Racists – victim blamers extraordinaire — like to pretend that their racism isn’t their fault, that they’ve been driven to their racism by the bad behavior of some members of the group they’re bigoted against. Do a search for the phrase “I don’t hate blacks, but” and you will find thousands of examples of this “logic” at its crudest. “I don’t think blacks are ignorant just the NIGGERS,” one YouTube commenter writes, encapsulating the racist “logic” in a phrase.
Misogynists are fond of making similar “arguments” about women. As one commenter on the Scott Adams blog puts it:
I don’t hate women, but I have a pretty low opinion of women overall. I think they have poor priorities, they have poor analytical skills, they tend to be disorganized, they tend to be impulsive, and they think the world revolves around their feelings. I don’t think all women are like that, but it’s the impression I have of the gender in general, and I don’t like those traits.
Naturally, variations of this general argument (such as it is) abound in the “manosphere.” “Misogynists are not born they are made,” writes MRA/MGTOW elder and proud misogynist ZenPriest in an oft-cited rant titled “Hate Bounces.”
“Once, a long time ago when the world was young, I loved women with all my heart and soul,”ZenPriest (also known as Zed) writes. But then along came feminism, which ruined women so thoroughly that poor ZenPriest found himself more or less forced to become a woman-hater:
I began to see women as vicious creatures whose only agenda when it came to me, or any man, was to see how much they could get from the man – then when he had nothing left to give because they had taken it all, toss him out with yesterday’s garbage. In short – as nothing but users. …
I took to avoiding women, particularly groups of them, because I could never sit quietly and put up with the bashing and would always challenge it, which ended me up in a lot of fights and added greatly the count of times that I got called “misogynist.”
Gosh, why would anyone who “see[s] women as vicious creatures” get called a misogynist?
[A]fter 3 decades of listening to it, and hating it, and trying to keep the animosity which had been building in me over it … I caved in and began to really hate women. …
I will not allow most women in my house unless I have known her a long time and she is old enough to have escaped being infected with the plague of man hating or is escorted by someone I trust, nor will I enter theirs except on the same conditions. If I pass a woman stranded on the road, I will not stop to help her because it is as likely as not that she will be afraid of me. …
I changed from a man who loved women and thought they were just about the greatest thing in the world, to a man who can’t stand them, or anything about them.
And of course it is all the fault of women and their alleged incessant man-hatery:
Man bashing and man hating harms women, because it makes men hate them back – eventually. A puppy returns love for love, but if you beat it will eventually turn mean and will one day turn on you when you raise your fist or your stick (or the club of words) to hit it. Men are no different.
As this last bit makes clear, this “she made me do it” logic is the very same logic used by abusers to justify their abuse.
Now our old friend JohnTheOther has offered a similar blame-the-ladies explanation as to why he’s developed what he calls an “indifference to female opinion.” In his telling, the straw that broke the camel’s back was some unnamed feminist who had the temerity to use the word “neckbeard” in an internet posting.
The culture of easy, casual insult by women against average men, creeps, neckbeards, mother’s-basement-dweller and so on, has a effect which might not be recognized by women. Guys generally don’t need to be told they’re held in contempt as a group, our wider culture makes this sparklingly clear. However, individual instances of circumstantial ad-hom have the very real effect of making men not care about women’s opinions.
Yeah, that’s why these guys don’t give a shit about what women say.
Naturally, Mr. TheOther feels the need to tell us that 1) he doesn’t have a neckbeard and 2) he has a (presumably human) girlfriend.
Am I a neck-beard? No, I’m clean shaven, Im not an online gamer, I have a girlfriend, a career, I dress well et-cetera. But whenever I see some casual, throw away comment like creeper, neck-beard or other minor belittling insult used to describe average men, it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions of women.
After being criticized for his blatant misogyny by a commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit (virtually the only MRA site online where misogyny is ever called out), Mr. TheOther altered that final bit to read “it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions offered.” He evidently thinks that changing the wording of this one sentence, and complaining about “quote-mining” will convince readers that the misogynistic argument set forth in detail in the rest of the post somehow isn’t misogyny. (And, on the Men’s Rights subreddit, that ploy seems to have worked.)
