It’s Friday again, and that means memes. Today’s batch comes fresh from the A Voice for Men Facebook page. AVFM may be in the middle of a slow-motion collapse, but they’re still doing an amazing job making and/or disseminating almost completely incomprehensible memes.
Take the one up top there, suggesting that if fathers have any issues with the way their “baby’s mama” is raising their baby, the solution isn’t to discuss this with her or — heaven forbid! — get more involved in raising the kid.
No, the only REAL solution is to ruin her Valentine’s Day by taking her to McDonald’s, instead of giving her the lavish romantic dinner she expects.
Because, you know, mothers are far more interested in extracting lavish dinners from their men than they are in, you know, taking care of any kids they might have accidentally popped out along the way.
Why did AVFM post a Valentine’s Day meme more than a month early? Probably for the same reason the site published an anti-Valentines rant from Paul Elam last August: there is no greater misandrist oppression of men than having to buy some chocolate or whatever for some dumb broad if she happens to be one of those women who expects her fella to buy her chocolate or whatever.
I have no comment on this next meme, because I have no idea whatsoever what point it’s trying to make.
I gather from the one below that someone saw Adam Sandler’s fake-gay-marriage comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and thought it offered some incisive social criticism.
I dunno, I’m not sure I have an objection. Why shouldn’t people be able to claim their roommates as domestic partners?
Enjoy the rest of your memeday! And don’t forget, all you fellas out there, Always Be Recording, just in case some random woman decides to do some false accusing.
MRAs and MGTOWs and the like talk endlessly about how all men should be always recording (and then presumably storing all the sound files just in case). I wonder if there is a single MRA or MGTOW who does.
@Hedge-Alchemist
You’re in a bad situation right now. I urge you to call a suicide hotline immediately.
After that, I urge you to find a therapist to talk to. I believe that the hotline can help you with that.
My thoughts follow. Perhaps they will be helpful.
Your brain is leading you astray with its “logic.” Each time this happens, tell it gently but firmly that you’re not going to listen to this piece of advice. Then distract yourself. Do the dishes. Turn on the radio. Dance around the house. Go for a walk. Repeat as often as necessary.
What I tell myself about privilege and oppression is that I am not responsible for what other people do. If I were, then I could congratulate myself for all kinds of things: Being the first person to walk on the moon. Writing “Yesterday.” Winning the Nobel Prize. Obviously I can’t do that, so I can’t blame myself for what others do. All I can do is the best I can, in my own small way, every day. I can influence others — I hope for the positive — but I can’t take responsibility for their actions.
Good luck to you. Please let us know how you do.
White people, cis people, men etc didnt become oppressors because of some intrinsic racial/gender/etc flaw. It was a combination of things that we dont yet understand fully. We do know that white people resisted white supremacy, men supported feminists, and so on all through history, and that many societies functioned without hardcore institutionalized prejudices & that some societies have reduced these prejudices.
If youre feeling this bad for any reason I also encourage you to seek medical help. & practice self care – you dont have to follow the news right now if that depresses you, for example.
Try Practicing positive ally-ship. Go watch some chill movies that celebrate diversity or something. If you can, make a donation or volunteer. engage with politically active art communities. You can help in ways that bring you joy.
…and for fucks sake make some friends with some trans ppl & PoC. Because we (/they) are just nice normal people who dont want you to feel bad, just want equality and to play video games and eat pizza.
AVFM’s next fundraiser should be to buy “John Galt” a book on comedy writing and joke construction. Eccch.
@Hedge-Alchemist
No one should die or feel worthless because of the color of their skin or their gender, religious, or sexual preferences. That’s kinda the point. No one person is an ambassador of their entire race, so you can’t accept the responsibility of all white people so arbitrarily, the same way you can’t judge any race for the actions of individuals of that race.
As long as you recognize that some people have inherent privileges or issues based not on the content of their character, but their color, class, religion, gender, or sexuality, and inform your decisions accordingly, you’re doing things just fine. Treat other people like human beings.
This exaggerated self-flagellation helps no one, least of all yourself, though I assume that’s rather the point of your post because right about the part where you said all white people deserve torture and death, I figured you must be trolling.
