NOTE TO AVFM READERS: See UPDATE 2 at bottom of post.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, a dude named unkleman wants us all to remember the debt of gratitude we owe to the white men of the world:
This message went over pretty well with the overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly self-pitying and self-congratulatory and maybe just an eensy teensy weensy bit racist demo in the Men’s Rights subreddit. I guess it pays to know your audience!
Men’s Rights and White Supremacy: two … tastes that go together.
Thanks to the folks in the AgainstMensRights subreddit for pointing me to this lovely comment.
UPDATE: Apparently, Unkleman’s comment was meant as sarcasm. That is, while he seems to think that his version of history is accurate, he thinks that the notion that individual white people today deserve credit for things other white people did in the past is stupid.
Interestingly, when he pointed out that this was what he actually meant, he got downvoted below zero, a stark contrast to the reception his original comment got. Take a look:
![ishm 5 points 1 day ago (10|5) I am in agreement with the majority of your statement! But the "owe to white men" stanza going on for a multitude of sentences triggered negative feelings in me. I do not believe we "owe it to white men", yet I would be much more complacent with "we should appreciate the MEN and WOMEN who discovered them". Owe should be excluded as there was no damned contract signed. Minorities and other whites do not owe anything to whites who discovered various technologies. Appreciate is the word you meant I hope. permalink save parent report give gold reply [–]unkleman -1 points 1 day ago (4|5) Yeah, it was entirely meant to stir negative feelings and the premise is ridiculous. It is just the other side of the coin of the thought process for people who use such excuses to be "politically correct" racists and meant to show that their justifications should lead to a reverse conclusion. If I actually believed I am owed kudos for racial reasons, one should assume that I literally have nothing else going for me in life and that would be sad.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/unkle2.png?resize=533%2C445&ssl=1)
Evidently, the Men’s Rightsers liked his comment much better when they thought he totally meant it.
UPDATE 2: Evidently my point in posting a picture of King Leopold of Belguim was a bit too subtle for the not-so-great minds at A Voice for Men to understand. So here is the point, in plain English: If you’re going to talk about all the good things done by white men in history, which have been considerable, you should also be prepared to talk about the bad things they have done, which have also been considerable. Since the fellow I quoted gave examples of the good things he sees as white male accomplishments, I thought I would provide an example of a white man who was not such a good fellow as a counterexample. I hope this helps!
“ask yourself how much of current civilization would exist if not for the white man”
zero.
this answer brought to you by a basic knowledge of history.
oops… I left out some words. posting before full caffeination. I meant that with ONLY white men there would be zero.
I say it once, I say it again, I say it 19 million times.
Misogynists. Don’t. Know. Any. Sodding. Thing. About. History.
Pick up a bleeding encyclopaedia, spend two minutes on wikipedia and you would realise that most of their crap is just that. Crap.
Dear MRA’s,
Urban civilisation as we would recognise it first developed in the Near East ie. among NOT WHITE PEOPLE.
Advanced civilisations with state apparatus and tax systems and armies developed in China, India and Africa well before they developed in Europe.
For most of human history, Europe was a cultural and technological backwater, while civilisations made up of mainly NOT WHITE PEOPLE developed technology, traded widely and build governments.
“Civilisation” was not built by white people.
“For all I know”
Well, ya see, THERE’S yer problem.
Posted the same day a white supremacist murdered three people. Stay classy, MRAs.
This just reminded me of some guys who were complaining that 12 Years a Slave was unsympathetic in its portrayal of slave owners.
“We’re not all bad! This is unfair! Leftist propaganda!”
Nobody said you were irredeemable goblins, calm down.
Also even if we do buy that “civilisation” was built by white people only, it was certainly not built only by white men.
Archaeologists have suggested that the basic technologies were developed by ancient women, that things like basket-work, pottery, the making and weaving of fabric, the making of snares and traps for small prey like birds and fish and the development of cultivated agriculture may well have been the work of women.
Also throughout history, women have done the majority (and still do) of agricultural labour, therefore being responsible for most of the food produced. And “civilisation” is all very well if you’ve not got anything to eat isn’t it?
Also throughout history women have been just as involved in crafts and manufacturing as men. In medieval europe, wives of skilled craftsmen were not passive arm-candy, they were often as skilled in the trade as their husbands, partners in their work and business and it was very common for widows to inherit the business when their husband died and to run it as her own. And when women weren’t skilled in the craft, they were often primarily responsible for the accounts and book-keeping of the business.
(Note I put “civilisation” in quotes as many ideas of what “civilisation” is are heavily informed by racism and imperialism/colonialism).
I just got done watching the 40-part YouTube series Crash Course World History, and even though John Green is a white Westerner he tries very, very hard to talk about events and cultures outside of Europe (“We get to be a continent! Even though we’re not a continent!”).
Admittedly, it’s hard to talk about people who don’t get recorded, and he doesn’t have time to speculate very hard (each video is 10-13 minutes long), so the series doesn’t include a lot of talk about women, but he still tries to stay away from the Great Man model.
Anyway, some people might benefit from even a cursory, necessarily abbreviated overview of history.
It seems like it would actually be a challenge to be so ignorant as to believe this racist tripe. I don’t know how people manage to do it. I guess these pasty bros are just that dedicated to never letting facts destroy their belief in their own racial superiority. It must be very important to them. I guess without it they’d just have to rely on their own personalities, talents and skills to feel special and something tells me that would be far too humbling for them. Since they seem to think they can die from mild discomfort or disappointment, seeing themselves as not being the specialist snowflakes doesn’t seem like a revelation they could handle.
Poor widdle racists.
I had someone tell me with an apparently straight face the other day that no scientific advances ever came out of the Middle East.
Yep.
Forget about the colonialist oppression white settlers have inflicted on NDNs*.
Forget the fact that our ancestors raped, abused, enslaved, and murdered so many NDNs in North America that now their numbers are still dwindling and they still suffer from racist, colonialist expansion. Forget the fact that South Dakota has the highest incidence of rape in the lower 48 states solely because white men are given the license to rape NDN women with impunity. Forget the fact that, despite this obvious history of being nearly wiped out – an agenda that our ancestors and “founding fathers” gloated about – the white majority believes that NDNs are only socioeconomically disadvantaged due to their own vices and that their kind has no history of colonizing NDN societies. Forget that pro-colonialist white women still find it acceptable to wear the NDN war bonnet in order to pretend that they are “sexy and exotic” while the same sexualized dehumanization of NDN women contributes to their status as non-human objects to be abused, raped, and murdered.
No, let’s talk about how much we should love all the nice things settlers have done! Things they have done entirely without the support of white supremacy and colonialism. I’m sure we can sweep all of the nasty stuff under the rug as long as we continue to focus on why we need to get on our knees and humble ourselves before the Great White Man.
Oh, but he’s right. White people have contributed a great deal to North American society. Of course, they have done so at the expense of basically every other race. Even white people who are not directly responsible for colonizing and attacking benefit from the legacy of racism and colonialism perpetrated against NDN societies. But still, without their gracious help, maybe we would still be overrun by those disgusting savages and their uncouth ways. No one has denied all of the things that white people have done for the world.
(This message was brought to you by highly contemptuous sarcasm.)
Just further proof that MRAs are racist as hell.
*NDN = Indian, a term for indigenous people of North America that many consider acceptable.
Well, that was certainly disgusting.
Maybe it’s just me, but these rants always seem to have been inspired by someone questioning the inherent superiority of the straight white cis man. I wonder what happened this time, someone pointed out that “maybe medieval Europe wasn’t the all-white wet dream of racists everywhere”? Or perhaps someone reminded them of how the effects of white imperialism are visible everywhere, and making jokes about the supposedly lazy people in Third World countries is shitty? Or maybe a white comic book character was cast as black in the movie adaptation?
The energy it takes to stay this willfully ignorant combined with the energy that’s still left over for ragewankwhining on the Internet could probably solve the energy crisis.
The History enthusiast in me is actually more offended than the decent human being part. Unkleman, everything they did in Europe China, or someone in the Islamic world, did first.
leatapp:
I know! A person has to intentionally block out and deny a hell of a lot of readily available information to be able to claim that white men were the sole creators of all of civilization. Just off the top of my head, who do they think invented writing? And freaking Arabic numerals. Who do they think developed those?
