When a college feminist decided, one cold night in 2014, to burn her personal copy of pseudofeminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ book The War Against Boys, the internet’s antifeminists responded as if Hitler himself had risen from the grave.
“Universities bring book-burning back, one page at a time,” declared a blogger at TheRebelMedia. After an extended comparison with the infamous book burning campaigns of the literal Nazis, he declared that “[t]he burning of Hoff Sommers’ book is a striking visual synecdoche for the malaise afflicting free expression across not only North American college campuses.” In a featured article, A Voice for Men described the burning as a “disturbing” example of “misandry in academia.”
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, one angry dude declared that
If you’re burning a book, you’re basically admitting to being not just a bigot, but one who doesn’t even have enough confidence in the strength of their own views to believe that they can stand up for themselves without needing to silence and censor those that oppose them.
If we set aside the fact that, unlike the Nazis, who confiscated the books they burned, a person burning their own copy of a book that is readily available to others is not actually censoring anything, he’s got a point.
So it’s interesting to see how many of the Internet’s antifeminsts and Anti-Social-Justice-Warrior-Warriors are embracing a proposal from one of their own to literally censor all academics who teach stuff they don’t like.
On Change.org, professional feminism-hater Carl Benjamin, known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad, has started a petition demanding that “UNIVERSITIES” — presumably, every single one of them — immediately “Suspend Social Justice Courses” because he thinks that “social justice” professors are up to no good.
In vague but melodramatic language Benjamin proclaims that
Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist.
He doesn’t specify exactly what kind of supremacism he’s complaining about here; presumably not white.
Nor does he ever define exactly what courses count as “social justice courses.” There aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of. [EDIT: Oops! Turns out there are.] Does Benjamin mean a tiny handful of, say, women’s studies courses taught by radical feminists? Or does he hope (at least in his wildest dreams) to take down the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.
Well, technically, I guess, virtually all college courses are taught “behind closed doors,” since the doors of lecture halls generally do get closed before class begins. Technically, I’m writing this post behind closed doors, because I don’t leave the doors of my apartment wide open. (People might wander in; the cats might wander out.) I suspect that Benjamin himself wrote up his petition behind closed doors!
Benjamin goes on to declare that
[s]ocial justice … has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.
If only some evil Social Justice English professor has indoctrinated Benjamin in the devilish art of writing without resorting to hackneyed cliches.
But that’s pretty much all there is to Benjamin’s petition. Somehow, thought, the vagueness of Benjamin’s plan hasn’t stopped 9,878 people — so far — from signing the petition.
It is, however, possible that some of the signers are a little bit confused as to what exactly they’re signing.
Indeed, the top two most-liked comments on the petition, for example, were written by people who seem to think that Benjamin’s proposal to peremptorily censor all college courses that he thinks are excessively social-justicey is, somehow, a defense of free speech?
Benjamin has posted a video in which he explains his crusade in a little more detail. It’s possible that somewhere in it he answers the question of how exactly his plan to drive all professors he doesn’t like from all the college campuses in the world is actually a crusade for free speech.
Here’s the video in question:
Oops! Wrong video. Let me try again:
Huh. I don’t think that was it either.
No, that’s clearly not it.
Ok, ok. I found the real one here.
But it’s 40 minutes long. I sampled the first 2 seconds, and that was about all I could bring myself to watch. So I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to a life of servitude under the jackboots of the Social Justice warlords. Still, that’s a far better option than actually watching a Sargon of Akkad video all the way through.
just to be clear… NO HE DOES NOT.
his point is the point all haters of flag burners make, and it just AS pointless.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT FREE SPEECH.
That’s a whole lot of noise about an act that’s become a purely symbolic indication of disrespect for a book’s content. Back in the days, book burnings aimed to destroy all or most copies of a book so that nobody could read it. Printing or copying, then distributing and storing clandestine copies would be incredibly laborious and dangerous. But even then, burning a single copy was irrelevant. In these days of e-books, burning copies of physical books is completely irrelevant. It has no effect on the free distribution of speech or ideas whatsoever.
I’m gonna chime in with the folks who’ve disagreed with this particular bit.
Burning a book is an act of expression in and of itself–a powerful, visceral rejection of the ideas the author presents. So long is one using a legitimately obtained copy of the book (they should not be stolen, much less ‘confiscated’), the decision to express oneself this way is not, in itself, a cause for alarm.
