MEMEDAY continues with the pic below that I also found on the Twitters.
While not technically a “meme” per se, it’s one of those things that antifeminists like to pass around amongst themselves — and that no one outside their little world will really understand, largely because it makes no damn sense.
Ok, so, a couple of Channers are talking about the eeeeeevil Anita Sarkeesian:
rekt pic.twitter.com/Ekxk0rO2Fw
— Victor Zen (@VictorZenMHRA) October 23, 2015
The first delightful thing to point out about this little exchange — and I’m using the word “delightful” to mean the total and complete opposite of delightful — is that Anita’s haters apparently really think that her speeches, videos and whatnot are little more than than excuses to say bad things about men.
She might say something like, well, to pick a random example from a recent blog post of hers about the Netflix show Jessica Jones:
To its credit, as one critic observed, Jessica Jones conveys the horror of Jessica’s past without ever depicting it. In this way, it avoids sensationalizing sexual assault, acknowledges that trauma leaves a lasting impact on people, and relieves the audience of the burden of having to bear witness to the worst of what Jones has endured.
But what Anita’s haters apparently hear is something like this:
Men are bad. Blah Blah. Blah They are all a bunch of patriarchal poopyheads. Blah. They should be put in jail just for being men. Bla Blah. Did I mention I hate men? KILL ALL MEN.
The second delightful (see above) thing about this little screencap — and the one that prompted Mr. Zen to post that triumphant “REKT” — is that supposed racial “gotcha.”
Anita’s haters (and internet antifeminists generally) have such a poor understanding of the basics of intersectional feminism that they think they can trump anything an SJW might say by accusing them randomly of racism.
If she says bad things about men, ask if she means black men as well.
Well, that would kind of depend on what she said, wouldn’t it?
Some things are true of all men. Some things aren’t. Sometimes race makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s certainly not racist to say, for example, that men generally benefit from unexamined privilege — at least if you acknowledge that this is not the whole story, and that other things (race, class, sexual orientation, and so forth) affect men in huge and complicated ways that can overshadow gender.
But the belief that feminists aren’t allowed — according to some imagined SJW rulebook — to include men of color in their analyses because that would be RACIST is a fairly common one amongst internet antifeminsts.
Take, for example, the case of one Dean Esmay — Twitter “activist” and former A Voice for Men managing editor. Several months back he posted a series of Tweets in which he essentially tried to argue that feminists who include men of color in their analyses are inherently racist.
He put it a bit more bluntly than that:
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616223240642408448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Even aside from the jarring line about “their women” — suggesting that black women are rightfully the property of black men — this is a bizarre claim. Feminists aren’t the Klan. They don’t argue that black men are uniquely violent; they simply note that, yes, there are black men who rape and beat women — just as there are white men and indeed men of every complexion who do.
As Esmay sees it, his charge not only applies to white feminists allegedly throwing shade at black men. It also applies to black feminists who criticize black men in any way.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222039578296320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
And black feminist men as well.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/616222290758373376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The weird thing about Esmay is that he doesn’t seem to be playing a game of “SJW gotcha” here; he seems to actually think he’s making some sort of rational argument.
Internet antifeminists are weird.
@Frank Torpedo
Ah, chiming in as a bit of a Halo fan, the comparison to the Forerunners is kind of unfortunate for several reasons (and be warned, here lie spoilers for post-Halo 3 media):
1) The Forerunners are actually a different species, not ancestors of humanity.
2) They were (and their remnants still are) at odds with humanity, and on the whole, helping us is not exactly what they aim to do.
3) A lot of them were bastards, to put it mildly. They were pretty full of themselves, and in practice, their philosophy of caring for the other species of the galaxy was often paternalistic at best, imperialistic at worst.
So… yeah. I get what you were going for with the analogy, but Halo lore kind of undermines it and gives it rather unpleasant implications.
Also, David, something seems to be off with linking images. I tried to create a link to one, and it auto-embedded, even though it was within a proper HTML tag; the actual URL just auto-embedded and left the HTML tags as text around it.
Testing again with a puppy picture:
This is a puppy.
EDIT: Like so.
@lkeke35:
You are the end boss of SJWs, the one to unite the warring tribes and bring us all together for the final struggle.
@Frank:
As a South African, albeit a white one, please be assured that I am all about that Afrocentrism.
