There’s been a lot happening on North American campuses with regards to the evolving debate regarding consent, sexual assault, and freedom to discuss gender issues. As a result I have incorporated related information into several pre-existing posts in this blog, including for example:
Earlier today I read a new article entitled ‘Diagnosed with Liberalism‘. It addresses the peculiar behaviour of social justice warriors (‘SJW’), with special mention being made of the infamous case of ‘The Mattress Girl‘.
Reading that article prompted me to create a new post just dealing with that case, and with some other similar incidents. All of which, it would seem, have either been proven to be false or are widely considered to be highly dubious. I think I am also right in saying that in each case legal action is being pursued by the male accused against the relevant university.
1. Emma Sulkowicz (aka ‘Mattress Girl or ‘Mattress Mule’) – Columbia University, New York
Columbia student: I didn’t rape her (3 February 2015) One of many articles about female university student, Emma Sulkowicz, who carried a mattress all around her campus after claiming she had been raped.
The young man accussed of rape, Paul Nungesser, later sued Columbia University and lost that case (see related Reddit discussion thread here). Further developments are anticipated.
August 2014 saw the publication of a number of articles discussing an unfortunate development in the gender debate that has been labelled ‘ironic misandry’.
Misandry is, of course, the irrational fear and loathing of men. These articles spawned the #MaleTears hashtag on Twitter, as well as the production and marketing of a range of products on the theme, such as coffee mugs and t-shirts.
I loathe the concept of ironic misandry and see it as yet another symptom of an ideology that has gone seriously off the rails. Here’s why:
1. Ironic misandry is entirely at odds with the credo of ‘do unto others’
According to Wikipedia, “the Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim, ethical code or morality that essentially states either of the following:
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated
This concept describes a reciprocal, or two-way, relationship between one’s self and others that involves both sides equally, and in a mutual fashion.”
Many of us think of ‘do unto others’ as being a Christian credo, but the same or similar phrase is common to many religions and cultures across history. That’s no accident. ‘Do unto others’ is a noble and eminently sound ideal that would be understood and supported by most reasonable people.
Ironic misandry runs contrary to how I want to treat others or be treated myself. Ironic misandry does not represent how I want my friends and family to be treated, and I don’t think it’s how most women want their male friends or family members to be treated. And don’t even try to suggest that mocking men is different because … patriarchy.
And in terms of the community generally, how would most women would react were this concept to be turned back onto them in the form of ‘ironic misogyny’? But more on that later.
2. Ironic misandry isn’t ironic
The definition of ‘irony’ is:
the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.
But the indisputable fact is that real life feminists don’t believe or act in the opposite manner, i.e. treat men in a loving and respectful manner. Look at my posts on feminism, feminist anger, and feminist censorship for examples of what feminists say about men and how they treat them. Heck, just look at comments by Clementine Ford in her paper listed above, or Samantha Allen in this article.
Clementine Ford describes the “I bathe in male tears” logo and associated paraphernalia as “one glorious phrase and a handful of beautiful associated memes“. She goes on to state that “images such as the above pillory the buffoonery of the MRA movement while giving increasingly stressed out and undermined women a means of laughing at the enemy.”
So despite the fact that feminists are always telling us how they don’t hate men, Clementine has no qualms about referring to us as “the enemy“. (Oh I get it, just joking, right?)
Ironic misandry isn’t rocking the boat with regards to the status quo – it’s reinforcing it.
The proponents of ironic misandry consider it first and foremost a humorous invention. I beg to differ. As would, I would suggest, most mature adults concerned about social justice and the welfare of men and boys. In fact pretty much anyone with an ounce of empathy, a conscience, and a brain in their head. Either way, you can’t change sexist bigotry into something else just by claiming it is funny. As they say, “a monkey in silk is a monkey no less“.
Regardless of the selective blindness of feminists, many men and boys are suffering and their tears are very real. For example, we have just experienced the suicide of comic genius Robin Williams, at a time when the suicide rate for men is substantially greater than for women. Ditto for homelessness, etc.
