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!
Funny, every other sex worker does not seem to describe their work day as the monty python argument sketch.
You’ve got a lot of shit to learn about research; I’ve read some of your shit even when you’re not directly facing off with feminists, and it is sorely lacking. I mean, if you actually wanted to do this well, your writing skills need substantial work (I have no idea how you are at rhetoric, so hey, maybe you’re fine)
Oh, I didn’t realize you were a delicate flower who couldn’t handle insults (Never you mind that you throw them out with wanton glee, albeit passive aggressively) or invective.
…that’d be because you are. Pretty regularly.
No, you typically do throw out something roughly equivalent and opposite (in force), it’s just done in a passive way. It’s the definition of the term. It’s what you do, oh, every other thread.
Also, it’s not unprovoked. You could have said that a year ago, I guess, but you’ve been trollin’ right along for a year now; that you’re bad at it doesn’t change that you, as a troll, simply don’t warrant a tiny iota of civility. I mean, you’re also a terrible person aside from that, and support terrible things just because anti-feminist dudes say them, so there’s other reasons you don’t… but at the end of the day, nobody expects anything but trolling from you. If you don’t like hostility, stop trolling places that don’t like you.
This (http://i.imgur.com/lLqbX.jpg) is what an MRA looks like, according to Maya L.
Rutee, not a delicate flower, but a special snowflake, from what I’ve been led to believe.
Look, the fact is that her ungratefulness is astounding. It is kinda funny to speculate that she is apparently wishing she had been splattered all over the road, rather than cast as a damsel in a situation where… she was the damsel.
So, Robert Farson … let me get this straight. You dismiss the two most vocal and popular MRM sites as not accurately representing the MRM, and you instead recommend sites hosted by a lying bully and a lying pedophile-booster. Interesting.
Oh, and Rutee, you have anger management issues. Just a bit of constructive criticism.
oh, and Shanean, hey are upper middle class white women, one of which has a masters in women’s studies. The other probably does as well. Not exactly the proletariate. More like the bourgeois.
There is some hostility to stay at home dads, but you’re seriously underestimating the tiny little factor that it’s women’s work. There’s no glamour in it, it’s low status, tiring, and thankless. From what I glean the hostility is pretty significantly less. Why would you do this tiring, thankless task that isn’t yours? Well, because it’s good for your kids, but that’s never really reinforced in popular culture.
It is, and it is addressed at least some of the time. I’m not disagreeing that a forum specifically set for real issues would be a bad idea, it’s the notion that men’s issues are not discussed that merits derisive laughter. You appear to be aware that it is moreso, further. It would help avoid side-eye to focus more on the “We want to discuss these things seriously, without distracting from feminism” rather than “Society has no place for discussion of men’s issues”. The latter is blatantly untrue and raises concern for good reasons.
Yeah, I could see that being a problem, but most of the shit you said in the post I started responding to you would be a great place to start in describing it to avoid that. I’m probably not the feminist most tired of majority-concern bullshit, but I seem to be moreso than most of the other folks here, and “No rilly discrimination in custody is not a real concern, dudes are doing fine there” was pretty good at me giving you a chance
@abeegoesbuzz- I don’t consider Sacks a bully in the least- elaborate, please? As for Farrell, it’s my understanding that quote was taken out of context, and he’s repeatedly condemned the sentiment.
Mags, the “I’m so unaffected” shtick really fails when you make post after post instead of, you know, leaving.
IT’s sad that you cited glenn sacks and warren farrell; they’re lying sacks of shit who couldn’t research their way through JSTOR if they had to. That’s part of your problem, I’ll point out; you’re using shitty fauxademics. You’re gonna get side eye as long as you look to people who rely on terrible understandings of history they made up (Seriously, Farrell’s theory is trivially disproven by looking at either modern day statistics or past organization; Only a small subset of women were ever truly ‘stay at home mothers’)
Ah lauralot, don’t worry about me. I am fine.
No, you can find the full text. Now, he may have backpedalled, and bully for him for realizing what he said is at least taken poorly (even if he didn’t realize it was blazingly unethical, which I somewhat doubt if he won’t own what he said).
It’s frankly immaterial; incest-support or not, he’s a lackwit. His research for, for instance, his theory of ‘male disposability’ was to take stereotypes he assumed were true and work backwards from there. He didn’t use actual research.
Sacks, if I’m remembering my idiots, is similar. I’m trying to remember how, precisely, he formulated his sexist thought, but it basically erased all women who don’t meet his mold of damsels in distress and women. It’s the pair’s norm. They’re not who you want to look to for academic research.
Sorry, but I can’t just “overlook” the incest thing. And before someone says “but radfems!”, please note that I’ve never had any time for Pat Califia either ever since I read a rather nauseating attempt to justify adults screwing adolescents from back in the 70s.
Insomnia, it’s a fucking pain in the ass. But hey, there’s been a lot of manboobz action to catch up on…
Mags, I don’t know why I engage with you at all, but I guess it’s because I kind of care about the information profession. Do you really think you could answer reference questions from feminists without trying to steer them to MRA sites? Because, as much as I personally think MRAs are fucked up, if someone asked me about them I would direct them to MRA web sites. It’s not up to me to hide the information from them. Frankly, I am not so sure about you though, and based on your behavior here I would never hire you to deal with the public. I am not saying this to try to insult you, by the way — it’s just based on your actions here.
