Never doubt the ingenuity of the internet’s misogynists in coming up with new reasons to hate a woman they’re already inclined to hate.
Actress and geek icon Emma Watson has been near the top of the new Misogyny hate list all this week, in the wake of the speech she gave at the UN gently praising feminism and suggesting that traditional gender roles aren’t always such a good thing for dudes either. She’s made this point before, declaring in a Tweet last month that
Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from prescribed gender stereotypes. #heforshe
— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) August 18, 2014
But wait, the Red Pillers of the internet declare: Watson is herself dating a hunky jock rather than a “bald scrawny impoverished poet.”
WHERE IS YOUR FEMINISM NOW?
According to the UK’s Daily Mirror, Watson is currently dating a fellow Oxford student who also happens to be 1) gigantic 2) a rugby player and 3) handsome. As The Mirror put it
Matt was dubbed Oxford’s most eligible bachelor and was previously named the best looking player in his on-field position by the university rugby team’s Twitter account.
I know, you’re probably not exactly shocked – shocked! – to discover that a famous actress is dating a handsome dude. But in the Red Pill precincts of the internet, the regulars think they’ve got their CHECKMATE FEMINISM.
Right wing “journalist” and blogger Robert Stacey McCain triumphantly cackled
All the hot babes like Emma Watson are crazy for guys who don’t fit “prescribed gender stereotypes,” right? So you will probably be surprised to learn that Emma Watson is dating a
bald scrawny impoverished poetthe biggest jock at an elite university. …In other words, an Alpha male, the epitome of “prescribed gender stereotypes” from which Emma Watson says we need to be liberated.
Smart young fellows figure out that listening to what women say is less important than watching what women do. Women are constantly saying they want sensitive Ashley Wilkes types, even while they’re actually going crazy for the Rhett Butler types. …
When all is said and done, the basic human sex instinct is still as simple as, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
On the Red Pill subreddit, the regulars celebrated what they saw as a great victory over feminism. Redpillbanana seconded McCain’s “analysis.”
As a man in our new feminist world, you are liberated from your gender stereotype and have permission to be vulnerable and human. And women have permission to dump you for the next nearby alpha male who decided that he doesn’t need to be liberated from his gender stereotype.
Other Red Pillers made sure that everyone knew that they didn’t think Emma Watson was all that hot anyway.
WOULD NOT BANG.
Meanwhile, proudly racist, woman-hating dating guru Heartiste offered these, er, thoughts on the matter, in his trademark, er, style:
Feminism long ago abandoned any pretense to logic or internal consistency. It’s nothing but feels all day, every day, with an extra helping of feels. Watson’s rationalization hamster, like most rodents residing in the brains of her callow ilk, is 700% thigh and 800% glutes. A swole spinner on the wheel of ego-masturbation.
Ok then.
So how do you respond to this sort of thing? Point out that Watson was previously dating a guy who most Red Pillers would probably consider a big ol beta? Post examples of conventionally hot actresses who’ve dated “nerds” and intellectuals and otherwise not stereotypically macho men – from Marilyn Monroe (playwright Arthur Miller) to Christina Hendricks (nerdy actor Geoffrey Arend, who’s not even as famous as her).
But what’s the point? All you have to do is step outside to see examples of happy couples who don’t fit the “me Tarzan, you Jane” stereotype the Red Pillers are so desperate to assure us is the One True Way.
The human heart and libido are complicated things. Yes, some feminist women date macho dudes. And some traditional women are drawn to nerds. Some women date men who make more money than them; others date guys who are broke. And a lot of women don’t have clear “types” at all. (Watson doesn’t seem to.)
It’s also worth pointing out that, well, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. A gigantic rugby player who is ferocious on the field may be a teddy bear in private. And scrawny nerdy dudes can be horrible people (e.g. Woody Allen).
Feminism doesn’t deny that some women – including some feminists — are drawn to macho men. What feminism says is that traditional gender roles are not the only way to do things.
Emma Watson can date whatever kind of person she wants to date. It’s her own damn business. That’s feminism.
I’m guessing that the shame heaped on Mr. Nice Guy for being a virgin is largely internal, either he’s claiming women say the stuff he says to himself in his own head, or he’s interpreting people’s behavior through a heavily distorted lens of his own shame.
Doing something to lessen the connection between male self worth and how much sex one has would probably be the best thing for the incel types and men in general. It would probably make some men less douchebaggy towards women, as well. Manospherians, however, seem intent on reenforcing this connection at every opportunity.
Really. A psychiatrist, of all people, should know better than that. But he doesn’t have even the most basic amount of self-awareness that the job entails. This dude is the last person in the world who should go into psychiatry…at least until he’s done a long stint in analysis as a patient himself, and experienced some real attitude changes. Only that way could he possibly acquire the insights he needs to realize that Henry the Abusive Chronic Pathological Liar is NOT a winning role model for sexual relations. There’s a reason Henry is on the couch, after all…several, probably.
