Rapist babies and internet threats

How the hell did I get mixed up in all this?

The manosphere is in an uproar about a public service TV ad from an anti-violence group that portrays a baby boy as a future rapist. Some MRAs are attempting to refute the ad's implication that improperly socialized men are prone to violence by posting and upvoting ... violent comments and veiled threats online. And apparently some non-veiled death threats as well.

A few days ago, you see, W.F. Price, head honcho at The Spearhead, wrote a critical piece about the endeavors of one Josh Jasper to draw attention to sexism in Super Bowl commercials; Price also pointed out that Jasper, CEO of the Riverview Center, a nonprofit serving domestic violence and sexual assault victims in Illinois and Iowa, had put out an earlier commercial that, in Price's words, "impl[ied] that baby boys are all potential rapists."

Despite the source, that's actually a more or less accurate description of the ad, which depicts a happy little baby boy as a future rapist. I'm just not quite sure why that's so objectionable; after all, every baby, male or female, is a bundle of possibilities, some good, some bad. (Hitler was once a happy, gurgling baby.) The point of the ad is that parents can have an effect on how their kids turn out; if you raise your son to be a violent, misogynist asshole, he may well end up a rapist.

As much as I agree with this basic sentiment, I'm not going to defend the ad. It's terrible. Generally, I'm not a fan of using babies to make political points -- it's trite and manipulative, to begin with. And in this case, it's worse than that: portraying a baby as a future rapist seems rather hamfisted, given that babies are often victims of abuse themselves. 

Judge for yourself; here's the ad.




All this said, the flaws of the "rapist baby" ad in no way excuse the response it's gotten from some of the more hotheaded in the Men's Rights Movement and the manosphere in general. On his website, Peter Nolan declares that the ad "promote[s] hatred of male babies"; on The Spearhead,  Poester99 goes even further, accusing Riverview Center of "promoting violence against baby boys." Which is, of course, completely absurd. (Even besides that, as Jasper has pointed out on his blog, the Riverview Center serves male victims as well as female ones.) It's hard to know if the people spouting this nonsense honestly believe it, or if they are using the baby in the ad even more cynically and opportunistically than Jasper is.

Unfortunately, the MRA reaction has gone well beyond simple rhetorical overkill. A number of comments on The Spearhead, many of them with dozens of upvotes, are essentially threats -- some vague, some not-so-vague -- against Jasper himself. duke writes that:

Mangina creeps like Josh Jasper should suffer the same fate as Nazi sympathizers after WWII-taken out and shot after a five minute trial.

Avenger adds:

If men really were as violent as he claims they would have shut him up long ago. One good beating and this mangina would never open his mouth again.

Firepower, meanwhile, goes after Jasper's ... first name:

So long as males tolerate sissified males named “Josh” – pissing even on our SuperBowl – these gender traitors will only feel encouraged to increase their anti-male slurs.

Over on A Voice For Men, meanwhile, MRA elder Paul Elam insinuates that Jasper, far from being a sissy,  is a violent "alpha puke" -- and calls on his fans to dig up dirt on him:

This man deserves consequences for his actions.

Some history on Josh is known. We know he was a marine and we also know that he was a Los Angeles police officer. Two areas for sure where the capacity for violence is a plus. Add to that the fact that he was on a Domestic Violence task force and this bad apple starts to stink a little more. ...

Anyone want to take any bets on whether this alpha puke ever busted heads as a cop, simply because he could? It leaves one to wonder - especially given the intellectual violence he is so obviously willing to inflict on male children - just what sort of skeletons are in this douche bag's closet.

If they are there, I would love to get my hands on them and rattle them together for the world to hear.

And on Men-Factor, antifeminist blogger ScareCrow (who used to regularly post comments here) posts the email addresses of The Riverview Center's mostly female board of directors, urging readers to "vent your anger" on this "bitch-hive," adding "I aim to destroy it."

I don't have the patience or the stomach to sort through the comments on the YouTube page for the ad to see what other vile shit has been posted there.

I can only hope that most of this violent language is just standard internet tough guy  talk, and won't result in real violence in the real world. Even if you believe that Jasper's ad commits a sort of rhetorical violence against male babies -- which I think is a ridiculous reading of the admittedly idiotic ad --  it does not justify actual violence against anybody.

