The Unbelievable Tale of Male Victimhood: Fear & Loathing of Women
Posted: August 9, 2012 Filed under: misogyny | Tags: male victimhood, misogyny, Sexism 45 Comments
Let me juxtapose a few things before I go on a full-on rant about Stephen Marche’s Esquire article: “The Contempt of Women; The rise of men. And the whining of girls.” The rise of men? When the hell did they ever fall? Did my paycheck and I miss something?
Consider superstar athlete and gymnast Gabby Douglas whose gold medal wins were greeted by racist and sexist comments about her hairstyle.
As the controversy surrounding Gabby Douglas’ hair drags on, we’re left wondering: how did it get to this point?
It’s still shocking that while Douglas was busy rewriting Olympic history and making the country proud, a string of negative Twitter comments about her “unkempt” hair stole the spotlight. Some are blaming the media for that shift in focus to Douglas’ hair, while others see the story as a segue into a much broader subject: black women’s hair.
Black women’s hair has always been a hot (and often, touchy) topic–inspiring documentaries, books, movements, and full-blown debates. So it’s no surprise that after Douglas’ meteoric rise to the public eye, opinions of her hair would be shared via social media outlets and beyond. However, the problem lies in the fact that those comments have somehow out-shined the Olympian’s gold medals.
Then, there’s this delightful tidbit of news from the likes of suffering white christian men everywhere as reported by Raw Story: “Man with Bible threatens to rape woman during ‘Gay Day’ in Michigan”.
Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan say that there was nothing they could do after Bible-preaching protesters threatened to rape and murder pro-LGBT activists at a “Gay Day” event over the weekend.
In a video posted to YouTube, several protesters with Bibles can be seen shouting at a woman celebrating in the inaugural “Gay Day” celebration, an event organized by the human rights group Tolerance, Equality and Awareness Movement (TEAM) to showcase the community’s diversity.
“Back in the day there was no free power, there was no going to the mall,” one protester tells the woman. “There was, ‘sit your ass in this house until I bring my ass home.’”
“And if your ass get to going out there like you said, guess what?” a second protester adds. “You get raped. And that’s what’s going to happen to you. … Keep your pussy clean, that’s all you need to do. Do you understand?”
After one man claims, “the Lord said that,” the woman challenges him to find the corresponding Bible verse.
He responds with Isaiah 13: “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”
Here’s a video that has me in mind of exactly what girls and women are taught to avoid daily. This one has a happy ending because the little girl in this elevator–who could have been a victim of who knows what–went full metal backpack karate kid on the sceevy old dude (via Edinburgh Eye).
Now, given what we ALLLLL know and since I just grabbed a few of this week’s outrages to illustrate just how far we’ve come, baby, let’s read some tidbits about how dudes are beginning to feel redundant and put out. The poor, long-suffering darlings! Bless their little victimized hearts!!
Contempt for men has become so widespread and acceptable that it’s a commonplace for politicians’ wives. Michelle Obama loves to describe her husband’s morning breath and struggles with smoking and failure to put away his socks. Her pull quote: “He’s a gifted man, but he’s just a man.” Got that, boys? You can be editor of the Harvard Law Review,first African-American president, director of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, loving husband and father, and an innovator of “absorption marijuana ingestion” to boot, but in the end “just a man.” Michelle uses that hokey line because it inevitably provokes warm ovations and knowing laughter. The wife of the British prime minister, David Cameron, has borrowed the technique, moaning about how Cameron “makes a terrible mess” when he cooks and can be “quite annoying.” This is what the political operatives call “humanizing the candidate”: Contempt for men is what ordinary women understand.