3. Ironic misandry erodes mutual respect between the genders
Ironic misandry removes even further respect between the genders, when mutual respect is an essential ingredient in moving onwards and upwards with the gender debate. We need to be doing everything we can to build respect not eroding it further. Ironic misandry and other feminist devices like it will condemn us to many more years of lobbing grenades from trench to trench instead of working together to address a multitude of issues of shared concern.
Given that that the original ‘Slate’ article has been addressed by others, I’ll conclude this post with some comments in relation to the paper by Clementine Ford which I found to be particularly noisome:
MRAs will have you believe that misandry is: a) rampant within the feminist community and b) capable of causing equal if not greater harm to men than millennia of oppression and disadvantage could ever possibly do to women.
As I indicated earlier misandry IS rampant within the feminist community, as is feminist denial about that fact. I challenge you to assume a male identity and go online and try to post reasonable comments in debates regarding gender, and see how you are treated. How you are are routinely abused. How your posts are removed. How often you are banned, excluded, denied a voice.
Oh, and by the way Clementine, didn’t you/your editor close your article to comments so very quickly once the expected support failed to materialise? Let’s see what reader Jane was able to contribute before the shutters came down on your sideshow:
Baffled to why teenage girls don’t describe themselves as feminists? Re-read this article and imagine yourself as a teenage girl looking for relevance to her life. Instead of a reasoned argument, inspiration or anything that might be impacting her now or in the future, Clem “click-bait” Ford delivers a short rant on why it’s fun to ridicule certain people on the internet. Sure it might be a “release valve” to Ford who must have to deal with some crazy nutters on the internet but if this is the only article they read on feminism this week while asking, “Am I a feminist?” then I can understand why many, a few or even one young woman might reply, “If this is feminism, then no.”
Feminists just love to exaggerate the position of MRA with assertions like “MRA claim that men are more oppressed than women”, “MRA would have you believe that everything bad that happens to men is because of women”, and so on, and on. Can Clementine point us towards even one reference where MRA have stated that misandry can cause more harm than all the oppression and disadvantage ever experienced by women? Of course, she can’t – because no MRA ever made such a statement.
“Misogyny and misandry are treated by MRAs as interchangeable things, with the latter being widely viewed as ‘just as bad, if not worse’.”
No, MRA treat these as two distinct things. The fact that some MRA might consider ‘misandry’ to be worse, is due only to the level of denial and hypocrisy within the feminist movement (regarding their inherent misandry), and the resultant chasm between how feminists demand to be treated and how they treat others.
“Feminism seeks to dismantle the patriarchy, thus liberating both women and men from its suffocating clutches.”
“Humour is a vital tool for feminists lest we lose our marbles completely when dealing with the irrational and factually incorrect bleatings of people who, among other things, argue that sexual violence statistics have been made up by feminist run government agencies to oppress man’s sexual nature.”
Clementine, some examples please of statements made by MRA that are “factually incorrect”, or where MRA have claimed that sexual violence statistics were made up … “to oppress man’s sexual nature”. MRA have highlighted inaccuracies and distortions within statistics related to domestic violence, sexual assault, and other issues. I invite you to examine and comment upon the many examples that are provided in my blog posts on these topics. MRA raise these concerns only in the interest of enabling informed public debate based on a balanced and accurate portrayal of these important social issues.
4. Gender reversal: What happens when a man attempts ironic misogyny?
In 2010 Paul Elam published an article entitled ‘October is the 5th annual Bash a Violent Bitch Month‘ in response to an earlier article in the feminist journal ‘Jezebel’. Although Paul has always asserted his article was satirical, years later it is still cited by feminists as proof of the alleged hideous misogyny of the men’s rights movement. A well-written discussion of Paul’s article can be found here.
Did feminists extend the same patience and understanding towards Paul’s or Roosh’s ironic offerings, to which they themselves felt entitled? Absolutely not, and in Roosh’s case both he and his supporters were subjected to a global campaign of harassment and threats of violence. Yes, the very same behaviour that feminists angrily assert that men oppress women with. Anyway read both this article and this one, and you can form your own view.