EDIT: I should have let this one sit a little before putting it up. I've made various changes to strengthen and clarify my argument.
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The uprising in Egypt: Not all about the menz

Leon Trotsky -- you know, THE Trotsky -- once said disdainfully of writer Dwight Macdonald, who'd had the temerity to actually question him about something-or-other, "everyone has the right to be stupid, but comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege."

Now, Trotsky was sort of a shit, and probably would have been a worse dictator than Stalin, and Dwight Macdonald was awesome, but I've always loved this little put-down, and I'd like to update it for the internet age.  So here goes:

Everyone has the right to pontificate about shit they know nothing about on the internet, but our comrades at The Spearhead abuse the privilege.

The latest example: A short piece about the Egyptian protests from Spearhead head cheese W.F. Price. Noting that footage of the protests show a lot of angry men out on the streets, Price opines:

Governments that consistently neglect or antagonize their male populations never last too long.

Yep, no matter what happens anywhere in the world at any time, on The Spearhead it's always all about the menz. Indeed, not only has the Egyptian government been insufficiently accommodating to men, Price suggests; it's also started flirting with feminism, having "recently taken the lead in the Arab world in empowering women." But such a transparent ploy to win over the wimmenz will invariably backfire, he argues (or, rather, asserts), further angering the angry men in the streets:

Female support matters little; women shift allegiance at the drop of a hat, so any government that counts on them to prop them up is making a mistake.

Those fickle, fickle women!

In the comments, someone called Antz took this absurdity a step or two further, asking his fellow Spearheaders to

note the alpha males in battle gear, ready at the drop of a hat to open fire on their freedom loving brothers with machine guns.

Alpha males have always been the wielders of the burning blade of feminist anti-male hatred.

Yes, that's right. The Egyptian security police have suddenly gone feminist on us.

This isn't the first time Price has attempted to cast an uprising in the Arab world as a manly reaction to the doings of evil women. He titled a recent piece on the Tunisian uprising "Arrogant Woman Slaps Young Man, Brings Down Her Regime." The "arrogant woman" in question was a corrupt local official who slapped and thereby humiliated a young Tunisian street vendor named Mohammad Bouazizi; his very public suicide -- he lit himself on fire in front of a government building as a form of protest --was what set off the Tunisian uprising. (I have no idea what Price means by referring to "her regime," as the woman in question was  merely a local functionary and the regime in question was of course headed by a man.) Price wrote:

Authoritarian regimes in Muslim-majority states tend to favor women’s empowerment, seeing women as natural allies in keeping fundamentalist Islam at bay and willing participants in corrupt patronage systems. However, favoring women can only go so far, as men need a certain degree of appeasement as well, and it seems that young Tunisian men have had enough of being – quite literally in this case – slapped around.

Never mind that Tunisia's historic adoption of women's rights legislation -- abolishing polygamy, and, horror of feminist horrors, requiring men to actually get consent from women before marrying them  -- happened more than half a century ago. Never mind that the repressive Ben Ali government was actually moving backwards on women's rights. A woman slapped a man, so the uprising was therefore all about the symbolic slapping of men by an evil regime that Price has bizarrely described as a "her."

Back to Egypt, which is even less of a feminist paradise than Tunisia. Indeed, a 2010 report from the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights concluded that the country was getting worse, not better, when it came to its already dismal record on women's rights. As thedailynewsegypt.com reports (link is to Google's cached copy of the story):

The report, which is based on the findings of international human rights organizations, stated that Egypt was ranked 125th out of 134 countries regarding women’s rights, and was ranked 13th among countries in the Middle East/North Africa region. ...

The state council’s refusal to appoint female judges in February was considered by the ECWR as a major setback to women’s rights in 2010. ...  Women still suffer from inequality in the workplace ... there’s been a rise in violence against women. ...  71.4 percent of violent crimes in 2010 were against women. ...

The ECWR also highlighted the increased use of two new alarming police practices against women: the practice of holding women hostage in order to force fugitives to surrender themselves to the police, as well as the sexual violation of women by police officers.

But that's not the only thing that Price has gotten very, very wrong: As many observers far more knowledgeable than Price have pointed out -- including, amazingly, one commenter on The Spearhead -- the footage of male-dominated protests we see on TV is in many ways wildly misleading: Egyptian women have been involved in the current protests in unprecedented numbers.

