This is a blog about how much it sucks when people co-opt feminism for bullshit.
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Sometimes I rant about things.
So I’m procrastinating by reading an article some dude wrote about attending a porn lecture by Robert Jensen on The Good Men Project (NEVER ENOUGH SIDE-EYE FOR THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE). After complaining about the lecturer’s personal anecdote of men walking out of his lectures when he declares he won’t actually be showing any pornography while the women in the audience seem relieved, the author actually says “After a brief disclaimer about why a man is talking about feminism, explaining that he’s using a feminist critique rather than a religious critique (an especially useful distinction to make at a Catholic university), and situating himself in the lineage of Dworkin and Dines, Jensen further built cohesion among the women at the cost of the men’s safety.”
The men’s safety.
The men’s safety.
What the fucking fuck is it with men? Why do words hurt them so much? Women, who are subjected to acts of violence and hatred within pornography on the regular aren’t going to be forced to look at images of those acts and that somehow make men less safe?
What is going to happen to them?
Is someone going to harm them? Jiz on their face? Disembody them? Shove a dick in their ass? Rape them? Objectify them? Punch them? Slap them? Spit on them? Hit them with their genitals? Call them a bitch, a slut, a whore, a cunt? Call them any gender-based epithet?
Oh wait. Don’t worry. The fear is described later. The lecturer asked men to stand up and explain what the last pornography that they masturbated to was like. When there were no volunteers, the lecturer stated that was the point. The author of the article took issue with that. Here’s why:
“As an educator, I can see how an exercise like this might be really useful, if enough safety has been built into a class. But this was a lecture, without any ground rules, expectations of confidentiality, or anything else that skilled teachers often do when exploring challenging topics. There also wasn’t any information given to the women about how to respond—were they going to tut tut us? Shame us? Laugh at us?”
There’s a Margaret Atwood quote for this. It has to do with men’s greatest fear being that women will laugh at them while women’s greatest fear is men committing physical violence against us.
Sound familiar, douchecanoe article author?
I would really hate it if women laughed at or shamed men for watching and wanking off to what often amounts to sexualized misogyny.
Men have a right to feel safe and secure in their pornography use, tho, right? It’s part of the code of society that men get to use women and images of them in any way they see fit, so why would you make that an unsafe space for men? Mean old feminism, taking away all of men’s entitlements and shit.
Also, apparently pointing out that men masturbate to porn is “demonizing” them.
Oh. my. god.
Really. What is this. Why is this one a website called “The Good Men Project” there is nothing good about this. This is why women don’t want dudes calling themselves feminists. Because they call themselves feminists and then they think they have carte blanche to start policing the movement and the women, lecturers, and ideas within it and feminism is not a men’s movement even if it benefits them in the end.
They start claiming women’s space as space that they need to feel safe in. Sorry dude, but you have the rest of society for that. You have your pornography for that.
Come into one of the plastic pussies they sell in porn shops if you need to feel safe. Don’t fucking come into my feminism.
Note: No, I sure didn’t read the rest of the article. I just fucking couldn’t. I just had to write out this rant and post it on here, especially since I’ve been getting so many asshole anons in my askbox asking about why women don’t want men to be included in feminism or to call themselves feminists. Here’s your fucking answer.
What the fucking fuck. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but seriously.
What is this shit.
This shit. What is it.
Anyway, I left this comment. I’m posting it here because I’m unsure it will make it out of moderation.
“WTF is this shit.
I guess when men are calling women cunts and threatening to rape them for having the audacity to have an opinion while simultaneously being a woman, I should remind those women of the great privilege they have to “bully” men, I guess, into submission. That’s the biggest load of bullpucky I’ve read in quite a while. Men are not bullied on the internet just because they can’t go around saying inflammatory or ignorant things without some other folks - even women! - getting pissed about it and letting them have it. But I forgot, telling a man he’s wrong in a not nice way is totally worse than having some dude tell you the many detailed ways in which he’d like to sexually violate you because you thought you could be a writer about serious issues while simultaneously being female!
Also, you know why a woman can more readily choose to stay at home? Statistically, she’s more likely to make less money, so it makes financial sense! Oh, the privilege of doing unpaid labor.
And women choosing when to have children? Catastrophe! I feel so bad for men who can’t point to a woman and choose her as his broodmare. What a privilege for women to be the deciders of what does and does not come out of their bodies. PS - I don’t know about your country, but in mine, dudes can give up their parental rights and not have to pay child support with the signing of just a bit of paperwork.
Regarding domestic violence instances, I know that in the country in which I currently reside, men are far more likely to be the perpetrators of such violence. They are also more likely to do more damage than women who commit violence as well, not that such a fact excuses violence coming from women. Also, social stigma around men filing reports of domestic violence committed by women revolves around the social notion that women are weak and thus their violence is not to be taken seriously. Is not being taken seriously as a powerful being really a privilege? Really?
And “I fancy him so much I’d rape him”? I don’t know any feminist who would ever be ok with a comment like that ever. And again, I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but I do know that dudes make comments like that on the regular over here and they do it with impunity. Rape jokes regarding women are in our media, on our social networking sites - everywhere. And plenty of people run to the defense of dudes and their manly right to make jokes like that when anyone does dare criticize that kind of cultural phenomenon.
Really, this article is a joke, and so is the good men project if this is the kind of shit you continue to publish. I mean, I know it’s bad when even Hugo Schwyzer has to peace out on you, but seriously. This is just sad. This site has taken a turn for the “A Voice For Men Let’s Call Women Cunts and Co-opt Their Language of Liberation Until They Agree With Us” worst.
Go ahead and just remove the “Good” portion. You’ll fit in better with your “red pill” bros. “
(Also, this article makes a total race fail by implying that Those Brown Women Over There are still being all oppressed, but Us White Ladies Over Here got it all together. Not only is that racist as fuck in and of itself, but it’s racist in the sense that it doesn’t take into account that most of the gains made by “women” have been made only by white women, and thus are not a cause for announcing an universal code of privilege for women in general. These so-called privileges aren’t shared across racial lines (I’m sure many of the male privileges aren’t either, but that’s another post), so it’s bullshit to even stir up this kind of thing. There is not enough “ugh” to express my dismay.)
Woooooow it actually gets worse.
He’s all “I understand why women are mad about the wage gap, but why would they be mad about my casual dismissal of their criticisms?”
Ugh. Gross.
Also, this line was written:
“And even a white man deserves our profound empathy no matter what our gender, orientation or color.”
Let me copy and paste that one more time just in case it’s too incredulous to believe.
“And even a white man deserves our profound empathy no matter what our gender, orientation or color.
I just can’t even. This is everything I talked about in my article on male fauxminism on Lawsonry.
(PS - to make it even better, apparently the CEO was worried that publishing Hugo’s article criticizing the founder would hurt the GMP “brand”. Gosh, I guess rampant sexism and privilege-denying won’t do that at all.)
- Hugo Schwyzer, in a blog post regarding his resignation from the Good Men Project following founder Tom Matlack’s revelation that he’s not so good.
This is just one part of a very good article. I recommend reading it, and if you can stomach the defensiveness of a fauxminist dude, the entire debacle. I mean, Tom Matlack seriously thought it would be a good idea to compare feminist criticism (or as he puts it, the “wrath of feminists”) to the asshole-ish, often violent, and entitled ravings of MRA types. I’ve cast a leery eye at the GMP plenty of times before, but now I think I’m pretty much done. I deal with sexism from enough men. I’m not gonna deal with it from men who think they’re so “good”.
