[UPDATE 2: Pogo now says his misogynistic posts were an “experiment.” For my take on this, see here.]
[UPDATE: Pogo has taken down several of the blog posts mentioned in this post. I have replaced the links to the vanished posts with links to archived versions.]
So you know that dude Pogo, who makes all those amazingly perky-yet-somehow-also-ethereal music/video mashups using snippets of old Disney movies and the like?
Turns out he’s a bit of a misogynistic dickbag.
Yep. On his Pogomix blog, Nick Bertke (his real name) has been posting a bunch of tiresome and achingly unoriginal rants about feminism and the alleged privileges of women that might as well have been cut and pasted from the Men’s Rights subreddit or A Voice for Men.
In “Why We Should Envy Women” he argues that “[d]espite what all these feminists talk about, women actually have things pretty damn good. Better than men, I would say.”
He presents a little list of ways he thinks women have it better than men; it’s an assortment of MRA clichés, a sort of mashup (yep) of Warren Farrell and Girl Writes What, as filtered through a million crappy blogs.
– You are naturally endowed with a more valuable, sought after and artistically favorable body.
– At the bat of an eye, you can be excused from accountability regardless of the magnitude of your actions.
– At 18, you lose the protective status of the child but retain the protective status of the female. …
– Society excuses you from needing to work and says all you need is a hard working and generous man. …
– You are granted the rights of a democracy without the burdens of military service.
The creepiest item on the list is undoubtedly this one:
– You can give the opposite sex a thrashing when the person deserves it.
That’s right: the guy who created the gorgeous “Alice” and the charmingly catchy “Upular” envies women’s alleged ability to beat up their boyfriends without consequence, apparently wishing he could do the same to women when they “deserve it.”
Seemingly channeling the “red pill wisdom” of the internet’s self-proclaimed masters of “Game,” Bertke goes on to explain that women are basically overgrown children needing the “discipline” of a firm father figure.
I’ve always found that the more I treat a woman like a child, the stronger the relationship, the better the sex and the more often it happens. Discipline, reprimand and complete indifference. I think the feminine woman craves the attributes of a firm father in the man she enters a relationship with. The more I realize it, the more I see modern feminism in a different light – it could well be little more than the collective feminine cry for drama and childlike retaliation.
Sigh. He seems to have turned this rant, or portions of it, into a video. (I could only make it through about 30 seconds before my annoyance got the better of me and I turned it off.) [UPDATE: He’s deleted the video.]
In “5 Things I’ve Learned About The Real World,” Bertke urges his readers to, yep, “take the red pill for a minute,” and offers more, er, insights into women’s alleged desire for “fatherly order.”
A lot of women you meet, feminists in particular, will preach that you are the source of their failures and womanly strife. This won’t stop them from playing powerless, and they’ll insist that you roll up your sleeves and rescue them from their mysterious bonds. The collective female cry for fatherly order requires that you as a man are expected to make the world spin.
As you may have noticed, Bertke’s prose is not quite as elegant as his songs. He can’t even keep his metaphors straight.
In “Where Feminism Goes Wrong,” he informs us that “inequality is a door that swings both ways but feminism by definition and in practice treats it as a one way street.” (Here’s an archived copy of the post in case he takes it down too.)
Yep. Inequality is somehow both a door and a street.
He goes on to declare that:
Feminism is taken prisoner by too many women and re-branded as a self entitling social status posing as a humanitarian ideology. There’s really only two possible explanations for why feminism has become a bait and switch: 1. Feminism is revealing its self to be a camouflaged push for gender supremacy, or 2. Feminists just aren’t doing a very good job of communicating their true cause.
There’s actually a third explanation, more convincing than the first two, which is that Nick Bertke has no fucking clue what he’s talking about.
Misogynistic outbursts are apparently not a new thing for Bertke. Last spring, after erratic behavior on his part led some of his fans to worry that he might be undergoing some sort of breakdown, one Redditor reported that “some fans and friends close to Nick that have stated that he’s done something similar in the past, going on a rude, sometimes misogynistic rant and basically acting like a 12 year old … .”