Hey MRAs little advice, if you’re trying to be philosophical about something, you probably shouildn’t use the Matrix because 1 everyone does it and 2, it’s kinda lame. As for Valentine’s Day, not everyone expects a romantic dinner or anything that you’d see in a romantic comedy. A lot of folks just want to hang out and watch something on Netflix or whatever. Everyone has their own thing.
@Hedge-Alchemist
I will repeat the advice call a suicide hotline immediately.
I would strongly urge you to consult a psychiatrist as soon as possible. You may want to hide things from them because of shame or fear. Don’t. They won’t be able to help you if you don’t tell them the truth.
Also, speaking from my personal experience, it’s possible that the real reason you feel depressed and hopeless is a chemical imbalance in your brain and your brain is simply refusing to acknowledge that and finding an excuse, regardless of how little sense it makes. In my case, I was suicidally depressed about how I wasn’t any good at academics… and ended up graduating with honors and over a semester ahead in college due to AP credits. Your story reminds me of myself before I realized in 11th grade that it didn’t make any sense and went on antidepressants.
Don’t do this. Doing this helps no one. You know what would make things better? Being the change you want to see in the world.
As white people, we have a responsibility to learn how to recognize racism when we see it, and speak out about it. I don’t necessarily mean doing so publicly, although that is also helpful if the situation calls for it. I mean, when you see a friend doing or saying a racist thing, call it out. Say, “That isn’t funny. That’s racist. Don’t say racist things in front of me.” That’s the best way that we can reduce the amount of racism in the world, right here and right now. Hating yourself and beating yourself up does not accomplish this, or anything else constructive.
Just remember to think of racism as an action, not a state of being. While I am 100% certain that there are people who are racist in their hearts, and that these people are not even slightly rare, it’s not helpful to accuse them of being racist. Instead, point out that their words and/or actions are racist. You can’t stop a person from being racist, but you can stop them from saying racist things in front of you. This also helps you to avoid the trap of “ironic racism” or “hipster racism,” where people get away with saying racist shit because they have convinced themselves and all their friends that they aren’t racist in their hearts, and so that makes it okay. It’s not okay.
I will also chime in that you should contact someone immediately and seek counseling. Don’t tell yourself, “Well, I’m not crazy so I don’t need it.” It may be true that you’re not crazy, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the best mental health you can attain. I’m not diabetic, but that doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from the services of a professional dietitian. Mental health works the same way.
@Contrapangloss
Yeah, I’ve had self-esteem and anxiety problems long before I knew anything about social justice. Those things don’t interact well with learning about the concept of privilege. I think my autism and the rigid thinking that comes with it didn’t help either.
@Kit Fowley
I’m not trying to be a troll. Sorry if I looked like one. I’d had reservations about posting what I posted because it would look trollish and I would get banned for it.
@guy
I didn’t really want to kill myself per se; I would conclude that the only solution was death, realize that I didn’t want to kill myself at all, and then immediately get angry at myself for not wanting to kill myself. It makes as much sense to me as it probably does to you. Thank you for your concern, though.
@Policy of Madness
I don’t normally propose online but sure, we can go to Vegas and get hitched and make a vacation out of it. As long as you don’t mind that I already have one child (a rabbit child).
All I can think of when I see that meme is “Those “parents” seem hella brown for that baby”. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic zygote or something? Boy, I sure hope someone got sent TOW for that blunder!
@Hedge-Alchemist
I’ve had a similar thought spiral in the past and it did lead to serious plans to kill myself. Please talk to a therapist if you can so that you can determine if there is something going on there.
As for what you can do to help, just speaking up when someone says something racist/transphobic is a good start. You don’t have to turn it into a confrontation, either. My wonderful gender studies professor tsught me the best trick: just ask questions. For example, when my coworker who is very unintentionally sexist and racist says something problematic, I just pretend like I don’t understand and ask, “why do you say that?” or “what do you mean?” It causes him to stop and think about what he just said, and he usually says “never mind” and we move on amicably. I think he’s starting to improve.
Another thing I’m doing is volunteering my time in a program that helps historically disadvantaged kids learn the skills they need to succeed in college. Of course, not everyone has the time, energy, or schedule that allows them to do something like that, but maybe you can find something you can do to help.
ah well said everyone who responded to hedge alchemist! very proud to even just lurk here.
i needed those answers too, so, thank you for your very poignant question, hedge alchemist!
