[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.
Regarding Art vs Artist: I’ve come up against this phenomenon a few times as a heavy metal fan. For example, Varg Vikernes of Burzum has made racist and anti-Semitic statements in the past, but thankfully these views don’t reflect in his music. There was a good article on the blog No Clean Singing on this topic: http://www.nocleansinging.com/2012/04/06/emancipate-these-riffs-arghoslent/
It definitely shows he doesn’t seem to understand the tastes of women as much as he claims.
I mean, just from my experience alone, women differ greatly in taste as to what they find attractive in a man. That shouldn’t be surprising since human beings, in general, don’t all find the same exact traits either in personality or physical appearance attractive. Almost every culture in the history of civilization proves that…
I, personally, think he’s full of shit about Bayonetta’s proportions being “unattractive” – because there is a woman that many men (most especially myself) find incredibly attractive because she is both tall and curvaceous. Her name is Christina Hendricks:
http://cdn.hollywoodtake.com/sites/hollywoodtake.com/files/styles/large/public/2013/06/05/christina-hendricks_1.jpg?itok=v5l35idw
Update on Pogo from his blog:
http://pogomix.net/social-media-monster/
It was an “experiment.” My ass.
Never mind. It was just deleted. *facepalm*
@Uzzmuz: Well, that’s why there’s no delete button on the Internet. Cached version here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dKCzk005JqgJ:pogomix.net/social-media-monster/
@Sissy You’re a GOD. And I are confused by intarwebz.
I suspect most of these people are virtually virgins. Real rapists are smart enough to not talk about their felonies online without a burner account, and the few who are that dumb are arrested before they can become PUA celebrities. This is what make the whole rape/death threats a macabre black comedy with the intent of terrorizing. While we have to take them seriously, the rape threat is 99% talking smack because it would leave DNA evidence. A killer OTOH only has to use silencer and gloves to have a reasonable belief he’d get away with it.
I would theorize the men acting as rape apologists feel their identity as men is being attacked. A man attacked a woman? She should have known he was going to try to take advantage of her. Because that’s what men are: always thinking about getting sex. Everyone’s fair game. Don’t want sex with a guy? Don’t talk to him. Or smile. Or go out in public.
This is all horribly misogynistic, but it’s worse than that. These people are social cripples if that’s ALL they think society is about.
If they’re not a social cripple, then it could be a case of not being able to empathize abstractly with people they do not know personally. This is a common problem for people on the right end of the political spectrum. It’s easier to feel good punching down. Punching up is risky and there’s no guarantee of victory.
@Sissy
Thanks for the link.
*saves page as…webpage compete*
@Uzzmuz: Don’t thank me, thank my sister and Google Cache. xD
Unfortunate part is that the cached version’s limited for a certain amount of time, so my lazy behind should screencap that ASAP.
I think you’re being too optimistic by casting rapists as people who know they’re criminals and are afraid of being caught. Studies have shown that most rapists don’t think what they did was rape, and of course most of the time they’re neither arrested nor punished, even with clear proof.
“Studies have shown that most rapists don’t think what they did was rape”
This is a major issue and what distinguishes rape from most other crimes. Even prolific thieves know and accept that stealing is wrong. In fact most criminals acquisitive criminals understand the concept of ‘legitimacy’ in the criminal justice system (i.e. they might not want to get caught and punished but they understand that if and when they are it’s a fair result).
Even violent criminals know that *unwarranted* violence is wrong. Many will in fact accept their use of violence was unwarranted and wrong but even those who don’t accept they did wrong will argue that their particular use was warranted, not that there’s anything wrong with the general prohibition on violence.
Rape is different though. The issues with ‘stranger’ rapes are complex but most rapes are by someone known or at least connected with the victim. The perpetrators of these rapes will also accept rape is wrong, but won’t see what they do as rape (often on the grounds that there’s no serious violence or force uses and similar).
This is why when men get angry at the “teach men not to rape” message and say “we know not to rape” they are missing the point. Yes, they won’t even consider leaping out of the bushes one night with knife in hand, but it’s recognising that that’s not the only way rape occurs that’s the issue.
NOT ALL WOMEN BUY ROMANCE NOVELS, YOU ULTRAMAROON.
Also, muscles are actually good for something besides bulging and bouncing during sex*. You know, like lifting heavy things or running really fast?
*We won’t mention breastfeeding, because everybody knows that boobs = sex, and that feeding babies with them is disgusting and obscene.
