So I’ve been skimming through the mass of comments that the Daily Beast piece on the Men’s Rightsers now has trailing in its wake. So far I think this is my favorite exchange.
Yep, that’s DriverSuz — aka Suzanne McCarley, “Senior Editor” of A Voice for Men.
And yep, that’s Angry Harry, the fellow that many MRAs call “the father of the men’s rights movement.”
Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
SittieKitty – That is so weird and so wrong…
All I can think of is flame-throwing bits and a sneezing fit. GOOD TIMES.
Yeah, it was weirder in that they blushed for saying the word too. Like people who use tits or boobs instead of breasts and then I look at them oddly and they get this glint of shame in their eye when they use the proper term. It’s fucking weird to me.
hrovitnir, I love puns. I have been well indoctrinated by my family to love puns and word play and randomness jokes that make no sense both in context and out. I’m totally gonna make a short story like this… maybe after troll in other thread gets banned.
OK – I’m on a lunchbreak, I am willing to answer for any comments I made earlier and clarify anything that people wish to pull me up on, but I’ll only offer comments if requested to. I intend to tread very, very carefully and not make the same newbie mistakes I fell right into earlier, if you guys are willing to give me a chance. If not, I’ll completely understand!
For the record: I am 50 (admittedly ‘cunt’ wasn’t the first word out of my mouth, I was just trying to indicate my age). Yes, my Nan was never a woman to pull her punches. And something I’m now wracking my brains about given what I’m hearing on this thread and other places is – why didn’t UK feminists go after the word during the Second Wave the way Third-wavers are now? Is it a sea-change in the usage in the intervening years? I do remember going through the process with other women of trying to decide whether to reclaim the word to describe our genitalia. But I clearly went along with the crowd that decided to drop it in favour of other terms for our ‘bits’ and carry on happily using it to describe the politicians, captains of industry, TV and marketing execs and other assorted nay-sayers that we saw as the willful thwarters of our purpose.
If a chance was missed back then to stop the term gaining a directly and indirectly misogynistic usage, because we just didn’t think of the word as an insult to women (as I said, I’ve always thought of it as a ‘gendered’ term, but because it was almost exclusively applied to *men*, not women), then I can only apologise. And I *am* thinking a great deal about the term now. Which is why I appreciate hearing from other people. Although I also fully appreciate this could be something a bunch of middle-aged Brits should maybe start their own thread on somewhere as the rest of the world is thoroughly uninterested in! In which case, point taken 🙂
Hey, Terrene, we’re the same age! 🙂
I’ve no idea how the word’s developed in more recent decades in the UK, obvs, but I can’t think of general examples of it as a straight term for genitals rather than an insult (or at least, too crude for polite use) after, I dunno, Pepys.
I don’t see how it being used to men makes it less gendered, though. After all, b***h is totally gendered and the whole point of using it against men is that it compares them with women/femininity, which = bad. I think it’s the same thing, but maybe it’s been slightly watered down from being heard too often in the UK? (This is what’s known technically as a wild guess.) It’s like other slurs one grows up with and might take half a lifetime to suddenly think, “Shit, that’s a horrible word and I’ve been using it without even thinking how bad it is!”
Well, that was a writing fail:
I don’t see how it being used to men makes it
less gendered, though.gendered against men.It specifically tries to demean the man by invoking the image of women’s genitals.
@Terrene, as another middle-aged Brit, I’m starting to suspect that there will be regional and class differences in its usage, too. It remained unbroadcasted for far longer than “fuck”, for example. Remember Stephen Fry on TV in an interview, asking what was the problem with it and using it repeatedly?
Terrene, I appreciate your attitude. We are not mean people, I promise–we have just had this exact conversation many, many times, and we really don’t like having it again!
What’s everyone’s take on ‘douche bag’? It’s clearly misgynistic but since it’s not officially a curse word people use it all the time, myself included. I tended to associate “douche bag” with light goofy non-offensive slang that you can say in mixed company, like “dickweed”. I’ve been trying to stop using it but it’s hard to give up.
Urgh. There are times when I want to smack Stephen Fry with a clue by four.
Brooked – I’m in two minds about douche— too (and yeah, I use it). I’m never sure whether its point is that douching is itself bad for women and a misogynistic idea (vagina! Dirty! Clean it out!) or a straightforward association with vaginas and anything related to them (other than the mighty peen, of course).
When I first heard douche, it was always douchebag. Since I grew up hearing that douching was something that was sold to women as necessary but was actually bad for us – I don’t know anyone who ever bought any, and I’m 50 – I always took it to mean someone who is a waste of carbon, nothing more. I try not to say it too much just because I know people who find it crude, so I try to say tool instead. To me, they mean the same thing.