(PS: Anyone else reminded of Paul Fucking Elam, at this juncture?)
Ah, Fibinachi, you give a much kinder reading than I do.
I had a bit of a visceral reaction to this guy, because this:
…is dead-on, and it’s a horrible, horrible way of thinking for someone in the healing profession to have. There’s already a tendency for medical professionals to view a patient as a set of symptoms and test results rather than a whole human being. Add that on top of it? I shudder a little.
And this is what he concludes:
“But also for the sake of women who want better alternatives to marrying someone like Henry.” Huh? Feminists and MRAs need to team up to find solutions! And the problem he’s identified as needing a solution to is not that there are abusive people like Henry and how do we stop them from hurting others, or how to give people the tools to spot abusive patterns in relationships, or what some ways society could make it easier for people to extricate themselves from abusive relationships and what can we do support those people? it’s not even how can you deal with loneliness? And it’s not even, telling lonely people they’re lonely because they’re horrible people who deserve to be lonely is not a kind or helpful thing to do, even though he’s trying to sound like that’s his concern. No, the problem he’s identified is women like assholes who abuse them and they have to stop and date the nice guys instead if they don’t want to be abused anymore. Which is classic Nice Guy(tm) thinking.
Sorry for the teal deer. I hope this doesn’t sound too ranty, the caffeine has yet to kick in, so I’m a little fuzzy.
The only way to think that a guy who beats the shit out of women is a splendid sexual role model is if one doesn’t think women are people. Mr. Nice Guy™ says, in words, that he understands that women are people, but in between every other line he demonstrates that he actually doesn’t.
If some dude can really lay into an actual, inanimate punching bag with skill and aplomb, we can admire him. When his punching bag is a woman, we can only admire him if we believe that the woman and the inanimate punching bag are substantively the same.
Uh, dude? We don’t need your “help” for that. Feminism has already helped us plenty. We already recognize that Henry is not good relationship material. We even know why that is. The “evil fringes” of movements have nothing to do with it. Feminism isn’t some wonky ideology, it’s a practical mode of analysis for sorting out why certain social injustices keep coming up, and why it all sticks in one’s craw. But yeah, go ahead and paint it as some evil alien “movement” you struggle to comprehend. At that rate, you’ll go very far. [/sarcasm]
Also, I love how he “mysteriously and unexpectedly found a wonderful girlfriend”. Yeah, that’s usually how it works. Not by plugging input into some Great Computer of Relationships, but by simply meeting someone with whom you somehow click. And I’m sure it is mysterious and unexpected to him for other reasons, too…ones which will not flatter his ego if he bothers to sit down and cogitate on it a little longer.
Of course, like every Nice Guy, he thinks he is a nice guy, when he’s exactly the kind of person women avoid the most – the assholes who demand women’s bodies and companionship as if it was something they’re entitled to.
RE: all the people who got the Henry the Eighth reference
Kid: I knew I could count on you.
RE: Bina
And don’t feel that you have to forgive anyone for their part in it unless YOU want to.
Kid: I have no intention. Right now, I’m working on actually responding to the passive-aggressive emails the father has been sending, rather than just shuffling them off. It’s been two and a half years, dude. You need to move on with your life, instead of acting like a stalky ex-boyfriend.
RE: cassandrakitty
Why the constant need to try to make sex as degrading and un-fun as possible, dudes both straight and gay?
Rogan: Sometimes I wonder the same thing. I feel like I’m missing a vital chunk of my dudely brain or something.
RE: Kittehs
HI KID! Despite the subject (and damn yes, I believe you) it’s good to see you posting here. ::waves::
Kid: It’s making fun of jerks! How could I NOT be into that? (And it’s good to be believed.)
RE: Unimaginative
I’m sorry that your family of origin is such a festering wad of pus. Kid, I love that you are so sarcastic.
Kid: It’s one of my best traits! And join the club, we have jackets.
Yeah, sparky. I was too kind in the reading. It’s been in my head for the last few hours like some memesplinter.
So I read the comments. And thought some more.
Wrong. It’s so wrong. And your explanation is exactly why. I guess I just *really* wanted the morw kind takeaway of “dont be a dick to people”, despite the constant garbled logic going the other way.
I’m late, but according to the Mirror article, this young man attends Oxford and speaks three languages. Sounds like he’s probably rather smart in addition to being athletic.
Which seemed to be Elliot Rodger’s technique, at least judging from his “manifesto”. He constantly talked about being “rejected”, but despite describing endless events from his life in laceratingly masochistic detail I don’t recall a single example of him actually asking a woman on a date and being rebuffed. It was all “watching her from a sulky distance” for what seemed like years on end and may well have been.
That ‘nice guy’ writer is really bad at any kind of internal consistency. “Yeah sure there’s a whole host of really toxic ideas bandied around in the MRM, but. You can just filter that out, there’s nuggets of good advice there too I promise! No movement is a monolith!” And “feminism is composed entirely of a bunch of meanies and people who are literally voldemort (I do not think that word means what you think it means, bucko) because they tell lonely people they are rapist shitstains for thinking they deserve a woman! Clearly none of their ideology can help me in connecting to women any better!”
