James Fell lists a few of the people who rub him the wrong way.
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Haters gonna hate, and douchers gonna douche. I’m gonna hate on douche bags.
Darth Vader didn’t know he was a douche bag. If you can fight the sadness and make it through episodes two and three you’ll see Anakin Skywalker self-justify his journey to the dark side. Humans are good at that sort of thing; everyone is the hero of his or her own story. Neither Darth nor General Zod nor the Crimson Jihad guy who wanted to nuke Miami in True Lies, nor even the bunny boiler in Fatal Attraction thought they were doing anything wrong. They feel the circumstances make their actions justifiable.
Instead of self-justification, you must instead engage in self-reflection and realize how your actions negatively affect others, and feel empathy for the suffering they experience. Do unto others, you know?
Beyond that, let’s make a list of examples just for fun.
YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR CHILD “PURE” AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS
Dr. Jack Wolfson, a cardiologist in Arizona, said this: “I’m not going to sacrifice the well-being of my child. My child is pure.”
Okay, that doesn’t seem so bad, wanting to keep your child “pure.” But pure from what, and at what cost?
What he wants to keep his child pure from is the most important health advance in human history (clean water perhaps notwithstanding). He believes the bullshit anti-science about vaccines and shrugs off social responsibility. When asked about how his unvaccinated children endanger the lives of others he said, “It’s not my responsibility to be protecting their child.” When discussing a girl with leukemia and how people like him put her life in jeopardy he said, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place.”
Yeah, there is a reason why this one is first on the list.
YOU’RE ALL ABOUT BEING AN ALPHA MALE
Questing for self-improvement = awesome.
Embracing bad science to be someone you’re not coupled with a desire to be dominant over others = not awesome.
If you need more convincing of how the term is toxic and breeds douchebaggery, read my piece The Myth of the Alpha Male.
YOU PROUDLY PROCLAIM YOURSELF AN “ANTI-FEMINIST”
You don’t need to wave the feminist flag. It’s understandable if you want to appear neutral on this issue because some just don’t want to get mixed up in the fray. In this piece for AskMen I talked about how “feminism” is an F-bomb that I don’t often drop because it’s a loaded term for a lot of people.
But why come out as an “anti-feminist?” Answer: you’re a douche bag.
It is my experience that if you proclaim yourself anti-feminist, you are indeed a douche bag, and I would know, because Twitter. And because this piece I wrote for TIME Magazine about men’s rights activists. The butthurt flowed freely, with misogynistic rants hurled at me for weeks. The number of Twitter users who put “anti-feminist” in their bios was high; not all were male.
I respect people’s right stay out of this battle, because it gets ugly, and you probably don’t need the stress. Just don’t be on the wrong side of it, or: douche bag.
YOU USE SEX TO GAIN ADVANTAGE
This is something any gender can be guilty of. I don’t want to engage in too much stereotyping, so I’ll just say that if you’re using someone’s sexual desire as a tool to control them, that’s not nice. It’s a douche bag thing to do.
YOU SHAME PEOPLE OVER THEIR BODY TYPE
I know fitness pros who believe shame is an effective strategy for motivating people to exercise and eat right, despite the fact that the research shows it has the exact opposite of the intended effect. Shaming people for being thin or overly fit or muscular is no better.
Stop it.
YOU CAN’T LET SOMEONE GO
No one owes you their presence.
Whether it’s wanting them to stop and talk to you on the street, at the gym, in a bar, or if it’s wanting them to see you again after a first date, or come back to you after a breakup, you can’t make someone stay. You shouldn’t expect them to stay.
Not being able to take no for an answer is harassment. And douchebaggery.
YOU THINK YOU CAN DICTATE WHO SHOULD MARRY WHOM
“Why can’t they just be happy with a civil union?”
There is an argument that gay people should not be allowed to marry, but will concede to marriage light where they get all the legal benefits, but can’t call it being married. People can’t be husband and husband or wife and wife, because tradition, or what some old book says, or something.
Think on this: being anything other than heterosexual has been held in contempt since time immemorial. People have been imprisoned, executed, shamed, beaten, denied parental rights, driven to suicide, bullied, “converted” … all for not wanting to adhere to what some see as the accepted norms of man + woman = only suitable pairing.
So, you take a historically maligned group of people then tell them they can’t officially marry the person they love, furthering the belief that they are somehow lesser beings because their love isn’t legitimate enough to qualify for marriage.
Like with feminism, you don’t have to be a supporter, but don’t get in the way of progress either. That’s douchey.
YOU EAT PALEO AND DO CROSSFIT AND YOU CAN’T SHUT UP ABOUT IT
Okay, maybe not total douchebaggery, but if you’re doing all three of these things then please know that you might be just a little bit annoying.
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Originally appeared at BodyForWife
Follow James on Facebook and Twitter.
Photo: Flickr/DieselDemon
Self reflecting
There are millions of men in this world that are very real victims of high conflict women and family courts. Loving fathers that have been alienated from children. Not all of these men hate women, but their fight for equality is a very real thing. if you want to label all of those men douche bags, then you’re completely clueless James Fell.