Douchebag I’m OK with, and I do love tool/toolshed.
Right now I’m surrounded by pussy. Clowns (Biscuit) to the left of me, jokers (Mimi) to the right, and I’m stuck in the middle.
I’m torn. “Douche Bag” seems genuinely inoffensive, I’ve never heard it used as an aggressively, hateful slur and no one seems put off by it. Yet it probably originated from how people see vaginas and it’s inner workings as icky and weird. I’ll probably end up keeping because, like dickweed, it’s just so plain useful.
I’m not big on language policing outside of hardcore slurs, but I’ve corrected people for “gay” and I found people’s complaints about “retard” pretty compelling and dropped it from my repertoire. People will have to pry “fuckwit” from my cold dead hands however.
@sittiekitty
I object! I prefer to call my breasts boobs 😛 ‘breasts’ just sounds too clinical.
@brooked
I’m apathetic. I don’t feel like it has the same ‘woman-like/bad(or here vagina=dirty)’ association, but I know some people who don’t like it, and don’t feel the need to use it. So, make that a big nothing from me 😛
Hi kittehserf and everyone else (still slightly bashful at talking directly with Manboobzers after all this time…) Yes, I do wonder why I’ve tried so hard to trace the history of the c-word sometimes – probably because of the strange arse-about face attitude I have towards it which I’m aware is uncommon on the planet now. But I still pretty sure I’m not the only one who has it! And there must be a reason.
So this stuff is making me think again. Was I really that deaf to the gender-specific-ness of the insults that were there all along? Or is the UK lexicon of swear words (which, I’ll guess is probably one of the biggest in the world, there really is something about Brits and our love of swearing – I’ve had to give up half my vocabulary already having left the UK, maybe *that’s* why I feel such a strong need to fight for cunt!) so delicately nuanced that we really do have an insult for every mood and quirk?
Douchebag is most definitely a US import for me and again – I have no real issue with it because it’s not wholly genital related. Please someone tell me I’m not the only person on the planet who bought one that came with two obviously distinct nozzles for two different… er.. areas… as standard? So my assumptions about douchebags have always been based on them being very much a uni-orifice and uni-sex device. The insult part to me has always been based around the kind of things these things flush out (dead and waste matter). Which puts a douchebag in a similar category to matters anal and scatological in my understanding. But again, if people have grown up with a different experience of douching and have heard the term applied differently as an insult, their thinking would be different to mine?
I hear douche and think “Something that is bad for women” so actually I kind of like it.
Hehe, some people don’t like the term, I was brought up with having to use proper anatomical terms for things first, and using slang mostly in school (I didn’t even swear until I was in sixth grade, I actually remember doing it). So it was just a thing to use proper terms like breast just like you would elbow.
@ thenatfantastic
I remember playing a similar game! My dad was very surprised to come home from work one day and find Barbie hanging by a noose on the front porch.
About “douchebag” – I agree with what several others have already said. Douche = useless tool of the patriarchy, making it a very fitting insult for some people.
hellkell –
I LOL’d. Loudly. And now I’m gonna be hearing that song all. day.
Thank you.
toujoursgai –
I <3 this defnition. 🙂
Terrene –
Mind, meet gutter, I started thinking “There’s a kink that’d need a really flexible spine …” (not “arse about face” itself, I say that all the time too – a lot of my swearing is Brit – just that together with c***).
Say, you must be about due for your <a href="http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/"Welcome Package!!
Well, I made a right mess out of that!
Well, I made a right mess out of that!
http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Double post? WordPress is having a weird.
@ kittehserf – Why, thank you! 🙂
Just for a laugh, watch Karen Straughan’s video ..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljnvAS1_cxM&feature=c4-overview&list=UUcmnLu5cGUGeLy744WS-fsg
It’s The x rated hairy horror version of cartoon buffoonery .. I thanked her for the sheer comedy in her video, which caused me to laugh uncontrollably, but i did point out to her, me thanking her was not a compliment.. LMAO ..I nearly did .. haha
So our female predecessors who died from smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, childbirth, old age, and other natural causes, would have lived if they’d had a man around to protect them? And no nun, unmarried woman or widow ever lived past infancy? And testicles can magically prevent death? Do tell.
The barnyard animal thing sounds like one of those sleazy NLP door-in-the-face techniques. Plant a horrific image in the mind of a woman, and – ta dah! – your obnoxious abuser personality suddenly looks acceptable by comparison. We’re supposed to be grateful that they treat us like crap instead of like shit.
Abusive douchebags. The cause of – and solution to – our problems!