Moving forward to June 2016, and Australian TV personality Eddie McGuire chose to offer up a little of his own brand of irony. Team feminism went ballistic. And on and on they went:
In this article Irish feminists reject the notion of misandry (October 2017)
“It is impossible to have an “ingrained prejudice” against men when we live in a world made by men for men. In a patriarchal society, the idea of men who are oppressed by virtue of their gender could never be anything but a joke.“
“Eight women create an internet utopia where they discuss the most intimate details of their lives, the most righteous, and the most hilarious. Dating, camming, work, love, and how to be an out and proud feminist. But when one of them disappears after being attacked everything changes. #KillAllMen suddenly moves from joke to reality.”
Whilst most of them labour on in denial, the fact is that feminists can be particularly spiteful and relentless in the manner in which they attack those who question or criticise their jaundiced view of the world. Although not according to this feminist:
Feminists are also not averse to turning on allies, particularly the men who openly support them (for examples see 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5/ 6/ 7/ 8/ 9). Wow, don’t they just love dishing it out?
Now as I mentioned in the “About this blog” post, women who publicly defend men and men’s rights issues are especially loathed by feminists. Click on this hyperlink and read an example of some conservative women who wound up with targets on their backs in this manner.
And two more examples of women targeted by feminists are Erin Pizzey and Catherine Hakim:
Erin Patria Margaret Pizzey is an English family care activist and a novelist. She became internationally famous for having started one of the first women’s refuges (called women’s shelters in the U.S.) in the modern world, Chiswick Women’s Aid, in 1971, the organisation known today as Refuge. Pizzey has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because of her stance that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are equally as capable of violence as men. Further details about Erin here and here
Catherine Hakim is a British sociologist who specializes in women’s employment and women’s issues. She has worked in British central government, and as a Senior Research Fellow in the London School of Economics. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. She has published extensively on labour market topics, women’s employment, sex discrimination, social and family policy, as well as social statistics and research design. She has published over 100 articles in academic journals and edited collections, and over a dozen textbooks and research monographs. She is best known for developing preference theory and her criticism of many feminist assumptions about women’s employment.
Apparently even worse still are women who not only criticize feminism, but do so on the basis of its overt misogyny towards women. This is discussed in a post by a well-known female MRA, Alison Tieman.
And yet at the same time, feminists have a deeply unenviable propensity to quickly play the ‘frightened and oppressed victim’ card should the tables be turned (aka ‘cry bully’).
Perhaps the most common way in which feminists lash out is through employing what is known as shaming tactics. At other times, though their response can include tactics such as online bullying, stalking and threats, and/or the lodgement of false or exaggerated claims to Twitter/ISP’s/etc in order to have the accounts of their targets closed.
In another post I talk about a recent Australian example involving the ‘Sunrise’ TV show. In one of the media articles that ensued, Michael Lallo suggested that only feminist women posting online attracted threats of violence/death … with of course the threats being made by men.
Well Michael, time to open your eyes and wake up … and you can start by checking out these sources:
To Milo or not to Milo? (21 February 2017) How the left neutralised a very annoying thorn in their side. A story rich in hypocrisy given what various feminists/SJW have previously said & done & walked away from without penalty.
Samantha Allen is a feminist writer – here is a recent example of her work. Another article in which she proudly states that she hates men is discussed here (source article available here)
Those of you who have spent time in Asian countries might have noticed a lot of western women reading books in cafes and looking somewhat bored. In various web sites and discussion forums one may read their plaintive cries about feeling “invisible” (e.g. Japan/China) and having trouble finding guys who will give them the attention they feel they is warranted.
It would appear that most western guys in Thailand, for example, have little time for western women. Instead they appear to prefer the company of more feminine, laidback (and yes, often more attractive) Thai ladies. And cynics note that I am referring to Thai ladies in general, and not simply bar-girls.
I even read a post the other day where a female expat stated that she was tired of western men in Thailand “disrespecting” western women in the way they pointedly ignore them. Tragic, just tragic.
In my blog post ‘I thought women were meant to be more empathetic‘ I talk about the issue of western women in Thailand flaunting local dress standards. Is this ‘look at me! look at me!’ behaviour in response to the ‘attention deficit mode’ that many western women appear to descend into within days of arrival in Asia? Or is it simply a reflection of a broader attitude of ‘my need to indulge myself trumps your right to have local social mores respected’?
Why don’t Western men in Asian countries lift their game and jump at the opportunity of approaching western women? Oh wait, they have already tried that back home and were rewarded with looks of disdain or contempt – or even accused of harassment. I can see this is going to be a tough sell.