Naturally, like so many misogynists, Mr. TheOther insists he’s really not a woman-hater:
I don’t hate women, I don’t believe in any “back to the kitchen” nonsense, or any other female-targeted belittlement. What I’m talking about is my personal attitude towards women’s opinions, their utterances, their writing, their thoughts, their contribution to society. If you are a woman reading this, that means your thoughts, ideas, speech, writing and so on.
Well, that clears it up. You don’t hate women; you just don’t give a shit what women think or say or do. Obviously there’s no bigotry in that!
Utterly dismissing “female opinion” because some woman called you a neckbeard: Men’s Rights activism at its finest!
she is old enough to have escaped being infected with the plague of man hating
I keep turning this over in my head. How old does one have to be? Or are we talking about an “untainted by feminism” ideal? If so, does he mean the feminist movement of the 70s, which would mean women who are well over 40? I mean, there really isn’t a particular age for “man hating”. I’ve met women who were well past 40 that hated men (in the traditional sense, that “men are all pigs”). I’ve also met women who were well under 40 who’ve said the same things about men as the above 40 man haters. If he’s talking about “untainted by feminism”, the same holds true. I’ve met feminist 60 year olds and feminist 20 year olds.
I guess this is what happens when you don’t care about the “thoughts, ideas, speech, writing and so on” of women. He could be letting some rights-fighting 80 year old into his house and not know it.
@Stick:
In other cases, OK. But here, the kind of ‘indifference’ we’re talking about is sociopathic; we’re talking about a guy, after all, who also expressed complete ‘indifference’ toward female rape victims and was ‘indifferent’ to the possibility that some Swedish radical feminists might be murdered as a result of AVFM’s harassment.
@AbsintheDexterous:
Isn’t it great? We get a bit of ageism along with the misogyny and racism. It’s like those “buy two classics get a third free” book sale at Barnes and Noble.
I’m also thinking of how much fun my mom would have realigning anyone’s assumptions about her. She’s got 60 years of sarcasm and dry wit honed and ready for any unfortunate assumptions.
@ Stick:
As if there weren’t a lot of other terrible, hateful posts of his logged on the internet. No, dude hates women. There’s a ton of evidence out there to support this.
Gee. And here I was thinking that it was YOUNG enough t not have been tainted by feminism. I always thought that’s why MRAs prefered women under twenty five.
I’ll never understand the whole “people think I’m awful, but I’m xyz. I’m human, I have a job, an SO and a pinochle club” thing that people who say truly awful shit engage in (cough:RUBY:cough). Like, yes, you’re human, we know this. You’re also fucking TERRIBLE. Your pinochle club or swim for abused animals doesn’t make any of the terrible shit you say un-terrible.
On another tangent of JTO’s, he says himself that words like creeper are a “minor belittlement”. Yeah, so a dude being told for a second that he isn’t the most awesome thing ever is a tragedy but telling women their opinions, thoughts or ideas don’t fucking matter, that’s just totes fine.
I’ll never understand the whole “people think I’m awful, but I’m xyz. I’m human, I have a job, an SO and a pinochle club” thing that people who say truly awful shit engage in (cough:RUBY:cough). Like, yes, you’re human, we know this. You’re also fucking TERRIBLE. Your pinochle club or swim for abused animals doesn’t make any of the terrible shit you say un-terrible. – ostara321
Maybe people like that say this sort of stuff because they’re so used to dehumanising people they dislike that they become desperate to prove their humanity when challenged (as in, they expect other people to do the same as they do and go straight for dehumanising tactics)?
I think that my biggest problem with MRAs who go on about how “all women are the same” still fall into the “degrade/pedestal” trap. They go on about how they used to pedestal women (as though this is the only other choice) and then, when women didn’t live up to impossible perfectionist ideals (no shit, Sherlock, women are PEOPLE and therefore flawed in a myriad of ways), they feel “betrayed” and act as though if a woman can’t be perfect, she must be worthless.