As Jenna Krajeski noted on Slate's XXFactor blog,

An unprecedented number of Egyptian women participated in Tuesday’s anti-government protests. Ghada Shahbandar, an activist with the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, estimated the crowd downtown to be 20 percent female. Other estimates were as high as 50 percent. In past protests, the female presence would rarely rise to 10 percent. Protests have a reputation for being dangerous for Egyptian women, whose common struggle as objects of sexual harassment is exacerbated in the congested, male-dominated crowd.

Max Strasser, a former associate editor at Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition in Cairo, explains the dynamic:

It is no secret that Egypt is a conservative country when it comes to gender relations. Men and women generally, though not exclusively, adhere to traditional gender roles where women stay at home. As a result, many public spaces are heavily male dominated. Moreover, sexual harassment is frustratingly common ... Big crowds, like soccer rallies, are usually the least hospitable for women.

Since this uprising began, the typical gender dynamic in Egypt’s public space seems to have been thrown out with the regime. Some have said that as many as half of the protesters are women. Moreover, as I have watched Al Jazeera it seems clear that women of all walks of life, from young girls in jeans to older women wearing niqab, are taking part.  All are chanting, pumping their fists and, at times, battling with the riot police.

As feminist human rights activist Nawal El Saadawi told Democracy Now!, "women and girls are beside boys in the streets."

Do I have any idea what's next in Egypt? Of course not. The crowds I've seen in the news coverage on CNN and elsewhere have been mostly men, and a lot of these men are fundamentalist fanatics. But I think the presence of women alongside the men in the protests is heartening, and gives us some reason for optimism.

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Johnny's Turn to Cry

Boo fucking hoo.

As many of you have no doubt noticed -- what with the literally dozens of news stories and op-ed pieces on the subject that have appeared in the media in the last week or so -- incoming Speaker of the House John Boenher is a bit of a weeper. While some have scoffed at his public crying jags, quite a few people, including some who don't like his politics at all, have stepped forward to defend his right to cry.

Women have been especially quick to jump to his defense, at least when it comes to the crying thing. In the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus announced that she wanted "to celebrate the lachrymose speaker-to-be and hope that he helps make the world safe for public crying." Rachel Maddow devoted a whole segment of her show to a defense of his shows of emotion -- while pointing out that while Boehner has been moved to tears by the plight of American schoolchildren, his policies will inevitably result in massive budget cuts for education.

But the most, er, original interpretation of the whole crying thing comes from one commenter on NiceGuy's MGTOW [Men Going Their Own Way] forum, who sees this female defense of Boehner's  right to cry  as ... an evil female plot to make him look bad. As Phloridian put it in a recent posting:

By now many of us have become aware of the crying episodes of John Boehner who is soon to become the next Speaker of the House.

Women all over the media have been insisting that it is alright, but snickering about it covertly. The piece on 60 Minutes has virtually doomed any chance of becoming President and he is beginning to become a laughing stock.

This is why women are not to be trusted. They will encourage men to cry, and expose their vulnerabilities all in an effort to weaken the man. That's what's being done here and it sickens me.

Women are devious creatures indeed! It makes me want to cry.

Straight talk on homophobia ... on the Men's Rights subreddit??

Oh Reddit. Sometimes you make me so sad. Case in point: the 5,415 upvotes Redditors gave to this old dog of a story, a blatantly misogynist, and blatantly made-up, revenge-vasectomy tale from the "Best of Craigslist." Mitigating factors: the fact that some commenters correctly labeled the story a hateful fake; the 4,582 downvotes the story got (resulting in "only" 833 net upvotes).

But sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised. Even as I was contemplating the idiotic reaction to this idiotic vasectomy story, I ran across another headline: "Does homophobia affect straight males too?" Good question. Weirdly, the post was from the Men's Rights subreddit. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst, I took a look. Lo and behold, the post had actually inspired a real, honest discussion of the issues.

The OP set the stage with a few specific questions:

Have you ever hesitated to become close to another male for fear that it might be misinterpreted by someone else? Was there ever a time you resisted getting close to another male emotionally because you were afraid it might be seen as sexual? Does the fear of being called gay or a faggot ever change the way you behave in front of other males?

Among the answers there were of course a few jokes, including one that was actually sort of funny:

dontputsaltinyoureye 9 points

it has had a tremendous effect on my life. i am unable to wear my avril lavigne [shirt] in public due to the fear. WHY CAN I NOT WEAR MY AVRIL LAVIGNE SHIRT?!

And there was the requisite reference to Glee:

AGenericGoon 44 points

I am heterosexual, and watch/enjoy glee.

