are sending out racist tweets complaining about the character “Rue” being played by a black actress?
Nope. They are doing something much, much braver. They are taking on a white dude for mocking other white dudes who are convinced they are the truly oppressed.
Over on the Boston Magazine web site, blogger Barry Nolan sets forth this truly hateful argument:
I have been a white male all my life and to tell you the truth, I have found it to be a pretty sweet deal. … Wherever you look and by almost any metric, any statistic, it works out to be a pretty sweet deal to start out life as a white male. …
So I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many white men like me can be found whining about how tough it is to be a white man. It’s a mystery to me how they came to feel so beset on every side by feminists, minorities, and “the system.” When in fact, the system is so stacked in our favor, it’s almost embarrassing.
On the Men’s Rights subreddit a post blasting Nolan as a “racist idiot” now boasts 90 upvotes. In the comments, the brave antiracists set poor Nolan straight on a thing or two. To Ellwood78, it’s just a big coincidence that most of the powerful figures in the US happen to be white dudes:
NoNoJCM, meanwhile, reports on his own bitter experience as one of the oppressed:
Irrel_M is apparently a Stephen Colbert fan who isn’t in on the joke:
To paraphrase Sojourner Truth, “ain’t I a white dude?”
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Note: This post incorporates some
Princessbonbon I have to agree. And having the US as the military power means the government doesn’t have to spend money on military or fighting our own dirty battles.
Yes, yes it is. David does not want you posting on his blog. Thats why he banned you dumbass, you posting here is “a bad thing”.
If you didn’t feel forced to comment because we mentioned your name, then why do you keep sockpuppeting despite being banned?
You aren’t posting as yourself and you have no right to post even if people are talking about you because you are banned PERMANENTLY.
So you posted because you visited the site i.e. you felt like it. This is a defense how?
You don’t have a right to post here period. Nobody does. This isn’t a public forum. You have the host’s permission to post here, and nothing more. You are just an entitled USian shit; this is nothing but a reflection of the cult of free speech.
In kindergarten, the closest thing I had to friends were two girls who spent our free time trying, and often succeeding, to make me cry. On a daily basis. In the first grade, a boy on the playground walked up to me, kicked me in the stomach, and walked away. In the fourth grade, our school had a dance, and two boys told me that another boy in my class wanted to go with me, but was too shy to ask. He didn’t, and they spent a good several days laughing at me. In the fifth grade, our classroom computer had a scanner, and a group of kids in the class took to scanning my school picture and defacing it in MS Paint. When I came home in tears, my mom called the school and everyone in the classroom was banned from using the scanner, leading the entire class to treat me like shit instead of just a handful. In the sixth grade, a girl in my class delighted in making fun of my clothes by walking up to me and making comments like “Lauren, you look really stupid in that jacket. Why did you think you could wear that?”
In seventh grade, a girl in my class interrupted a conversation I was having with one of my few friends to tell me, apropos of nothing, “You really need to get a nose job.” That same year, I had pencils thrown at me in music class and two kids I’d never met before in geography class made it their hobby to spend every day tormenting me. In the eighth grade, two other girls started a rumor that I was a witch and I was cursing people, which my classmates somehow believed, and used as an excuse to treat me even worse. In freshman year of high school, I was slammed into the lockers in the gym’s changing room when there were no teachers around. And on. And on. And I was teased on a daily basis, from kindergarten to graduation.
Guess what? I still have white privilege. And I still have class privilege. And cis privilege. And able-bodied privilege. Because getting bullied doesn’t negate a systematic societal advantage. And, perhaps most importantly of all, I don’t use my shitty experiences to justify trolling websites which have made it clear I am not welcome.
Jesus H. Christ, MRAL. So you got bullied as a kid. I got beaten up to the point where I got a concussion. There was an entire website devoted to mocking me in high school. I had dogshit left in my locker. I got a fucking death threat, for crying out loud. And you know what? I moved the fuck on.
You are allowed to be mad. You are allowed to think being bullied is shitty, because it is. You are allowed to say, “Boy, that little asshole who bullied me sure was a jerk.” What you are not allowed to do is throw a perpetual pity party about how no one has ever known the incredible hardship of being you. What you are not allowed to do is insist that your experience is the only thing that matters, and throw a tantrum every time anyone correctly points out that a huge proportion of people have had it much, much worse than you in many ways. And what you are really not allowed to do is to keep coming back to a blog where you were banned and demanding that people listen to you whine for the thousandth time about how mean it is of us not to want you around just because you treated everyone here like shit. GO. AWAY.
Oy, I need to be more careful approving new commenters. In my defense, his first comments were entirely unobjectionable.
But his opinions are not really the issue here.
MRAL, I banned you not because of your opinions but because of your behavior — notably your repeated attacks on people here. When I banned you I said I might let you back after 4 months or so if you behaved and stayed away. You have not behaved. So no, you can’t post here.
I gotta admit, I haven’t moved the fuck on. I still carry around a lot from my past and I know it’s shaped me as a person. I even self-pity a little sometimes. (They threatened to set me on fire! I mean they actually had lighters out. I’d pity anyone that happened to!)
