Thought Catalog – which seems to be rapidly becoming the go-to site for terrible antifeminist posts – is making a bit of a stir on Reddit with a post bearing the deliberately provocative title “Wait A Second, Did Amy Schumer Rape a Guy?” Spoiler Alert: The anonymous author concludes that yes, she did. The anonymous author is full of shit.
In the Thought Catalog piece, Anonymous takes a look at a speech that Schumer – a comedian with some subversive feminist leanings — recently gave at the Gloria Awards and Gala, hosted by the Ms. Foundation for Women. The centerpiece of Schumer’s speech, a bittersweet celebration of confidence regained, was a long and cringeworthy story about a regrettable sexual encounter she had in her Freshman year of college, when her self-esteem was at an all-time low.
So why are so many white dudes so desperate for an excuse to use the n-word? Consider this white dude, who recently posted this bit of, er, wisdom in the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
Bear in mind that the Men’s Rights subreddit is 86% white, which is a good deal whiter than the United States as a whole, and only 1.5% black, which is way less black, according to a recent survey of its members. I’m pretty sure none of the white dudes upvoting this little slogan have obtained the proper n-word privileges. (Note: The survey in question was spammed with a number of identical responses, BUT the percentages I’m giving are based on the survey data with all the spammed entries removed, thanks to the industrious Angelica Field; see here for details.)
It’s hardly surprising that black men haven’t exactly flocked to the Men’s Rights movement, given the overt racism of a significant number of MRAs and otherManospherians. And even those MRAs who aren’t so obvious about their racism tend to be dismissive of issues that disproportionately affect men of color: MRAs almost never talk about the drug war that has put so many black men behind bars (two thirds of all those in prison for drug offenses are people of color. mostly men), nor have they ever attempted to organize or even offer any real support to campaigns against prison rape (60% of all prisoners are people of color).
This slogan isn’t likely to help the Men’s Rights movement with what the politicians like to call “minority outreach.” It might help reach a different sort of audience, however — an audience already quite fond of the n-word. When I did a Google search for the phrase “men are the new niggers,” the first result was a discussion on the Vanguard News Network Forum. I won’t link to it, because the Vanguard News Network is a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist website that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “gutturally racist.” The site’s motto: “No Jews. Just Right.”
Of course, the notion of describing men as “the new nigger” didn’t originate with white supremacists. It was clearly inspired, in a backwards way, by the John Lennon song “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” a feminist attack on misogynistic hypocrisy. While Lennon wrote the lyrics, the titular phrase originated with Yoko Ono, who deliberately used the racial slur in what was evidently an attempt to shock people into recognizing the ways in which women, like black people, were dispossessed.
It was a bad idea. Even though Ono and Lennon didn’t mean to reinforce racism by using the slur, it’s not a word that they had any cultural right to appropriate for their own purposes; not only that, but Ono’s slogan seems to implicitly define all “niggers” as men and to ignore black women, who don’t need John or Yoko to remind them that many people already see them as “niggers.” In the end the title ended up undercutting the message of the song. It can’t listen to it; it makes me cringe.
But glancing over the lyrics again, which aside from the title are essentially about the hypocritical messages sent to women by sexist society, one line in particular stands out to me, because it so deftly captures a certain kind of sexism — and even though it was written years before Warren Farrell first started going on about “disposable men,” it also captures pretty well the MRA tendency to view gender relations upside down:
While putting her down, we pretend that she’s above us
Yep, that’s what the Men’s Rights movement does, all day, every day.
And it’s that kind of delusional thinking that leads some of them to conclude not only that they are the “new niggers,” but also that using the n-word is somehow an appropriate thing for their almost all-white movement to do.
Many Men’s Rights Redditors see themselves as fighting a noble fight against genuinely evil, misandrist radical feminists on the internet. One of their most powerful weapons: the deadly downvote.
Reading through one old thread on Men’s Rights last night, I noticed how some Men’s Rights Redditors had deftly deployed their downvotes to fight off the evil feminist misandry lurking in this comment:
Outrageous! A statement that could have been ripped straight from Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto!
Kudos to the brave Redditors who saw this vile misandry for what it was.
Elsewhere in the same thread, I happily noticed, Men’s Rights Redditors were helpfully upvoting the reasonable and uplifting sentiments of decent fellows, like the Men’s Rights Redditor who goes by the name theboners, who offered a sensibly critical take on the always controversial question of whether or not it was a good idea for men to give in to “pussy privilege” and let ladies have the vote:
Oh you irresponsible women! Why do we let you do anything?
I mean, aside from letting GirlWritesWhat make YouTube videos; that’s ok.
–
It might be time for that blinking
gif to remind possibly literal-minded readers that I do not actually agree with theboners or think SweetieKat is a reincarnation of Valerie Solanas.
Is there no end to the ways in which women oppress the men of the world? Over on A Voice for Men, Clint Carpentier reports – and I use that term loosely – on a heretofore overlooked form of anti-male oppression: the abuse of fathers in delivery rooms by women who are at that moment literally in the stirrups giving birth.
Yep, we’re talking about women who use 12 hours of labor as a convenient excuse to yell at, and sometimes scratch and bite, their husbands and boyfriends. Apparently, there’s an epidemic of women in labor cruelly attacking men from the comfort and safety of the delivery table.
