It’s the eternal question: do misogynists spend their entire lives looking for excuses to get mad at women, or are they so naturally enraged by any evidence of female autonomy that they can’t help but erupt in rage over the tiniest of things?
We may never know the answer to that question. What we do know: almost anything can provoke them, no matter how trivial it is, no matter how misguided their anger might seem to anyone who doesn’t actually, you know, hate women. Let’s look at some of the latest things to cause women-haters to lose their shit.
1) British tennis champ Andy Murray’s announcement this week that he was hiring former female tennis champion Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. Even though she’s, you know, a lady.
On Twitter, as Buzzfeed has chronicled, some have taken exception to Mauresmo’s status as a non-man.
https://twitter.com/zainmohammed786/status/475642785979449344
https://twitter.com/ollieman_95/status/475620687391260672
Others have suggested that maybe she’s more of a man than him – ho ho!
Amelie mauresmo to be andy murray's new tennis coach! About sums him up he plays like a woman only she's more man than he'll ever be.
— Paul Kemp (@53pkempy) June 8, 2014
Why it would matter to any of these people just whom someone who is not them wants as his coach remains unclear.
2) An article on the Huffington Post noting that on D-Day, one woman – war correspondent Martha Gellhorn – accompanied the 150,000 men who stormed the beaches.
It’s an interesting story: all the female correspondents who requested spots on the boats were turned down, so she ended up sneaking her way into the invasion by hiding in a ship’s bathroom.
But over on the A Voice for Men forums, someone called Humansplaining w/ Jarred is outraged that “Feminists can’t even let Men have D-DAY for themselves!”
Here we are on the 70th anniversary of a watershed moment in one of the bloodiest wars in human history, where thousands of men selflessly gave their lives, and some Feminist feels the need to devote an entire article to the fact that there was also ONE woman involved! There you go, it’s official – the ratio of worth from women to men, is 1:150,000. Those two are completely equal in the eyes of many Feminists, apparently. You can spend all your time relaying the experiences of that one female in great detail, without even the slightest nod to the individual experiences of those 150,000 other human beings that were involved, many of whom perished in the process. Because VAGINA.
Yep. That’s right. Telling the story of one woman on D-Day is an attack on all the men involved. Hell, let’s take that further. Any story told about any individual person involved in a collective effort should be considered a grave insult to all the others. Saving Private Ryan is an insult to all soldiers who weren’t Private Ryan!
3) LEGO is launching a new series of scientist minifigures – only this time, they’re women!
On the Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them) website, British MRA and would-be politician Mike Buchanan sniffs that this move by LEGO belongs in the
‘You couldn’t make this s*** up!’ file. Doubtless it will sell well to hatchet-faced mothers determined to quash any signs of femininity in their unfortunate daughters.
Apparently acknowledging the existence of female scientists is somehow an injustice to men and boys?
4) Older women sometimes have sex with younger men.
There’s a certain kind of man who likes to loudly declare just which women – or categories of women – he “wouldn’t bang.” Our old friend Heartiste – the white-nationalist, purple-prose-writing pickup guru – is a member of a slightly smaller subgroup: he gets angry when other men have sex with the women he’s declared unsuitable, a group which apparently includes all but 0.1% of women his age and older.
In a recent post, Heartiste lambastes the dating site CougarLife.com as a symptom of our “rapid cultural collapse.” Its crime? Matching up “mangy cougars” and their “dusty muffs” with “inexperienced younger men hauling a knapsack of blue balls.”
While Heartiste directs most of his hate at the so-called cougars themselves – for the crime of having sex while female and forty plus – he’s indignant that younger men, in his mind, allow themselves to resort to
the shabby hole of a bottom shelf jezebel to alleviate your incel. … a tepid squirt of pallid pleasure in exchange for your dignity and psychologically distressing confirmation that this is the best you might ever do.
Apparently the idea that a younger man and an older women might actually enjoy having sex with one another is too much for his fragile misogynist mind to take.
Indeed, it’s hard not to wonder if Heartiste actually likes sex at all – or if his own alleged lovemaking prowess extends much beyond a “tepid squirt.” This, after all, is a guy who thinks going down on a woman is “beta,” because burying your face in what he calls that “fetid, humid mess” is sort of icky, and might lead her to think that you think she’s hot.
And last but not least:
5) Some people are trying to get colleges to take rape more seriously.
In a column in the Washington Post, George Will sniffs that colleges, by addressing what he calls “the supposed campus epidemic of rape” are bestowing upon “’sexual assault’ victims” a “coveted status that confers privileges,” thus encouraging others to jump aboard the victimhood express.
