So why are so many white dudes so desperate for an excuse to use the n-word? Consider this white dude, who recently posted this bit of, er, wisdom in the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
Bear in mind that the Men’s Rights subreddit is 86% white, which is a good deal whiter than the United States as a whole, and only 1.5% black, which is way less black, according to a recent survey of its members. I’m pretty sure none of the white dudes upvoting this little slogan have obtained the proper n-word privileges. (Note: The survey in question was spammed with a number of identical responses, BUT the percentages I’m giving are based on the survey data with all the spammed entries removed, thanks to the industrious Angelica Field; see here for details.)
It’s hardly surprising that black men haven’t exactly flocked to the Men’s Rights movement, given the overt racism of a significant number of MRAs and other Manospherians. And even those MRAs who aren’t so obvious about their racism tend to be dismissive of issues that disproportionately affect men of color: MRAs almost never talk about the drug war that has put so many black men behind bars (two thirds of all those in prison for drug offenses are people of color. mostly men), nor have they ever attempted to organize or even offer any real support to campaigns against prison rape (60% of all prisoners are people of color).
This slogan isn’t likely to help the Men’s Rights movement with what the politicians like to call “minority outreach.” It might help reach a different sort of audience, however — an audience already quite fond of the n-word. When I did a Google search for the phrase “men are the new niggers,” the first result was a discussion on the Vanguard News Network Forum. I won’t link to it, because the Vanguard News Network is a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist website that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “gutturally racist.” The site’s motto: “No Jews. Just Right.”
Of course, the notion of describing men as “the new nigger” didn’t originate with white supremacists. It was clearly inspired, in a backwards way, by the John Lennon song “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” a feminist attack on misogynistic hypocrisy. While Lennon wrote the lyrics, the titular phrase originated with Yoko Ono, who deliberately used the racial slur in what was evidently an attempt to shock people into recognizing the ways in which women, like black people, were dispossessed.
It was a bad idea. Even though Ono and Lennon didn’t mean to reinforce racism by using the slur, it’s not a word that they had any cultural right to appropriate for their own purposes; not only that, but Ono’s slogan seems to implicitly define all “niggers” as men and to ignore black women, who don’t need John or Yoko to remind them that many people already see them as “niggers.” In the end the title ended up undercutting the message of the song. It can’t listen to it; it makes me cringe.
But glancing over the lyrics again, which aside from the title are essentially about the hypocritical messages sent to women by sexist society, one line in particular stands out to me, because it so deftly captures a certain kind of sexism — and even though it was written years before Warren Farrell first started going on about “disposable men,” it also captures pretty well the MRA tendency to view gender relations upside down:
While putting her down, we pretend that she’s above us
Yep, that’s what the Men’s Rights movement does, all day, every day.
And it’s that kind of delusional thinking that leads some of them to conclude not only that they are the “new niggers,” but also that using the n-word is somehow an appropriate thing for their almost all-white movement to do.
LBT, yeah, he apparently thought being trans means “choosing” your gender. If it were that simple why would anyone choose to be harassed and looked down on and discriminated against? (Of course, he’d also deny the discrimination.)
The asshattery, it burns. The goggles do nothing.
RE: Lady Mondegreen
*rolls eyes* Everyone should be able to choose their own gender. It just so happens that people FLIP THEIR FUCKING SHIT over it.
And I thought the main complaint the misters would have against “cis” is that it is usually pronounced simililar to “sis” like in sister, sissy, which would be too unmanly.
This, a thousand times!
This is the reason why I started doing drag, and also why I find gender flowing more appealing than completely changing gender.
And well, the people flipping their fucking shit over it is so true and so annoying!
Especially the kind which will strictly police gender in children, but God forbid adults can decide anything about their own fucking gender! DAMN THOSE ASSHATS!
Phew, I feel better now.
talacris: The complaints about “cis” reminds me of a very old Doonesbury comic:
http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/1976/03/20
Clyde: “Well, I hear you’re gay.”
Andy: “That’s right – and I hear you’re black.”
Clyde: “Yeah, but that’s normal!”
Andy “Didn’t used to be.”
For the longest time, heterosexual, white, cis male has been “normal”, and everyone else has been the deviation from the norm. I think the experience of having been labelled, and losing the status of “normal”, is something of a psychic sucker punch to these guys.
The N word is used to beautiful effect by Elvis Costello in Olivers Army, and the only legitimate use of the word in conjunction with “white” or “men”.
Oh noes, the Others are Other-ing the Normals! Normal is the new N-word! LITERALLY!!!1111elebentyhundredeleben!!!
[/sarcasm]
Honestly, if someone put a wheelchair ramp in a building, these guys would claim that their ablebodiedness was being discriminated against.
Labeling products that contain peanuts is discrimination against people who don’t have peanut allergies, especially if they’re men.
I’m lolling so much reading all these comments, there are some seriously brilliant ones in there. 😀
That said, just had a conversation with a guy who thinks it’s totally unfair of women to flirt and raise expectations and then not being willing to go all the way. How DARE they discriminate against men and make them outcasts by rejecting their cock after planting such vile expectations in their heads. Such a severe lack of respect for the male sexual experience… Misandry, I’m telling you. We should totally equate the sad illusionary issue of their blue balls with slavery!
Roses are red
My balls are blue
Flirting is misandry
So fuck all you feminists, boo
Being included in their group and well aware of the benefits that come with it, nothing aggravates me more than when white heterosexual/cis-gendered men self-victimize themselves when another group – whether women or a particular ethnicity – bring up their mistreatment and try to discuss it. It’s funny (not in a “ha ha” way), given these same people don’t really seem to think about their race or gender at any other point…except to say “me too!” when someone brings up race or gender issues. To me, it seems common among the privileged – lacking much trouble in their lives – to create personalized drama or conflict to act as oppressed or put-upon as many minorities.
Honestly? I almost don’t want to consider myself “White” anymore. Were I born in the earlier part of the 20th Century – I’d just be a Jew. I’m more comfortable if people just considered me that than to be part of a vast majority I often find either pathetic or repugnant. The fact Jewish individuals eventually were included in that nebulous label of “White” seems like positive, until you realize you’ve been conflated with the same group of people who treated you as sub-human due to their unapologetic antisemitism. The worst part being that, even when a lot of men lust after the likes of Scarlett Johansson or Kat Dennings, many of them still aren’t bothered stereotyping Jews as “cheap” (’cause it isn’t like secondary citizenship and being forced into ghettos make you poor or anything!) or that they somehow “control all the media” (nevermind, at the genesis of filmmaking or television or superhero comics, no one else wanted to get involved in such).
As comicbook writer Mark Waid had a character of his, an Indian-American woman, say – after dealing with a white nationalist who claimed to love her: “a racist with a hard-on is still a racist.”
RE: white guys claiming they’re as oppressed as black women
Hey guys, want a palate cleanser? I just found this awesome book at the library, Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker. It’s a mystery taking place in 1920s gay Harlem. Lots of drag performers/cross-dressers/trans people (at that time period, the lines hadn’t quite been drawn in the sand yet), queer people, black folks, and gangster Prohibition intrigue!
I’m really liking it so far. I figured if my library was going to have that damn “Urban Fiction” section, I might as well use it to diversify my reading selection.
“Hey, you know something, people? I’m not black, but there’s a whole lot of times I wished I could say I wasn’t white.”
— Frank Zappa
Reblogged this on dariancase.
Pierce Harlan wrote a disgusting piece at AVFM the other day in which he compares feminists with lynch mobs. It has a graphic image of two black men hanging, surrounded by a lynch mob.
Never mind that the Tuskegee Institute pegged lynchings for alleged rape at 19.22%. Hanlan pretends that they all were. In response to the “Don’t be that Girl” poster campaign, Fidelbogen wrote on Men’s Rights Edmonton, “Why does this post have a picture of Emmet Till? Because like many other marginalized and minority men throughout history, he was a victim of rape hysteria.” I was and still am livid about that one. When I point out to MRAs that Emmett Till and other black men were lynched because of racism and that rape allegations were just a convenient excuse to murder them, there’s a collective yawn.
Hanlan’s post had the ironic title, It is Time to Stop Waging the War on Sexual Violence with the Memes of the Hangman. You assholes are the ones appropriating the oppression and murder of black men to further your own agenda, not us.
*I meant the “Don’t be that Guy” poster campaign.
Comparing false rape accusations to lynching makes me really, really pissed. It’s bad history, pisses on both black liberation AND women’s liberation, and aaaaaarghlebarghle *vomits acid and fire*
I couldn’t bring myself to do more than quickly skim that Pierce Harlan piece, the title of which really does break the irony meter, since they’re the ones using the lynching meme, and appropriating actual pictures of black men who’ve been lynched to make their ridiculous arguments.
David, when Hanlan’s article first appeared, the photo on the home page was huge and it was like a punch in the gut. The MRE photos were even worse. I hate death photo ambushes.
I’m so glad you pointed out that most lynchings were for crimes other than rape. The vast majority of (most likely false*) accusers were white men, and the even more vast majority of lynchers were white men. I think part of the reason the idea that it was all about rape is down to To Kill a Mockingbird, but the main part is that it taps into the assumption on the part of bigots that women are always to blame — even for men’s crimes. Reality doesn’t matter in the face of that assumption.
It’s frustrating, this male hypoagency.
Okay, you MRAsshats…where are the white men being hung from trees by feminist lynch mobs for their sexism? Point them out to me. Post pix, or it didn’t happen. Don’t hurry. I’ll wait.
Bina, don’t you know that feminists are trying to abolish due process in rape cases and that it’s exactly like being hung to have your name in the paper*? Gah, the lying bugs. Mostly they’re basing their arguments on what happens on university campuses. Consequences for breaking a university’s code of conduct is not the same thing as a criminal charge.
*The National (Misogynist and Racist) Post had a recent article about a rape case and took it upon themselves to not publish the names of the two accused. They shamelessly pander to the MRM.
Well, that’s just wrong in so many different ways.
Fucking assholes.
As a white cisgendered male, I don’t find the term cis in the least offensive. It always reminds me of college chemistry. I find the n word extremely offensive. It reminds me of Klansmen.