@Frank
Afrocentrism makes me as uncomfortable as any kind of racial supremacist ideology. The idea that one race has to “care” for all the other races is just gross no matter who’s saying it.
People bring up Sarkeesian’s sex-negativism like its a given, but I really don’t see any indication of that in her videos or other commentary. The pacifism sure, no argument, but she’s not overtly sex negative. The problem is that very few games address sex and intimacy in truly honest and mature ways. Catherine comes to kind and some of the Bioware games, but few others. Hearing the way she talks about Gone Home you can tell she is interested in romantic relationships in games, just not trope-y sexist ones.
Yeah I’ve noticed all of a sudden all these white dudes in the Manosphere posting videos of Tommy Sotomayor. Unironically.
Wow. Freaking foolproof…
@Jef,
She was around for years before she did the video game series. My disagreements with her about sex and romance are mostly based on her previous videos. You could watch the True Blood, Hunger Games, or Glee/GQ videos. (I’m not saying I disagree with everything in those videos, just that each has some parts that really bother me)
I haven’t watched most of her older stuff because it’s a lot less polished and her delivery is really forced (I love Anita but comedic timing is not her thing). I guess I should go back and take a look, but honestly I don’t think you can judge pre-GG Anita and post-GG Anita as the same person.
Jef,
Why, and how so?
@Frank Torpedo
Except not. Modern Africans aren’t the “parents” of all humans. Their ancestors were, but since their ancestors were the ancestors of all the other races as well, that would give all people equal claim.
I’m not going to respond to the rest of your post because I don’t think I can respond to it calmly.
To paraphrase Mr. Esmay: There is no more pathetic specimen than a Man Of Color who sells out and turns Men’s Rights Activist. Considering the widespread strain of racisms that exists within the Men’s Rights/Red Pill movement. So sickening.
@Sbel
Honestly, you could also just say “But humans didn’t really originate in Africa! HA! GOTCHA, YOU DUMBO!” and that knocks the legs out from under my idealistic bent right away, if you stand in opposition to it (and why shouldn’t you? We’re not all supposed to agree with each other, as though we were a hivemind).
I would not be able to disagree with you, because the Multiregional Hypothesis, is, in fact, a real and competitive theory.
Anyway, while I grok your point, I feel I should make my drift more apparent: I am not only working off the Recent African Origin model, but also from a few specific points:
1.) The oldest anatomically modern human beings, or rather, their remains, were found in Africa – not a proto-human species. Real, functional, genuine human beings, as real as you, or I, or grandpa over there.
So I’m not really sure how Modern Africans are not the genesis of human beings, or, at least, directly related to it, unless there is some information I’m not privy to that you know. They are, for the most part, identical to the first fully developed human beings.
2.) There is a theory that all human beings possess the mitochondria of an African, modern human woman named Mitochondrial Eve, and the Y-Chromosomes of a modern human African man named Y-chromosome Adam. To this day, there are African people who still contain the particular haplogroup ‘Eve’ possessed, namely, the Sandawe and the Mbuti.
So, considering these two points, my idealistic bent is not all that much of a flight of fancy, or mere rhetoric.
@Jeff
In an ideal situation, we should all care for races that are not our own, under the fiat of our being the same species, so don’t think you’re exempted from the task, or that other races are not also charged with the responsibility of looking after us.
I expect you and the others to hold up your end and do your bit, in turn. The law of Reciprocity still applies here.
@Frank
Trust me, that’s not even remotely close to my only problem with Afrocentrism.
Jef,
If there were general interest in discussing their merits, I would be happy to summarize some of her old videos and my objections to them. However, I’m inclined to think that you’re right: it’s not super-relevant and potentially mean-spirited. If she’s going to speak about TvWiVG, then it can stand on its own merits.
Instead, let me recommend that if you want to watch old Sarkeesian videos, you should watch her series on LEGO marketing and toy marketing generally. It’s quite good, and it’s cool to see all the old 20th-century ads she pulls up.
I was trying to think of why I jumped to her back catalogue for evidence, and I realized it’s because I don’t actually understand the TvWiVG series. I have watched them a few times now, and I find them so confusing that I would have trouble using them to make any argument. The reason I decided to watch her old videos was my hope that it might help me understand her better. This is also the #1 reason I’ve said before that I don’t think her videos are very good. I tend to think that it’s her structure and word choices that cause confusion, but It’s possible that the weakness is not in her direction but my comprehension.