One can still criticize the motives and methods of the book-burner, mind you. A preacher who lambastes the Harry Potter books, for instance, on the grounds that they promote witchcraft, can be rightly condemned as a superstitious idiot pandering to the ignorance of his flock, regardless of whether he calls for his congregation to actually burn the books or not.
I’ve talked about how truth and falsity is a function of the axiomatic framework you’re working in, how most axioms are chosen based on aesthetic sensibilities, and sometimes progress requires reconsidering these axioms (e.g. non-Euclidean Geometry) when teaching a math class.
Should I fear that I’m to be labeled as an SJW Mathematician? I fear these same principles applied to any other field of study would earn easy “SJW” status. Please advise.
You guys are raising a lot of fuss over the fact that david’s words are easily misunderstood.
Arguments of the form “Ignoring [obvious problem] so-and-so has a point” are common here. I don’t think he was saying that Sargon had an actual point.
ikanreed
I figured that last line was sarcasm.
Freemage:
I think this is the essence of the problem with these guys. The inability to understand this mixed in with the inability (or being too lazy) to think critically. They ignore the motives and methods and always ALWAYS focus on the superficial act.
Often you hear their type say no matter what a person says, somebody is going to be offended, so they will just let others be offended and not consider other people’s response. They ignore why people are offended. The idea of critically examining why people are offended and basing their future responses never occurs to them. The simple act of “being offended” is the issue.
It’s the same when they see an entertainment company change something for a particular segment of the audience. They see no difference between a change in the level of sexualization of a female character and for example, the Cartoon Network of england cutting (spoiler of Steven Universe kinda) an affectionate dance between two perceived women in a Steven Universe episode. All they see is that something is “changed” and that’s what’s bad. Let’s not examine what is being changed, and what message either says and critiquing or applauding the company based on that. That would require thought. Nah, they just pretend to adopt some moral high ground, so they don’t have to actually argue ideas. (NOTE: I don’t actually think they truly believe the act of a company changing its content in such a way is bad (they’d be happy with changes they liked and still wouldn’t examine it critically), they just use it to accuse opponents of hypocrisy when they can. The bonus is it requires no critical thought. Score!)
Valentine
I thought Monty Python kind of pulled the rug out from under that kind of thinking? It did for me, anyway.
http://45.media.tumblr.com/c8147005c3d0c02fdcca3ed483575bb3/tumblr_nrrclcHlyO1ub62wvo7_500.gif
She’s my OTP.
But, you know, on a semi-related topic, it seems that people perceive any femme on femme interaction as inherently sexual. I remember someone on Tumblr being like “oh, this person spoke up against My Little Pony porn but LOOK AT WHAT THEY DREW!” and it’s a picture of some Gen 3 (lesbian) ponies gently nuzzling each other with nothing explicit happening.
Like, people don’t understand that drawing a character splayed with her vagina out is different than two characters nuzzling, especially when it involves children’s media. It’s like, for some reason, lesbians are inheriently masterbatory materials for some reason.
This is more of the mindset I witnessed as a long term member of David Icke Forum (not of course, Mr Icke’s fault his forum has gone to the dogs) communists everywhere. The false flag of Cultural Marxism and the fallacy of the so called ‘Frankfurt school”. I had no idea where this bullshit was coming from, now I know this is commonplace within the Alt Right. I am British, and let me tell you, I am worried that even Jeremy Corbin is not Left Wing enough to be able to rebalance the parties. The Labour Party has not been a Socialist party since Tony Blair ascended to power. I feel sorry for you Americans that you have a two party system, and they are both right wing, your Denocrats are not Socialists by a long shot, and your most leftist candidate is Bernie Sanders (who is a Jooooo, Cultural Marxist, Commie, Immigrant etc) Have you ever looked at the Political Compass test? You do not even have a Left Wing! And a bird with one wing can only flap around in circles!!!!
@pandapool
I love My Little Ponies… For the record, I have always seen Dashie and Pinkie as gay, Rarity as straight hyper feminine, Applejack as straight tomboy, and Twi and Fluttershy as asexual, although Fluttershy is feminine and is aspie. Just my, take, might not be right.
I was pretty disgusted at the fan art of humanised Cutie Mark Crusaders – I’ve seen some gross paedo stuff which really gives bronies a bad name, yea, there is Rule 34, but of kids, just plain wrong. I have the same issue with Finn the Human porn.
