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.
@Cassandra – Well, women can kill men too. And, as I pointed out in my very first comment, women tend to get shorter prison sentences than men for the same crimes.
He has to be missing the point on purpose, right? It’s surely impossible to be this stupid and still be able to operate a computer.
Goddamnit! Just when I’m about to go to bed, he drops this gem — “Men who go off to battle are haunted by it forever”
And you would know because…of a work of fiction it seems. Excellent.
Why exactly do you think you’re qualified to comment on what ALL veterans experience? And you do get how claims about ALL anything can be disproven by just one counter example, right?
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In other news, after a small Word related snafu, the survey may be up in the very near future.
“Warren Farrell got me into men’s rights.”
“A Voice For Men does a lot to help men and I respect them a good deal”
…
And you expect us to take you seriously?
@Melody – Again, that’s fiction. And it’s a form of wish fulfillment for most men, who’d love a new woman every week and don’t get one. It’s not real life. And even in the movies, it’s James Bond running towards danger and protecting the women from the same danger. In the movies he emerges triumphant, of course, but that’s not what happens in real life all the time.
Ah, there we go – now you’re being disingenuous!
I used that as an example of one of many venues that deals with men’s issues, on some level – you know damn well what I meant. Would you prefer I point out, say, The Good Men Project? That generally deals more with various personal issues. Point is that, like those two things, men’s issues are not as “invisible” as you claim.
@Ally – https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
“On some level” is key. Not on the deep level that I’m talking about. We as a society have acknowledged the ways in which women’s feelings can be hurt by gender roles. If a man tries to talk about the same thing, he’s laughed at.
FFS, Jason, I was mocking you, not saying that you’re wrong because you like Warren Farrell and AVfM. Yet another MRA who has no idea what an ad hominem is.
James bond is a male fantasy. Rich, classy, gets laid, gets to exotic location, is invincible ect.
You started this whole fiction story with you hero statement and your comment about how males aren’t allowed to have feelings. You don’t get to back out and claim I got off topic.
You keep backing out of EVERY statement you make when people point out you are wrong. You don’t know marxism. You don’t understand the definitions of the words you are using. Stop trying to school us on terms YOU don’t understand.
@Ana – It’s funny you mention that many pacifists have been feminists. Because I can give a counter example to that and attack the voting rights argument all in one: Emmeline Pankhurst. She wanted suffrage for women (well, rich women, anyways) but when World War I started, she went around giving white feathers to teenage boys to shame them into fighting. Not such a problem with gender roles when she was the one benefiting, eh?
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.
@Melody – And does James Bond ever have PTSD?
By the way, there is female wish fulfillment. Twilight. And that has a disposable male, too. Mike Newton (remember him)? He’s an ordinary guy, not a vampire or werewolf or anything, so he doesn’t get any love.
@Jason
No one is responsible for how Paul Elam conducts himself other than Paul Elam. His silencing tactics, slurs, and erratic behavior make him very unpopular with me and I feel no need to excuse his bad behavior when I see it.
As someone who has worked with mentally ill men, I am all too aware of the behavioral restrictions placed on men like shaming for showing “weakness”. However, that’s not misandry. That’s a rigid gender role.
“What happens in real life? Blown off limbs and PTSD”
Seriously, just fucking stop. I’d ask, but I can guess the answer — yes you are dense enough not to see that you’re playing right ingot the tired old troupe of veterans being broken men. Which is nothing like supporting them.
Make your points about here’s in media without playing into a different set of tropes, and maybe just never, ever, anywhere, use veterans to prove your points.
It’s about as much misandry as women being “damsels in distress” or “keepers at home” is misogyny, deal?
Twilight? Where the guy watches her in her sleep, tells her he wants to kill her several times, abandons her, ect?
There is NOTHING wrong with wish fulfillment. It is just you are trying to use James Bond as a victim ect.
You keep ignoring half my argument.
For. Fucks. Sake. Stop!
Not every veteran comes back with PTSD, and acting like they’re all inherently broken doen’t fucking help.
Argenti, my friend, I don’t see what I’ve done wrong. 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.
Women lacking agency,being disposable ect is on the same level as a male power figure?
No. I won’t agree that is the same.
Seriously, guys, this is one of our old faithful blog herpes trolls with a new sock, which is why he’s repeating the same arguments that have been made eleventy billion times before. Why bother engaging him?
(Unless it’s fun for you, in which case chew away!)
Jason: I don’t think we were afraid of Japanese women and children being spies for their country
That’s why they didn’t get sent to Manzanar.
Oh, wait, they did.
Shit, that theory is shot to hell.
@David – I’m not arguing that black men face more racism.
Nope, you are arguing that misandry is at least as bad (someone earlier was all upset that “feminism says women are as oppressed as blacks were…” this seems to be parallel in structure. Wonder when that dude will call it out as an unjust comparison).
Jason: Feminists have questioned the notion that a firefigher should be a man. They haven’t done anything to question the notion that a gunperson should be a man.
Dude.. you are thick. Feminists argue for women being given all the same options as men in the Army, i.e. to be in the Infantry. It was fear of women being allowed into Ranger School, (late 90s) which caused it to be reclassed as an Infantry course, not a Leadership course… why? Because feminists were arguing that all the non-combat courses needed to be open to women.
When people try to stereotype the women of a marginalized group, they usually try to make them as manly, and unfeminine as possible.
Which is why we hear about the ugly Russian women who.. no wait, we hear about how “Eastern European women know how to treat men”.
@NightShadeQueen – The problem is, Howard Zinn is a Marxist. Marxism is all about conflict. Who’s the oppressor, and who’s the proletariat? Those are the questions Marxism asks of every dynamic It’s a very limiting worldview, and it does apply to some aspects of society, but not to gender. Applying Marxism to gender is a capital mistake. The rules of gender are very, very different.
So why did you do it? Because trimming the tail end off doesn’t stop it from being a Marxist argument: since Zinn made it.
. I am arguing with the notion that Andrew Carnegie’s wife didn’t have it every bit as good as Andrew Carnegie.
Then you are stupid. Could she vote? No. Could she own property? No. Could she enter into contracts? No.
She therefore did not, ‘have it every bit as good as Andrew Carnegie.” QED.
Men who go off to battle are haunted by it forever. If they survive, of course.
Says the dude whose never been.
You are wrong. If you won’t take my word for it, Lyn MacDonald did an excellent series of Oral history based books on WW1. It’s a lot of reading, but you’ll discover that your myth is false. “The Soldiers’ Tale: Bearing Witness to a Modern War” by Samuel Hynes will tell you why you suffer from this idea of war as something which haunts one forever.
That’s just the thing – Twilight plays directly into traditional gender roles. And those suck for men, too. (Just not the men you see in the story. Mike Newton disappears pretty quickly. And, I hope, becomes a vampire hunter.)
Yes, James Bond is wish fulfillment. He is very, very far from being a reality, for most men.
I see we have drifted to male disposability. Someone should ping Dave.
Oh, and Jason….Women suffer more from PTSD than men (american psychological association).