@Joshua
It depends. I hope you’re not conflating the different marques of Afrocentrism by mistake, because there are many flavors all belonging to the same banner, and, even then, my ideas are not necessarily Afrocentric, given that people who are not African and certainly not black proposed the theories I have mentioned.
It seems like a few people are misinterpreting my drift before it has become fully apparent, so I should probably explain further: I am not advocating the inherent superiority of Africans and, by association, the African Diaspora.
I am merely implying – through popular scientific theories and findings that have been peer-reviewed, and even then, they may be incorrect – that we are older, and, perhaps, fulfill an integral role in the story of Mankind.
You know, the Chinese like to brag about how they have 4,000 years of history; I counter with the proposition that we Africans have 100,000 years of history, and that, by the charter of the Recent African Origin of mankind, all the world’s history is tied to us; we are, quite possibly, irrevocably tied to mankind’s achievements.
I am not implying that everyone who is not black is inferior; nor am I implying some kind of fucked-up reversal of the White Man’s Burden – that we are laboring under some word of Black Man’s Burden.
Sbel’s post about how my ramblings made them so mad they can’t even see straight has kinda surprised me. I don’t see what’s so exceptionally disgusting and offensive about it, but it is what it is; you can’t win them all.
I’m actually raising my eyebrows a little at Sbel, because their post sounds to me a little like,
I already admitted that none of what I said may be true, since these theories are just that – a set of theories which have yet to be proved beyond a shade of doubt. Honestly, the outrage seems kinda unnecessary, but what do I know? I’m just a guy on the Internet.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Disclaimer: I am not a biologist.)
The study of mitochondrial DNA gives us what is, to my mind, pretty firm evidence supporting the idea of a recent African origin of humanity.
(“Recent” in this case means that h. sapiens developed to its modern stage in Africa before spreading out, displacing other hominids. This theory is in contrast to the older hypothesis that H. sapiens developed simultaneously in different regions of the world from those older hominids.)
There’s a basic principle in taxonomy which says that the place with the most variation within a population is, in most cases, the place of origin of that population. A good example might be the Spanish language. Mexicans, Argentinians, Chileans and Cubans (amongst others) all speak Spanish; and yet the difference between any two dialects of Latin American Spanish is smaller than the difference between two dialects of Iberian Spanish. A Murcian and a Galician will have far more difficulty understanding one another than a Mexican and an Argentinian will, despite the fact that Murcia and Galicia are separated by far fewer miles. This is because Iberia is the home of Spanish, and all the Latin American dialects are offshoots of one particular Iberian dialect. (I don’t know which one; I know we have Argentine and other Latin American posters here, so your input/correction is appreciated.)
The same applies to humanity, if you look at mitochondrial DNA: only one branch ever left home, the others are still there. In the case of mtDNA, we refer to the branches with L-numbers, from L0 to L6. All humans outside of Africa have L3 mtDNA, as do the inhabitants of modern East Africa and many of the inhabitants of North Africa. The remaining branches (L0, L1, L2, L4, L5, L6) occur only in Africa or within the African diaspora.
It’s even more extreme than that, in fact: all non-Africans have mtDNA which falls within two sub-branches of L3, called M and N, whereas the remainder of L3 stayed in Africa. Most African people – and hence most of the African diaspora – have L2 or L3 mtDNA. Groups L4, L5 and L6 are basically only found in tiny populations within central Africa. It’s entirely possible that two neighbours within a Kenyan or Ugandan village will have a greater difference in their DNA than, say, an Inuit and a Maori; or indeed between a black American and a white American.
From this we conclude that Africa is the home of humanity.
(A lot of people make a lot of noise about the interbreeding between H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis; this reaches a fever pitch amongst white supremacists, who have been known to claim that their Neanderthal DNA makes them somehow different from and therefore better than others. While it is factually correct that Neanderthal DNA can be found in modern humans, you have to bear a few things in mind about this:
A) Fuck white supremacists. This isn’t strictly relevant but I wanted to say it early and clearly, so there was no confusion. Not only are they hideously disappointing, pathetic, spiritually-shrivelled examples of the very worst in human nature, but they also manage to get their science wrong at every conceivable juncture, which really puts the boot into their claims of superiority.
B) No really, fuck white supremacists.
C) H. neanderthalensis DNA can be found everywhere except among black people in southern Africa. Since most of the African diaspora came out of West Africa, this means that black Americans can also be part-Neanderthal, as can native Americans, Chinese and Aboriginal Australians.
