Oh, the Men’s Rights subreddit is on a roll! Earlier in the week, as regular readers will already be well aware, a sizeable number of the regulars there were waxing indignant about a spermburgling girlfriend who turned out to be imaginary, and expressing sympathy for the imaginary girlfriend’s imaginary boyfriend, even though he’d admitted to punching her in her imaginary stomach.
Now they’re directing their wrath at a British journalist whom they’ve decided is being insufficiently grateful for being rescued from being hit by a speeding automobile by Ryan Gosling.
The backstory: Earlier in the week, British journalist Laurie Penny was wandering the streets of Manhattan, lost in thought, when she almost stepped off the curb into the path of a taxi. A man standing nearby grabbed her and pulled her to safety. That man happened to be famously hunky young actor Ryan Gosling.
Naturally, Penny tweeted about it, and her tweet aroused something of a Twitterstorm, in part because of the novelty of the situation, and in part because the thought of someone so dashing performing this little act of urban heroism made more than a few ladies (and men) swoon a little. I would probably react the same way if I heard a story about Kate Winslet saving a kitten.
Anyway, Penny was a little bit overwhelmed by all the attention her story was getting, and ended up writing a funny, spiky little essay for Gawker reminding people that while, yes, Ryan Gosling had indeed done a very nice thing for her, for which she was grateful, that it wasn’t really the biggest deal in the world. For one thing, she pointed out, lots of ordinary decent people perform similar acts of “heroism” all the time. For another, there are bigger heroes out there – like those working tirelessly to keep Rick Santorum from becoming our next president.
She ended the piece with this:
I really do object to being framed as the ditzy damsel in distress in this story. I do not mean any disrespect to Ryan Gosling, who is an excellent actor and, by all accounts, a personable and decent chap. …
But as a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that’s lazy storytelling, and I’m sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.
And the thing is, I’m sure he would. I’m sure he’s as embarrassed about the attention as Penny is.
Well, for some people, Penny’s refusal to play the “boring supportive role” was simply unacceptable. Over on The National Review, antifeminist asshole Suzanne Venker wrote a snide and misleading piece portraying Penny as an ungrateful bitch:
If Western women want to know where all the good men have gone, they need only look in the mirror. Not only can men no longer hold the door open for women or pay the check after dinner, they can’t even save a woman’s life and get a simple thank you.
Never mind that Penny wrote explicitly that she was “grateful to the dashing and meme-worthy Mr. Gosling.” We can conclude that Venker either has terrible reading comprehension, or is deliberately lying about Penny. In any case, she continued on in this vein:
Feminists have totally destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Not all women seek the feminized version of the American male. Most women like big, strong, sexy men. They want men who are willing to put out fires, fight in combat, and, yes, even save damsels in distress. But in post-feminist America, Marlboro Man is a rare breed. We can thank women like Penny for that.
Well, actually, the reason the Marlboro Man isn’t around any more is that he died of lung cancer. (Well, to be more specific, two of the actors who portrayed the Marlboro Man did in fact die that way.) But let’s continue:
If Americans don’t wake up to the evils of feminism, the next time a woman walks down the wrong side of the street, the men of America will simply walk right past her and let her get hit.
And we’ll have no one blame but ourselves.
Really? Really? I’m pretty sure that Penny’s Gawker essay isn’t actually going to turn American men into a bunch of woman-hating psychopaths. I think we can all agree that Venker is being a giant turd here.
Well, not all of us, I guess. Someone posted Venker’s little screed to the Men’s Rights subreddit – you were wondering when I’d get back to them, weren’t you? And the regulars responded, well, like you would expect them to. Here are two of the most highly upvoted comments there, from two of the subreddit’s most prolific posters.
Stay classy. Men’s Rights Redditors!
“If Americans don’t wake up to the evils of feminism, the next time a woman walks down the wrong side of the street, the men of America will simply walk right past her and let her get hit.
And we’ll have no one blame but ourselves.”
MISANDRY ALERT
Is this “anti feminist asshole” and “turd” (lol David) capable of conceptualizing helping people without gender being involved? So it’s ok for women to save other women, but not men because women owe men something special.
WTF? If she wants to know why some think the world has gone nuts, she need only look in the mirror.
I would like to think that I would act to save someone from being hit by a car they haven’t seen regardless of gender or any anticipation of reward, but because it is the right thing to do.