So what then, you may ask, is the current situation in western countries such as USA, Canada, the UK, and Australia?
Well in the West men are confused, for they are routinely dragged over the coals for alternately either paying too much attention to women, or not enough. Or about the right amount but they are doing it wrong. Oh, and the goalposts regarding the ‘right’ way are continuously being moved.
On that first point, readers would be aware of the surfeit of publicity regarding the unwanted looks and attention that women attract from men, and how such behaviour threatens and disgusts them (example here).
And then every now and then there is an incident that serves as a lightning rod and focus for demands for action. Let’s look at the example of THAT infamous New York street harassment video …
Horrifyingly common act against women exposed by text trend (26 October 2023) OK, so this one isn’t about talking – it’s about texting. But your face will be in your palm in 3-2-1. Say anything bad about women and you’re not just a misogynist – you’re frightening! Nothing even vaguely uncomplimentary is said about women … presumably perfect already.
Woman’s note to ‘cute’ plane guy goes viral (4 July 2023) “The bold flier told her followers that the sky-high story was proof that people should go after what they want”. No, not “people” … just women.
Twitter thread concerning a girl attending a gym who claims some fellow is watching her. Read the thread and you’ll note that the two main female characters featured in it – complaining about being harassed/objectified – both have OnlyFans accounts #FacePalm. Here’s the original MSM item (23 January 2023).
The Victorian Government (Australia) has issued a video highlighting the horror of women receiving unwanted attention on public transport, and – surprise surprise – calling on men to step in and deal with other men (9 April 2019). ‘Independent Man’ responds to this rather well with his own video.
Of course governments never step in and ask women to deal with other women who transgress one ‘rule’ or another, err like sexually abusing students for example. Because that would be hateful or misogynistic or something bad. Or something.
Unsafe in the City – A Tale of Five Cities, by Plan International (October 2018) This pro-feminist ‘study’ unsurprisingly completely ignores not just all the people who manage to remain safe in the city, but also both male victimisation and female violence.
“Why are the events like the mass groping at Cologne used as an example of how immigrant men pose a threat to “our women”, yet white Australian men acting in a similar fashion at a car show is dismissed as “boys being boys”?”
And this with no evidence provided – aside from two vague anecdotal accounts – that any man laid a hand on a woman at Summernats 2017. No mention, for example, of any actual police reports. In fact, I have been advised that in the entire 30 year history of Summernats there have been only two reported sexual assaults. And yet this being, allegedly, in a “similar fashion” to the outrage that occurred on NYE in Cologne? Talk about a reach!
These two pictures were both taken at Summernats, guess which one featured in Clementine’s article?
Breast enlargement remains the most popular procedure (UK) and in the United States too (2013). In fact if you want a good chuckle then google on ‘feminism and breast augmentation’ and see the fur fly as feminists who have had their chests packed with silicon try to rationalise their decision (“I did it for myself, really”). Of course you did.
See the readers comment by ‘Okrahead’ about the spandex ‘lady’ in the gym in this article
The new math of campus (5 February 2010) Aw gee, not enough guys to go around on campus … and that was 2010 and there’s even less guys on campus now! ROTFL! Take a bow, feminism
Men and women are individuals whose position with regards to interacting with other individuals is influenced by many variables including age, relationship status, sexual orientation, cultural background, etc. There is no ‘one size fits all’.
Men are criticized both for approaching women, and for not approaching women. Some women live for male attention, others want none, with the remainder happy to engage at the times, and in the manner, of their choosing. Oh, and an individual woman’s position may change on a daily basis and/or depending upon the perceived attractiveness of the male who approaches her.
As women do not hold up signs advising of their own particular preferences, even well-meaning men – who comprise the overwhelming majority – are in a constant state of uncertainty, unease and frustration. Maybe if all women could organise themselves onto the same page, and circulate universal guidelines, things might be different. But we all know that’s not going to happen.
Feminists stoking the fire of misunderstanding and paranoia between the genders sure doesn’t help things, and only serves to propel ever more men towards a MGTOW lifestyle.
Elsewhere in this blog you might be interested in reading:
