Hat tip to Psychonomics. TW for brief mentions of rape.
Cracked has recently presented an article about the five ways modern men are trained to hate women, as part of its latest bid to be Feministe’s more ableist, more prone to dick jokes little brother. Seriously, what is it with Cracked and social justice these days? I can only figure that they’ve worked out that laughing at misogyny is funnier than “hey hey guys you know what’s funny? SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE RAPED. Ohmigod I crack myself up.”
Unfortunately, unlike commendable articles such as 8 TV Ads That Hate Women and 7 Popular ‘Chick Flicks’ That Secretly Hate Women, this Cracked article tried for “feminist” and ended at “horribly misandric.” I really hate picking on David Wong; he is clearly trying, and criticizing people who are clearly trying kind of feels like kicking a three-legged puppy struggling to walk. But nevertheless he is spewing some really stupid shit! So here goes.
The first and most obvious problem with this article is that he keeps referring to “men” when he really means “straight sexist men,” which is a subset of men. While feeling entitled to a hot girl is very common sexist man behavior, it certainly doesn’t apply to (say) the shy guy who assumes that the girl who asks him out is joking, or the promiscuous dude who takes most rejections with a shrug and a “your loss.” People are different, and one’s anti-sexist language needs to be careful not to reinforce that sort of stereotypes.
The rest of the problems with the list I’ll go over point-by-point.
5. We Were Told That Society Owes Us A Hot Girl.
Here, I will admit that Wong has a point. A whole fuckload of media that star men and have nothing to do with romance end with the hero getting a hot girl at the end for being awesome. It’s simple Success Object: if you are successful enough at Thing X (whether X is earning money, playing in a rock band, or killing Nazi zombies), you should be able to earn a woman as a prize. You can even see the logic here kind of: I mean, everyone likes rich people and rock stars and dead Nazi zombies, right?
But, of course, dating does not work that way. There are lots of reasons that someone doesn’t get a partner that are no one’s fault and do not make one a bad person, ranging from shyness to not knowing many available people to a physical appearance disliked in one’s particular subculture to simple bad luck. And similarly there are many stupid assholes who still manage to get relationships (often with other stupid assholes). But the thing is, among certain sexist people, not getting the thing which you clearly deserve tends to lead you to hate the people who are so misappropriating the deserved things.
4. We’re Trained From Birth to See You As Decoration
This one is also not bad (except for an eyeroll statement about the difference between men and women is that women occasionally don’t think about sex). It’s also not particularly masculist, so I shall only discuss it briefly. Society tends to sexually objectify women; therefore, people of all genders tend to bring up women’s appearances even in situations in which it is not relevant, and to get positively angry when women aren’t sexy enough.
3. We Think You’re Conspiring With Our Boners To Ruin Us
Aaaaaand here’s where Picard starts facepalming.
Seriously? Way to erase low-libido or asexual men, dude. Just because you are constantly horny does not mean that men are constantly horny. And, yes, I think this section is a high-libido/low-libido issue, not a men/women issue. (Although what I have read about trans people on hormones suggests that it is possible that testosterone makes you hornier, the science is far from in, and at any rate lots of women are hornier than lots of men.)
I am fairly high-libido. I say I’m thinking with my clit! I get horny at inappropriate times! I really really want sex with partners I know are bad for me! I occasionally get horny when I don’t intellectually want an orgasm and have to put up with some annoyed masturbation in order to get work done! I was also born with a vagina.
(Also, dude, people with vaginas masturbate in public sometimes. If you’re clever you can rub your legs together in a way such that your jeans stimulate your clit and have a little orgasm and no one will even notice.)
2. We Feel Like Manhood Was Stolen From Us At Some Point
Darth Penis. Reaaaaaally.
Okay, look. Let me say this in the clearest way possible. Those urges to show your penis to people or hit something or light things on fire or jump off high objects or pee in public? Those aren’t necessarily evolutionary urges! It could be because our culture believes that men are supposed to be violent and reckless and risk-taking, and that proper masculinity (at least one form thereof) involves lots of explosions and lighting things on fire!
I actually don’t have that many objections to the “some forms of masculinity involve certain behaviors that are inimical to civilization, and therefore escapist media in which those forms of masculinity are possible is popular, and also some sexist men think that women stole getting to do awesome manly things from them” line of reasoning. I just don’t think those forms of behavior are evolutionarily hardwired in all men everywhere for all time.
…Man, everyone likes lighting things on fire, I don’t think that’s a dude thing, I think that’s a people thing.
1. We Feel Powerless
No. No. No no no no no no no no.