And dammit, this is one of the things feminism is advocating: A woman is not a supporting character, or someone who is awarded to one of the guys because of some action he undertook.
Why can’t these guys see that imposing such roles on people is unfair?
If Western women want to know where all the good men have gone, they need only look in the mirror.
i… what? is she saying western women ate all the men?
well, she works for the nro, so she also considers the possibility that money might be involved. but basically, no.
I love misogynistic women like Suzanne Venker. They’re arguments always boil down to “I can’t find any good boyfriends and it’s all the fault of feminism. It can’t possibly be that I’m an awful person with ridiculous expectations about gender”. I can’t possibly be the only woman on earth not looking for a big, strong, firefighting superman to rescue me all the time, can I? I pay taxes so that police and fire men and women can rescue me from fires and marauders, thanks, I prefer my men to be emotionally supportive, nurturing, and intelligent partners in my life.
My sister has always liked Gosling. Now she has more reason to.
Jesus, holy overreaction, Batman. Gosling did a good thing. Reporter person thanked him, and also said, hey, lots of non-movie-star people do this every day. That is as it should be. Instead it’s turned into THIS free-for-all.
I intervened in a beating once. Got a guy away from the woman he had beaten unconscious in the street. The guy took off and the woman staggered upright, obviously not right, and stagger/ran off with a slurred mumble that she was fine. Maybe she said thank you; I can’t remember, I was on the phone with the cops at the time and have a hearing problem, plus I was pretty wired so might not have remembered anyway.
But you know what? THAT’S FINE. Jesus. I don’t do things like that to get my egodick stroked and told what a wonderful hunk of man-meat I am. I do it because it’s the right thing to do! Even if she had hissed in my face that I was an asshole for intervening, that wouldn’t make me go, “Ha, I’ll just let this guy BEAT YOU COMATOSE then! Hahaha, shows you!” Because WTF. Not how ethics work, people!
Yes, men can do all those things, and most women are appreciative. However, most thank-yous don’t come with the blowjob these men seem to think they should. Your entitlement, check it.
Personally, I’d prefer none of my male friends, lovers, or relations EVER went into combat. Getting brain damage after your Hummer gets blown up on a mine or massive PTSD isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
I love misogynistic women like Suzanne Venker. They’re arguments always boil down to “I can’t find any good boyfriends and it’s all the fault of feminism. It can’t possibly be that I’m an awful person with ridiculous expectations about gender and relationships”.
I can’t possibly be the only woman on earth not looking for a big, strong, firefighting superman to rescue me all the time, can I? I pay taxes so that police and fire men and women can rescue me from fires and marauders, thanks, I prefer my men to be emotionally supportive, nurturing, and intelligent partners in my life. And really, if I saw a dude about to step into traffic, I’d totally try to help him, because I’m a human being.
Ryan Gosling did the decent human thing here, and from what I’ve read, it sounds like Laurie Penny was humanly grateful for Ryan Gosling’s human decency, regardless of their respective genders. Sounds pretty equal to me.
But the MRAers seem to think Ryan Gosling should be getting Extra Bonus Gratitude Points for saving Laurie Penny while also in possession of a penis. Sounds pretty not equal to me, guys. WHINE HARDER.
Having been hit by a car several years ago (I got a minor fracture), I tend to find myself stopping my male friends from stepping out into the road *even when there isn’t any real danger*. It just shows them I love them, though, right? 😉
Apparently I am a superhero or something.
I say this because I have, multiple times in my life, done things like “grab a baby’s stroller as it was rolling away and headed for the street” or “yell, ‘Hey, this guy’s choking, someone help him’ when I saw someone choking,” or “honk at a car that was trying to turn into oncoming traffic” or “send the police to check on a friend whom I rightly feared was attempting suicide.” It’s fairly likely that in one or more of these cases, my simple, minimal-effort-required action saved a life.
Except, apparently, I’m not eligible to do that, because I’m an icky-poo girl, and rescuing is only supposed to be done by men to women. (Sorry, choking guy. Especially seeing as the doctor who ran over to help you and actually saved your life was also a woman, I guess you were just supposed to be left for dead?) And, apparently, I should have demanded all those people shower me with praise afterward, rather than seeing those things as being pretty much the minimum of being a vaguely decent human being.