It’s always disappointing to find out that someone whose work you enjoy and admire is a shitty person. Alas, he’s far from the first talented musician to turn out to be a woman-hating asshole.
Bertke, dude, stick to sampling other people’s words. Your own words are terrible.
H/T — @Metz77 on Twitter, who alerted me to Pogo’s asshattery.
EDIT: Reworded a couple of things.
The guy’s username used to be “fa***tron,” so I honestly didn’t expect much from him
NO BEEP BEEP NO THAT IS NOT CORRECT
Sweet jesus I hope he doesn’t have kids.
How very disappointing. I’ll be right back after I unsubscribe to his YouTube channel.
To be clear, he was all
and I was like “okay, that’s…super disrespectful, yeah, but I mean it could be worse. You set clear boundaries, enforce them when necessary, put them before yourself; that’s better than calling her a slut or whatever.” And then he mentioned sex in the same sentence and I kind of cringed, but then he was all
and WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK
HAVE YOU NEVER TALKED TO A PARENT EVER
WHAT
“- You are naturally endowed with a more valuable, sought after and artistically favorable body.”
Ah, the old “the male gaze is actually female privilege” argument. In fact, all of his Women Have It Easy arguments are by-products of the patriarchy.
It’s almost like this guy doesn’t get it or something.
Mouse Farts, your all-caps wtf-ing never fails to make me laugh literally out loud. Thank you for that. Hahahaha.
“Discipline, reprimand and complete indifference.”
These guys think being indifferent hardass is the universal mark of a father? Talk about having daddy issues.
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/25400831.jpg
“I’ve always found that the more I treat a woman like a child, the stronger the relationship, the better the sex and the more often it happens.”
Go fuck yourself into the sun.
Also: if “discipline, reprimand and complete indifference” is how you think children should be treated then I severely hope you never have any.
Ah, yes. This looks like yet another iteration of the “dudes are gross” theorem. I forget which mammotheer made it up (it was a while), but this theorem basically states that since straight men don’t find other men to be sexually attractive, women must also find the male body to be unappealing. Therefore, only women are sexually attractive and have bodies that could appeal to another human being.
@alaisvex
SO, SO SCARY!
There is something really creepy about an adult man treating his sexual partners like children. He clearly has NO IDEA how to interact with women or children.
I guess it’s a good thing I’ve never heard of this guy until now. He sounds like a real asshole.
@ej,
Agreed. Also, agreeing with everyone who’s said that they hoped that he never has kids of his own.
Although, if he doesn’t have kids, that will probably lower the chance that he will step on a Lego…and he deserves to step on many, many Legos.
As a teenager I used to post creative writing online under the name Pogo. It’s really, irrationally bothering me that I share an internet name with this asshole.
That sounds even more paedophilic than the usual MRA nonsense. Is there a word that means kind of impressed in a really nauseated sort of way?
Oh boy, where to begin?
According to who? I think you’ll find that the people who say this are men.
Only if we’re conventionally pretty (skinny, blonde, white), and even then it’s bullshit.
No. Men say this, not women. Stop blaming women for things men do. Don’t make me hashtag this.
This is the fault of men infantalizing women. Men think of us as children, and treat us like such, then get mad when we get treated like children.
Women would very much like it if you stopped treating us like children.
And suddenly, I find an answer to the question “How can you believe this load of bull droppings?”. You seem to live in the 1950s.
Women are expected to work nowadays. Otherwise, we’re “gold diggers”.
But, we’re also expected to stay home and take care of the kids, otherwise we’re “selfish”.
So, which is it? Are we stay-at-home mothers and wives and thus “gold diggers”, or are we working class women who make a dollar to your dollar twenty-five who are selfish for not devoting our lives to our men and children?
Ah, the old “MEN GO TO WAAAAAR!” argument.