Queer men exist. Asexual men exist. Men who think sex is fun enough but all things considered would really rather play Magic exist. You CANNOT have a model of how men work that only applies to men who fit our culture’s idea of How Male Sexuality Works.
This is the Beast end of the Knight/Beast dichotomy. “All men indiscriminately want sex with everyone everywhere, all men continually exercise self-control to keep them from harassing and sexually assaulting and raping women, all men will fuck any warm hole that comes to hand, and if they try really hard they can pretend to be a Knight but there’s always the Beast lurking within.” No. That is not how male sexuality works. It isn’t necessarily predatory or violent or rapey or indiscriminate– any more than female sexuality is.
He then goes to a list of human achievements that exist because boobs. Apparently war is about raping women. Of course the myths of glory and dulce et decorum est have nothing to do with it– not to mention the horrific view “men are soldiers because free rape privileges!” gives us of men.
Seriously, this is SO misandric. Apparently men will not be motivated to do anything unless you bribe them with pussy for it like a five-year-old given a cookie to be quiet at the mall. The joy of creation, the rush of adventure, the endless hell of insecurity that nothing you achieve will ever prove wrong, even the desire for a fuckload of money in the bank– nope. Men know not these things! Men do great things because pussy. That’s it.
Simultaneously, he’s managed the dubious feat of making his feminist article incredibly misogynistic. DID YOU KNOW that women aren’t great architects? Or sports stars? Or musicians? Or actors? I mean, men only do it because they’re bribed with pussy to do so. But women can get cock whenever they like! So they really have no motivation to pursue art if they can already get laid. (Presumably queers don’t achieve great things either.)
Darth Penis. Christ.
About ozyfrantz
“Also, dude, people with vaginas masturbate in public sometimes. If you’re clever you can rub your legs together in a way such that your jeans stimulate your clit and have a little orgasm and no one will even notice.”
As I commented when reading this, the only person I know who’s masturbated in public is a chick. And she didn’t do it by “rubbing her legs together” either.
@Monkey “but it seems like they’re in their “sensitive new age guy” phase, in which the writer is trying to be penitent about his own sexism/misogyny but comes off as saying “every other guy Is misogynist but me, because I admit it.” in other words kinda like Hugo Shwyzer.”
This, very this. It’s like they’re addressing their own pathological view of women by projecting it onto everyone else.
It should be noted that David Wong has admitted on the forums that he tends to vote Republican more often than not.
I liked the article and disagree with some of your statements (I don’t really think he should have made a ton of asides solely to include lines about asexual men; plus I don’t think the war line was about rape), but you do have a point about the overall tone of the article (and the final bit about how being a heterosexual man = achieving great things for the sake of boobs, though that may have been just questionable wording and not really what he meant). The “men do THIS, men do THAT” tone can be brushed off as comedic exaggeration, but if someone else in a different articled wrote something along the lines of “women do x and y” I would likely have issues with it, so clearly there’s a double standard at work preventing me from noticing these things the same way that he didn’t notice it.
Joeina: I hated that McKinney article. He attempts to pierce the argument that men who criticize sexism are just “trying to get laid” with… Virgin-shaming, which surely misses the point.
Then there’s this:
“‘Misandry’ has to be one of the most efficient words in the English language. In just one word it condenses the self-denying assholery of ‘I’m not racist, but…’ with the misogyny of ‘All women are bitches,’ throwing in a free persecution-complex bonus, because it’s not like the user was going anywhere.”
W T F.
Monkey: I admit that you’re right – he’s pretty heavy on the “misandrists”, and especially the whole “you’re all a bunch of whiny virgins”.
I guess I gave him more leeway. Like I said about the beginning of the movement of gender-egalitarianism and intelligent discourse on male-ness into the mainstream. If a person with some burgeoning feminist leanings is only ever exposed to the word “misandry” when MRAs or MGTOWs showed up to spit their usual crap? For a long time, I felt similarly. The conversation isn’t over, but I feel happy that its being discussed in places that it previously would have been unheard of.
I read this article and I was completely dumbfounded. I felt really misunderstood and very frustrated that people could actually take this thing seriously. It constantly disappoints me how many men (and women) think that denouncing men or masculinity is somehow a path to virtue, is somehow enlightened and is anything but childish.
I really am annoyed by the constant claim that society hates women. Society does not hate women, it does not hate men. We have an imperfect society, we are humans. Hyperbole does no one any good.
This is what annoys me about things such as rape culture, misogyny and misandry, they are preseneted as the norm in society, rather than the a subversive streak in our culture. Even when people may have sexist attitudes they do not realise, on the whole the average person believes in fairness and gender equality and acts with a good heart to the men and women in their lives.
Oh. My. God.