I bet these “Rebel Media” (note the quotes) types also think flag-burning is somehow a freedom of speech too far.
Well, I would use trash books like these for toilet paper to freely express what *I* find them to be, but they’d fuck up the plumbing. Which would be unironically appropriate.
And frankly, they’re awfully expensive to use as kindling.
FTFY, asshole.
So, does he want his petition signed in…
LIQUID FUCKING GOLD?
(ba dum tish)
jy3, Social Justice Beguiler
That is especially funny now that Velveeta is using “liquid gold” as the slogan for their macaroni and cheese.
People need to read The Crucible. It rightly satirizes the whole red scare paranoia.
Having watched a sampler of his work, Sargon never does his homework or looks up anything before turning on the microphone – He just spouts off whatever bigoted, misinformed thing he believes is true and presents this as an objective fact.
The stream-of-consciousness ramble seems to be a favored style among these douchebags. Bathtub Man and dunderf00l follow the same pattern. In fact, some of them deride people who actually edit their videos in a professional manner.
I worry for all the idiots getting their news from his channel – they think they’re getting the hot uncensored truth, but he’s just a right-wing spin jockey.
It worked for Rush Limbaugh…
So freaking glad I finally found a way to block his videos completely from appearing in my Youtube recommendations lists…though not before needlessly wiping out my actual sensible recommendations, and without ever figuring out just what in my favorites or who among my subscriptions was causing him and thunderfoot to appear…
I suspect too much sunlight might make him burst into flames, so you may be on to something.
Hey Vaiyt!
It’s been awhile since you posted. Welcome back!
I look forward to when these folks get as old as limbaugh, they all seem to be prepping themselves to be the new right wing of new media.
In fact I got a song that at least makes the rambling amusing rather than just one hour long stream of smug contaminating my speakers.
That being said I wouldn’t wish schizophrenia on them, that would be just sad to see them literally lose grip on reality, though I wouldn’t be surprised considered how much they like to falsify everything that doesn’t fit their narrative. If only they weren’t the face of YouTube Atheism, justifying literally every bad stereotype there is of Atheists.
@vaiyt
That explains why their videos are two hours long yet have two minutes of content.
That’s the same naive attitude Rush Limbaugh fans have… and Alex Jones fans have, and Glenn Beck fans have.
To continue from my last post. The truth is ultimately something you have to struggle for and find yourself. Some people are more honest than others, but no one is an arbiter of pure, uncensored, unadultered truth. Putting such blind faith in what other people believe leads to misery. I should know because I made that mistake when I was younger. Back in the day I used to believe in conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and watched Alex Jones and Stephan Molyneux videos. Eventually, I discovered their craziest and most repugnant beliefs, which is when I started questioning their doctrines, but it still took me a long way to flush their poison out of my system.
Hello.
Wait, is he not an atheist ?
Did he made a video when whatisname pastor had burn some pages of the Koran ?
Have a nice day.
I read the first comment in that video and want you guys to suffer with me :
So from what I can tell from this wonderfully comprehensive block of sound reasoning, this paragon of intellectuality just compared black people to mosquitoes. No reply seems to have an issue with this.
@Ouraboros13
For me it was learning almost all the YouTube Atheists that I followed turning out over time to be massive sexist bigots. I never believed in discrimination other than like two things, outright bigots who make society drag them by their knuckles and Scientology for just being every bit as awful as I imagine them to be. So when they turn out to be outright hypocrites and possess the same mental structure as the fundamentalists they mock, it made me very sad. GG was the final straw in how even the nicer people like the Bible Reloaded who are the most accepting of people as far as I know, was still willing to associate with people like the Amazing Atheist and Repzion. At this point the only one I want to follow is Steve Shives, he seems to be nice enough and hasn’t fallen to being pretty much a right wing conservative minus the televangelism.
Another day, another rant from some MRA with a pretentious name, a couple of polysyllabic words, and a vague doomsday argument.
Specifics? He’s never heard of the word.
Proof? You’ve gotta be kidding.
Clarity? Ha, ha, ha!
On the other hand . . .
Cliches? He’s got a lot of them–and plenty more where they came from.
I have to say, as a holder of an MA in Women’s Studies (MISANDRY!) I never felt indoctrinated by my professors. In fact the one teacher we had who was a rabid Rad Fem the University were a bit embarrassed about and while she had tenure and couldn’t be fired they moved her into a position where she could do least damage.