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!
A great smackdown.
I’m often caught between thinking MRAs are staggeringly incompetent, or just atrocious bigots. I suspect its a mix of the two.
How do you pronounce cis? It’s a word I’ve only seen on the internet and never heard spoken. Is it like sis or is it like kiss?
RE: weirwoodtreehugger
I don’t know if this is the correct pronunciation, but I’ve always pronounced it like “sis.”
Trans folks typically pronounce it was /sis/, but I’ve heard some pronounce it as /siz/ instead. Either one is okay.
as*
RE: WWTH
How do you pronounce cis? It’s a word I’ve only seen on the internet and never heard spoken. Is it like sis or is it like kiss?
Like sis. As the old joke goes, “Being trans is not for cissies.”
Yes it was a small spurt of scientific advancement in Europe that massively snowballed. There is nothing special about Europeans that says it could have only happened in Europe. Europe just got lucky with a handful of very smart and talented people. To blame “The White Man” for all of the horrors that this tech has wrought with out also crediting “The White Man” for all the benefits it’s brought is simply sexist racist bigotry. Either “The White Man” is responsible for the tech good and bad and all the benifits and atrocities associated with it or “The White Man” is not. Either thank “The White Man” for your computer and electricity in an air conditioned home with indoor plumbing or stop blaming “The White Man” for climate change.
This is arguably my favourite historical topic. The magical thing about Why Europe Industrialised And Not Somewhere Else (aka. The Great Divergence) is, no-one fucking knows why, and there are a load of very interesting competing theories trying to pinpoint the right confluence of factors unique to Europe which led to its discovery of the quite incredible possibilities of use for compressed air, basically. Was it natural/environmental conditions? Higher income? Competing states? War? Abundance of resources? The influence of monetisation based on New World silver? Ain’t nobody got a clue, really. I think the best theory is that it’s due entirely to a very small cadre of engine scientists, almost exclusively Scottish, working in a very specific field which no-one else was interested in (atmospheric pressure) in the mid-18th century; this is more resultant than anything on the religious proclivities of Scottish Calvinism than anything else. But still, it’s only one theory. Great field of historical sociology.
RE: genderneutrallanguage
Are you back again?
To blame “The White Man” for all of the horrors that this tech has wrought with out also crediting “The White Man” for all the benefits it’s brought is simply sexist racist bigotry.
The thing is, the White Man DIDN’T come up with this shit. That’s what everyone’s talking about. They claimed credit for a lot of other shit OTHER PEOPLE did. Gunpowder was China. Printing press was China again. Zero was India. Algebra was the Muslims. The start of computer programming was a woman.
We’re not blaming white guys for coming up with this shit. We’re blaming them for plagiarizing other people’s shit.
But we could have had those benefits you speak of without white supremacy. And yes, white people as a group are responsible for white supremacy – who else could be? That doesn’t mean that every single individual white person supports white supremacy, but they still play the primary role in maintaining white supremacy by virtue of benefiting from it. White supremacy deserves no praise for its accomplishments because it is a system of oppression; while white people access far greater amounts of wealth and power, they step on the backs of people of color in order to do so (even if they don’t intend on doing so). It deserves nothing short of abolition. I can appreciate the work of white intellectuals, thinkers, etc. without making my appreciation a reason to appreciate the impact of white supremacy.
It wasn’t until I started following Medieval People of Color on Tumblr that I realized how many white people seriously believe white men invented everything and the rest of the world was some kind of trackless wasteland. Also that racial groups were neatly divided and different cultures had no contact with each other. And they get really upset when shown evidence to the contrary! Every post on that Tumblr is like a Renaissance painting of a black guy visiting Italy and then a billion racists freaking out over how this could possibly be.
Also, before Medieval People of Color, I had no idea there were white people who thought that historically all non-white people were slaves–not just in the U.S., but everywhere. There are people who seriously believe that PoC were slaves all over the world, and the U.S. was the first place they ever had freedom. (I’m not sure what they think the arrangement was in non-white countries, but they seem fuzzy on the existence of such countries in the first place.) It’s amazing how the Internet exposes you to whole new levels and styles of racism you never imagined.
RE: Shaenon
I love medievalpoc. I wrote The Princess and Her Monster in part out of a lot of frustration that nobody ever wrote sweeping epic fantasies about brown people, but I always felt weirdly guilty and self-indulgent for doing so, like I was writing about something blatantly ahistorical… you know, like dragons and hobbits and shit.
And then I realized that I was wrong and felt so much better. Never was I so happy to be wrong!
(Also, that person linked me to this interactive map of the Roman Empire that helped me figure out travel logistics and shit for the story. SO MUCH USEFUL.)
Yup…atrocious bigots because staggeringly incompetent. Their bigotry is all they have to make them feel superior to all those other people. Good solid reasons? Pff, who needs those?
I don’t know about anyone else, but I prefer to be grateful towards specific people directly, instead of kowtowing to a useless bunch of bigots. There is absolutely nothing in genitals and skin colour that grants them automatic world-improving skills, as evidenced by their tendency to sit on reddit with their thumbs up their butts and whine while enjoying conveniences and life-saving devices invented by women and people of colour.
I also don’t blame ‘white people’. The privilege of being white is that white people are seen as individuals; most people know the difference between Hitler and Einstein. It’s the kind of privilege that ought to be automatic for all races.
I have a better idea. How about you go live in a mud hut in some remote part of the world and stop pooping here?
It’s amazing how people’s minds get blown by these things. Shouldn’t somebody who isn’t a history buff at least be familiar with Othello? That’s how I learned about the Moors and their presence in Europe.
GNL: YOU didn’t invent squat, so no thanks are coming your way.
RE: WWTH
*snrk* My English class had a huge fight over whether Othello was TRULY black. But that’s Texas for you.
LBT, I hate to ask, but I must – what race did they think he was? I mean, Othello’s actions do not make any sense in the play UNLESS he is black?!?
Oh I dunno, I often think about all the knowledge and advancements we have LOST due to one genocide or another. I was reading something recently about the vast knowledge of medicinal properties of native plants in the Americas, completely lost because we decimated a whole people. White men didn’t accomplish all this crap because white men are awesome. Other peoples were oppressed, silenced, killed, you name it. It’s not a big mystery why the privileged group got to do more shit and get recognized for it.
In all fairness, the non-white civilizations were not always very nice to each other before we showed up, but they did have a lot of accomplishments that we overlooked. I think it’s safe to say that every culture has their blind spots, their situations that they accept as right and/or unchangeable that just happen to be convenient to those in power.
But I have also often wondered how much of the gorgeous architecture and landscaping of the South was due to black labor – not just unskilled labor either, because it was common practice to get gifted slaves trained and then use them or hire them out (only giving them a small percentage of what they would’ve earned as free craftsmen).
The MRAs also have a bad habit of idealizing their own ancestry. The Vikings took slaves and practiced infanticide.
RE: Bonelady
LBT, I hate to ask, but I must – what race did they think he was? I mean, Othello’s actions do not make any sense in the play UNLESS he is black?!?
*sigh of deep emotional pain, rubs temples* There was this argument over whether ‘black’ in Shakespeare’s time meant ‘black’ in our time, and whether Moors were sub-Saharan African and whether any of this meant anything in contemporary race relations and oh god it hurts me even to remember this shit. Because I guess teenage Texans had to know WHAT KIND of black Othello was because otherwise how would we know what he REALLY was?
Seriously, my soul is weeping.
Is blaming white men for global warming even a thing? I’ve never heard anyone be all like “We wouldn’t have global warming if it weren’t for all those white dudes.”
I have a creeping suspicion that what he really means is “expecting white men to share the responsibility for dealing with global warming.”
genderneutrallanguage:
Way to completely miss the point of the post!
1. No one is blaming white men (and only white men) for climate change. You are the only who brought up climate change.
2. White men aren’t the ones solely responsible for every scientific breakthrough and cultural advancement ever.
So no, I’m not going to get on my knees and thank a hundred white men because some white men in the past invented some things. Other people invented things too.