White guilt isn’t the point of talking about privilege or social justice issues. Making all white people feel bad about themselves wouldn’t accomplish anything. It’s more about awareness and taking responsibility for changing your thinking and behavior and moving forward.
It’s easy to reason yourself into feeling horrible about yourself. A good therapist can help you with understanding what social justice should mean to you and helping you with intense negative emotions.
Hedge-Alchemist –
Privilege guilt is a self-serving emotion. It keeps the conversation in the realm of “All About Us,” (those with privilege). Am I a bad person? Do I deserve to be punished? Can I be an ally? Who will tell me if I’m a Good Privileged Person? Should I feel this guilty? Should I feel more guilty? How much guilt do I have to feel before I’ve suffered enough?
If left unchecked, this sort of guilt has the tendency to turn into some really nasty resentment of marginalized people. Much like my abusive dad who spent a little time wallowing in self-hatred for all the hitting and verbal abuse, then went straight to resenting me for “not forgiving him” (where “forgiving” meant “act completely as though the abuse never happened even though there hasn’t been an apology or attempt to make amends”) and triangulating the rest of the family against me for it. Because in his mind, it was still All About Him, and I still didn’t exist as an actual person with actual needs (not being abused, recognition of past abuse). I was still a possession, a thing to be subjugated and to serve, and I how dare I not work my ass off to make him not feel guilty anymore. How dare I not recognize his pain, which was obviously more important than mine and probably the only REAL pain because it was his.
Social privilege pushes us to think of ourselves as having that kind of self-centered superiority, and to demand a lot of attention when we’re feeling guilty, or indeed, having any sort of feeling or thought about our privilege at all. But marginalized people do. Not. Give. A. Fuck about our privilege feels. They just want, and need, the abuse to end.
You must work to dismiss the entire question of your guilt and seek self-forgetfulness. Believe me when I tell you that when you seek EMPATHY, guilt becomes way less of a big deal. Guilt oppresses us when we don’t know WTF to do and don’t really understand what we might have done wrong and simply feel attacked in some vague way. With actual empathy, actual quiet listening, imagining ourselves in others’ shoes, the vagueness goes away, we understand a lot more about what to do and not do, and the guilt that comes is fleeting and purposeful.
Milo (@nero) lost his blue verified checkmark from Twitter for violating TOS and he has been having a meltdown on twitter about it. Just thought y’all would like to know.
Hedge Alchemist’s post reminded me. There was a FB post about Thandie Newton seeing a strangely racist statuette in a London Starbucks, asking Starbucks HQ about it, and them removing it.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the comments were full of wharhlbargl from white people offended that she was offended and criticizing her for criticizing it. I had a merry time going through the threads mocking them with vigor and enthusiasm – because with great snark comes great responsibility. The cream of the jest? The almost universal assumption on the part of the squealing hammerheads that I *must* be Black or I would be agreeing with them. They probably weren’t best pleased to discover that no, NOT all white people agree with them.
I got some nice feedback from POCs about being not-awful. It is amazing how easy it is to be not-awful; try it, it can improve your quality of life.
Hedge-Alchemist,
you’re suffering from cognitive distortions and self hatred. These are often symptoms of depression or some other mental illness. Even if this isn’t the case with you, cognitive distortions can lead to depression if not addressed. You might benefit from talking to a therapist; distorted thinking often results in beliefs that feel so real that it may be difficult to address it just by seeking out disconfirming evidence and alternative ways of interpreting reality. You may need to talk to someone who helps you learn to question your beliefs and see the world in a more constructive and hopeful way regularly for some time.
You have chosen a reasonable thing to feel awful about, but that doesn’t mean your awful feelings are reasonable. Your feelings of guilt are way, way out of proportion to anything you could possibly be considered responsible for. There are plenty of things so bad in the world that you could spend lifetimes fretting over them. We inherit an unjust world and become complicit in its injustice before we mature enough to understand and question our role in it. This is just how it is, and the best we can do is to acknowledge the past as it was, and as something we had/no longer have any power over. If we did something wrong, we should acknowledge that too.
But then we should move on. We all have a right to life, happiness, and self-love and self-acceptance. Even if we have done something really bad we still have these rights. No purpose is served, nothing is made better by letting the past swallow the future.
Making amends is moving on. Apologizing is moving on. Learning from it is moving on. Making it better is moving on.