I will take this secret to the grave.

But there were also a number of bracingly honest comments, comments that would not be out of place on a feminist or LGBT message board. Some commenters talked about being gay-bashed -- even though they aren't gay. Others talked about how hetero-normative gender roles force men to keep quiet about their feelings:

TheBananaKing 27 points

Absolutely. all -normative behaviours box people in.

Straight guy here. ... there's an awful lot of restriction and anxiety in inter-male behaviour. You can't ever be sad or hurt - only angry. You can't extend comfort or affection towards another guy, except via humorous taunting / rivalry / aggression (eg play-fighting), unless you're very, very drunk. You have to do this kind of... reverse double-entendre the entire time, translating everything into John Wayne before you speak or act it, and back again to understand others. It's a pain in the ass.

Others offered more personal takes on what it's like to be a straight guy who's frequently taken to be gay:

ecartes 9 points

I talk with a lisp and dress really well. I'm also heterosexual.

Almost everyone I initially meet believes, nay, KNOWS, that I'm, ACTUALLY homosexual. It's weird, living with the thought that everyone I meet thinks I'm gay. Although I will never know fully the oppression that some gay people face, I feel like I've felt a lot of it just from being perceived as gay. ...

And perhaps the most unexpected of all:

soylentcoleslaw 33 points

If I acted on my normal impulses, I'd be extremely effeminate. I love cute things and cute clothes, I have subconscious feminine mannerisms, and I'd love a strong partner who makes me feel safe and who would take charge. I've never had a gay fantasy in my life. The thought of being with another man just doesn't do it for me, but given what I want and who I naturally am, I'm said on numerous occasions how much easier my love life would be if it did. As it is, if I want to attract someone new, I have to tamp all that down and put on my reasonably masculine face, and maybe if I'm lucky, I can reveal some of that side of myself gradually. But I can't be totally myself. Never. ... So I go on pretending to be manly sometimes and hopefully don't screw up.

Oh, sure, there were some answers that were bluntly homophobic -- redwood9 states plainly that "I just hate fags ... I hate all cocksuckers and those who bend over and take it in the ass" -- but they made up a tiny minority of the comments, and were generally downvoted.

So what's going on here? Has the Men's Rights Subreddit suddenly become a beacon of open-mindedness? Not exactly. Most of those commenting in the topic don't appear to be Men's Rights regulars, but Redditors who were drawn to the topic when it appeared on Reddit's main page. Here's what someone who is a MR regular had to say:

aetheralloy 0 points

"Bro's" and "bromance" is the term often used to shame men ... Women (feminists) in particular love to use it. ...

The really interesting question here isn't if it affects males, but why women are both extremely homophobic towards gay males while also willing to use them as emotional buddies.

Yeah, damn those feminist women and their hatred of gay men!

So, no group hug just yet. But it's good to see an outburst of good sense in a discussion forum that's often pretty backwards.

It's just a pity that the moderator of Men's Rights remains convinced "that there is an international, feminist, antimale conspiracy," as he puts it in the sidebar, and that the subreddit's slogan remains "Earning scorn from feminists since March 19, 2008."

Because, you know what? If you're a guy feeling boxed in by normative gender roles, some of the best people in the world to talk to about it are, you know, feminists.

That's not funny: Prison rape jokes

Looking back through older posts on the OneY subreddit on Reddit, a relatively new and very promising subreddit devoted to men's issues, I ran across a surprisingly civil and illuminating discussion of prison rape jokes. "Scarletbanner" opened the discussion by asking why there is a double standard with regard to these jokes:

As someone [who's] majoring in Criminal Justice, I hear comments when the topic of women being raped that it's "fucked up shit", yet when the subject turns to prison rape, it's a massive joke... from derogatory comments regarding sexual preference to "don't drop the soap". Between 43,000-140,000+ are raped each year ffs, with men (especially homosexuals) as the largest targeted group...

The typical Men's Rights take on this is that there's a double standard "because nobody gives a shit about men," as EddieVanHelsing put it in a comment there. This explanation doesn't take us very far, given that women are also raped in prison, and that people make jokes about that too.

Others in the discussion offered more incisive takes on the issue. puffinmuffin pointed out that

the problem is NO ONE CARES about people in jail. No one gives a shit about prisoner's rights. It really isn't an issue about raping, it's an issue about the fucked up system that no one cares enough to fix. Conditions in a lot of jails are downright abhorrent. Unsanitary environments, abuse, horrid bureaucracy ... But no one cares. They think, "Oh, well, they're criminals so they deserve whatever."

