Carl Jung posited that human beings share a “collective unconscious” full of symbols and archetypes that populate our dreams and make regular guest appearances in our fairy tales and mythological sagas.
Return of Kings contributor Donovan Sharpe apparently believes that men share a collective scrotum.
In an execrable post on that execrable site earlier this week, Sharpe complained that
The National Football League recently helped women get a firmer grip on the scrotum of masculinity by hiring its first full-time female referee, Sarah Thomas.
Yes, that is an actual sentence that was written and posted online by an adult human being who believed it to be true.
As Sharpe sees it, having a single female referee for the sport of professional football threatens the symbolic balls of all men. Dismissing those unenlightened dudes who see the hiring of a female referee as no big deal or even (shudder!) a good thing, Sharpe warns that
hiring a female referee is the continuation of the NFL’s consistent support of the feminine imperative at the expense of both the athlete and the male spectator. …
One of the main objectives of feminism is giving women power over men. The ability to exercise power over men in a male-dominated sector is something feminists have drooled over for decades. Thomas’s hire is the crack in the door they need to eventually realize this dream.
Apparently Sharpe is unaware that there are women on the supreme court, in the Senate, running companies, offering opinions about video games … Oh, wait, he writes for Roosh’s terrible video game site too, so I’m guessing he probably knows about that last one.
Anyhoo, as he sees it, the hiring of Thomas opens the floodgates for other female referees with designs on the collective male scrotum, who will soon “have the capacity to exert dominance over men in the most physically demanding, testosterone-driven sport in the world” despite their allegedly obvious physical limitations.
Because, you know, there’s no possible way that she’s in good enough shape to be a referee, as everyone knows that
men are physically superior to women in every way. This is why 99.9% of employees on oil rigs, sewers, warehouses, etc. are men.
Yes, it’s true that there are small percentages of women in jobs they’ve been systematically excluded from for generations. Big surprise. And yes, while nearly 4% of those working on offshore oil rigs are women, only a handful work on the drill floor.
But, uh, warehouses? You really think they’re 99.9% male? Sorry to break it to you, fella, but 14% of warehouse workers are female already, and there’s no reason there couldn’t be a lot more. I briefly worked in a warehouse several decades ago, picking orders for distribution, and, yep, it’s true that everyone working on the floor was a dude. But not because the work we did was suited only to “physically superior” men. Probably the most common item I dealt with on a regular basis was the humble o-ring. I really didn’t tax myself physically lifting these:
I also once worked in a grocery store where one of my main duties was filling a giant freezer with boxes of frozen baked goods. They hired me because they wanted a large dude for the job, and I was in decent shape at the time. I worked my ass off, but my supervisor, a 5-foot-tall woman twice my age, could do the job probably three times faster than I could.
Sorry about the digression. Back to the biggest threat to the scrotum of masculinity since Katherine Heigl made that Funny or Die video about balls.
Sharpe also manages to get himself a bit worked up over the fact that he finds Ms. Thomas attractive.
Though the 41-year-old Thomas is well past the wall, it’s easy to see that she still retains some of the beauty she no doubt benefited from in her youth. …
Better looking girls have always lived better lives. Despite feminists’ efforts at social engineering, it will always be this way, and that’s perfectly okay. Crying their way into the boys’ club is no different because at the end of the day, feminists aren’t going to use trolls to infiltrate the almighty patriarchy (Billie Jean King notwithstanding) and neither are men.
Huh. I’m pretty sure that female pioneers like Sandra Day O’Connor or Janet Reno or Madeleine Albright didn’t get where they got by crying or fluttering their eyelashes at men.
For all his harrumphing, the only actual “harms” that Thomas’ hiring might inflict upon men and their collective scrotum that Sharpe can come up with are
- There are probably lots of dudes who are better referees than her that the NFL should have hired instead because, you know, men are pretty much always better than women
- She might make a bad call someday, thus doing a terrible injustice to some giant football-playing man.
Horrors! I was not aware that any referees ever made bad calls. The very notion makes me feel a bit faint. I may have to lie down for a while.
Same with white nationalists. It’s like they’re trying to claim greatness by association, rather than doing anything worthy themselves.
It’s already bad enough that I share the same species with the MRA community without having to know that we also share the same scrotum. Excuse me while I retch and cry in the shower.
Oh, owwww, there go my eyes again. Hang on while the cat retrieves them from under the desk for me…
Ahhh, that’s better.
I could write a whole disquisition on why the first sentence alone is a load of shitcrap, but I think I’ll just leave this riiiiight here.
And Billie Jean King was not a “troll”, she was a tennis champ. Who beat a boastful sexist idiot fair and square.
Sure sucks when your ballsack’s caught in a vise of femininity, eh, dude who thinks with his scrotum?
Perhaps interacting with actual women (if these dudes are able to behave and treat them like human beings of course) would help their fragile masculinities not to shatter at the mere presence of a woman.
Also gotta love the paradox that all men are superior to women in every way, yet they are completely dominated as soon as a lady enters the room. Suppressed kinks maybe?
Yeah. The women umpires in AFL are all goal umpires.
Found a nice piece covering pay for refs/umpires in all forms of football around the world. http://www.theroar.com.au/2014/03/26/are-referees-under-paid/
Well, there’s Cernovich, with a law degree which is usually quite difficult, but his brand of law seems to be the kind that involves you going “RRRRRGH I’M A LAWYER” at everything without actually doing anything.
Why they’re afraid of a woman referee despite men allegedly being superior in every way is a good question 🙂 I try to grasp the fragility that these men must have in feeling threatened by a woman becoming a referee, and it’s just… unimaginable.
The first time I heard of Balzac was in the song “Pick a Little”, from “Music Man”. The townswomen are dissing the books in Marian’s library, including works by “Chaucer, Rabelais, BALzac!” It was years before I understood why that was supposed to be funny.*
*Admittedly, I can say that about a lot of things from my childhood.
