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.
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:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DrXTzToM40?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360%5D
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.