Others have already torn apart Will’s argument pretty thoroughly. So I’ll just note one not-so-little irony: the headline for Will’s column, as it ran in the Post, was “Colleges become the victims of progressivism.”
Why is it that the people who most loudly condemn the supposed “cult of victimhood” are the first to claim that they’re the ones who are really being victimized – by “progressives,” by feminists, by female tennis coaches, by stories about women in war, by LEGO figurines of female scientists, by women they don’t like having consensual sex, by anti-rape activists trying to create a climate in which more than 12% of rape survivors on campuses feel safe enough to report their rapes?
Feminist discourse has never changed the definition of misandry. All it has done is shifted the focus from individually held prejudice to prejudice on a systematic scale. Because oppression functions in terms of hierarchical systems, not an interplay of gender stereotypes in which no one benefits. Of course misandry exists, but not as oppression.
Patriarchy and misogyny are two different terms. Patriarchy denotes a system wherein men oppress women on the basis of gender. Misogyny refers to the social prejudice against women, and it carries the connotation of power because feminists believe that misogyny is a function of power rather than merely a form of prejudice that some individuals have towards women. It’s true that the definitions are very similar, but they are still distinct. And even if they were effectively the same, who cares?
Quite a few discourses invent new words and/or redefine old words. It happens with or without feminism and similar ideologies. And your allusion to the 1984 dystopia is way out of place because Newspeak was supposed to be a language that not only constrained thought, but also prevented the very possibility of social revolution. All language constrains thought, but not all language actually functions as a tool of enslavement. Like all MRAs, you don’t know shit about that book. George Orwell probably can’t even rest in his grave because of dumbasses like you using his literature for bad political talking points.
Funnily, you could call misandry an Orwellian term IMO. Since there is no such thing as systemic oppression of men the word is used not to highlight an actual, real problem but to perpetuate misogyny while sounding like the speaker is concerned about gender equality.
That’s even worse than being a hatchet-faced female scientist Lego buyer.
Depending on the type of ball, of course. Tennis ball face wouldn’t be as bad as basketball face.
emilygoddess – We do have to keep our trench alluring and youthful-looking, otherwise it will end up as a SPINSTRENCH.
Do you suppose MRAs even have a gender trench, or is that too unmanly and modern? Maybe they have a gender motte-and-bailey?
The funny thing is that often when these sorts of dudes demand that we criticize “extremists” it turns out taht when they’re not talking about Dworkinsolanas they’re mad that we don’t attack the same three feminists that they know about, and hate. Like that “extremist” Anita Sarkeesian. .
David doesn’t have to paint every man on AVFM with that brush. All he has to do to establish that AVFM is a misogynist shithole is to 1) point out various examples of misogyny anywhere on the website 2) point out that no one on the website cares about the misogyny and/or in fact supports it and 3) point out that the small minority of people on AVFM who call out the misogyny are jumped on by the majority. You’re just repeating the #notallmen bullshit all over again.
And why do trolls pretend to be “neutral,” anyway? They’re so transparent, it’s not like they’re fooling anyone. And I don’t see how the pretense of neutrality gives them any kind of advantage. “I’m completely neutral on the issue of whether or not women are human beings who deserve rights” makes you sound immoral and lacking in critical thinking skills, like Buttercup Q. Skullpants said.
QFT!
Scuse my ignorance here but why do they keep calling Sarkeesian a fake feminist who was just out to make money?
Trolls and all MRAs for that matter, you’re all trolls!
@sparky
I think deny deny deny is part of trolling 101. They all get the handbook before being sent on their douchebro way, which must be true since they all copy and paste the same shite all over the interwebz. My current favorite claim by MRA trolls is that feminism is synonymous with traditionalism – how does one even argue against it it’s so ludicrous. Lack of self awareness is strong with them. They need to learn the lesson, that every time you point the finger, three are pointing back at yourself.
Mike Buchanan, do you serve any other purpose than making me ashamed that I share a nationality with you?
Now current female scientists
Lynn Margulis
Jill Tarter
Prof Hahn
Prof Bajcsy
Vera Rubin
Next, why are you scared that women are getting funding that levels out the “playing fields” in STEM.
You are an MRA piece of … work who deserves no consideration except to think of you as a joke.
@athywren
I know this is a little old, but
seems like a kind of counterproductive and slutshamey way to mock PUAs…I get the point you’re going for, though.