Wetherby:
O_o … Again, just off the top of my head, writing! Arabic numerals! Freaking willful stupidity.
And isn’t interesting how unkleman frames it as a worship/debasement thing. It’s “get on your knees and thank” white men; not “there’s been scientific and cultural advancements made by white men, lets take a moment and appreciate Shakespeare and Jonas Salk.” Its all about elevating white men above everyone else, and everyone else “should” be worshipping white men.
The entitled butthurt is strong in unkleman.
Just want to make a plug for the /r/badhistory sub on reddit, where they snark very entertainingly about … bad history. Unfortunately, there’s a moratorium on bad history from the Mens Rights sub right now, just because there’s so much of it.
Lots of very funny people there, with very little patience for bigotry.
I mean, it’s like I want to shout to the heavens, MOHENJO-DARO, FUCKNUTS!
Of all the reams and reams of archaeological research that have been published on Mohenjo-daro, perhaps the most succinct sound byte is Dancing Girl (Mohenjo-daro), which proves that the M-Ds 1) knew about bronze making and metal blending; and 2) valued dance.
Can MRAs get anything right? They can’t do math, stats, relationships, and now history. It’s like they’ve been brought up in a bubble and have no contact with reality.
Do you think the muskets would have worked if the Chinese had not developed gunpowder?
Do you really believe that no other race has experienced a renaissance?
Are you really so stupid as to think that only good ol’ white boys ever had or have high civilizations?
And do you REALLY believe that only MEN, of any color, have been creative, inventive and brilliantly contributive to the overall advancement of civilization?
Oh…wait. Sexist, racist and totally uninformed about history? Must be a good ol’ white boy.
Sheesh!
And who are the ones responsible for destroying the environment in the name of profit and the pursuit of fossil fuels? Why, I believe that’s primarily white men who stick their fingers in their ears and shout “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” when it comes to global warming.
@hellkell
I know, right? I often wonder how they manage to get along ar all. Poor babies. (snurk)
He does say this later:
“Yeah, it was entirely meant to stir negative feelings and the premise is ridiculous. It is just the other side of the coin of the thought process for people who use such excuses to be “politically correct” racists and meant to show that their justifications should lead to a reverse conclusion.
If I actually believed I am owed kudos for racial reasons, one should assume that I literally have nothing else going for me in life and that would be sad.”
I don’t agree with that at all, mind. Butt it’s important, I think, to acknowledge that something meant to be sarcastic was in fact meant to be sarcastic. (Even if the execution is terrible.)
There was a small spurt of scientific advancement in Europe that ended up massively snowballing and creating modern society. I read somewhere that nowadays there are more scientific advances in a single month than in all of history put together before the 1950’s. That’s because once you invent the alphabet it becomes a lot easier to write books. Any place on earth that had advanced civilization, whether it’s India or China or Europe, could have started modernity and the fact it started in Europe has nothing to do with the innate superiority of the white male and everything with the particulars of the political and intellectual climate in the 16th and 17th century that allowed a few brilliant individuals to thrive and devote their interests to natural science.
I have a feeling that people from the middle east and North Africa used to be considered more white before than they are commonly now. See for example this map from Huxley http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Huxley_whites.png/250px-Huxley_whites.png
Racism brought to you by the MRM.
Seriously though, how ignorant and arrogant do you have to be to think that white people created civilization? European culture was always 10 steps behind other cultures, especially with technology.
Sadly this isn’t surprising that they would think this, hell I’m sure there are a lot of people in the United States who think this sort of thing. Our history tends to brush over the accomplishments of other cultures, and claim everything was made and thought up by European cultures.
And then there’s the idea that not only did white people create civilization and technology, but that it was all white men? Nah, if you think that, you are just being wilfully ignorant.
But, as we’ve seen before, the MRM and all associated movements are practically artists in the realm of wilful ignorance.
I realize that I am showing my ignorance, but will someone please define “cis” for me? I have no idea what it means, as in “straight white cis man.”