[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.
I like this comment becuase it’s condescending but still informative. I still can’t figure out how to quote bits of text so bear with me.
Yes, the ‘i’m not an X, but’ cliche happened, but doesn’t invalidate my claim, as you can read in my second post.
You quote me saying rape is good, not rape is nonsense. I don’t remember typing that. Sorry if I did.
When I said I have yet to meet a sexist, I mean, Obviously I have online, in their thousands. But in person, not so much. People are not vocal about it. Some older men I’ve spoken to say some things that are sexist, like women’s role in business and work but it’s a developing world over here, catching up.
Just because you haven’t seen women’s fitness magazines doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I can think of three and I don’t even subscribe to them.
Thanks for the links, I’ll be reading them soon, but let me assure you that there are just as many google results debunking the claims. It’s hard for an individual to google things in an unbiased fashion, it feels almost offensive to search for the opposite of your agenda, but sometimes it’s important. I often like to type what I think, and follow it with the word ‘myth’ or ‘debunk’
The pinnochio lie is not a lie. You can easily find examples of what I said. They are hardly blocked from view. If that type isn’t welcome here then, well, Irrelevant to me since I don’t frequent here and I’m speaking more generally than a single website.
There are numerous examples of men being falsely imprisoned, sometimes for years, others committing suicide and others having their entire careers ruined from false accusations of women who, say, claim rape, and then later, after the suicide, admit they only held hands. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you might consider checking up on it first, rather than just skipping – dismissing (remember when I mentioned that word?)
‘I’m not sexist’ – Not a lie, see second post
Tone police thing, well, not sure how to respond to that but just being critical of the way something is handled shouldn’t be mocked. To any objective mind they can see in almost anything, that the thing is flawed. And in this case, the way people do feminism is often flawed. That’s just how life is. Sometimes people do things wrong, and others point it out.
Doesn’t make me sexist.
I don’t know this dead feminist is, but I can assure you there are many more. I know a few youtubers who – regardless of whether I agree with them or not – have opinions that lead to death threats and letters being sent to their homes, needing police protection as a response. Again if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s not hidden. Go check.
‘because they’re sexist duh’ – not very useful but ok. Why are they?
‘from other men’ – Ok he learnt it from other men. Why? How can it be stopped? Hint – Understanding.
‘it never ever works’ – I’m wondering how true this is. maybe you as a collective tried to some degree at some point in time, but gave up out of exasperation, and future examples you jump to anger and frustration. Again, understandable, but the wrong thing to do.
Also, a whole bunch may do what I suggested, but then others will just jump right into anger and frustration, and drown out the reasonable people. A problem indeed, I don’t have a solution.
However, things tend to go viral a lot these days. Hopefully an actual reasonable argument to him would go viral and he would see it, see his shameful ways and reply decently. I dunno, maybe I have too much faith in humanity?
And I don’t think feminists are evil, I just think some are. In the same way I think some of every group of activists can be.
Credible sources or GTFO. Youtubers are not credible sources. Peer-reviewed studies are. Cohort studies are. Literature reviews are.
Don’t come in here with uncited opinions and then tell other people off for being unreasonable.
Why do I need credible sources for an opinion?
I am honestly about to go to dinner – with GIRLS as well as boys. Woah! so I can’t right now, but if it’s really too difficult for you to just, check… I guess I could do the googling for you. I don’t see why you demand such a thing when you said yourself you have free time, and I guess you probably have some kind of broadband, right?
Also, me stating unreasonable people is not remotely linked to me not citing my thoughts. I don’t like to cite thoughts because people rarely read them and its a waste of my time.
Those who are interested will surely do as I suggested and check for themselves. If you’re not that into it and just want to be angry at me then, well, that’s your prerogative but I really gotta go dinner.
I’m the plus one of my girlfriend, by the way, not the other way round.
Well, that was quite the logical U-turn. From “I haven’t seen X in the wild so it doesn’t exist” to “Just because you haven’t seen X doesn’t mean they don’t exist” in one paragraph.
Guess what? Just because you haven’t seen a sexist in person doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Most people are smart enough not to say racist, misogynist things in a business setting, but behind closed doors with friends, it’s a different story. The anonymity of te internet just emboldens them to speak their minds more freely. I have former facebook “friends” who seemed perfectly nice in real life, but didn’t think twice about posting gross, offensive memes about women on their wall. That sexism was there all along, just hidden under a veneer of social respectability.
@EJ – You are awesome. That is all.
Because if your opinion is not based on credible sources then you should be ashamed of holding that opinion.
Here’s an opinion: I am of the opinion that Uruguay doesn’t exist. I’ve never been there, I’ve never met an Uruguayan, I’ve never seen pictures of downtown Montevideo, and I’ve never eaten Uruguayan cuisine. Sure, I’ve met people who will tell me about how they went to Uruguay; but then I’ve also met people who will tell me about how their cat is the reincarnation of Smaug, so I take that with a pinch of salt.
On the other hand, I am not going to go around Necro-ing threads in order to tell people this opinion, because it is a stupid opinion and spouting it will not measurably improve the overall happiness of the human race.
Less facetiously: This website is not called “Come and spout your opinions.” Such a website exists, it’s called State. This is not State. This is WHTM. Here we talk about misogynists and how absurd their antics are. You are the current topic of conversation, because you are a misogynist and your antics are absurd.
Also, you didn’t say “it is my opinion that rape culture does not exist.” You said “rape culture… if it exists (which it does not.” That’s not the statement of an opinion. That’s an assertion of facts.
You’re playing among grownups here. Grownups do not make assertions unless they have credible sources to back them up. If you make assertions and then, when called on them, claim that they’re just opinions then you’re asking us to treat you like a child.
If you make a claim and you expect to be taken seriously, the onus is on you to support it. Claims require evidence, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you simply say “I believe X, and you should google it and see if you can find sources to support X” then please be aware that you come out looking as credible as the people who tell us that spreading vinegar on their back porch helps to prevent chemtrails. Or the people who believe that Obama is planning FEMA concentration camps. Or the people who claim that Uruguay exists.
Have a good dinner. Think over whether you want to be treated as a grownup. If you do, come back with credible sources to back up your assertions. If not, think hard about what value you hope to add to the overall sum of human happiness by continuing to tell us your opinions.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
One day, I hope to be as awesome as you are.
(I was really, really tempted to reply to you with a curt “Be quiet, men are talking.” It’s a joke which would have gotten a joke among my real-life friends but I’m unsure of the reception here so I’ll just mention it and won’t actually make it.)
@Omni: If you somehow escaped the 9th grade without learning that when you make assertions the onus is on you to provide supporting evidence, then consider this your continuing education moment for the day.
Do yourself a favor, stick your pseudo-flounce.
omni sez:
Ya know even very ignorant people are usually at least smart enough to pretend they have a source for their claims apart from their own imagination. Congratulations on lowering the bar.
Gonna guess that one of these YouToob Feminists is Anita Sarkeesian. How the fuck is criticising female representation in video games “extremism”? You have a tone as if these YouToob Feminists are deserving of death threats and harassment because of their views – fuck you. Chances are their views are NOT extreme in any way, according to an actual reasonable person, the problem is the groups of internet assholes who get butthurt over any woman who doesn’t fit their ideal of how a woman should behave i.e. submissive and silent, only existing to stroke their breathtakingly fragile egos. Seriously, many of these online misogynists are WAY more sensitive than you perceive the average feminist to be.
Sorry, let me clarify: you have a tone as if the death threats are evidence that these youtubers have extreme views. As I’ve said, that is not the case.
Reasons to cite sources for the facts you used to form your opinions:
1. It’s polite, when coming into someone else’s space.
2. Those you are having discourse with need to access and assess the sources you used to form your opinion in order to either agree or disagree.
3. When coming into someone else’s space with a dissenting opinion, especially a space where trolls are rampant, you need to assert your own credibility.
4. Your interpretation of the content of your sources might not be the only interpretation.
Really? So. . . people responding with death threats means those people were somehow justified in making those death threats because the feminist(s) must have said something really offensive to provoke that kind of a response? That’s really your argument??? I guess Martin Luther King Jr. must have said some really offensive things about racial equality by your logic. . .
lol . . . what is this supposed to prove?
My guess it’s meant to be like “I can’t be sexist, I allowed a woman to ask me out!”.
It doesn’t prove diddly.
He allows his girlfriend to have friends, and even allows her to leave the house to visit them as long as he’s invited to go with! See, he’s not a dangerous extremist like us but still manages to not be a sexist.
@EJ – Oh, fie, you make me blush, good sirrah. But seriously, thank you for all your informative, witty, and whack-a-troll posts. I wish I could send you fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies (or other treat of your choice) through the intertubes.
“Do my homework for me in debunking my assertion that feminists are irrational and angry, and if you’re not interested in wasting half an hour of your life on tediously refuting my Gish gallop, well, then you’re just another irrational angry feminist.”
Thanks for putting us in a lose-lose situation, but we’ll pass.
Numerous? How numerous? One is numerous. Is this an actual epidemic, or are you latching on to a few rare examples, and pretending that they’re as big of a problem as the thousands of rapes that
a) go unreported
b) aren’t believed when reported
c) have the charges dropped under enormous pressure from family/friends/the police/the community not to “ruin the life” of the accused, coupled with lack of will on the victim’s part to endure the trauma of reliving the crime at trial
d) make it to trial but no conviction, thanks to the perpetrator’s connections, an archaic system of cross-examination that thinks the victim’s dress, conduct, sex life, and prior relationship to the perpetrator have any bearing on the guilt of the accused, and murky definitions of consent (deliberately made even more murky by the very people who think false rape accusations are a huge problem for men).
Men don’t get tossed into jail merely on a women’s say so. If anything, more perpetrators go free because the testimony of “just a woman” isn’t enough to convict. Innocent-til-proven-guilty is one of the bedrock principles of the American justice system. That doesn’t get magically tossed out the window when it’s a rape trial.
Whenever this gets brought up, I always wonder what exactly are the incentives for a woman to levy false rape accusations? There certainly aren’t cash prizes or book deals at stake, just uncomfortable questions and nasty gossip. A woman would still have to go through the whole booking, trial and cross-examination process and have her character and judgement called into question, in a way that isn’t done for other crimes. That’s quite an ordeal to go through just to get revenge, or a spot on Oprah, or whatever is you imagine women are banding together in large numbers to do this for.
Congratulations on your unbelievably gender-diverse group of dining companions.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
Freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies sound lovely, thank you.
I generally figure they must have some underlying belief that all women must be spiteful, manipulative sadists. More projection on their part probably. We’ve seen some of the manasphere’s fantasies about hurting women they don’t like, maybe they assume women must similarly want to destroy innocent men’s lives out of spite.
And ofc, some of these guys are just rapists who want to keep their rape culture safety net in case they do get (rightly) accused.
manosphere*
It’s pretty easy to go through life never meeting “a sexist” when you’re
1) A man. Men don’t personally experience misogyny.
2) The kind of person who only thinks someone can be a misogynist if he outright says “I hate women.” Here’s a newsflash. Most people don’t come right and say they’re bigoted. All of the manosphere groups claim they’re not misogynists. Then they go on to say things like women lie about rape, women are like children, if a woman ever hit me, I’d beat her, women can’t do science, women wearing pants is ruining western civilization. And on and on.
How nice for you that you can avoid misogyny by just quickly going your separate way. Women don’t have the luxury of doing that. That’s why the concept of privilege isn’t nonsense like you surely think it is. Privilege isn’t just about gaining things from being in a privileged class. It’s about avoiding all the crap that people in marginalized classes have to put up. For example, I’m white. So I don’t have cops and retail workers treating me as a criminal for simply existing in public. You probably aren’t catcalled constantly. You probably don’t have to prove you aren’t emotional before people will listen to your opinion.
So, this is a threat. Right? You’re essentially saying. I’m not sexist. Yet. But if you feminists don’t keep quiet, I will be! Very classy.
In what way is rape culture nonsense? Here’s just one example. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/28/nation/la-na-montana-judge-20130829
A judge blaming a 14 year old girl for being raped by her teacher. Because the 14 year old child “seemed older than her chronological age.” The rapist got a slap on the wrist from this judge and the victim killed herself. That’s just one example. Women are always given an arbitrary and ever expanding list of things she should do not to get raped. Apparently things that are out of their control. Like don’t go through puberty too quickly. That’s rape culture.
As for gamergate. Yeah, it’s nonsense. It’s also not a feminist movement. Not sure why you brought that up.
Citation needed. Three women are murdered a day by their husbands and boyfriends in my country (the US). Are you really trying to sell me on the notion that the real source of violence is feminists against men. In my country, even though the majority (about 77%) of homicide victims are male, 90% of the perpetrators are male too https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain 110 husbands were murder vs. 603 wives in 2010. Both men and women are far more likely to be killed by a man than a woman.
Please provide examples of feminism that is so extreme it justifies misogyny. What could possibly justify bigotry?
There are entire fields of academia devoted to trying to understand one another. Psychology, sociology, neuroscience etc. There has been plenty of research. For example; men with macho attitudes are more likely to be misogynistic http://www.livescience.com/21172-men-sexist-attitudes-muscles.html
Women think rape culture exists in the west because it does.
EJ,
You have mastered the take down.
http://www.sharegif.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/19/clap-gif-22.gif
You do know that people online are real people that exist in meatspace, right? Also, this is the second time you’ve said that you’ve never met a sexist and then contradicting yourself immediately. You’re pretty much saying that any sexism you encounter just doesn’t count.
Citation needed. False rape claims aren’t any more prevalent than false claims for any other crime.
Side note; do any of you Mammotheers have the cite for that? My Google fu is weak today Even looking for false report stats without mentioning rape leads to nothing but wanks about false rape allegations. Lots of AVFM and Return of Kings hits. Although, I guess that’s good evidence of rape culture that you can’t find good statistics amidst hand wringing over false rape accusations despite the fact that they are statistically rare.
You made a claim. It’s up to you to back it up. You don’t have to provide evidence, but if you don’t nobody will take you seriously.
Too bad I didn’t catch you before you left. Because I have homework. Maybe next time.
Ask the women you know if they’ve experienced sexism. Don’t interrupt. Don’t tell them they were imagining it. Just as them questions and really listen to the answers. Ask if they’ve experienced street harassment and at what age it started. Ask if they’ve had their contributions at work or school devalued because of their gender. Ask if they’ve noticed objectifying representations of women in mass media. Ask if they feel there will be negative social consequences for declining to wear makeup. You might just find that unlike you, they’ve encountered plenty of sexist people.
WIki’s got everything.
Most of the people on this site are above the age of 25 (I think Fruitloopsie and I are the only one’s who are below the age of 25…that I know of). We eat with women and men, so you’re obviously not an adult, and if you are, I’m not sure why the parents at the McDonald’s are letting you eat in the ballpit.
Wasn’t there an article recently that described most false rape accusations as being the ‘unknown masked individual attacked me at night’? Does anyone else remember this?