D) Even with that in mind, the amounts of H. neanderthalensis DNA we’re discussing here are very low: single percentage points at the most. Any given individual alive in the world today is overwhelmingly H. sapiens. Claiming to be part-Neanderthal is sort of like that white person you know who claims to be one-sixteenth Native American and believes that this gives them the right to wear a feathered headdress: this may well be the case, but the remaining fifteen-sixteenths of them are vanilla white so when they start calling themselves Little Eagle then eye-rolling really is the correct thing to do.
Interestingly for me at least, according to statistics most Afrikaners have on average six percent black DNA, which means that I probably have a black great-great-grandparent. Of my four grandparents, two came from hideously racist and hideously illiterate rural parts of South Africa* which the word “hick” is not strong enough to describe, meaning that while my black ancestors are most likely to be in those branches, there are no written records of it and they wouldn’t admit it even if there were. My effective blackness begins and ends at being able to sing the first verse of the national anthem, which is still more than can be said for certain members of our rugby team.
E) I believe that there is a similar Chinese movement that views Chinese people as having partially descended from another hominid species in the same way, but I am really not qualified to address that.
F) Going back to Neanderthals, I saw a museum exhibit about them. Do you know what the big distinction between them and us is? At every human (that is, H. sapiens) campsite you can almost always find art of some sort: cave paintings, bone or ivory carvings, etc. Even our tools are often decorated. On the other hand, no piece of Neanderthal art has ever been found: their campsites have remains of tools in them, but nothing decorative whatsoever. The most they did was ritually bury their dead. The drive to create art seems to be a deep-rooted instinct amongst humans. It’s found in even the bleakest places: concentration camps, cancer hospices, New Jersey. Our earliest human ancestors decorated their tools, their living spaces and their sacred places. Neanderthals didn’t. How anyone can take pride in being descended from a species that is foreign to art is utterly foreign to me.
G) Humanity is far more similar than we think. A lot of people find comfort in claiming some sort of biological uniqueness for their cultural group, but this is almost never the case. I appreciate that sometimes this is done by oppressed groups looking for identities, and I’m sympathetic to that; but most of the time I see it from dominant groups looking to exclude others, which I’m less sympathetic to and which brings me to my final point.
H) To conclude, fuck white supremacists.
—
* For any other South Africans out there: one of them was actually called Van Der Merwe. Sometimes life really does sound like a bad joke.)
@Frank
The only Afrocentrist people I’ve met were black supremacists, so I dunno, maybe I over reacted?
Anyway, even if Africans were descended from the original humans… So what? I don’t think it makes you anymore important than the rest of us. It sort of reminds me of the self important cultural posturing that Chinese and Japanese legend have. Both view themselves as the first civilizations, both are totally wrong, and both influence many people to say very; very stupid things.
For instance, Japan has difficulty importing foreign rice because many Japanese biologists think that Japanese are just TOO different to eat foreign grown foods.
I’m not good at closing arguments, so, whatever. It just ends here.
@ EJ
I watched “District 9” with a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean mate and I didn’t get why he was laughing until he explained it.
I’m not sure how you got from “them” to “we.” When MRAs say “white men did X Y and Z look how great we are compared to nonwhites and nonmen,” we rightly counter that they’re resting on someone else’s laurels. Same here.
Since we all descended from that group, then we all “belong” to that older group.
Not trying to take away anyone’s Blackness or claim they’re great because White people came from them.
Feminists are free to criticize all races of men who are sexist/misogynist. Plus, why are MRAs equating feminism with just White women, which is the only way that asking if feminists mean Black men too would be an uncomfortable question?
EJ (the other one) — some of the best street art along the Amtrak line between CT and Pittsburgh is in New Jersey, so yup, even there!
“Humanity is far more similar than we think.” TRUFAX
I can see how that happened. Conservatives think their bigoted opinions are facts and don’t really understand what racism/sexism/whateverism is, much less why it’s a bad thing. From that perspective it seems like everything under the banner of political correctness is a conspiracy to sweep the ‘truth’ under the rug and steadfastly ignore the elephant in the room because liberals don’t want to offend minorities or hurt their feelings or something. So then you get to the idea that anti-racism is not saying anything bad about any POC ever and saying bad things about whites, feminism is not saying anything bad about any woman ever and saying bad things about men and so on.