But what I can say is that it hasn’t shaped me into a privilege-denying asshole. It hasn’t led me to conclude that being a middle-class suburban white kid wasn’t a pile of privilege, or that my high school experience was the worst possible, or that social justice doesn’t matter because I’m hurting.
I can acknowledge the realness of my suffering without using it to erase or justify anyone else’s.
Jesus Holly! I got the shit kicked outta me on a regular basis in well every grade in school, but that? Also, there were a least a few shit kickings I had coming to me, since I was just as likely to pick a fight as suddenly find myself in one.
I think you’re right about those kinds of experiences shaping a life and person, but it takes someone with a lot of integrity to deal with all of that, still care enough to stand up for what’s right and have the kind of wisdom you repeatedly show in your writing.
My apologies if that came out as suggesting that your suffering or anyone else’s wasn’t real – as I said in the following sentences, I think it is perfectly fine to be upset or hurting years later. There’s no doubt that I am still affected by things those bullies did to me, and I’m obviously never going to be remotely okay with things like finding a note in my locker telling me I was going to die tomorrow, just as I can’t imagine you’ll ever be okay with people threatening to set you on fire. (Seriously, what is wrong with people that these are things that happen? *sigh*) “Move the fuck on” is probably an overly harsh way of expressing, “Your personal rotten experience is not the sum of all experiences ever, and continuing to act as if it is instead of trying to build a newer, happier, bully-free life isn’t helpful for you or anyone else.”
Polliwog – No need to apologize, and man, I’m sorry that shit happened to you. I wasn’t objecting to you saying you’d moved on, more just pointing out that there are a variety of ways of coping that don’t involve “I suffered therefore I have a Lifetime Asshole Pass.”
Wow, I’m sorry you guys went through all that. I got called names and had spitballs shot at me and I took it pretty hard, but that’s nothing.
I ran out of cream for my coffe this morning. Another victory for Antz and the MRM!
No worries, I just figured it was better to be totally clear that inadvertently say something I hadn’t meant. (And I’m similarly sorry – every time I think I’ve heard all the possible stories of people being assholes, someone shares something like “also, they threatened to set me on fire” and I go back to “WTF HUMANITY, WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH” mode.)
*totally clear THAN
MRAL, if you’re still reading – continuing to force interactions with people after they’ve clearly told you to go away is not OK. Forcing your way into communities that you know don’t want you around is not OK. The fact that you do not or are not willing to understand this is not OK.
Now go away, for good this time.
I think Scooby has a point. I worked hard in my classes, spending sometimes, oh, thirty minutes or so on any one of my homework assignments; doing homework during homeroom and other school times; I got As and Bs and was generally a teacher’s pet.
And then one day I put on a hoodie and carried some Skittles and I totally failed to get chased down and shot like a dog by some violent vigilante with delusions of authority OH WAIT
/SARCASM
I know MRAL is gone, but I’d like to remind a hilarious lie he one said: he tried to pass as a middle-aged man with a limp and working in a factory. “He” was poor but had been offered a computer by a family member. (I might have mixed up some details, but that’s basically it)
That’s obviously not the only lie, but that’s his best (read “worst”) IMO.
As for why he’s not welcomed but “worse” people can still comment: I see DKM, NWO, etc as our pets crocodiles or scorpions – they would kill if they could but they’re fun to watch. MRAL is a head lice or a mosquito, he comes back to annoy us no matter how many times we kill it. It might fun – or gross, depends – to watch in a microscope the first few time, but after a while you just really want to get rid of it so it stop sucking your blood.
No offense to biologist who might actually like them, but there still terrible as pets.
To be fair, Mr. Al doesn’t even particularly seem to like trolling here anymore. It’s become an obsession, or a habit or a tic. I was going to point out that Scooby was Mr. Al last night, when he posted basically the same complaint both here and on Nolan’s piece. Why do that unless you’re just going through the motions?
Dude, Mr. Al, find something you do enjoy. The internet seems to not be working for you.
I do hope he doesn’t become the next Dennis Markuze. Dude was scary because he might hurt someone and scary because he might hurt himself.
Not that it’s inevitable.
Markuze was really sick, and at least is getting treated now. M__L is just pathetic (Nobody expect me to buy his word on illness anymore, right? He’s a serial liar, and not even a compulsive one)
“Nobody expect me to buy his word on illness anymore, right? He’s a serial liar, and not even a compulsive one”
I might be true, it might be a lie. I’m well past caring. Either way he needs professional help and to stay the hell away from here.
MRAL:
You have my sympathy about your bipolar diagnosis. I’m depressive, have been all my life but, guess what, it doesn’t make me abusive or turn up and bother folks who have already told me they aren’t interested in talking to me. People are telling you to GTFO and if you had an ounce of decency you’d pack up your damn goodies and leave.
There are people in this community who are going through and been through stuff that you can barely imagine. Sometimes they’re prepared to talk about it, but not to you. You’ve already made it clear that you think we are lying about life experiences that shape who we are so why the fuck should we put up with listening to your white boy pain?
Scooby is MRAL?! jeez. you miss a lot when you step offline for a day