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.
@ kirbywarp
You were nice enough though to put an executive summary though so you win!
I got phone call in the middle of typing that sentence so I’m blaming that for the excess of ‘though’s.
Tiege, it’s like your mouth is falling down the stairs. If you are here in good faith, you should do a more in-depth review of the comment policy.
Which is funny because that’s an example of group memory preserving a potentially lifesaving behavior, while the monkey-banana experiment has a moral about group memory being a stupid reason why people keep doing pointless things.
Tiege, chill. Its not that your comments are stupid. Its that this isn’t the place or time to be helping the aggressor.
I spent a year with a guy like this one. I was in total denial, making excuses but telling myself I wasn’t excusing the behaviour, just trying to understand why he behaved like he did so I could help him! Ultimately, I just enabled him to further hurt me.
I get it. When you’ve invested in someone this is what you do when they let you down.
From what he said on where feminism goes wrong, it seems like he is on the right track by me. Women have all the same legal rights men have now and no liberal feminist is ever able to give me a concrete example of just what male privileges I actually have.
@ Spurricane
What’s your heart rate when you’re walking down a street at night?
I usually google things I don’t know but want to know. For instance, if I were curious, ‘Male privilege list’ turns up a lot of results. I don’t know if they were written by liberal feminists. The list in the first result was written by a man.
Again what is that relevant to? I have had to walk some dangerous streets and it’s why I go strapped. It’s a dangerous world out there and I’ll be damn if I’m going out unprepared. My girlfriend has her CCP as well. Psychopaths, thugs, gangs, and criminals of all descriptions a risk that both men and women face in America’s crumbling cities.
Most of what comes up when I google that is pure conjecture, subjective.and either not cited, or cited by highly dubious sources that are hardly likely to be impartial and unbiased. The first thing that comes up is a blog by someone named Peggy MacIntosh that list some glorious male privileges like:
21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
Color me skeptical if that is true or that it represents any kind of privilege even if it was. No one says you aren’t going to deal with assholes in life
spurricane. I haven’t the link just now, but I saw something the other day describing privilege differently.
Privilege is not something you personally possess. It’s the word we use to describe the things you don’t have to worry about that other people do.
It’s neat because it covers all the ways anyone can be privileged in relation to any other person or group. Class, religion, age, race, ethnicity, sex, gender, education, wealth, marriage, sexual preference/ identity, health, or the lack of any/all of them or having distinctive differences can all affect how well or how easily we move through our own lives.
mildlymagnificent
There was a “posh” comedian some years back who used to open his act:
“I’m privileged, not to be here, just generally”
Alan, I was just about to post the Lindy West link. Glad you beat me to it. It’s highly relevant. I don’t think her experience “explains” all trolls, and I don’t think she meant for it to; it was just a surprising thing that happened with one troll, who started out particularly awful (really, dude, necrophilia? Hiding behind a stranger’s dead dad just to get back at her for saying something you didn’t like? Gross.) Turns out that this dude had problems and was taking his self-hate out on what he figured was an easy target…and what’s easier than a woman? Especially an unapologetic woman whose words are in the public spotlight, and who dares to criticize the status quo?
It would sure be nice if all trolls were to melt like that the moment we threw a bucket of water over them, but sadly, some guys just want to watch the world burn. I’ve had death threats on my own blog…and rape threats, and other not-so-veiled threats of violence. Most of them were done in a matter of minutes, which is how long it took me to IP-ban them. Being unwilling to take shit — and in some cases, make their IP numbers visible, so they understood that I am capable of tracking them back and so are police — was the only way I could make them see I meant business, and that I don’t fuck around. It’s been very quiet since my last major run-in, so I think they took the message.
But still, any dude who thinks that women have it easy in life has never been one, especially on the internet. And any dude who thinks his privilege doesn’t exist just because he can’t see it, can fuck the hell off. It’s not the beneficiaries of privilege who feel it, it’s their victims. And the nature of privilege is to be invisible to those whom it benefits, but all too palpable to those whom it tramples underfoot.
Hi everybody! I’m back from vacation and over the flu and finally getting back to life as normal. So many new people!
What spurricane fails to do with points like this is take them to their next step. It isn’t the woman being careless with her finances that has experienced the loss of privilege. It’s the woman (and women) who comes after her, trying to apply for a loan or open an account, who is going to face discrimination based on the assumption that “Last time I loaned money to (invested in a venture with, etc) a woman she was irresponsible… because she was a woman. Because all women are less financially responsible than men. Therefore I’m not going to give this completely different woman the loan/account/etc.”
It’s the danger of conformation bias based on stereotypes. The person in the above example might have had hundreds of perfectly mundane experiences involving women and finances, but the first experience that confirms their sexist assumptions, that’s the one they’re going to latch onto.
The privilege men have in this example is not being lumped in with every other man who has ever made a bad financial decision. People come up with other reasons (sometimes classist, racist, etc) but it’s almost never “men are bad with finances” because that’s not the stereotype. You get “men aren’t as good with babies” as an excuse to expect women to leave careers and become stay at home mothers, or “men are bad at laundry”. Or stereotypes that excuse bad behavior like “men can’t help themselves around pretty women” or “men are naturally inclined to be more aggressive”.