Is it cool that Ryan Gosling is a vaguely decent human being? Absolutely! I’m glad he is! It is definitely superior to being a terrible human being! But acting like “OMG you didn’t let someone walk into an oncoming car when you could easily prevent that” is some sort of amazing compliment is just sad. Of course you grab people before they walk in front of cars. You don’t do it because you’re a hero and you definitely don’t do it because you want women to swoon with gratitude. You do it because you’re not a fucking MONSTER who would just let someone die for shits and giggles.
Unless, of course, you’re an MRA. Ugh.
Good post. But are you intentionally forgetting that Kate Winslet did perform an act of heroism, not that long ago?
Two things about the mensrights thread stand out to me: the immediate, over-the-top outrage, because apparently being ungrateful while female is a mortal sin; and the consistent downvoting of posts that point out that, according to Laurie Penny herself, she did in fact thank Gosling and was grateful. I haven’t checked back there since last night, but it’s notable just how happy some of the people there are to believe an untruth.
I work in healthcare. Every day, in thousands of hospitals, doctors, nurses, and technicians off all genders, save lives. Often without so much as a thank you. Most of them are in those professions because they care for other people.
If you think you’re owed some sort of parade because you did something ethical or compassionate, there is something wrong with you.
And if you MRAs think that women should be grease spots simply because you feel she didn’t do enough obeisance for your good deed, then you deserve the label of entitled man-child asshole.
That is all.
No way man. We trapped them in mirrors, like the evil Queen does in some versions of Snow White, and we force them to tell us how pretty we are all day. Take that, men!
Ryan Gosling, I had a crush on you when I was 10, and I’m not totally over it yet. Good to know your hunkiness comes with basic human decency, though, as Penny pointed out, it’s no more heroic from you than it would be from anyone else.
If you ever feel a desire to see the Rockies back in the home country, look me up. You can stay on my couch, we’ll go to Banff. Maybe you’ll declare your undying love for me, I don’t know. If you come in July, we could see the Stampede.
Out of curiosity, how much thankfulness do the Men Right’s Redditors think Ms. Penny owed Mr. Gossling? Let’s assume that I pull a woman from oncoming traffic. It would probably make for great conversation for a bit but eventually one would hope that, if we were to continue talking, that we could move away from her being infinitely grateful forever and ever, amen. That would get pretty dull after awhile.
Ms. Penny thanked Gossling for his charming act publicly and everyone was content. Except for the MR Redditors, of course.
For all of the moaning about “white knights” that MRA’s do, it’s funny that they never notice that gender traditionalists like Suzanne Venker are the ones who are absolutely in love with the concept. The white knight does what he does for women not because he’s a decent human being, but rather in expectation of some kind of reward. Which is exactly why feminists aren’t such big fans of white-knighting.
And often enough if the WK doesn’t get “properly rewarded” for his good deeds he becomes sulky or rageful, and the inherent sexism comes out. I recall one MRA (wish I could remember who) telling an anecdote about his younger days when he intervened to stop a pimp beating a prostitute. She was, to his surprise, not grateful at all; she actually hit her “rescuer” and shouted that the incident was just going to cause more trouble for her. Which was probably true. So what lesson did this proto-MRA learn? Why, he concluded that no woman anywhere was worthy of his help from then on. QED.
Also, hey girl,
Feminist Ryan Gosling memes, just for you, girl.
I think it’s because they don’t feel they have a lot to offer in the ‘ethics and compassion’ sphere. It’s like the unacademic person being bemused by the academic person having a complete meldown over a B, when the unacademic person is really pleased with their C. Except instead of academic prowess, it’s human decency (which is more important than academic prowess).
Sorry that, by saving her life, one man took the spotlight away from one women for one moment. My appologies, your exaltednesses. Men should know that their ONLY place is grovelling at the feet of the goddesses.
Which version of Zarat is this one? Looks like “left his computer logged in and NWO found it.”
So Antz, how many decades is she supposed to say thank you for a brief bit of assistance?
O HAI, ANTZ. Still being nonsensical, I see.
Also, As if I didn’t like the man from “Drive” enough. 😀 Though, good on Penny for writing that article. Perspective is always good.
@princessbonbon
, presumably.
(My apologies to Pinkie Pie)