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.
Seems I missed the chew toy.
Damn, I missed the troll baiting again. Damn you, time zones!
Not surprised there were a few points missed, Sid, this troll was an epic mountain of fail.
@Dvärghundspossen
QFT.
Problems with Trolly-boy being twofold – that he made civilian victims of war (so frequently women and children) invisible and that he claimed that feminists were only too happy with the status quo of only (or mainly) men being pressured to fight.
Sid: what points? i haven’t followed closely the whole thing.
Dvärghundspossen: yes, men have been forced more into wars. Emphasis on the past tense, as far as country like USA are concerned. And let’s not forget that people who sent this men to dies were overwhelmingly men or that women had to fight to be legally allowed to be in fighting positions.
Most MRAs are the same, as they mostly just repeat a few talking points. I admire David for fishing out the amusing ones from all the repetitive dreck (like this Jason fellow).
I’m kind of perplexed as to why, when their arguments are that women aren’t expected to fight in wars, MRAs aren’t feminists. When a group of people want to help take some responsibility and some of the weight off your shoulders, why are you complaining?
I’m going to make a point of always referring to the Men’s Rights Activists or MRAs as White Men’s Rights Activists or WMRAs from now on.
Jason, if you think rape jokes are funny, perhaps you found THIS funny:
It amazes me how many MRAs quick to defend rape jokes were offended by this… What’s up with the double standard?
Also Jason: did you know you can’t even FIND a list of female civilian casualties in the current wars? I tried to find a number and it doesn’t exist. That’s how much people care about women who die in war.
@entropistanon What would they complain about then, if women were allowed to do the same jobs in the army as men?
As for the whole ‘And it still falls into a greater societal expectation – that men should die to protect women’, well, isn’t that something that feminists wants to change? Or at least I would like to see this attitude die in a fire, and I would call myself a feminist.
Damn you, sleep! I missed Jason, but this had me rolling:
So no.
@bookdragonette: Amusing how women get the reputation for being complainers who never want to fix problems, when MRAs exist.
Sid: You may assume that you’ve been smacked over the head with a gigantic “Citation Needed” sign. It was glittery and had purple fluff glued to the edges.
Still catching up on this thread, but I wanted to say, is it bad that I knew Jason was a troll as soon as I read his name in my RSS feed? So sad… It’s bad when you start recognizing styles of names as being trolls or not… How long before he starts in on how we’re all anonymous and he’s using his real name and so we’re all bad meanies?
Also:
The Paperbag Princess. That is all. (Incidentally, I love this book.)
On Objectification of Men:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/7290-Objectification-And-Men
I’m sure I’ll add more, but I’ve got two pages to catch up on.
Oh, and black women are hypersexualized with increased femininity, not decreased/more masuclinity. I don’t know why you’d think otherwise. The trope is consistently portrayed as having more curves, larger breasts, wilder/longer hair, ect ect in an attempt to say they’re more “wild” and have “less inhibition” and so are more “sexual” and “base”. It’s pretty common for white women to not be more “feminized” per se, but more infantilized than PoC of other races, and for white women who are infantilized to be more boyish than girlish, as we see Asian women consistently given the infantilized girl look comparatively, and black women given the adult woman jezebel look.
It seems like the regulars here failed on a few points in this thread, honestly :/
No, Jason provided 100% of the fail in this thread. The fact that he provided so much of it that it was hard to mock it all isn’t the regulars’ problem – or anyone’s, really.
Jason: “That’s great for Julia Ward Howe. We need more like her. But it’s not something I see in feminism much these days, women caring about men’s issues…”
Jason’s already gone but have you guys seen the new documentary that Jennifer Siebel is doing?
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jensiebelnewsom/the-mask-you-live-in
Well, that was rageinducing to read. Thank God I had you guys’ comments in between the turds to keep me going.
@sittiekitty
I don’t think it’s an either/or situation. You’re right that black women are hypersexualized by accentuating their physical characteristics associated with femininity, but they’re also masculinized by being portrayed as loud-mouthed, argumentative, combative. Even this bit of what you said
is used to portray them as less feminine than white women because sexual aggression is associated with masculinity, not femininity. Even more than all that though, there is a persistent racist stream of thought, that is often vocalized, that black women are not as feminine as white women.
Shadow, true, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I was merely trying to argue against the idea that there was only one way to go, that there aren’t part “feminine” and part “masculine” being used to imply they aren’t “real” women. Women is a ill-defined concept when you’re looking at it from the PoV of not being a woman (ie: trying to define what women is in any way that isn’t “Anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman”) and there are so many ways that things traditionally associated with being a woman that’s used to discredit women from being woman.
That was a bit of a word salad. :/ I’ve been up all night delivering babies. Hopefully I got my point across. If not, please feel free to tell me otherwise and I’ll try to correct myself.
The Paperbag Princess! Now that’s what Going Your Own Way actually looks like.
@sittiekitty
Fair enough. I should have taken into account that it was a rebuttal. And I totally agree with you. Not to mention that it’s hard to talk about these stereotypes sometimes because of how geographically dependent some of them are.
That’s awesome! Do you work in a hospital or are you a midwife?
I think of the “welfare queen” stereotype as a very feminine negative stereotype of black women. You know, in her pink Cadillac, with her press-on nails and tawdry jewelry and so on.
Shadow, totally! Each region has different views of so many different minorities, especially with racial stereotypes.
I’m a midwife.
Please let the answer be “neither; my life is a comedy film and all my friends were just unexpectedly having babies at the same time.”
I was hoping that the answer somehow involved kittens.
@katz
I was actually replying with the hoodrat stereotype in mind, but thinking on it more, I feel like the masculine stereotypes are applied to Black women’s personalities even for those stereotypes that are very feminine in presentation. I mean, maybe it’s just that we’re encountering different stereotypes. but for me, all the stereotypes I see posit Black women as abrasive and very much in opposition to the ideals of White femininity (soft, loving, patient etc.). The only stereotype of Black women I can think of that falls in that category is that of the kindly old Black woman (or, in the words of Jeff, “I was raised on TV, and I was conditioned to believe that every Black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor” :P)