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.
What Freemage said pretty much applies here in Oz, too. We might not be as obvious as in the US but misogyny is a real problem here.
Meanwhile, happy birthday Argenti!
http://youtu.be/z4N95Mi3M_k
Happy Birthday Argenti!
Also, Mark’s icon is literally a fedora; he’s not even trying, totally a troll worth ignoring.
I’d have called it a trilby, with that narrow brim, but those seem to get lumped under the heading of fedora. Stupid of him to use a style that’s already (unfairly!!!eleventy!!) laughed at because of its association with cretins like PUAs.
Happy birthday, Argenti!
Serrana, I love your new kitty pic.
That is all.
Thank you, Kitteh! It’s Nilla, being all intellectual and stuff.
I love yours too!
Nilla’s prolly being feminism, too, like the kitteh on the Fidelbogan thread.
Mine’s Maddie being
not intellectual at allcute. It’s not quite up to the level of sitting on the kerb crying to get stuff, but she does try.Thanks guys! I’ve had a “fun” afternoon. I got another danio and am trying again with a plec…and got a pair of puffers for the planted tank. The tank full of snails. Puffers, the fish with no concept of “full”.
I spent most of an hour picking out snails because damn guys, I’m thrilled you’re eating, but there are plenty of snails to go around!
Happy birthday, Argenti.
Jason really has gaslighting down to an art, doesn’t he?
Happy birthday, Argenti!
Meowy birthday, Argenti!
Except he hasn’t figured out that it doesn’t really work when people can go back and read what he wrote.
If what Jason is doing is art then it’s going to end up on Regretsy some day.
@Kitteh’s
My first thought was literally “An antifeminist trilby, now I’ve seen everything!”
@Argenti
You were born today?!!!!
YAYYYYY!!
Shadow – every time I think of “trilby” in connection with these jerks, the word tries to turn to “triviality” instead.
Funny that.
@Kitteh’s
And misandrist, always misandrist.
Didn’t we used to have a regular who was very into fedoras and trilbies? Did he change his mind about hats, or drift away from manboobz? (Good heavens, my memory is shit.)
Naturally! 😀
Really I think douchecanoes wearing trilbies or fedoras is the last word in misandry. How dare they make a very handsome type of hat harder to wear for other men!
Unimaginative – there was a troll recently who called himself The Black Fedora, and I think Pecunium and lowquacks like fedoras, but other than that I can’t recall.
Yeah, trilby-wise, I have to say that the association saddens me, as I no longer feel that I can wear mine. Even though it looked damn fine on me.
Also HAPPY DAY BIRTHDAY ARGENTI, YOU FABULOUS PERSON YOU
If fedoras suited me I’d wear them just as a “fuck you” to all the PUAs, hipsters or twitswhobagfedoras, but as it is, I take comfort in knowing none of that lot can outweigh this or this.
Shadow — Saturday technically, but for various reasons celebrations were today. For all purposes other than what date my mother’s OB/GYN yanked me out, it might as well be today (and I do mean yanked, as in, with forceps)
So on one hand, y’all might as well follow the trend of today being my unofficial birthday. In e other hand, there will probably be drunkenness on Saturday (probably, I need to email my pharmacy student about that, I forgot to ask meds psych if I’m allowed to drink, and talk psych wasn’t sure)
All in all, thanks guys! I’m just pretending it’s a trend and running with it since most people do get their birthday wishes at their party 🙂
Kitteh — yeah, pecunium is a man of many hats in both the literal and figurative sense. I’m pretty sure lowquacks mentioned hats when, um, *returns to the corner of shame*
And they don’t just ruin them for men!
I am fucking BEAT, this is the first I’ve sat down for more than 15 min since like 6, excluding things like sitting while repotting plants or picking snails out of the tank (one of them is still hunting btw, but seems to be surveying the snails, not eating them) — they’re TINY, and stuffed, they look like little peas with little peas under them!
SittieKitty — I got a bristlenose plec btw. Or at least that’s what they called it, I see no bristles, but it’s like…shorter than my finger makes it sound bigger than it is.
I was pretty sure it was that Seared In The Memory occasion too.
::slinks off::
You know, there are a shit ton of inside jokes that new folks should learn. That is not one of them!