Anyone wbo has read this blog for any length of time is well aware how adept Men’s Rights Activists are at convincing themselves (if not necessarily anyone else) that they are the true victims in any given situation.
Indeed, writer and workshopper Warren Farrell, whose books have provided much of the intellectual underpinning of MRA ideology, has argued in complete seriousness that men are victimized by women’s butts. A shapely posterior, you see, has such a hypnotizing power over your typical horny man that young women have what he once called “miniskirt power” over their male bosses at work.
An article in today’s New York Times suggests that many Trump voters are equally adept at painting themselves as the victims — in their case not of butts but of liberal meanies.
It’s an absolute must read. Not because it’s a good article — it’s terrible — but because it is so revealing, not only about Trump voters but also about the strange reluctance of so many in the supposedly liberal press to hold Trump voters accountable for anything they say or do. Indeed, the basic thesis of the piece — titled “Are Liberals Helping Trump?” — is that liberals are being so mean to Trump voters that they’re pushing them even further into Trumpland.
The piece starts with a brief portrait of Jeffrey Medford, a South Carolinian who voted “reluctantly” for the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office. Trouble is, when he brings this up in any venue also frequented by liberals, they’re like all mean to him.
Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.
“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”
He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”
Uh, dude, you put yourself on the side of an unstable, authoritarian bigot by voting for him. If you didn’t know what you were getting when you voted for him, then you weren’t paying attention. Trump started out his campaign with an explicitly racist attack on Mexican immigrants, and it pretty much went downhill from there. During his campaign, he revealed himself to be a bully and a chronic liar with no understanding of the job he felt he deserved, a man morally and practically unfit to be president.
And now Trump is making good, or at least trying to, on his terrible promises. His only redeeming feature is that he is so ignorant and inept that he’s fucking it up.
Oh, and did I mention that he’s hellbent on taking away the insurance I and literally millions of other Americans depend on for necessary treatment for the chronic health issues that insurance companies like to call “ongoing conditions?”
So, yeah, some of us are a bit testy.
The article’s author, Sabrina Tavernise, sets forth a thesis that more or less mirrors Medford’s self-pitying “argument.”
Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right.
“Provoking.” I don’t want to sound, you know, mean here, but this is the logic abusers use to blame their victims for their own abusive meltdowns. It’s a kind of argument that seems to come naturally to MRAs, Trump supporters, and Trump-supporter enablers.
In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one.
Assaulted? You know who else feels assaulted? The longtime residents of this country who have been arrested and deported by ICE, including one woman picked up at a courthouse after she complained of domestic abuse. The Muslims held for hours in airports as a result of Trump’s profoundly un-American executive order.
Is it “self-righteous” for those opposed to Trump to point out the actual effects of his bigoted policies?
Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.
Again, it’s the logic of an abuser: “You made me hit you!”
“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay.
First, it’s not “a little like” that at all. Second, are you seriously complaining that the left is … calling you names?
I mean, you do remember all of this, don’t you?
I feel just terrible for these people.
Mr. Younquist wasn’t quite so open about his Trump support.
“The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat,” Tavernise informs us,
was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.
POOR BABY
“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.
I hate to tell you this, Mr. STEMLOGIC, but that’s not a very rational response at all.
Tavernise weighs in again with her equally stupid opinion. Which is pretty much the same opinion as all the Trump supporters she interviewed.
[I]f political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.
How “persuadable” is someone who gets so mad that some women don’t want to date guys they violently disagree with politically that he decides he’s just going to SUPPORT TRUMP EVEN HARDER SO THERE TAKE THAT!!!1!!
But no Trump supporter may have suffered more for her beliefs than Ann O’Connell, a “retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump” despite being a registered Democrat. (She apparently liked Trump’s promise to build a big old wall to protect her from all the evil Mexicans who are creeping over our southern border and then I guess for some reason creeping all the way up to Syracuse, NY, not far from the Canadian border, where the percentage of Hispanics is far below the national average and which is actually a really terrible place to look for jobs right now.)
Anyway, Ms. O’Connell has suffered mightily for her beliefs. For she can no longer enjoy Meryl Streep movies! You know, because that mean actress lady gave that speech about how shitty it is to mock disabled people.
Mrs. O’Connell feels hopeless. She has deleted all her news feeds on Facebook and she tries to watch less TV. But politics keeps seeping in.
“I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,” she said.
BOO HOO HOO
Here’s my question: is it possible that these Trump supporters are feeling so defensive about their vote for president because on some level they know what they did was indefensible?
Or am I just being mean for even asking that question?
H/T — @ParkerMolloy, who posted a couple of the pics I used on Twitter.
Okay, I gave myself a time-out. I am gonna stop posting, but I would like to say a few appreciative things first
@Croquembouche of patriarchy — In an ideal world, yeah. But the second half was “thinking I knew stuff” so I thought I’d ALREADY done that step! The first half is kinda like “don’t worry about if you’re wrong, other people will correct you” which should now revise to “try and make sure you’re as right as you can be before bringing it to other people because otherwise you’re draining their resources by making them correct you” as you say.
@Dalillama – No, I 100% agree on the putz thing. I have…poor social sense, to put it mildly.
@MrsObedMarsh – Appreciated. Truth be told, I’ve been reading posts here for…at least a year now, maybe more. I don’t think I’d quite realized what a community the comment section was, so I never really observed IT by itself. I’ll go do that for a bit before coming back, I think.
(other thing: I think I came here more for my OWN benefit than to make a good faith contribution: to talk about stuff I wanted to talk about, air some stuff that’s been rattling around in my head, that sort of thing. That’s a shitty attitude and I’ll work on THAT in the future too)
@Croquembouche of patriarchy – That’s fair. I’ve heard things about people who troll comments here but am apparently insufficiently aware of the specifics to avoid the pitfalls. Clearly I haven’t read ENOUGH comments.
Anyway. I think it’s about time I took MrsObedMarsh’s advice and stopped posting at least for now, I do apologize for the fuss. I’d appreciate being let know if I’m doing stupid things in the future again, but no-one is obligated to do that or anything!
Oh oop, will respond to this too:
That makes a lot of sense. I feel like this is something I periodically forget because it makes no sense to me…or it’s something I should have known but didn’t. Either way I’ll try and keep it in mind.
…
examines internal thought processes
finds “worse than the Obama years”
oh dear
(now who’s the short-sighted one? :/)
This is a REALLY good point that I left buried somewhere in one of the text walls. It’s almost like the pie is larger when more people are baking it…
I finally forced myself to read the article, and it included a couple of gems that no one has mentioned yet.
So this woman complains about how nasty Democrats are, while making accusations against them that are at least as bad (and probably much worse), and she doesn’t even realize it. She needs a nice heaping helping of perspective, with a side order of self-awareness.
This analogy fails because the Trump administration isn’t just a beat-up car that will break down, it’s an exploding Ford Pinto that will destroy both itself and everyone inside it along the way.
@Some Guy
I hope next time it’ll be alot more pleasant for all of us.
@Troubelle
I’ll make that another project of mine. I got a lot but this one is quite interesting.
Father and son accused of kidnapping and rape want to use the Bible to justify themselves in court:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/01/23/father-son-duo-accused-of-rape-wants-only-law-book-that-truly-matters-at-trial-the-bible/
The suspects are both white and the victim is black, so I wonder if the “curse of Ham” argument is going to enter into their defense argument. Sick, sick. If they had been Muslims citing the Quran, the president would have tweeted about it 2,704,402 times by now.
This was totally a necessary and worthwhile use of everyone’s time. Like a 5mph car crash. Easily avoidable, everybody is mildly inconvenienced, and the spectators don’t even get to see anything cool…
In that case here’s a few things I found that are pretty cool.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/13529bb6e66c93547f91f27992ba25cb/tumblr_o68w0ewPda1tlb56zo1_500.gif
http://i.imgur.com/1wK5WsM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/pPcxefb.gif
I think this really nails it. Yes, I see a big connection between the politics of the right and the MRA movement. Have you read George Lakoff? He talks about how right wing views are aligned with patriarchal values, and left wing with matriarchal. I think what we’re witnessing here in real time is the end of patriarchy as the dominant societal model worldwide, and this big upsurge in misogyny and fascism are very much related and are patriarchy’s last angry, violent, hateful last hurrah. It’s white male privilege raging against the dying of the light of unearned entitlement. Let’s just hope they don’t destroy society and the planet in their death throes.
@Preuxfox
And I love* how they use the “like being gay in the ’50s” line – as though everything is completely fantastic for LGBTQ folks right now in 2017.
*by “love” I mean the actual opposite.
@Some Guy
I’d just like to share my experience here. To the rest, I hope that my digression is not too disruptive.
I’d like to think of myself as much like you, socially awkward and always trying to make good-faith attempts to learn more. I, like you, also saw myself as being reasonably level-headed and progressive in my views. I saw this comments section as being akin to a salon, where I could come in and bounce my pet theories off the wall at a receptive audience.
Basically, I’m saying that I am (or was) one of those self-important windbags. I’m trying to be better, and one realization helped me a lot:
It is a privilege to be able to consider matters on a purely dispassionate, intellectual level, divorced from ground-level concerns. It is a privilege to never be questioned on one’s premises simply because they’re regarded as “acceptable” or “reasonable” by people you’ve formerly interacted with, or to be met with nothing but understanding and corrections when you err.
And to simply assume that we are due this privilege wherever we post is bullshit, and bullshit must be called out when we see it, even in ourselves. Especially in ourselves.
