Today in Straw Feminism: Why they chuckle at male suicide figures — explained!

Spectacular timing, in the wake of the suicide of an Antipodean celebrity whose problems included being hounded by Twitter trolls, many of whom revelled in misogynistic slurs. But of course it’s the dudes of the world whose very existence is begrudged.

To clarify: By “playing the victim” I mean people who are privileged and haven’t been victimized. Not people who have actually experienced oppression or persecution or violence.

@leatapp:

Yeah, it’s one of Those Things. There was a article at some point earlier that someone linked (hah, so specific), which showed some ongoing research into perception and how highly privilege people tended to take it as a personal attack when they were asked to account for it.

It is that people of a certain somewhat myopic bent skip straight from “Don’t care” to “Oh, so I’ll just self flagelate some more, then!”.

way personal opinion – I know several people who do kind of the same thing, and I wonder if it isn’t just a way to sort keep the attention focused on them. Either it’s “Oh, so tell me all about the ways in which I am better than you” or it’s “Oh, so tell me all about the ways in which I am a horrible person”… both results being you still talk about that person. But that’s people I know. It can’t apply to the entire world, right?

@maggiesausage, you are so right omfg.

Fibinachi,
This mentality sort of reminds me of when a stereotypical spoiled kid on a sitcom can’t have cookies for dinner so they say something like, “I never get to have any cookies! I just won’t eat anything! You want me to starve!”

Feminists definitely stole these guy’s ice cream.

Part of me wants to think that people who get defensive when asked to acknowledge their privilege have good intentions and just can’t think critically and are genuinely hurt because they think they’re being called bigoted.

The much bigger cynic me is pretty sure that they just enjoy having whatever privileged status’ they were born with and want the additional privilege of being able to say offensive things without getting called out. I’ve just had too many frustrating online conversations with people like this to think otherwise. They seem to purposely misunderstand some points and deliberately ignore others.

The more years on the internet I accumulate, the less of a crap I have to give for people act who confused and hurt when their ignorance and bigotry is pointed out to them.

leatapp – maybe that’s where this “laughing at male suicide” bit comes from. They’re still at the level of saying “I’m gonna hold my breath till I die!” and women* around them are saying, “Fine, go ahead.”

*And everyone else too, of course, but they wouldn’t mention that.

I think that is called the false dilemma fallacy.

They think that equality is a zero sum game – if women (and people of color)have more equality, then white males have less. (This is not my own thought -I read it somewhere recently, and cannot remember where, sorry.) So when we ask/demand equality, we are trying to take what is theirs from them, and this is going to damage them forever.

I suppose this explains at least some of the rage some of these guys exhibit – they see us as trying to hurt them.

kittehserf, Morgan brought her on the show to discuss trans issues, During the whole segment there was an infographic on the screen saying that she had been a man until the age of 18 when she transitioned. After the interview she called out the show for it on twitter. She’s always identified as female and doesn’t wish to be called formerly male.

Piers Morgan could have just apologized and made the correction and everyone could’ve moved on. But no. He doubled down and got defensive. He accused Mock and her supporters for bullying because apparently wanting to be labeled correctly is a terrible oppressive thing. He even tweeted that he was a victim of “cisphobia.”

It was a pretty big debacle and he was a huge asshole.

weirwoodtreehugger,

Those of us with certain privilege have been told in so many ways, our whole lives that the world is for us and we are “normal” and everyone else is some deviation away from us and we are literally entitled to take certain things for granted. I think it is possible not to see it, and to be protective of the privilege we can’t see, but know on some level we don’t want to lose. It is sort of like the Upton Sinclair quote,”, It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Maybe there is a scale from “Just don’t get it” to “Get it and like it this way” and difference people are on different points on that scale. I’ve been guilty of it. I’ve gotten offended at being called out, only to realize later that I was ignorant and wrong. I’ve had to apologize a few times because the thing about being blinded by your privilege is that you can’t see it. It’s just something that is and has always been. Ignoring it is as normal as breathing until something or someone snaps you out of it. I’m grateful to the people who took me to task. They saved me from a lifetime of being an asshole.

Allison Kilkenny of Citizen Radio has talked about how movies she liked before she was progressive are horrible to watch now. I’ve had the same experience. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, but you know that for years you watched bigoted portrayals of people, (in my case even women, of which I am one) and did not see it. It’s spooky and it’s humbling.

I don’t think that is quite right Weirwood TH, according to her book.

I’ll just leave this here:

“Suicide is the biggest killer of young men. Arguably good riddance to the privileged.”

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=605#p6326