First, men are the ones who usually decide when we go to war. Second, men are the ones who decide when to initiate the draft, which when it happened last, feminists were helping men jump the border into Canada to avoid it, and have been outspoken against it for a long time now. Third, if someone in office asked for a draft now, they’d be impeached in a heartbeat, so we haven’t had one since Vietnam. Fourth, women are in the military now, and we fought long and hard to get there, no thanks to men like you. Fifth, women in military service have to be wary of their fellow soldiers because rape on military bases is a thing.
Fuck off.
And we’ll go to jail for it too! As long as men don’t tell men to “man up” or mock him because he was abused by a woman, thereby making him afraid to report his abusive partner.
Weren’t you just mad that women get treated and protected like children? And didn’t I just state that that’s the fault of men?
Thanks for proving my point.
Also, I second other people in this thread. You’re scary, and you should stay far away from women.
Men are the source of a lot of bullshit in womens’ lives. They’re also the source of a lot of bullshit in mens’ lives too.
The reason why we encourage men to become feminist allies is not because we want them to do all the work. We encourage them to become allies so they can encourage other men to become allies as well.
Because some of you more sexist dipsticks won’t listen to us because we’re FEEEEEEEEMALES, and thus you see us as inherently inferior. So, we encourage someone you view as equal to you to explain the situation, simply because, as unfortunate as it is, that’s the only way you’ll fucking listen. (And even then we’re ignored because you just label people as awesome as David “manginas”, and move on.)
Do men really help out the feminist movement? Fuck yeah they do. Do they do most of the heavy lifting? I’d say no.
Remember what I just said about listening? You’re not doing it.
If you were to actually listen to feminists, and not that straw-woman feminazi you’ve been talking to, you’d find that we’re actually communicating quite well.
It’s just hard to communicate with people when they’ve got their fingers in their ears and are trying to shout over you while you’re trying to have a reasonable conversation is all.
Women are naturally endowed with a more valuable and sought after body? Is he forgetting the vitriol that MRAs spew towards women who are less than HB9? Or infertile? Or both?
Also, *pokes Mouse Farts* Email?
Also, can you guys help me pull together statistics to help me prove that men are more likely to be raped than falsely accused? I made that claim on comments under an article about the UK adopting “Yes Means Yes” and I need to back it up. So far I’ve had trouble because the stats and timespans and countries are all jumbled up. I’m looking to prove than more American men have been raped in a recent year than falsely accused.
Women are naturally endowed with a more valuable and sought after body? Is he forgetting the vitriol that MRAs spew towards women who are less than HB9? Or infertile? Or both?
Also, *pokes Mouse Farts* Email?
Also, can you guys help me pull together statistics to help me prove that men are more likely to be raped than falsely accused? I made that claim on comments under an article about the UK adopting “Yes Means Yes” and I need to back it up. So far I’ve had trouble because the stats and timespans and countries are all jumbled up. I’m looking to prove than more American men have reported rape in a recent year than been falsely accused.
Ah shoot, posting went wrong. Mods could you delete the first one please?
(By the way, Mouse, sorry for not emailing you yet – my Internet’s been down all week, currently hitching wifi on my phone, and I can’t remember my email password. =P)
Fuck this guy. Society told *me* that I better be able to take care of myself because there was no guarantee anybody else would do it!
I am so sick of these fuckers pulling these *facts* out of there asses and using it to justify oppression.
Well fuck. I really like his mashups. Like, I have one of his logo wallpapers as my desktop.
Not anymore.
And then they proceed to complain about that other kind of women, those nasty women with professional careers.
Yup. They love to complain about how unqualified, dumb women are taking jobs out of the hands of hardworking, smart men who would contribute so much to society. So, really, what he should say is that society tells women that they can’t take care of themselves, no matter how hard they try, and that they either need a good husband or the government to take care of them. And then society complains that women can (apparently) choose the government instead of having to marry a man to avoid starvation. (Because women apparently can’t work.)