MRAS-Listen, YOU set up the dichotomy. I don’t know of any woman who explicitly and seriously tries to pass herself off as “perfect,” and even if such a woman exists, she is not some kind of Ambassador Of All Ladies Everywhere. So when you set up impossible standards and then get pissed at and entire GROUP of people for not living up to them, you’re being an idiot (just you, individually- I don’t attribute the actions of one person to others who share your phenotype).
But I find it funny that MRAs seem to think that the argument is going to come back upon them, as though “all men are the same as well.” They trap themselves in this thinking that all women are pedestalled or worthless, and then they trap themselves into thinking that the only rebuttal to their misogyny is the equally sexist argument that men are either knights or dogs. Men are men. Women are women. And humans are humans. When you exhibit behavior that makes you noxious and putrid, you can’t hide in your group and expect the stink to waft away like a fart in a crowded room without anyone noticing who did it.
When YOU stand up and act like a misogynist douchebag, YOU are making a statement for YOURSELF. And in response, if people choose to find YOU noxious and poisonous for that fact, you can’t simply try and pass that off as the hatred of all men, seeing as most of us don’t have to hate the messenger to hate the message- and critique it honestly.
Also, it’s an insult to neckbeards everywhere to assume that it’s a proper insult to combat misogynist thinking. Misogyny isn’t facial hair. It’s coursing through your veins and coming out your mouth like vocal diarrhea. The problem isn’t what you’re saying. It’s that you actually and actively believe that over 50% of the population is some kind of Hivemind dead set on permanently wilting your erection.
I’m growing more than a little tired of people framing discussions of misogyny and other kinds of bigotry in terms of an extremely narrow definition of the word “hate”.
There’s lot more to misogyny than just “ARGH WOMAN BAD I HATE YOU SO MUCH RARGH.” It’s not just a question of viewing women with seething hatred, it’s a question of viewing women as alien, unimportant and inferior.
Even if Mr. The Other were telling the truth here, he would still be treating the thoughts and concerns of women with dismissive contempt. And that damn well is misogyny.
@Argenti Aertheri
“NWO — your citation is a newspaper, as in the MSM you always complain about.”
And that’s exactly the point. These women journalists, talk show hosts and news anchors in every media outlet will talk about or print up our daily barrage of demeaning men. It’s a totally casual and accepted part of everyones daily life. It’s like a backround noise that never goes away.
So today she prattles on about how women are so much more empathetic, sympathetic, cooperative, ect, ect, ect. Just all-together way better than men in every way. Now tommorow she might write a story about rampant misogyny in the gaming community. And there’ll be a screen shot of some uber-avatar in fiddlededee grove with a thought ballon saying, “women suck at gaming.”
Do you see the irony? The entire MSM makes a living out of ridiculing men, yet somewhere, in some game, a woman/girl had her feelings hurt and something’s gotta be done to solve this travesty of justice. The same woman from a MSM outlet, who just blathered on about how shitty all men are, is horrified that one woman had her feelings hurt in an obscure online game.
Our politicians and schools are just more of the same. Men are bad, they’re violent, they’re evil, they’re lazy, they’re inconsiderate, on and on it goes. Women are only always told they’re good, strong, brilliant, empathetic, cooperative, on and on that goes.
The very institutions that make a profit and gain more power from ridiculing, demeaning and demonizing all men, are demanding safe spaces for women so that no one woman will ever be ridiculed, demeaned or demonized. The ultimate irony.
Argenti:
Doesn’t matter, all citations are wrong anyway. If you get information from somewhere outside yourself, it’s actually less reliable than something that originates entirely within your own head.
It’s why his idea of what, say, DV and EEO laws say is more right than what they actually say.
Dracula:
That’s what the friend defense always is. In a way it’s a testament to the (partial) success of the efforts to stigmatize bigotry.
Line from a story I’m writing. Seems relevant to the topic at hand.