^^^^^
On a semi related note, Barbara Cartland (fluffy pink author of gazzilions of ‘bodice ripper’ novels) designed the gliders used on D-Day. Love that fact.
I think I was clear I was talking about rape apologists. If I wasn’t, I apologize and am making that clear now.
As for the study, that is very interesting. Do you have a link? Preferably to raw data?
I’m inclined to question how the results are being interpreted. Unemphatic people who use sex as a weapon know damn well what they are doing, that’s why they’re careful to try to pick people who they think can’t fight back. If drugs are involved, then they are simply lying. So at the least I quibble with MOST rapists. I can believe most rapists don’t think rape is wrong, which is a different thing from not knowing they’re doing it.
I can think of a whole host of reasons someone convicted of rape wants to make themselves look good with, “I didn’t know!”
We went through a bit of this when it was thought all child molesters had been molested. Many might have been abused and/or neglected in their upbringing, but they also claimed to have been molested to get a sympathetic ear.
RE: I think I was clear I was talking about rape apologists. If I wasn’t, I apologize and am making that clear now.
Never mind. I though you were responding to a different point. My bad. Teach me to be tldr.
^^^@ katz
(I will learn how to Internet one day….)
NickNameNick: It seems to still be leading me to the Let Me Google That For You page. I don’t know why it’s doing that (It only seems to be doing that on Firefox, and only with your links).
As for the rest of that conversation: If Yahtzee really wanted to make a comment about this, I’d suggest he looks at the difference between how men are portrayed on magazines for men
http://www.hudsonpro.com/m_and_f_small.jpg
Vs. magazines for women.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/07/12/article-2361969-1AC56468000005DC-264_634x832.jpg
On Muscle and Fitness: Bulging muscles, glaring gaze, face tilted down and in shadow, “power stance”, showin’ off his claws (because it’s focusing on how he got fit for the Wolverine role).
On Good Housekeeping: Nice sweater, smiling, face is more open, more relaxed stance.
Yup, we wimmens sure do like those muscles, yes indeedy. Never mind the fact that Bina brought up that not all women like romance novels, and never mind the fact that some romance novels are written and/or had their covers designed *gasp* BY MEN!
Yup. Because authors don’t always design their novel covers, as someone who has written and published novels (LIKE YAHTZEE) should be well aware of.
Couldn’t find the study I think katz is refering to, but I did find this — http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2014.0022
Small sample size, but of the 73 guys surveyed, 13 would be willing to obtain sex by force, but not “rape” (18%), and another 10 would rape (14%). So nearly a third of these guys would rape, with 57% of them not calling it that.
Argenti:
It’s amazing how people’s perceptions change the moment we drop the word “rape”.
Which is why I still advocate teaching men not to rape. Dissenters will say “Everyone knows not to rape! It’s a waste of time!”, but studies like this just show many people still don’t know what rape actually is.
Men still think “obtaining sex by force” is okay, just as long as we don’t call it “rape”, despite the fact that’s the damn definition of rape.
We need better sex education. This bare-minimum, abstinence-only nonsense is obviously not working.
Back on the topic of “Women find muscles sexy in games!”, this particular image has been brought up before:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0e/Conan_%282007_video_game_cover%29.jpg
A famous YouTuber brought up that this is “male sexual objectification”.
To which I would respectfully disagree. This image is bad, but not for the same ways he’s thinking. The image itself is bad because of toxic masculinity, not because of “sexual objectification”.
Women don’t wanna fuck that. That’s not a “come hither” kind of portrayal, that’s a “I’m going to lop off your head and drink wine from your skull” kind of portrayal.
Bonus points though for picking a game cover with scantily clad slave girls in the background, and even more bonus points for picking a game where said scantily clad slave girls are collectables in the game.
I like Good Housekeeping’s Jackman a lot better than the one from the muscle mag. The one looks like a guy I could enjoy talking to, and the other, like one who can’t wait to rip me to shreds. >shudder<
Yes, but Pogo’s probably gross enough to consider that yet another sign of how unfairly desirable women’s bodies are.
Yes, that’s the study I was referring to.
@ParadoxicalIntention
I know who you’re talking about, Jontron posted that on his twitter. It sucks that he actually used that image as part of his argument, but I think he got plenty of blowback from people about it. Hopefully he got a bit educated on the subject.
I love Jontron, my nightmare situation is him or the “Best Friends” Mat, Pat, Woolie and Liam pulling a “Pogo” as I am now going to call any situation where a personal favorite internet personality reveals themselves to be sexist/racist/homophobic etcetera….