My favorite coffee shop is called Balzac’s. I love announcing that I’m going down to Balzac’s. Because I am really 12 years old. 🙂
The NFL is the most physically demanding? Nonsense! That would probably be elite gymnastics. The hours they put in and the things they do are almost beyond comprehension. And they do it all with no padding or helmets. These are short men and absolutely tiny women and girls too.
Balzac is actually a pretty good choice. In RL he was a misogynist or a reactionary. He was also a misanthrope who subscribed to the view that society is run on terror, basically. So his take on relations between the sexes was, essentially, “terrorize or be terrorized.” I don’t think that’s an over-the-top description; anyone who reads his books will be aware that most of his love-interest-type female characters come to unhappy ends. (But then lots of his other characters come to unhappy ends too; there is that.)
Fun factoid: Balzac was a total caffeine addict; he drank around 50 cups of coffee a day. Would it surprise anyone greatly to learn that he died of caffeine poisoning? (I just shudder to think what his kidneys must have looked like. I’m the sort of person who needs to pee just after SMELLING coffee.)
@ Bina
Given the sheer copiousness of Balzac’s output and the comparatively few years during which he set it all down, I think it’s a safe bet to guess that he didn’t sleep much. So at least all that brew was put to good use.
“(I just shudder to think what his kidneys must have looked like.)”
He sacrificed his kidneys instead of his lungs…or other body part(s).
I had a brief flash of this post where the quotes were simply replaced by:
Better than Ayn Rand’s amphetamines, that’s for sure.
Am I the only one who sees a resemblance between the Balzac portrait and Ron Jeremy?
So an athletic woman making a career in sports might be conventionally attractive into her 40’s? Well glory be, must be a feminist conspiracy!
I always thought Bobby Riggs was the troll in that game anyway.
There used to be a strip club in Vancouver called Uranus that has now been replaced by a starbucks. We like to go there just so we can announce that we’re going to Starbucks in Uranus.
So we also have the minds of 12 yr olds.
Wait until they get a load of Kim Winslow! (Mmmm, probably not a lot of MMA fans in here, especially after seeing the hateful assholes that *sometimes* thrive in the professional ranks of that sport.)
@jackremiel our sidelines in the past have not been well managed. We had a spectator receive a potentially life threatening injury on the touchline at our club a few years ago. In the men’s game, I always try to keep a really watchful eye or stand back. In the women’s game, if it gets rough around the edges, I always have to restrain myself to avoid jumping in. (And getting myself and my team disciplined)
Wow. Today I learned that being an NFL referee is a full time job. I wonder what exactly it is that they do between February and August? Real manly stuff, I bet!
No, lunkhead, it’s the NFL’s consistent marketing to women in order to expand their business, something they’ve been doing for over ten years now.
Sheesh, the job consists of memorizing a rule book and running up and down a field for three hours. Lots of women can handle it just fine!
What is happening to my scrotum and when did it start playing American Football without me?!
I know the Balzac pun from The Simpsons only, as we don’t really say it in the UK – at least not in my milieu.
This is a very serious situation. She could potentially transmit cooties to male NFL players.
Somebody needs to break it to this guy that 45% of football fans are women. On any given Sunday, around a third of the viewers are women. The last Super Bowl had a larger female audience than the Grammys, Emmys, and Oscars combined.
The NFL is a business, just like video games. Catering to the boys-only club isn’t going to keep the profits flowing. They need to court the female demographic and maintain a family-friendly image in order to continue growing. Why market just to Chuckie Cheesehead and Chuckie Junior, when you can persuade his wife and daughter to come to the game too, and make twice the ticket sales?
A few years ago, the NFL marketing strategy was all “let’s court women because they represent the domestic hearth and control all the spending and the access to their sons. We’ll sell them pink jerseys and party recipes!” (ugh). But lately they’re starting to acknowledge that female fans are serious and knowledgeable, not just tailgate support staff. They’re paying attention to concerns about domestic violence and head trauma. (Not doing much about them, mind you, but at least the conversations are happening, and they’re starting to air PSAs during games). I’m sure the breast cancer campaign also drives the brofans crazy. Pink gloves? The horror!
It’s interesting that these guys are okay with a man enforcing the rules, but the moment a woman puts on the striped shirt, suddenly she’s the Masculinity Police, stepping in and telling the boys not to be so rough. When performed by a woman, the referee position becomes an attack on manhood, rather than a method for keeping play fair and consistent. Strange. Are they worried about false false start accusations?
I read a book years ago that seriously advocated that men could not do well under a woman’s leadership if that leadership was personal and/or directive. Men could be fine under an impersonal, non-directive leadership (the example: a female city planner won’t offend the male motorists who have to follow her one-way street designs), but men would be deeply bothered by a woman exerting direct, personal leadership over them (the example: a female baseball umpire would deeply vex the male players).
A baseball umpire. Seriously. Not that the city planner example is really any less ludicrous, but still…
I remember being flabbergasted at the time. I know umpires. My dad was an umpire. Umpires don’t *lead* anybody. They are a neutral third-party observer, standing in places where they can see the strike zone and/or the play where the action is—and just report what actually happened. Yes, batter, that pitch you let past was in your strike zone. No, infielder, you did not tag that runner before he was safe on base. Yes, runner, you needed to tag second base again before you could go on to third; you’re out.
Umpires don’t make the rules. They barely can be said to even enforce them (I’d say instead that they apply them). They simply tell everyone what the heck just happened in that cloud of dust around home plate, so the game can move on and not get embroiled in a fight every time there’s a close play.
It’s surreal to see this exact hypothetical argument playing out IRL. Different sport, same fragile egos.