In other news, I’m hoping paul sticks the flounce.
Maybe LEGO should inspire young wannabe female scientists with a range of modern era ‘famous’ scientists rather than ‘female’ scientists?
Because Lego sets normally feature real-life celebrities and historical figures. HOLY SHIT HOBBITS ARE REAL
The Lego scientist line is the most recent winner of a contest where people submit their ideas for Lego sets and folks on the Internet vote on them. Having followed the contest, I’m pretty sure it won because nearly all the other entries that got voted in were, “Why don’t you make a line based on this nerd-friendly licensed property? How about this one? How about a Lego Big Bang Theory? I like the Big Bang Theory!” It was one of two finalists that was actually an original idea.
I have to admit that Lego is something of a hobbyhorse of mine, because I loved Lego as a kid, and it pisses me off that it’s turned into a “boy toy.” I feel similarly about science.
And I love that Lego is planning to market the science line (initially called “Female Minifigure”) as “Research Institute” and not make a big deal over the fact that all the scientists are ladies.
Incidentally, the line was designed by geochemist Dr. Ellen Kooijman.
Speaking of misters not understanding satire: Jezebel satirized the headline of yesterday’s terrible Wa Po editorial. http://jezebel.com/if-you-want-to-stop-violence-against-women-ban-men-1589233029/all
Predictably the comments sections is fall of whiny not all menzers who didn’t get that it is satire.
@constellarmaid
I see your point. Though, to clarify my position, it’s not that having hundreds of “notches” is a bad thing, or even their being shallow. I have no problem at all with strings-free sex – it’s not my thing, but it’s a perfectly acceptable thing. What I do have a problem with, though, is the idea that pursuing one night stands is the only acceptable thing; that preferring long term, deep relationships is somehow something to be ashamed of, that it makes you less of a man. I don’t care about being a man anyway, personally, but it’s still ridiculous to consider those who do to be less worthy of the label just because they don’t approach sex the same way that PUAs do.
For the record, I recognise that this part is a false dichotomy:
Robert –
And I lost to the blockquote monster. Undefeated no longer. Damnit.
You got bingo — you missed “both genders are oppressed” // men have it just as bad. If guess you could fold it into the mansplaing, but I’d call it its own fallacy.
@Athywren yeah, that’s definitely a point I can get behind! The phrasing just made me uncomfy, thanks for understanding. 😀
(I’m always blown away when I can have a discussion like this and it doesn’t blow up within the first post. Discussion is a beautiful thing. :’D)
WWTH, that reminds me of an apocryphal episode during Golda Meir’s time as PM. There had been a series of rapes in Jerusalem, and someone in the Cabinet proposed a curfew on women being out after sunset as a preventive. Meir allegedly replied, “Why on the women? They’re not the ones doing the raping.”
Oh yeah… I’d totally forgotten that we feminazis are dogmatic radicals…
How dare you question my words?! EN GARDE!!
(insert quip about left-handedness here)
@babylawyer
I believe I made the comment you are responding to. Anyway, THIS all day long. What MRAs do not understand about govt and the law could fill all the many bodies of water of the world and then the unknown rivers and craters on Mars and then it could colonize LV-426 and…….
The free speech thing — after that silly Duck Dynasty fake attention grab by the network, i was awestruck by the conservatives, specifically all the elected officials, who were making hilariously stupid comments expressing their lack of understanding of free speech. It’s the same with these losers.
Patriot has hollow meaning for me given how the people who profess to be patriots the loudest, again, don’t seem to understand the constitution. There is NO non-religious argument against the right to choose or marriage equality. NONE. Every single anti argument is rooted within Christianity.
It’s a wee bit late, but I just glanced over at my history bookshelf and noticed books by Margaret Murray and Rosalie David, both brilliant archaeologists. (Archaeology counts as a science, right?) Margaret Murray was studying the ancient dead at Cambridge at the turn of the last century, when most British women wouldn’t even dream of getting degrees. Rosalie David more or less invented the field of paleopathology, where the remains of ancient peoples are studied in order to learn what illnesses were prevalent in their times. She’s autopsied more mummies than anyone, as far as I know.
And of course, I must mention Mary Wolstonecraft, who wrote the first programming language for one of the first proto-computers. In a sense, she was also the grandmother of sci-fi, as her daughter, Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley, arguably created the genre when she wrote “Frankenstein”.
@Winter Walker
I might be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure that it was Ada Lovelace who invented the first programming language, not Mary Wollstonecraft.