How much I hate the WE he uses. It’s the Hugo-Schwyzer WE. WE do this, WE do that and WE should totally stop that. By all the gods, how much I hate it when some man thinks he is eligible to claim authority over the rest of us and can freely extrapolate from himself to the rest of us. Granted, he is not telling us how we should stop trying to blow other people up, but that does not make it any less obnoxious.
@pretentiousbot5000:
“It should be noted that David Wong has admitted on the forums that he tends to vote Republican more often than not.”
What does that have to do with it?
______________________________
I think David Wong has a tendency to write articles in the (misplaced) confidence that he is accurately representing both sides, and usually just ends up pissing both of them off. I’m pretty sure he’s done the same with articles addressing both Christians and atheists.
Actually exactly reversed, but thank you for reading carefully! /sarcasm
THIS.
“…Man, everyone likes lighting things on fire, I don’t think that’s a dude thing, I think that’s a people thing.”
Yes. Wise critters run the other way. Especially the flammable ones.
ok that smiley didn’t come out the way I expected…
Blackhumor: “Actually exactly reversed but thank you for reading carefully. (Sarcasm)”
No, if an article like this were done with women as the subject their heads would be on a platter.
It’s sexist both ways no matter how much you believe otherwise. Thank you for proving my point. (Sarcasm)
Ozy,
as for men only doing stuff for pussy. That’s certainly an exaggeration that makes a possibly valid point about the distribution of male motivation a caricature. See here -
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/
China’s a big laboratory in that respect today: The Mosuo tribe is a functioning matriarchy, and, according to a Brazilian author, who lived with them a while, a part of the female social dominance seems to be about giving out sex rather freely. They’re, interestingly, apparently observing flirting patterns not unfamiliar to Westerners (re: eg displays of playful dominance by males), but the women run the exchange, offering their sexuality without too many strings attached in “walk-by-marriages”. Allegedly, according to the anthropologist, men there are happy, but appear to lack ambition. On the other hand, that also describes significant parts of the male population in other, very Patriarchical cultures, like the Middle East, or Africa, where women appear to work and provide most of the (low) family income. For the non-Mosuo Chinese population, 97% of unmarried people there are allegedly already lower class men. Will they become aggressive, or creative, or withdraw? Currently, interestingly, and also contradicting the basic notion of the article, they appear to be happy to withdraw with porn (to the degree accessible and permissible in China) and video games.
I suppose we’ll only ever know the relative motivational importance of increased sexual access for each sex/gender if eveyone has access to all the sex they desire and no one is suffering from any scarcity. Apart from that (unlikely) situation, I doubt we’ll ever be able to tell. But I don’t think that “men being differently motivated by sexual scarcity than women” is a hypothesis that should be ex-ante discarded simply because it’s not a priori politically correct.
I appreciate David Wong for trying. I do notice that a lot of men with good intentions who have probably not studied up much on feminist theory and such, often make the mistake of “all men are like” and it’s usually some form of “boys will be boys” excuse. and, no, sorry, but FAIL.
Also, I’ve always had a problem with the term “misandry” (much like the term reverse racism) it implies an equivalency to the term misogyny. and the two are just not equivalent. There is a difference to someone, an individual, or maybe articles or reports in the media making stupid stereotypes, vs INSTITUTIONAL, ECONOMIC and HISTORICALLY based prejudice (usually always coupled with elements of control and violence).
Refer to Suzanne Pfarr’s article “The Common Elements of Oppression”
http://ericstoller.com/blog/2006/03/31/the-common-elements-of-oppressions/
And this article from the perspective on race and the term “reverse racism”
A Look at the Myth of Reverse Racism
http://raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1024893033,80611,.shtml
@Nic
Using the word ‘misandry’ doesn’t imply an equivalence with ‘misogyny’, but a similarity. That said there is institutional and historically based prejudice against men (economic is another issue that I’m unsure of, I haven’t really looked into that much), very heavily coupled with control and violence. The patriarchy is structurally misandric, with negative views about men leading to negative outcomes for men – the fact that the top of society is dominated by men doesn’t demonstrate or imply that men are not subject to institutional prejudice.
What Birch said.
I find that some of the main people that employ that false equivalency are folks looking for a chance to unleash preprogrammed argument. Acknowledging hatred or disregard for men is not an inherent attempt to say its equal to what happens to women. And besides I thought this wasn’t about who has it worse
As well, I think that very little of institutional *sexism* is actually based on *misogyny*, unless pedestalization is based on misogyny. Stuff like keeping women out of combat (or even, believe it or not, not giving them the right to vote) were defended on the grounds of “protect the womenfolk,” not “women are evil.”