“Splaining” is a word that has been leveled at many people and statements, but it fundamentally means “speaking from a position of privilege to the not-similarly privileged”. I was “splaining”, declaiming for no one’s benefit but my own, in the process excluding, minimizing and downplaying the lived experiences of the people in this community, and I was so blind to my own privilege that I didn’t even see it. It took several good boots to the ass (one even from Hippodaemia, and I am ever grateful to them for it) before I got it into my head that that was what I was doing.
I am not patting myself on the back for finally “getting it”. Fuck that. It’s not a goal, it is a journey. I can be better. I will do better.
And I will begin by shutting the fuck up when my contribution is not needed, and listening, and learning.
It sounds hackneyed, but we need to “check our privilege”. One resource that helped me (indeed, the second hit when you Google it; the first is, ugh, Know Your Meme) is this: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-checking-privilege-means/ )
I hope it helps you as well.
Guess what? Milo thinks there are a lot of good things about that priest-on-boy action:
http://uproxx.com/news/milo-yiannopoulos-defend-pedophilia/
He’s going to give the keynote speech at CPAC, by the way.
Between that and his endorsement of fat-shaming, I fail to see how his antics won’t end up pushing the South out of the GOP.
@ personalpest,
Well I did wonder whether these people was a dog whistle for Democrats who aren’t white, and traditionally married if female.
Also the car analogy fails because what actually happened to poor Mr Medford on polling day was:
Four vehicles pulled up and offered him a lift.
Johnson on a skateboard and Stein on a unicycle he dismissed.
That left two, one with a Democrat bumper sticker and one, Republican.
So maybe he just chose on the basis of the bumper sticker.
Or maybe he took a look at the vehicle, the passengers already in it, and the driver, and chose based on that.
There was the minibus with seatbelts, fire extinguisher, windows designed to easily be pushed out in an emergency; or the aforesaid beat up old Pinto, with no brakes and the oil warning light on.
Passengers on the minibus included Muslims, POC, and some folk who looked a bit queer. Some with disabilities.
Passengers in the Pinto included some dude in Klansman’s robes, some dude mooning out the window, and some dude catcalling women who walk by.
Driver of the minibus has licence on display, showing many years driving vehicles small, medium and large. She’s a woman, not particularly young. Driver of Pinto has never even driven a car before, he’s a man, slightly older.
Mr Medford needs to admit the Pinto was not his only choice.
‘banned opiates specifically to target Chinese people’
after fighting a war with China to ensure that they could get opiates into the hands of as many Chinese people as possible.
@Miriam Lakoff looks at two ways of organising information, ‘strict father’ and ‘nurturant parent’; he specifically avoids the idea of ‘matriarchy’ as the ‘opposite’ of patriarchy.
OT: Milo is currently getting the attention he richly deserves, aka his “in defense of pedophilia/pederasty” comments, and it looks like he has outlived his usefulness to alt-right.
@ guest
Wasn’t that the British? To quote Gladstone:
Trump voters are the fucking dregs of humanity & they deserve to feel like utter shit for the rest of their rotten lives.
That orange shitrag has the goddamn nuclear codes!
I hope Trump, Pence, & Bannon drop dead. Putin, Ryan & McConnell, too. Evil motherfuckers.
Hello.
So, they are egocentric irresponsable cowards.
Egocentric because all is due to them : you MUST give them respect, you MUST give them attention, you MUST take care of their feelings, you MUST give them a boner (if appropriate), you MUST support them whatever they do because they know better than you. And so on. And do not expect any sent back lift, their mere presence IS our (only one) reward, we ungrateful bastards.
Irresponsable : not assuming their choices, decisions, actions, up to 11. Educating and monitoring their children ? Oh no, that is boring. Sorting the rubbish in recyclable and non-recyclable ? Bringing their empty can or their finished cigaret to the closest trashbin ? Ho, come on “there are people paid to sort/clean after us”. Agreeing that they have make a wrong choice ? Considering doing something to correct it ? Of course not, it was not their fault to begin with !
Coward : quite often linked with irresponsability. Fleeing or using weak argument to deflect reponsabilities on other sources. They are said to be too noisy ? No, it is their children ! Do they have forgotten to do their homework ? No, their dog ate it ! Do they grope (i stay mild here) someone ? No, s.he was asking for it / it is evolution / it was an uncontrolable pulsion of their body ! Did they lie so obviously to someone that this someone became speechless ? No, it is alt-fact, you are the liar !
Are you not taking us a bit too much for people unable to understand and to have a logical reasoning ? NO, YOU ARE, AND IT IS MEAN.
If we mix a bit the head letters of that, that makes them ICE people. Is this why they sometimes have a melt down ?
Have a nice day.
Hey, David, everyone? I’ve just had another idea for a minor way we can resist Trump. Contact the New York Times (here are their contact details: https://myaccount.nytimes.com/membercenter/feedback.html) and denounce them for this POS article. If you’ve got a subscription to it, cancel it, like the way all these conservatives have cancelled their Netflix accounts over Dear White People. The article is possessed of exactly the same spirit as the Democrats who have compromised with the GOP – a spirit of spinelessness and capitulation, predicated on the delusional belief that compromise will placate them. It’s a spirit that needs to be denounced and defeated throughout the entirety of American liberalism.
@guest: I haven’t read Lakoff, but that makes more sense. I know there are a few historical (and extant) matriarchal civilisations, but I really don’t see any connection between political progressivism and matriarchy.
Re the article: yeah, you nailed it. “Let’s build bridges and stop being divisive” say the plutocrats, the neo-Nazis and the KKK.
Also, I hadn’t seen that “Tree. Rope. Journalist” T-shirt before. Kinda wish it’d stayed that way.
@Croquembouche
I like the oil warning light. That’s a nice touch.
@ Skiriki
While looking into that little scandal, I found something even worse. If these stories get traction, they could seriously hurt Milo’s career(fingers crossed, knock on wood). Trumpophiles would probably be fine with older women molesting teenage boys (“hur hur hur wish that’d happened to me hur hur hur”), but they’re not going to feel the same about men molesting boys.
Note the one-party assumption here.
No, dude, you had four cars show up, and one of them was the most qualified car ever to drive from Charleston to Atlanta. But you didn’t get in, because you couldn’t have the front seat and be in charge of the radio.
Instead, you climbed into the car that had an inebriated driver, no inspection sticker, and clouds of toxic fumes. You forfeited your right to complain about the ride the moment you made that choice.
This right here ^^^ is the issue. It’s not Democrats that are driving these so-called “moderates” away. It’s their perception of Democrats. It’s the fake news that portrays protestors as violent. It’s Trump’s stupid-ass “crimes committed by immigrants” list, and diversion of advocacy funds to VOICE, and relentless drumbeat about how scary and bombed-out the Big Cities are. It’s thousands of low-band AM radio talk shows, bleating to the cornfields and prairies how liberals and minorities and welfare receipients are the enemy, a destabilizing, destructive presence. Credulous folk eat this stuff up, and there’s no reality-based narrative to counter it.
It’s laughable that Trump supporters are feeling shamed because liberals are rubbing moral superiority in their face. Which party keeps trying to shove its morals down the throats of everyone else? Which party loudly rails about the evils of abortion, welfare, healthcare, and big government, then quietly turns around and avails themselves of these things when they’re in need? Let’s stop pretending it’s the left that’s the problem here, when the right is always perfectly happy to take advantage of the social programs put in place by the left.
I also don’t see any effort on the right to win over Hillary voters to their side. Okay, so after Romney lost, there were approximately 0.8 yoctoseconds of RNC introspection about extending the Republican tent to better appeal to blacks, Hispanics, and women. Then they all dissolved in hearty laughter, lit another round of evil cigars, and went to work on voter suppression and Benghazi. They find it much easier to ignore and disenfranchise than govern. Why should it be always on the left to be the ones to reach out and find common ground? They want the left to be the bigger person. Then they scold the left for being on a moral high horse. Then they scold the left for extending a giant middle finger and being “mean”. Geez, all they want to do is control and hurt and kill us, and this is how we show our gratitude!?
They’re no different from the abusive trolls who come in here and finger-wag at us about how we’ll never find husbands if we don’t toe the line and grow our hair and act more submissive and respectful.
Yeah, no thanks. We’ll be just fine on our own with our fifty cats and our sixty-five million votes and our 20-30 year demographic advantage. All we need is a functioning goddamn democracy.
Ooglyboggles: I’m assuming picture number three is the Emergency Shiba Inu Delivery Service in action.
With regards to the brief discussion of dog-hair knitting, it is possible to make a felted ball of cat hair with nothing but hand pressure. Said felted ball makes an excellent cat toy.
I have a cone of shame from when youngest cat got spayed. I put it on a stuffed (toy, not taxidermy) cat; thinking of borrowing a lab coat, adding a chainsaw or similar, strategic pair of fuzzy spherical objects, rainbow fright wig and there’s my next Halloween costume:
Extreme Vetting
Incidentally there’s an old-fashioned Finnish metaphor “cat’s fleeces”, to dismiss something as worthless or irrelevant.
Not to be confused with “extreme wetting”, a soon to be euphemism for water torture.
@ lindsayirene
There were some interesting articles on that site (especially the nazi punching one), so thanks for linking.
One thing that confused me at first though was the unironic use of the phrase “ethno-nationalist”.
As Confucius put it “the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name”; so what’s wrong with ‘racist’?