Or maybe he is being consistent, and his stance just is “I only hear what I want to hear”
It’s a cornucopia of bewildering whatthefuckery, made all the worse by the fact that (as I’ve come to gleam) this is all taking place on what is apparently a Rationalist blog (which is a thing) so the entire discussion is being made by The Most Rational People who spend their time wondering what I statements, O statements and E statements mean in relation to epistimic knowledge of circumstance, what the statistical density clusters are in relation to virginity and IQ measures, and just why women are such inferior specimens of humanity, worthless and always dating jerks.
It’s… it’s really something.
RE: Fibinachi
the statistical density clusters are in relation to virginity and IQ measures
Kid: They really, REALLY hate being virgins, don’t they? Eesh.
Since when is feminism about having a hate-on for anything traditionally “macho”? Oh no, I must not speak to men with BODY HAIR! I must not speak to any men with MUSCLES or who PLAY SPORTS!
Sigh. Rejecting traditional gender roles is not about rejecting certain qualities people have, and thus the people themselves. It’s about rejecting these qualities as being the ONLY acceptable way of being a “man” or “woman”.
Seriously, Unimaginative’s link is like a memetic splinter that lodges in the brain. It’s all so appalingly wrongheaded. It’s like discovering a tribe of feral gnomes in your closet that subsist on nothing but old socks and moral utilarianism. Facinating, curious and infinitely bloody confusing.
@LBT:
Amen, Kid. Amen and “eesh”.
@Fnoicby
Well, here’s the thing: this is equating Emma Watson’s personal choices with her political ones. This is saying that her political position (that men should not be required to be macho) must translate into a personal choice to never date a man who is, or looks like he might possibly fall, within the “macho” standard.
This is a problem that feminists have wrestled with for a while (if you say women should be OK with a career, does it make you a bad feminist if you are, yourself, a stay-at-home mom?) but I think that’s more or less resolved. There was a period when “the personal is political” reigned supreme, and you still see that from time to time (it’s not dead) but the importance of it seems to have subsided a bit. The personal is political, but the prior formulation of that restricted women’s choices just as much as the traditional model, just in the opposite direction. I think a lot of feminists today understand why that’s not cool.
So this shaming of Watson for not making her political personal (in their opinion anyway) is just MRAs trying to play a gotcha with 70s and 80s era feminism. Personally I find that kind of hilarious.
Thanks Policy…I’m not well versed in 70’s/80’s feminism and didn’t realize that was an actual thing at one time. Seems quite a shallow idea on the surface, I’m curious to look into the history though.
RE: Policy of Madness
There was a period when “the personal is political” reigned supreme, and you still see that from time to time
I still see this a lot, particularly on tumblr. I actually fought a DID diagnosis for YEARS because of political reasons, and felt this weird sense of let-down and failure when I finally caved and took it so I could get disability. You still see it a LOT in trans and queer circles, and I’ve definitely seen it in multi circles online too.
…this might have something to do with why I don’t hang out in the scenes anymore, if I ever did.
@LBT
I actually prefer the reverse formulation: the political is personal. Although we all create society, and are created by society in turn, in a circular fashion, as individuals we are more “created by” than “create.”
@ LBT…you need that money, you take it. Less money they can spend on bombs to blow up people.
I feel really lucky to have a job so boring that I can have a nervous breakdown while working.
…And how often do y’all lose things?
I lose stuff, other multi-peeps lose stuff, my LDR guy loses stuff, it seems to be something dissociative people are incredibly good at.
I can imagine that part alone becoming debilitating.
The “personal is political” idea is sound, but the thing is, that should never be a reason to put blame on individuals for doing what they need to do to survive.
Which is stupid because “should not be required to be” =/= “should not be allowed to be” =/= “should be shunned for being”.
RE: blahlistic
how often do y’all lose things?
We’re lucky, we lose things pretty rarely. Then again, our dissociation rarely manifests as memory problems, and we don’t dissociate so much anymore. Also, we’re pretty strict about our routine, making sure we put shit in the same place every time, and that seems to help.
RE: cassandrakitty
that should never be a reason to put blame on individuals for doing what they need to do to survive.
But THINK OF THE MOVEMENT!
@ LBT
Check out the “yes, but” in the “AVFM publishes” thread right now. I’m not even going to try to respond, but ugh, people really need to back the fuck off with the judging about how not everyone is doing activism perfectly.
Here is the quote on the quote:
Carol Hanisch has a brief essay called “The Personal is Political” in the
Redstockings collection *Feminist Revolution* — her essay is dated March
1969 (204-205). The essay defends consciousness-raising against the charge
that it is “therapy.” Hanisch states “One of the first things we discover
in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are
no personal solutions at this time.”