So the musician who goes by the name Pogo, best known for his magical audiovisual mashups using snippets of old Disney movies, is now declaring that the awful misogynistic nonsense he recently posted on his blog and on YouTube was “somewhat of an experiment for myself,” intended to rile up
the enormous breed of hyenas out there taking gender equality and feminism hostage, and bending it into a social status to validate their feeling that the world owes them everything because of their gender.
As Pogo (real name Nick Bertke) explains it in a new blog post today, his attacks on women were intended to expose these fake feminist “hyenas … as the self contradicting brats they are.” To do this, he says,
I uploaded videos and blog posts to draw this mentality out and see just how much of it plagues my own circles. I mashed together the most radical views I could find about women and feminism on the internet, doing my best to present it as my humble opinion and honest observations.
It wasn’t long before my Twitter, which I haven’t touched in months, was absolutely blazing with “equality seeking, compassionate and understanding people” putting every one of their ideals through the shredder and back again. A few people had excellent things to say, but watching the rest of them was like watching a bunch of vegetarians turn cannibal and tear apart a newborn.
Bertke gives zero examples of this.
Looking through Twitter’s list of “Top Tweets” mentioning Bertke’s now-deleted @PogoMix Twitter account, I didn’t find a lot of cannibals. I saw a bunch of Tweets like this:
https://twitter.com/Andie_Cox/status/560788383861981184
rip @PogoMix
Used to love your mixes a lot. No more. Please look into what feminism actually is, then we'll talk.— Cassie (@dinosaur_mug) January 30, 2015
https://twitter.com/rosstavo/status/560946547085811712
The harshest tweet of the bunch was this one:
https://twitter.com/dearmothica/status/560999015295483905
Looking through some of the rest of the Tweets referencing his account, I found more disappointed fans, a few more people asking if his antifeminist videos were poor attempts at satire, and a number of people (mostly dudes) challenging him to back up the various dubious assertions he’d made in his blog posts and videos.
The most abusive tweet of the bunch was the following one, from a self-described troll — seriously, the word “troll” is in his avatar.
@pogomix im gonna beat you up
— Speedcore Henry after EVO 🙁 (@FilmCritGRINCH) January 30, 2015
There were not a lot of cackling feminist “hyenas” to be found, unless you count this Tweet as a sort of hyena howl:
https://twitter.com/HELLOK1TTY4EVR/status/561006261572222977
There are a couple of obvious problems with Bertke’s claim that the whole thing was an “experiment.” For one thing, as I pointed out in my last post, he’s apparently had misogynistic eruptions before. For another, his “honest views on feminism and gender equality,” as he puts it, are still pretty shitty.
While avoiding overtly misogynistic statements — you know, like claiming that women are basically just children begging for discipline — Bertke’s post today is full of the same sort of ignorant and vaguely infantile attacks on feminism you see on Men’s Rights sites. In addition to calling his feminist opponents “hyenas,” he also suggests that many self-described feminists are “brats pocketing what they think is a ticket to a special club for getting special treatment.”
And in his earlier post Where Feminism Goes Wrong — which he hasn’t taken down, and which he says he stands by — he makes similarly ridiculous claims:
The irony of feminism is that, by focusing largely on one gender, it in inherently supports the segregation of genders and raises a breed of self victimizing gold diggers who think historical injustice to their sex makes them personally deserving of special treatment today.
So, yeah, not buying it. And if Twitter is any indication, there aren’t a lot of other people buying it either.
I guess we’ll have to see what he comes up with next.
EDIT: Reworded the sentemce starting “For another” which wasn’t quite right before.
Argumentium ad youtubem (yeah, it’s a pasty third declension noun, sorry about that!)
So, seriously then? Stupid little shit I’ve noticed:
Presenting male: people get out of my way, shopping is not an obstacle course occupied by moving idiots
Presenting female: dude, I was walking there, wtf! Other dude, I need that thing you’ve decided to lean against while you text!
Presenting male: *walks to corner store at night, is ignored*
Presenting female: *walks to corner store at night, is, at minimium, stared at* insert extra stupidity if it’s a weekend and there are drunks around
Presenting male: *walks down busy street in broad daylight, gets asked for a smoke or a light, is otherwise ignored*
Presenting female: same street daylight bit, *is hit on and generally asked where I’m going and told to smile* or offered some unnamed job and told that women can’t get ahead cuz we’re all stuck up bitches. That was different, never thought I’d hear a literal MRA line while trying to get from amtrak to subway.
Experiment if you don’t believe me — go get a skirt and women’s shoes, and either stuff a bra or bundle up so you can’t tell, and go grocery shopping. Make sure to take a piss while you’re there, I just adore gendered bathrooms! (I do not, and being the size of a teenager, tend to use the ladies’ room if there aren’t singled stall bathrooms [all hail the unisex bathroom!])
Do I stand or sit? Can I just go behind this bush or do I have to somehow hold it for another hour? Why is the men’s room covered in piss and the women’s room look like a murder scene?! I just need to pee damnit!!!
(I went trans shopping, so hopefully that one will be a bit easier, and got some nice and gender neutral clothing but it’s still too cold for my clearance rack finds)
But I’m gonna end this because I do actually have to pee!
This needs some cute, so I come bearing turtles that might manage to be cuter than mine (it’s okay though, at least a few of them are his species but smaller) — http://www.viralnova.com/cutest-turtles/?np=1
Aww. Those are very precious turtles.
Number 11 was my favorite.
Shellinati! 🙂
“Proper flounce or not, can we get David to enforce it? Teapublicans are about as interesting as watching paint dry while it’s still in the can.”
Because you only want to hear political opinions like your own? I didn’t see a “No republicans” in the comments policy.
“Lol, most of the people harassing him are other men, two of which are literally wearing fairy costumes. That had to have been set up.”
It’s NYC, all kinds of crazy shit happens. No one here has proven it wasn’t set up, other than it has to be because it somehow sounds so implausible. But even if this instance is, so what? That doesn’t mean it never happens. I have been called at by drunk women (when I was about 10 years younger mind you) , “Hey sexy guy across the street!” It’s not something that happened often, but it has happened before.
@Lolly
When you talk of redistributing power, and collective responsibility, you speak of the ultimate authoritarianism. The worst governments on this earth were all about redistributing power, wealth, privilege, and so on. Collectivism is all about making hostile classes out of people. It is about punishing individuals for supposed collective crimes. I was never claiming women as a group held some kind of privilege. What is it with leftists obsession about endlessly fractionalising people? There is no female privilege, just as there is no male privilege, we are all only individuals with different abilities, traits, people around us, and so on. The fact remains that feminism is a leftist ideology. You don’t hear of too many feminist objectivists for example, though I concede there may be some out there who label themselves as both and see no irony in doing so. Government interference in consensual social relations is to economics and society as creationism is to science.
That’s because government is better than you at solving problems. You really want to pave and light your own roads? Defend your own borders? Rely on corporations to assure you their food, toys, and automobiles are perfectly safe? Test your own air and drinking water? Provide your own disaster relief? Fund your own research for deadly diseases? Have a college education be unaffordable for all but the Koch brothers’ kids?
You want to talk “nanny state”? Let’s talk right-wing politicians anxious to regulate every aspect of a woman’s reproductive health and freedom. Let’s talk right-wing politicians telling us who can and cannot marrry. Let’s talk creationists forcing their beliefs into science textbooks and classrooms and stifling the teaching of critical thought. Let’s talk Selective Service registration (a Reagan-era creation). None of these are liberal ideas.
spurricane:
No, but persistent tedium is.
And here’s where this is getting tedious. No, we disagree with you. We’ve provided reasons and concrete examples as to why we disagree with you. We have backed up our arguments. You have yet to address any of it. You just keep reiterating the same thing, over and over. That’s not a discussion. That’s tedious trolling.
And that bit that Buttercup Q. Skullpants quoted? That was your reply to why you keep using the term “liberal feminism.” That’s actually not what liberal feminism is. You gave the tea-party definition of a modern USian political liberal.
And it’s a wrong definition, too, Sparky. When I think of a “nanny state” trying to regulate behavior and suppress thought,
it’s generally the right wing.
(Stupid ipad keeps randomly refreshing and repainting the “post comment” button right under my descending finger. Sorry!)
I am definitely a slave to the shellinati! My day so far has included watching an adorable yawn, redirecting him to his fresh salad, twice, and fluffing it the second time since he’d walked through it and flattened it. Also, cleaned off dusty butt’s shell, cuz dusty. The rest of the critters will be demanding attention soon enough, but so far it’s just been the shelled one.
And I see a certain someone has decided to make a less interesting debate partner than my tortoise, who at least varies his responses. “Hey, he just winked at me!” — my mother, more than once, contrast with the yawn (yeah, they aren’t emotional responses, but they’re more varied than yet another go ’round the Tea Party not-so-merry-go-round)
Well of course it has. The law of big numbers states that in a large enough population, even rare events occur frequently (just not statistically frequently).
The difference in how often women get cat-called vs men getting cat-called makes all the difference in the world. It can be nice when someone randomly says “hello” to you on the street, until you start getting approached constantly whenever you go out, with that “hello” more often than not turning into a proposition and then anger when you reject it.
This is male privilege, remaining blissfully unaware of what daily life is like for another gender, and being flabbergasted when an interaction that, to you, seems harmless is described as harassment. The youtube video, labeled “model pranksters,” assumed that it was attractiveness and skimpy clothing that caused the harassment, so they had to get a male modal in a tight t-shirt to walk around and still get fewer interactions (and less intense reactions, no slighted women following him around and calling him a bastard for not responding) than a woman in a normal outfit.
The original video succeeded not just because of the number of potentially frightening interactions, but because it accurately depicted what to most women is daily life. The response video failed because it failed to do the same for men, and it had to stack the deck as much as possible (assuming no foul play) to do so.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here. Because you’ve been harassed less than a handful of times, the fact that I get harassed about a dozen times a week now magically isn’t a problem? Someone once yelled at you across the street and that’s just as bad as the fact that I’ve been attacked twice by men wanting my number?
Do you really think that because street harassment can (and probably has at least once) happen(ed) to everyone, it isn’t a problem? That makes it sound like a bigger problem.
http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2014-National-SSH-Street-Harassment-Report.pdf
So yeah, men, especially non-straight men, get harassed quite a bit. Both men and women get harassed overwhelmingly by one or more men. But look at those numbers.
“Sixty-five percent of women reported experiencing at least one type of street harassment in their lifetimes. More than half (57%) of all women had experienced verbal harassment, and 41% of all women had experienced physically aggressive forms, including sexual touching (23%), following (20%), flashing (14%), and being forced to do something sexual (9%). For men, 25% experienced street harassment, too, including 18% who experienced verbal harassment and 16% who experienced physically aggressive forms.”
So what are you trying to argue? Are you honestly saying that because it also happens to men (mostly by other men) that it somehow isn’t a problem for women anymore? That wishing to be able to go grocery shopping or walk to work without being “sexually touched, followed, flashed or forced to do something sexual” is an unreasonable request?
Are you okay with living in a society where this is the norm?
Dude, I reiterate: it is a COMEDY video. Are you totally daft? Can you not read labels? Because it says so right there in plain sight. What is it about you right-wing teabags that you can’t even read a label?
I will concede that you are hard evidence that something in the US is crumbling. But it’s not the inner cities, it’s the insides of your head.
Also notice how the ‘legal rights’ point has been left untouched. Rather nitpick about street harassment and the definition of ‘liberal’ and make it unquestionably clear that he doesn’t understand the use of the word ‘privilege’.
That’s funny, because Norway and Sweden do that, and they don’t look half bad from where I sit!
One could make a decent argument that the redistribution going on under the “worst governments” took the form of concentrating wealth, power, and privilege in an ever-shrinking portion of the population, rather than redistributing from the “have too much”s to the “have not enough”s
I certainly would. It happened in Nazi Germany, too. Corporations got government contracts to build the crematoria, fergawdsakes. That is the very definition of CAPITALISM. And China? Communist? Don’t make me laugh. It hasn’t been definable as such since Mao Zedong died, and even then it was highly questionable. Nowadays, it’s all run by corporate oligarchs. It is a People’s Republic in name only, and has been for decades.
But I don’t expect a doctrinaire teabagger like our troll to understand that at all, even though it is a far from subtle distinction. To those guys, taking away rights and equalities is FREEDUMB!!!