Racists – victim blamers extraordinaire — like to pretend that their racism isn’t their fault, that they’ve been driven to their racism by the bad behavior of some members of the group they’re bigoted against. Do a search for the phrase “I don’t hate blacks, but” and you will find thousands of examples of this “logic” at its crudest. “I don’t think blacks are ignorant just the NIGGERS,” one YouTube commenter writes, encapsulating the racist “logic” in a phrase.
Misogynists are fond of making similar “arguments” about women. As one commenter on the Scott Adams blog puts it:
I don’t hate women, but I have a pretty low opinion of women overall. I think they have poor priorities, they have poor analytical skills, they tend to be disorganized, they tend to be impulsive, and they think the world revolves around their feelings. I don’t think all women are like that, but it’s the impression I have of the gender in general, and I don’t like those traits.
Naturally, variations of this general argument (such as it is) abound in the “manosphere.” “Misogynists are not born they are made,” writes MRA/MGTOW elder and proud misogynist ZenPriest in an oft-cited rant titled “Hate Bounces.”
“Once, a long time ago when the world was young, I loved women with all my heart and soul,”ZenPriest (also known as Zed) writes. But then along came feminism, which ruined women so thoroughly that poor ZenPriest found himself more or less forced to become a woman-hater:
I began to see women as vicious creatures whose only agenda when it came to me, or any man, was to see how much they could get from the man – then when he had nothing left to give because they had taken it all, toss him out with yesterday’s garbage. In short – as nothing but users. …
I took to avoiding women, particularly groups of them, because I could never sit quietly and put up with the bashing and would always challenge it, which ended me up in a lot of fights and added greatly the count of times that I got called “misogynist.”
Gosh, why would anyone who “see[s] women as vicious creatures” get called a misogynist?
[A]fter 3 decades of listening to it, and hating it, and trying to keep the animosity which had been building in me over it … I caved in and began to really hate women. …
I will not allow most women in my house unless I have known her a long time and she is old enough to have escaped being infected with the plague of man hating or is escorted by someone I trust, nor will I enter theirs except on the same conditions. If I pass a woman stranded on the road, I will not stop to help her because it is as likely as not that she will be afraid of me. …
I changed from a man who loved women and thought they were just about the greatest thing in the world, to a man who can’t stand them, or anything about them.
And of course it is all the fault of women and their alleged incessant man-hatery:
Man bashing and man hating harms women, because it makes men hate them back – eventually. A puppy returns love for love, but if you beat it will eventually turn mean and will one day turn on you when you raise your fist or your stick (or the club of words) to hit it. Men are no different.
As this last bit makes clear, this “she made me do it” logic is the very same logic used by abusers to justify their abuse.
Now our old friend JohnTheOther has offered a similar blame-the-ladies explanation as to why he’s developed what he calls an “indifference to female opinion.” In his telling, the straw that broke the camel’s back was some unnamed feminist who had the temerity to use the word “neckbeard” in an internet posting.
The culture of easy, casual insult by women against average men, creeps, neckbeards, mother’s-basement-dweller and so on, has a effect which might not be recognized by women. Guys generally don’t need to be told they’re held in contempt as a group, our wider culture makes this sparklingly clear. However, individual instances of circumstantial ad-hom have the very real effect of making men not care about women’s opinions.
Yeah, that’s why these guys don’t give a shit about what women say.
Naturally, Mr. TheOther feels the need to tell us that 1) he doesn’t have a neckbeard and 2) he has a (presumably human) girlfriend.
Am I a neck-beard? No, I’m clean shaven, Im not an online gamer, I have a girlfriend, a career, I dress well et-cetera. But whenever I see some casual, throw away comment like creeper, neck-beard or other minor belittling insult used to describe average men, it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions of women.
After being criticized for his blatant misogyny by a commenter in the Men’s Rights subreddit (virtually the only MRA site online where misogyny is ever called out), Mr. TheOther altered that final bit to read “it cements my not giving a shit about the opinions offered.” He evidently thinks that changing the wording of this one sentence, and complaining about “quote-mining” will convince readers that the misogynistic argument set forth in detail in the rest of the post somehow isn’t misogyny. (And, on the Men’s Rights subreddit, that ploy seems to have worked.)
Naturally, like so many misogynists, Mr. TheOther insists he’s really not a woman-hater:
I don’t hate women, I don’t believe in any “back to the kitchen” nonsense, or any other female-targeted belittlement. What I’m talking about is my personal attitude towards women’s opinions, their utterances, their writing, their thoughts, their contribution to society. If you are a woman reading this, that means your thoughts, ideas, speech, writing and so on.
Well, that clears it up. You don’t hate women; you just don’t give a shit what women think or say or do. Obviously there’s no bigotry in that!
Utterly dismissing “female opinion” because some woman called you a neckbeard: Men’s Rights activism at its finest!