And that’s all really hard to do if you don’t have your strength. To make things better you need to take care of yourself. Your needs are important, and you deserve to have them met as much as anyone else. All humans have a need to flourish. Give yourself that, if you can. You’ll already have made the world a bit better.
There is no simple algorithm to being a morally sound privileged person. Having humility and compassion and paying attention goes a long way. Making mistakes is not failure. It is part of a process of adjustment. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to do penance or redeem yourself.
@ Hedge,
forgot to add: if therapy feels like it’s too much for whatever reason, you can also learn to deal with distorted thinking from books. Self-study actually works better for some folks than talking to a therapist, and it’s definitely easier to start and cheaper. One relevant book is Feeling Good by David Burns.
Honestly, the companionate “friends marriage” sounds pretty awesome to me. I’m *not* a-romantic, but I kinda think I like being serially romantic? The idea of putting my eggs in one basket by forcing my sex life and love life to revolve around my co-parent always seemed kinda stressful.
I’m going to go out on a limb here with some ideas that I am not 100% confident of. If people of color or trans people or whatever disagree (heck, if straight white men disagree), I’m very much open to the idea of being wrong. about this, but here goes:
If thinking about “privilege” throws you for a loop, it’s okay to choose not to worry about it too much.
I am not saying you don’t have to worry about social justice. You do. You’re obligated to think about to how to be kind and fair in your private life, and you’re obligated to think about how you can do your part to make the big picture more just. You’re obligated to allow people to discuss justice and injustice in the language that works for them. You can’t be one of those people who throws a tantrum every time they hear the word “privilege.”
You are not, in my opinion, required to adopt the language yourself. You can think through the issues with the terms and models that feel right to you. You are not obligated to mouth anyone else’s words.
“Privilege” is currently an important concept in some kinds of sociology and gender theory, and in the jargon of several activist movements and philosophies. Maybe it will be important forever; maybe a few decades from now the academy will have moved on to different language. Today, it’s definitely true that you can’t participate meaningfully in those discussions if you’re not comfortable working with it.
However, I don’t believe that you are required to be a theorist. You don’t have to read academic journals or jump into the tumblr conversations where activists are hashing out the most optimal politics for abolishing kyriarchy. If you had to do that to be a good person — well, we’d pretty much be doomed. We can’t expect everyone in society to spend years grappling with the nuances of cutting-edge sociology.
Now, just because you’re not obligated to seek out and study thoroughly the entire discourse on social justice, does not mean you have no obligations. Your duty is this: to listen when you are spoken to. When someone has a problem with your personal behavior, or the behavior of a group you have some power to affect, or with the way you talk about them, you have to pay attention, and you have to let them speak to you in their own language. You can’t insist that they accommodate themselves to your comfort.
What you can do is translate what you’re hearing into words that help you make sense of the world.
Personally, I happen in vernacular conversation, “privilege” is not an ideal word. It’s a very charged word; and a very ambiguous word. Everyone agrees that a privilege is something one person has that other people don’t, and that’s basically all we can agree on. Some people think of privileges as things that can be earned; some people think privileges, by definition, cannot be earned. Some people think of privileges as things everyone should have (like access to education); others think of privileges as things no one should have (like the ability to abuse others with impunity)
When “privilege” talk makes people feel guilty, I think it’s often that last point that’s tripping them up. Someone tells you, “you’ve been privileged to enjoy [some/more] of the safety, opportunity, and respect that everyone should have”; you hear, “you don’t deserve safety and happiness; any happiness you do have, you got by exploiting others.”
Maybe, if you hold that idea in you head — and you get a therapist to train you how to do it — you’ll make peace with your privilege and this whole essay will be moot. In the mean time, I encourage you to find your own words. I don’t have a solution for you — I don’t have one for myself — but maybe try “blessing” on and see how it suits you.
Suppose, as an example, that you went to a well-funded private school. If someone says to you that you education made you privileged, nod and agree that they have a point. But when you’re telling your own story — inside your head or to a friend or in a memoir — say “I have been blessed with an expensive education; now I should use it to do good.”
Wow. I’m a guy and I used to prop the bottle. In my defence we had twins. There isn’t anything those MRA guys won’t use to froth themselves into impotent rage is there?
They’re so jealus we can make people. I bet they hate breast feeding women too. So much salt, you could make taffy.
Aww. These attempts at memes are pathetic, but they try so hard!
Mmm, taffy.