Textbook DARVO.
Hershele — BRAINFAX! Yeah, I remember, he just said the other day that he was laughing at my quoting government sources for statistics though, so news ones? LOL! (I seriously had a college assignment at one point to compare the news article with the study, that was quite hilarious)
I never thought of misogyny, as usually practiced, as being the conscious hatred of women. Most heterosexual men actually desire the company of women from time to time. However, if you combine a headful of craptastic beliefs about the proper relation between the sexes with an aggressive lack of interpersonal skills, you often produce behavior which will alienate many of the XX-chromosomed humans with which you deal. Then you get the ‘she made my bits tingle, and now she won’t even TALK to me! Why does this happen? Why are girls LIKE that?’ nonsense, in which all personal accountability on the man’s part vanishes and the woman/Women become the source of the pain.
The only redeeming quality in all of this is that NAMALT. Despite the MRAs bloviating to the contrary, although sexism is endemic and rank in our society, their particular quirk is the exception and not the rule.
The first time I saw the term ‘neckbeard’ was in reference to Ross Douthat after he shared his LADY PILLS MAKE ME LOSE MY BONER story with the world. I’ve mostly seen it used to describe people who are similarly disconnected from reality, I don’t think it’s just related to scruffiness
Reasons men have given me as to why they now hate/can no longer respect/no longer listen to women (TW for abuse apologism and casual misogyny and people being assholes):
1) I used to respect women and even consider myself a feminist, but they refused to make me Boss Feminist and asked me to check my privilege at the door so now I know that feminism is bunk and women are bitches.
2) I used to respect women THE MOST EVER. I treated them with like, extra respect, did nice things for them all the time, you know. But none of them did things to my boner in return. Now I know they’re all evil harpies.
3) I used to respect women, but then I found out what the tango is about, and, like… my hands are tied now, obviously.
4) I used to respect women, until I found out they are all sluts.
5) I used to respect women until I got dumped for reasons I didn’t consider adequate. Also, her friends backed her up. Uppity shrews.
6) I used to respect women, until a female friend of mine stayed in an abusive relationship with a guy. I mean, talk about irrational lady brains, right?
Dear misogynists everywhere: none of these reasons makes any sense unless you already have no respect for women. And seriously, the fucking tango? Get the fuck out of my face.
And how could I miss 7) I used to respect women, but my one and only sex partner I’ve ever had happens to be a sub, so clearly all women want to be controlled by men in every aspect of their lives. It just makes sense.
@Robert
Give women a little credit, will ya? They ain’t stupid. They get to act like animals in heat knowing full well that men are forbidden to act like animals in heat.
The ying and yang of sexuality. Female arouses when ready to mate. Male responds by mating.
NWO: drawing illogical conclusions from baseless assumptions since…
Hey, anyone know when his first post was? I’d love to see the moment his fractal ridiculousness was first introduced to this fine establishment.
@NWO
“…men are forbidden to act like animals in heat.”
I bet it sucks not being able to rape any hot woman you see on the street.
MRAs don’t seem to get the concept of “not caring.” When one doesn’t care about something, one generally doesn’t spend hours every day dwelling on it. If MRAs don’t care about women’s opinions, why do they care so much if we hate them? After all, would you care if a stupid person hated you?
NWO, you do realize men are allowed to wear pretty and sexy clothes, and some of them do it, and enjoy it just as much as women? And don’t pretend you know anything about a woman’s mind.
But who I am kidding, you still haven’t realized that a huge part of people’s sexuality is (when they can afford it) to receive and give pleasure without making a baby in the process. Yeah for condoms, for the pill and the rest of birth controls.
Viscaria, when was the tango one?
@Kyrie
Hooraaaayyyy!!! The men and women have identical sexualities gambit. It sure didn’t take long. I didn’t get my period this month. I hope I’m not pregnant.
Get your programs here folks, ya can’t tell a man from a woman without one. All throughout history in every diverse culture they’ve always acted the same. The sameness is startling.
Tell me more about this sameness????????