Carpentier starts off his post by making clear that giving birth isn’t really the big freaking deal all the ladies think it is, anyway:
Yep, that’s a butt on the cover. He put a butt on the cover. Men are oppressed by women’s butts.
You may remember the embarrassing spectacle a couple of months back when Warren Farrell asked the readers of A Voice for Men to help him pick out a cover picture for a new ebook version of The Myth of Male Power, the 21-year-old crackpot bestseller that more or less provided the, er, intellectual foundation for today’s Men’s Rights movement.
It wasn’t just embarrassing because AVFM is a noxious hate site that regularly calls women c*nts and whores and helps to organize informal campaigns of harassment directed at individual women. It was also embarrassing because all three of the pictures were sexualized images focusing on specific female body parts. You can guess which three, and you’d be right: tits, ass, and vagina (the latter tastefully covered in a merkin made of moss).
Well, Farrell ended up rejecting all of these images in favor of … a different picture of a woman’s butt. Yep, the screenshot above features the actual cover of the recently released ebook version of The Myth of Male Power. (You can see it in its full sized-glory over on Amazon.)
The implicit message of the cover couldn’t be clearer: men may seem to run the world, but women can control and exploit them through the power of their sexuality. Male power is undercut by … butt power.
Am I reading too much into a cover image? Farrell doesn’t really believe this nonsense, does he?
Well, in the introduction to the ebook, Farrell writes:
In case you’re wondering, “genetic celebrity” is Farrell’s term of art for any attractive woman.
But golly, you say, the fact that a dude feels “powerless” because he can’t have sex with every woman with a nice butt that happens to wander across his field of vision doesn’t actually mean that men are powerless or that male power is a myth. Well, Farrell has an answer to this as well. And by “answer” I mean, well, whatever this is:
Got that? I’m not sure there’s anything there to get; it’s nothing more than hand-waving to distract attention from the nonsensical nature of his previous statements. In case any Men’s Rights activist ever brings Warren Farrell up as an example of a respectable, “academic” MRA, you may wish to point out that almost nothing Farrell writes ever actually makes any fucking sense.
In the book itself, Farrell repeatedly suggested that male power can be undone almost completely by the sexual power of women. In one oft-quoted passage, he wrote about the effect that a “secretary’s miniskirt power, cleavage power and flirtation power” allegedly has on their male bosses. (Myth of Male Power, p. 21)
While that statement has earned a certain notoriety for its sheer ridiculousness, Farrell went further elsewhere in the book, essentially arguing that men are as addicted to female “beauty” as drug addicts are to the drug of their choice — and as helpless.
“Sexually, of course, the sexes aren’t equal,” Farrell wrote. “[M]any men feel ‘under the influence the moment they see a beautiful woman.” (p. 320, emphasis in original.)
This sort of temporary “intoxication,” Farrell argued, leads men into shackling themselves to these temporarily sexy tyrants for the rest of their lives — thus agreeing to support them (he suggested implicitly) even after they get old and ugly. (p. 85.)
In Farrell’s original book, this “argument,” such as it is, was merely one of many that he thought undercut the alleged “myth of male power.” Now, with the butt on the cover, he’s put it front and center. Or, more precisely, rear and center.
Warren Farrell, you’re an ass, man.
Oh, awkward segue here, I just wanted to show off the cover to the new edition of my classic book, The Myth of Human Power.
It will soon be available for one million dollars in cash in unmarked bills, upon delivery of which I will sit down and write it for you. It will probably be pretty short and not very convincing.
Hey ladies! Dean Esmay reaches out to the young women of America
Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.
AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an
open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.
Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely
reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.
So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?
Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.
1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”
2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.
3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”
4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”
5)“[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”
The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.
The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.
EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:
6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“
How dare you accuse us of sexism, you spoiled little girl!
If Jason Gregory were this adorable kitty, it would be hard to stay mad at him
Hey, everybody!
So you remember that post a couple of days ago, that one in which I quoted Jason Gregory’s most peculiar dating advice for angry men? You know, the one in which he suggested that men rebuff women who are interested in them with a long and rather nasty assortment of misogynistic insults? You know, like these:
Tell her that she isn’t interesting, that her soul is dog-shit and that she has nothing to offer other than boobs and booty, that she is a piece of shit and a total failure as a human being, that you don’t find her attractive and that she isn’t even good enough to be a cum-bucket.
Well, it turns out I totally misinterpreted Jason Gregory’s post, according to an unbiased and neutral outside observer named Jason Gregory, no relation to the original Jason Gregory, who’s written a post about it on his blog.
Hold on, I’m being told that this second Jason Gregory is in fact also the first Jason Gregory.
Men in dresses: How A Voice for Men chose to promote its post about trans women
Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men has not exactly shown much of an interest in trans* issues in the past. Indeed, the only time I can recall founder Paul Elam ever even mentioning trans* people was in the context of a vicious attack on a Men’s Studies expert who happens to be a trans woman; he suggested she was a mentally ill man-hater whose “so hated the sex they were born with that it sparked a life long academic quest to deconstruct it into something that did not disgust them.”
So it’s a little surprising to see a post on AVFM now with the seemingly dispassionate, slightly turgid, title “Male/female discrepancies in transsexualism.” The post starts out as dry as its title, but it soon becomes clear that it is “scientific” in style only. It’s not an attempt to understand trans women or trans people in general; it’s an attempt to use the existence of trans women as a helpful prop in an old Men’s Rights argument.
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