@Rutee- I’ll look into that, then. Sacks, too. I’ve simply enjoyed some of their writings, which is why I linked to them, although I admit I’m not all that familar. I certainly wouldn’t consider Sacks an academic, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Valenti and Marcotte are bloggers and authors of fairly basic, fairly pedestrian feminist 101 books, but they’ve still done a lot of good.
And I wouldn’t call men a majority- the dominant gender, obviously, but that’s different, I think. Others may disagree, but for me, this is the reason that men’s groups are needed in a way that “white pride” bullshit isn’t. A lot of racism seems predicated on the implicit notion that the “other” (usually non-white) is simply inferior. Whereas when it come to sexism- it seems rooted in separate gender roles which the members of the other gender are each assumed to be unfit for. Since men are dominant, men’s roles are more exalted and more flexible, I think, but only relatively speaking… they’re still constrained. So we need to address the way men are harmed by gender roles as well, and I think can and should do this without derailing feminist discourse.
Or do you think I’m off here?
I missed this. The problem IMO is not that men as men aren’t taken seriously, obviously. But ironically, since men (as you’ve stated) aren’t supposed to talk about masculinity or question it, doing so results in dismissal. When I say “men’s space”, I don’t mean just a space with dudes. I mean a space where men can challenge cultural programming, destructive masculinity, and also more concrete men’s concerns like circumcision, contempt for non-traditional men and yes, discrimination against men in the few areas it exists… in the same way feminists do from the female perspective.
I think a lot of sexist ideas against women also comes from a similar idea of women being an inferior “other”.
I think I understand you when you say this, but could you please elaborate? What do you mean by “relatively speaking”?
Farson, sorry but Sacks is a bully. More to the point, he bullies abused families.
Re. your racism/sexism comparison: It’s a comparison that never rings true to me, but as far as your little story goes, it’s not true that racism embodies a simple good/bad notion, while sexism is about value-neutral roles. Racism is about roles too — think about the hardworking Latino, the athletic African American, and the spiritual Native American. Not bad, as far as stereotypes go, but wouldn’t you rather be, y’know, you?
Anyway, like I said, it’s an inaccurate comparison, but it also doesn’t prove what you want it to. If what you really want to say is that men can be harmed by gender roles, that much is true. If you want to try to find other parallels, where, like, men are compared to farm animals and laws are passed that will force them to forgo medical treatments to remove possibly fatal toxic tissue from their bodies because of “gender roles,” let me know. By the way, you sure have a way of derailing feminist discourse while you’re not derailing feminist discourse.
In sociology, the dominant group is the majority. It’s not about numbers, but power.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that women’s gender roles are low status, often unpaid for, and predicated on helplessness *eyeroll*.
LAst I checked, there wasn’t a platonic ideal we could compare them against. The fact is that most people identify and prefer male things because men receive more agency.
Yeah, I know. It’s why I said it to start with. But they’re constrained to stuff that most people want to do (Because society says they’re higher status and better, and will pay them for).
In phrasing being a member of the majority as just so horrid, yeah, you are, by a mile.
@Maya- Well, I think that it’s a different- it operates differently. Othered races are basically considered “less than” in every way. That is, in a model racist society there will be basically no position for them- there’s nothing they’re seen as intrinsically qualified for. Whereas, with gender, men and women are separated at every level into their respective roles, and both genders are taught that they are naturally ill-suited for the other’s sphere. Women are still othered, of course, but in the sense that their place is less valued… not that they have no place at all.
And so, then, since men are constrained in a sexist system, in a way that maybe whites are not in a racist system… a non-hateful men’s movement is necessary. Does this make sense at all?
Technically, feminist websites like this are “men’s spaces” as well. (We find cultural programming of masculinity just as bad as of femininity and if any man came to us feeling down because he wasn’t “manly enough” we would support him. – Ami Angelwings is a man who transitioned, I think.) But women’s issues are inevitably brought up more often. And this is, after all, a site that mocks misogyny.
But it is a very good idea to work on spaces specifically for men. I think the Good Men’s Project is a men’s space online. Unfortunately, it crawls with extreme MRA trolls.
Ozymandias’s website No Seriously, What About The Menz? is a very good space if you are looking for men’s spaces online. Contact Ozymandias. She can definitely help you with whatever help you need.
@Rutee- Well yes, most people prefer masculinity, but not all… because there are things that men aren’t “allowed” to do. To contrast, I would say that whites as whites aren’t really constrained at all. Cisgendered people as cisgendered people… there’s no “role” they need to play. Straights as straights. Etc.
I think people intuitively sort of understand this- which is why a lot of feminists are receptive to a non-hateful men’s movement, to Movember and all that, but would roll their eyes at a “White History Month”.
@Ruttee
No matter how much you disagree with him, he still makes a good general point that men don’t feel “addressed” in a way women are.
I think the reason so many young men join with extreme MRAs is because they feel excluded. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the reasoning behind it sounds to you, but that is how they feel and that’s why they do something that stupid. And among men who don’t know any better and buy into our culture’s narratives of what men and women “are like”, that makes them say some very hateful and misogynistic things.
I know I am so soft right now, but Robert is actually a reasonable guy. He wants to work with us. He’s not a jerk like Paul Elam or Angry Harry. Of course, I am completely against misogynistic assholes and people who support them. But Robert isn’t one of them.
God, Gosling looks like such a fucking mangina in that picture.