Archythearchivist, a self-described "XX, card carrying, baby eatin' feminist" suggested that the double standard

is perhaps more indicative of the way that masculinity is viewed. Male rape is funny (to some) because it subverts common narratives of male virility and roles. It's a "joke" where the main idea is that the world is a certain way, and only certain less masculine men would be raped. ... It bases itself on a world that supposedly does not exist, at least not for "real" men. ... These jokes should be considered as tasteless and hateful as any other rape joke.

But perhaps the most thoughtful comment came from AlphaCygni, who noted that there had recently been a post on Reddit

from a guy who had been sexually abused in a juvenile detention facility. Apparently there was systematic abuse and rape of young boys within this facility. What struck me the most about the [discussion of this on Reddit] was the number of individuals asking the victim why he didn't just bite the dicks of his attackers. It was a situation so far out of their mindset, they couldn't imagine how a person can be made to feel so powerless and scared that their primary focus is on staying alive rather than avoiding emasculation. Rape as a real possibility is something that just never seriously occurs to most men and, since they never think about, they can't place themselves in the victim's shoes. ...

All that being said, I do know some women who joke about rape. I know a rape victim who makes rape jokes. I know other rape victims who can't stand them. I think if more people could experience what it's like to be the object of unwanted, intense, sexual attraction by someone who is more powerful than you, there would be less rape jokes overall except by those who enjoy gallows humor. I think that if more men were allowed to openly share their rape experiences and men were to listen to these poor individuals and try to put themselves in their shoes instead of asking how they could allow such a thing to happen, or discounting their masculinity, prison rape jokes wouldn't be seen widely as funny.

The whole comment is worth reading; this is only an excerpt.

Prison rape is a disgrace, and jokes about it don't help. Because most of those in prison are male, it primarily affects men. But women in prison are more than twice as likely to be raped or abused by other inmates than men. And, as Scarletbanner alluded to in the comment that started off the discussion, gays (and transsexuals) face a much higher risk of rape in prison.

I'm preparing a "further reading" post on prison rape, but in the meantime if you're looking for more information on the subject, I suggest you start with the fact sheets on the web site of Just Detention International, a human rights advocacy group working to stop sexual abuse in detention facilities worldwide; the pictures I used to illustrate this post come from a media campaign by the group.

Manly pic: John Wayne, Metrosexual

You may remember a recent post of mine about that Michael-Cera-hating, Alpha-jock-loving Vanderbilt gal who wanted to see men emulate more manly role models, like John Wayne. Well, a friend of mine showed me something today, a picture from an old Spy magazine, that would rock her world, though not in a good way. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this stylish fellow with the nice gams and the weird male camel-toe is John Wayne. It's not a costume. He was on vacation.

Manly Links: In the fashion world, manliness is the new black

Tiring of mere boyish charm, the fashion world is apparently now obsessed with big burly MEN. Well,  not that big or burly, really. This is the fashion world, after all. I have no grand theory on this, so instead I'll just give you a batch of links:

Salon: The "menaissance" hits the runway: Muscles and chest hair make a comeback as anxiety peaks over masculine roles

Jezebel: Dudes are not immune to body fads

New York Times: New Fashion Trend: Manly men

If the cut and toned dudes on the runway are giving you body issues, guys, Marissa has some advice:

It's our job to bitch about Barbie, guys; it's your job to bitch about Ken.

Men's Rights Activists: "Don't tell me to 'man up,' you mangina!"

If you're ever looking for a pretty much sure-fire way to get a Men's Rights Activist to blow his top -- not that this is a particularly difficult feat -- just tell him to "man up." Indeed, the phrase is so infuriating to some MRAs that it causes them to spew typos like a mad man. "Few phrases in the world make an MRAs [sic] want to rip our [sic] their spines and beat people to a bloody pulp with them," writes TheZetaMale on his Zeta blog. "'Man Up' has to be one of them." Meanwhile, on the Men's Rights subreddit on Reddit, a fellow calling himself olythoreau seconds this emotion:

I noticed that people using the phrase "man up" or "be a man" really fucking pisses me off. A trigger of sorts. Fuck everyone who has any expectation that I or any other man perform masculinity to their liking. Yes, I'm a man, but I'm a fucking individual... and I'll perform masculinity any way I fucking please!

Thing is, I completely agree with this sentiment: telling a guy to "man up" is an obnoxious thing to do. Oh, sure, I sometimes agree with the message people are trying to send by using this phrase: stop whining about trivial shit and get on with your life.

Indeed, no group of people I've ever run across is so expert in turning molehills into Mt. Everest than the MRA crowd; they put the whiniest of "victim feminists" to shame. Do you really need to boycott half the companies in the Fortune 500* because they ran "misandrist" ads featuring doofus husbands failing in their doofusy attempts to cook dinner? Does the fact that some random hot chick finds you repellent really mean that evil women rule the world? Does the fact that some anti-MRA blogger calls a dumb old sexist cartoon a dumb old sexist cartoon really mean that "feminists and manginas .. would love to enforce a world where the very thought that men experience problems with women in relationships is taboo[?]"

So I can certainly understand the exasperation so many people feel towards the MRM, as the very existence of this blog attests. But the phrase "man up" is absolutely the wrong way to make these points, for precisely the reasons olythoreau outlines. And I'd add: the phrase is sexist as hell, suggesting implicitly that non-men and non-manly men are a bunch of, well, pussies. (It's telling that the most common alternate way to tell someone to "man up" is to tell him to "stop being a pussy.")

I'm hardly the only feminist-ish person to dislike the phrase "man up": Jezebel ran a story called "Stop Telling Men to 'Man Up'" the other day, noting the sudden ubiquity of the phrase in the political world, and making the point that the phrase implies "that the worst thing to be is not-a-man — weak, lacking in courage." (Of course, there are some MRAs who have no problem with the phrase "man up" for exactly this reason.)

But there is an irony to MRAs' distaste with the phrase. No, scratch that, a HUMONGOUS GIGANTIC FUCKING IRONY. While they complain about the phrase "man up" being applied to them, they are the first to question the masculinity of anyone who disagrees with them or who displays their masculinity in any other way than they do -- hence their almost ritualistic use of the gender-bending term "mangina" (NSFW link) to indicate anyone not-them. (For ample proof of this, just scroll down to the comments on virtually any post on this blog.) As cat points out in a comment on this very subject on this very blog:

The thing about MRA patriarchy foot soldiers is that they can't seem to get the old slogan of "the patriarchy hurts men too". First, they complain about not being able to express emotions and variety, then they turn around the first chance they get to bash the guys that do. You know, if you stopped doing all this gay-bashing gender shaming, you would be able to express your emotions verbally, dress in different colors, admit you enjoy musicals and baking, etc. You're slitting your own damned throats and blaming it on everyone but yourselves.

I'd only add one little caveat to this: the people attacking "manginas" aren't always the exact same people in the MRM who are complaining about being told to "man up." Indeed, TheZetaMale -- the first guy I quoted above -- actually took his fellow MRAs to task in an earlier post for using "shaming language like 'Faggot' and 'Emasculated Mangina.'" Unfortunately, his attitude is rarer than rare in the MRM.

So here's a challenge for any MRM who hates being told to "man up": take a stand against the term "mangina" and all the other obnoxious gender-questioning slurs that litter every message board or comment section populated by MRAs. Post a denunciation of this shit right here, in the comments to this post. Just human up, and do it.

NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL READERS: *I realize that they're not literally advocating boycotting half the companies in the Fortune 500. Sometimes I keed.

EDIT: Amanda Marcotte posted an excellent piece on how "man up" fucks stuff up for everybody. Check it out.

QuoteOTD: Un-macho, Un-macho Men

Enemy of all things manly?

Sometimes women actually live up to Men's Rights stereotypes. Consider Katherine Miller, a beta-male-taunting, Alpha-male idolizing, Vanderbilt-going, essay-writing gal who looks down her nose at all things wussy, from man-scarves to Joseph Gordon-Levitt: 

America’s elite has a problem. It’s skinny jeans and scarves, it’s Bama bangs and pants with tiny, tiny embroidered lobsters, it’s Michael Cera, it’s guys who compliment a girl’s dress by brand, it’s guys who don’t know who bats fourth for the Yankees. Between the hipsters and the fratstars, American intellectual men under the age of twenty-five have lost track of acting like Men—and these are our future leaders. We have no John Wayne, no Clint Eastwood. And girls? Girls hate it.

John Wayne? Clint Eastwood? Really? Couldn't you be a little less, well, cliche about your manly idols? Think outside the box. Think inside the ring. How about this guy? He's a snappy dresser with a hot retro style, he's a hit with the ladies, he's built like a fucking piledriver, and he could kick John Wayne's ass with one hand tied behind his back. (Or both, really, considering that John Wayne is, you know, dead.) Hell, the word Macho is even part of his name -- and plastered on his sunglasses to boot!

"Fag bashing," woman-hating, and Men's Rights myopia

One of the many failings of the Men's Rights Movement -- and "failing" really isn't a strong enough word for it -- is the way in which it ignores or denies real problems faced by boys and men that don't fit into its grand conspiracy theory in which all the ills faced by men are caused by evil women or by men corrupted and seduced, personally and/or politically, by said evil women.

One of these problems, and it's a big one, is the "fag bashing" that's rampant among boys of high school and college age. The atmosphere of abuse has a tragic effect on gay teenagers, as the recent rash of suicides illustrates all too poignantly. And it also has an enormous effect on boys who aren't gay but who have their masculinity challenged constantly by other boys.

While the MRM is obsessed with the notion of the smug, castrating (Western) woman, the entitled "princess" who looks down on decent, ordinary "beta" males and Nice Guys in favor of jerky, aggressive alpha males, it pays virtually no attention to the daily nightmares inflicted on boys by other boys (and men by other men) by "fag bashing."

Again, take the recent gay teen suicides. While they have inspired magazine cover stories and ongoing discussion on feminist blogs, the only MRA blog of any prominence that even mentioned any of the suicides, to the best of my knowledge, was the False Rape Society, which essentially used the suicide of Tyler Clementi as an excuse to bash feminism, as I pointed out in a recent post, and (as cat pointed out in a comment here) to turn the story of "brutality against a gay kid" into one "about how hard it is to be hetero."

While MRAs hate it if anyone calls them "fags" or otherwise criticizes their masculinity, they routinely deride any men they don't like as a "manginas," and various other terms to suggest they are not "real men." A few MRAs, like the folks at the blog No Ma'am, bash gays and lesbians quite openly; they've also, you may recall, labeled me a "poof" (among other things)

One of the smartest takes I've seen on the phenomenon of anti-gay bullying comes from male feminist blogger Hugo Schwyzer. In a recent post on "homosociality and homophobia," he puts the recent suicides in a broader context. Drawing on the research of sociologist  C.J. Pascoe, Schwyzer describes the ways in which "fag discourse" permeates American high school:

The discourse manifests itself in the almost incorrigible way in which young men label each other “fags” while seeking to avoid having that label applied to them. According to this discourse, fear of being called out publicly as a “fag” is the primary driving force behind what Pascoe cleverly calls the display of “compulsive heterosexuality.” ... Pascoe notes that among young men desperate to establish their masculine bona fides with their peers, what we see in American high schools amounts to compulsive, almost frantic efforts by young men to prove their manhood.

Anyone who has worked with adolescent boys knows how much anxiety many of them feel about their own masculinity. It’s not news to say that our sons, like their fathers before them, often have to endure or participate in physical or at least verbal violence that we tragically and falsely believe is necessary to transition into manhood. ... The real stigma in being labeled a “fag” doesn’t lie in the association with homosexuality, but with being seen as feminine.

There's no easy solution for a problem that is so pervasive, but Schwyzer argues that "perhaps the best way to “inoculate against cruelty”is ... to encourage strong non-sexual relationships between boys and girls at every age." Going back to a review he wrote of Michael Kimmel's book Guyland, a study of teen boys and young men, Schwyzer notes that

boys who have close female friends are much less likely to exhibit the worst and most destructive tendencies of the Guy Code. After all, the “guy code” is wrapped up in the notion that approval from other men ... is the most precious commodity a young man can pursue. Even heterosexual conquest is, ultimately, a means of gaining approval from the guys. Young men who have friends of both sexes are less likely to be held hostage to solely masculine approval; they can receive non-sexual validation from their female friends — and that validation is less likely to be connected to the brutal “sturdy oak” ethos of the Guy Code.

And they are less likely to participate in the relentless onslaught of cruelty towards their gay and lesbian peers.

These are lessons that the Men's Rights Movement -- or whatever rises up to supplant it -- will have to learn if it wants to be a movement that really benefits boys and men, straight and gay alike, instead of indulging regressive, self-defeating and often dangerous fantasies of manhood that demonize "fags" and women alike.