@Kristen. I believe we can look at the term douce in a different light. Women’s vaginas are not, in fact, dirty. Douching was invented to get women to buy more useless cosmetics, playing on our insecurities about our bodies and our sexuality. The device and the process were completely without merit. Totally useless. Therein lies the metaphor. Dick is a nice insult, but douche has an added edge of sublety that I quite enjoy. Cheers !
On a lighter note, Chris Pratt from Guardians Of The Galaxy recently posted his first headshot from 2000 where he is in an unbuttoned shirt. The caption reads, “Chestmaster McDouche. You’re Welcome.”
You should have left your personal politics about vaccinations alone and taken your own advice re the anti-feminist. (btw making issues like this approachable and telling people its ok to be neutral is a great start to spreading awareness so that was good). BUT starting with such a personal rant about vaccinations was a fail. You made the article read like high school english homework and no doubt lost a bunch of readers straight off the bat with such an unprofessional and ungrounded rant up front. If you are going to write an article about how not to be a… Read more »
Asserting False Balance where there is none is quite douchy. Whereas, supporting rational thinking is just plan old normal behavior.
Do you not see the insult of using a term describing an item used to clean women’s vaginas as a derogatory term against other men, e.g. you are so lame that you should be used to clean out a woman’s “dirty” vagina? If you want to use anatomy to insult other men, feel free to use male anatomy instead and just call them dicks. (Which is also pretty insulting to penises, but you get my point.) You SHOULD call yourself a feminist if you’re going to write on this otherwise pretty enlightened website. Feminism, like vaginas, is not dirty; it’s… Read more »
Kristin, I can’t speak for other men, but I probably wouldn’t have considered the vagina to be dirty if I hadn’t seen so many pictures of diseased genitalia during sex ed. At this point I’m not sure I get how anybody can think of a sex organ as being clean after all those dripping, red, scaly pictures are seen.
I’m curious if you consider MGTOWs douche bags as well.
You have to ask?
Choosing whether to vaccinate your own child is a civil right, MYOB. Sounds like Archy is sprouting herd mentality.
My 2 unvaccinated sons a few years ago were in danger of contracting whooping cough from vaccinated kids when an endemic swept their school. Even though they were exposed to the virus as their vaccinated friends were becoming very sick, they did not contract it. Explain that Archy.
At least our choice was conscious.
One of many Douche bags
Theo
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It’s called: You got lucky.
It’s not your own business, that’s the problem. Your unvaccinated children put EVERYONE AT RISK because of ignorance. Quite frankly it should be illegal without a damn good reason. Do some research on herd immunity and why vaccinations are essential to a decent life. We are seeing horrible illnesses come back because of douchebags that don’t vaccinate who put everyone at risk.
Theo, your ignorance does not just endanger your own children but it endangers other children as well. I sincerely hope that your sons will eventually educate themselves and, once they reach 18 and leave your legal jurisdiction, get themselves vaccinated. I disagree with this article in that I don’t think your decision to not vaccinate makes you a douche – rather, I think it makes you ignorant, irresponsible, delusional, and, frankly, dangerous. Now that I know your children aren’t vaccinated, I don’t want to be around them, and I certainly don’t want them in public schools or in public in… Read more »
“I survived a car crash and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt! explain that!”
Well, here and in China it’s calling “getting lucky”, douchebag.
Seems that your the biggest Douche Bag James. Put your brain into 1st gear at least before regurgitating the bullshit fed to you without thinking about it. Are you actually saying the unvaccinated child endangers the life of the vaccinated one, eh? Am I missing something. The child that has been vaccinated against hooping cough can contract hooping cough from a unvaccinated child, what’s the point of vaccination with a lame argument like that. Everyone’s a Douche bag in own right, if you don’t think you are it’s only because your the biggest Douche of them all. Self proclaimed Douche… Read more »
Vaccinations aren’t 100% effective. Trouble with anti-vaxxers is that herd immunity is compromised and it gives more bodies for the pathogens to evolve into forms which may not be protected against with vaccines. The other issue is since they aren’t 100% effective, some vaccinated people can become sick from unvaccinated people. Herd immunity though heavily reduces the chance of the unvax’d person WITH a disease coming into contact with a vaxxed person who the vaccine didn’t work for.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with a representative sample of the anti-vaccination population.
Because there are some people who can not get vaccinated. Babies can not get vaccinations, people with immune problems can’t, and there are some people who can’t due to some allergy. What you are doing with your actions(assuming your child is not one of the above) is condemning those people because you can not understand high school biology.
You forgot writing articles telling people how to tell if they’re a douche bag.
Ninja’d! 😉
Admittedly it’s pretty douchy for me to comment on this article … and I’m gonna have to agree with John on this one. You may not have to go any further than your own mirror to see a douche bag … and I’m not sure Darth Vader was douche—Anikin Skywalker was a pussy, then a douche, and later as Darth he was a total dick. Anyway keep up the judgements they’ll get you far in life—and don’t be sarcastic about it.
Love you,
Josh
Also, if you write listicles.