Dissecting the stereotypes around men and women usually puts men at an advantage, not a disadvantage, when things like confirmation bias come into play. And things about individual men that would put them at a social disadvantage or paint them in a bad light are almost never attributed to them being men. Take for example the fact that the vast majority of school shooters are white men/boys. There’s two defining categories that we almost never acknowledge when they happen, but you can bet your lifetime income that if the shooters were predominately black, or women, or gay, or anything not the default, we would hear all about it and people would be asking questions about what’s wrong with black gay women these days? (You can see this in racist media and social reactions to terrorist attacks when the perpetrator is even suspected to be Muslim, whether it turns out they are or not.)
Things like this are the reason less women are hired in STEM fields, paid less, hold less political power, etc. It’s why black people are less likely to be home owners even if they have the necessary income to get the mortgage; why they’re hired less and incarcerated more.
It’s the “attributed to my sex, race, orientation, etc” and therefore used as an excuse for continued discrimination against other people (who I happen to have that demographic in common) part that’s important in those kinds of points.
Wow, that was more of a teal dear than I intended.
You say this as if you’re not sure it’s a good thing.
and no liberal feminist is ever able to give me a concrete example of just what male privileges I actually have.
1. What is the purpose of the adjective “liberal” in that sentence? Does it add anything? I’m getting a little tired of mindless people slinging it around like it’s supposed to be some kind of insult. The word “liberal” literally means “free”. Are you against freedom? Or just against freedom for certain groups of people?
2. I’d be willing to bet feminists have given you tons of examples, you just don’t like what they say. What you really mean isn’t “no one has ever given me an example”, but “people have given me examples and I don’t (or won’t) understand them.”
Women may have the same legal rights as men in theory, but that doesn’t mean they’re applied equally in practice. Why was George Zimmerman able to use the “stand your ground” defense, but not Marissa Alexander? Why is it so difficult for domestic abuse victims to get restraining orders that are taken seriously and enforced by the legal system? Why are rape victims subjected to extra scrutiny regarding every detail of their private lives, from what they were wearing to their prior sexual history – a level of scrutiny and a burden of proof we don’t demand of other crimes that fall less disproportionately on women? Why does the pay gap still exist, over half a century after the Equal Pay act was passed?
As for privilege, here’s a concrete one: you get to walk down the street and not get harassed and catcalled simply for being a man. No one questions your right to exist in a public space.
Whoops, blockquote fail up there:
I think the fact that the discussion around violence was centered around walking down the street and being afraid is indicative of male privilege itself. It occurs to men too to be afraid of walking alone at night, especially in a high crime area because men can be and are victimized in such settings.
Women worry about violence and harassment in so many other situations. We worry when a man sits nearby on a bus, train, plane or subway that he might harass us. He might even be the sort to not no for an answer.
In a club or bar, if a man hits on us and we’re not interested, we can’t just say no and move on. We worry that he might react violently to a hard no so we give excuses. Sometimes they don’t take the hint and try to get around them. Like the PUA who suggested collecting phone chargers to get around the “I have to charge my phone” excuse. Sometimes we have to say that we have a boyfriend whether that’s true or not because some men will not respect our wishes not to be hit on but will respect that we’re another man’s property. And that’s not the only danger at places where alcohol is served. Men aren’t socialized to watch their drink at all times because a woman might roofie it. But that’s a common thing men do to us. Men don’t have to worry about having a buddy system while out because it’s usually women who are raped if we get too drunk to say no.
Men aren’t told to give women a hard no so as not to lead a woman on, but simultaneously expected to say no in a way that doesn’t hurt her feelings. If a man hurts us after we reject them, we’ll always be scrutinized for not meeting this impossible standard. Men are rarely blamed for any violence committed against them. We almost always are, especially if it’s sexual violence.
Spurricane, you say you have a girlfriend, but when you were single what went through your head after making a date? Did you make sure to meet in public and tell someone where you were going? Have you ever had to worry about whether it was safe to get in a date’s car or go home with her?
Men risk violence if they go to a dangerous neighborhood or a bar that’s a gang hangout. They risk violence if they get involved with crime. But there’s a whole array of situations where men feel safe and comfortable. We don’t. We’re safe only with people we know with certainty aren’t a threat. We have to be vigilant constantly. Men have to be vigilant occasionally.
If that’s not male privilege, I don’t know what is.
Oh, and when old white men can sit in the legislature, or on the bench, and with one stroke of the pen or bang of the gavel, prohibit women as a class from access to health care, look me in the pixels one more time and tell me men and women have the same legal rights.
I’m sure Spurricane didn’t do his research on feminism and doesn’t realize that liberal feminism is a type of feminism. As opposed to radical feminism. He almost surely meant politically progressive not understanding that the word “liberal” doesn’t mean that in every country.
Of course, his lack of knowledge of either international politics or feminism has not stopped him from believing he’s right and we’re wrong. Because ladybrains!
There’s another male privilege. Men can speak about topics they don’t know much about and still expect to be taken seriously. Women are far less likely to talk about topics we aren’t knowledgeable about or if we do we add the disclaimer before hand. Because men will often not listen to us unless we prove we’re experts on a topic first. Even then they might not. See the fake geek girl phenomenon.
When you’re hanging out with men or walking down the street, you don’t have to think of the possibility of unwanted advances that might turn violent. When you’re hanging out with women, you don’t have to constantly think about how you’re presenting yourself in case they might try to do something to you.
Even with non-dangerous streets, you haven’t been told throughout your entire childhood to never travel alone at night, to beware strangers in the bushes that might want to rape you. I’d dare say you probably rarely ever need to consider the possibility of being raped.
In a group of people, you don’t need to ever worry about being the sex object in the room, and can instead go on with normal group dynamics. When you speak up to your friends, you rarely have to deal with being ignored simply because your word is valued less than that of a man’s.
When you look towards popular media, you don’t get bombarded with messages about your weight, your size, the myriad of little details that are photo-shopped to hell in pictures of models. When you look at male models, your experience of comparing yourself to them is much less personal.
When you look out into the world, the world is your oyster if you have the means and the education. Your gender is highly represented in politics and in academics. You never have to bother with the concept of being the “token” in a class of engineering students, and public policy rarely concerns itself with matters strictly related to being male.
You are part of the class that didn’t have to campaign for voting rights, that didn’t have to campaign for equal inclusion in the upper levels of society, that didn’t have to “prove” themselves worthy of basic rights and never sat under constant scrutiny of your actions, lest you betray your entire gender.
Not to mention all the small ways in day-to-day interactions that you were treated with more respect, as the default person rather than a variation. This is the part that’s hard to explain; you can really only get a good sense of what you haven’t experienced, or you’ve experienced differently, if you actually sit down and listen to women describe their lives and experiences.
That enough fodder for you?
Also,
Nope.
I’m assuming that you’re from the USA based on your avatar and use of the word ‘thug’ and ‘America’s crumbling cities’.
Pregnant people are routinely fired from their jobs (illegal, sometimes receiving redress, but proving discrimination can be hard and expensive and most don’t bother) and are refused proper accommodations even if recommend by a physician (totally legal).
Here’s a google search, since there’s so many examples: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=woman%20fired%20for%20being%20pregnant
Women are being fired for being too attractive (totally legal): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/iowa-supreme-court-attractive-woman-firing_n_3586861.html
Women are being fired for being not attractive enough or wearing makeup (totally legal): http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40042617?uid=41435&uid=3739864&uid=2&uid=3&uid=67&uid=62&uid=41433&uid=3739256&sid=21105246845241
I’m not even going to wade into the mess that is our reproductive health and rights. I think you probably wouldn’t care anyway. It’s not like you’re ever going to face death if you are legally denied aborting a pregnancy that turns dangerous.
@spurricane:
Except those aren’t things that can be attributed to just a few assholes. It’s a society-wide trend. As for if it’s true or not, how many times have you heard a joke who’s foundation is “women can’t drive?” How many times have you heard a similar joke about “men can’t drive?”
Just the fact that “I like my women barefoot and in the kitchen” is a pervasive thing (albeit much less pervasive than it used to be) is an indication that there’s a social dynamic that puts men above women. Good-old-boys clubs but no similar thing for women? There’s millions of symptoms that point to the same underlying issue.
@ Buttercup
“Why was George Zimmerman able to use the “stand your ground” defense, but not Marissa Alexander?”
Hi, please don’t think I’m being out of line here but that’s possibly not the best argument to make about male privilege in the legal system. I hope I’m not mansplaining but perhaps you’ll forgive me for some “barristersplaining”?
There are reasons to distinguish those cases; not least that Zimmerman’s application to run ‘stand your ground’ was denied. I can go into more detail if you want but the legal issues are not as straightforward as some articles seem to suggest.
Don’t get me wrong; the legal system is ‘biased’ (in application if not intention) against women and I can give you a whole host of examples if you like.
One aspect, for instance, in England at least, is how much easier it is for men to use the various ‘defences’ (in the legal not evidential sense of the word) in murder cases to get murder knocked down to manslaughter.
A man can plead ‘provocation’ if he kills his wife because he presumes she’s been unfaithful, or ‘diminished responsibility’ if he kills her in a moment of anger, whereas abused women who kill after years of violence will be charged with murder; even if that was their only means of escape.
I can give you many more instances of male privilege at work but perhaps this best explains the problem. Until relatively recently a standard test in criminal law was that of “the reasonable man”. Eventually it became “reasonable man sharing the same characteristics as the accused”. One of those characteristics was being a woman (I kid you not). Eventually the courts began to use “reasonable person” but whilst the language may have changed, the underlying attitude has not.
Once again, I hope you don’t think I’m having a dig. I just don’t want detractors to have any ammunition in the form of erroneous reporting of legal issues, to try to dismiss what is a real bias in the court system.
… I was going to add a few more examples specific to video gaming and STEM, but then I noticed his keyboard-vomiting of racist dog whistles and his Tea Party avatar. Either he’s playing a character or we could use a blackboard and flash cards and he still wouldn’t understand.