There’s a well-developed intellectual expression of contempt for men, too, encapsulated in the idea of the “masculinity crisis” — men are doomed, in this argument, by their own inherent natures to flounder in the emotionally complex, predominantly social postindustrial world. Dozens of books have circled around or near the concept, but none had actually made a persuasive, research-grounded argument until Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and the Rise of Women. The book begins with a somewhat expected girl-powered farewell to male power. The American middle class, she writes, “is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the workforce and from home, and as women make all the decisions.” Her numbers make a case: Women now have half the jobs in the American workforce. Three quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the recession belonged to men. Of the top fifteen growth industries in America, twelve are almost exclusively the preserve of women. In the postindustrial economy, men’s physical strength becomes more or less irrelevant. And women are also setting the groundwork for the curve to continue: “Women now earn 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and about 44 percent of all business degrees,” writes Rosin. Three years ago, more women than men earned Ph.D.’s.
This isn’t because men are inherently stupid or broken.
Oh, really? It seems to me that this article makes the case for the contrary argument to that last statement; not for it as Marche insists. Here’s more about the poor put out man who is just a victim of self-loathing and I guess, its companion, low self esteem. Don’t forget to read the part about how certain parts of the country have miniscule rape statistics. The men must just be really put out there!!!
President Bush was proud of being small-minded, proud of being ornery, taking the maximum number of vacation days possible, proud of never traveling, not knowing other languages, and just in general not knowing and not caring. He fit neatly into a pattern with the other recognizable men on television. In advertising, the lumpen male idiot is the go-to. Other versions of male self-loathing are more sophisticated. The best and most refined comedians of the moment all take it for granted that the masculine is inherently the stupid, the obese, the miserable, the lazy, the selfish. Take Louis C. K. — his hatred for his own hungers is his best material. Much of Daniel Tosh’s material, both on his show and on tour, is about men’s selfishness, irresponsibility, and general grossness. Extreme pornography, the avoidance of fatherhood, and Stone Age sexism are defining traits. Male self-hatred is the comic cliché of the moment — the L. A.-is-like-this-but-New-York-is-like-that, white-people-drive-like-this-but-black-people-drive-like-that, what’s-with-the-peanuts-in-airplanes of the moment: Can you believe how gross men are? Male comedians go to this safe material for the same reason they do anything: for the approval of women. Rather than resist the contemptuous gaze of women, they have learned to share it.
It’s just hard to know where to start on all of this. I’m sure you’ll have some choice comments that will be far wittier and rapier than mine. I would just like to say that when we start discussing Phelp’s hair instead of his future career plans, when little girls or women don’t have to fear what will happen when left alone near men, and when all the pay gaps, discrimination cases, and sexist, misogynist ads and “joke” banter about women goes anyway then I will have a chat with this poor, put out white dude. Oh, and I stuck in one of those gratuitous Hillary-bashing cartoons so you’ll be reminded of all those poor put out men that had to run against her and her monstrous cankles.
Until then, I will just shoot him a HUGE look of contempt AND raise him one Kiss my Vagina, you Asshole!!
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I just vomited in my mouth. For some reason I had a flash replay in my mind of all the women I have known in my life that could not admit they were a feminist.
I really had a hard time reading that. But dak,what an important subject.
I know. It sounds like some little boy skinned his knee while trying to knock over a few pedestals. It just was disturbing to me that he could be so casual about what women really go through that all he can focus on his stereotype of the ‘bitch’.
Yes, we are really “holding the man down”. Sometimes it’s hard not to want to start another planet. I wish I could live long enough to see hate, resentment, and just “I better than you” ego, wiped off the face of the earth.
The Olympics, used to be a coming together of the world. A celebration of humanity.
I can’t make it through this article yet. Sickening. Brilliant post so far though, Kat.
I couldn’t read it all either. It’s the dumbest most ass-backward crock I’ve seen in quite a long while.
Me too. I tried once last night and twice this morning and I can’t force myself to read the article.
I finally read the article but I can’t find the words to comment. There’s obviously a lot of anger coming from Mr. Marche. I prefer to walk away from it.
I had the same reaction, Beata. I literally felt my Blood Pressure rise while reading it.
This sort of thing has a long and dishonorable tradition. It’s the big brother of The White Man’s Burden, of the put-upon aristocrat struggling to teach the peasants not to be lazy, of slaveowners bemoaning their harried lot while the slaves just spend their time singing without a care in the world.
The depressing thing when it concerns women is that we never seem to get to the point where that garbage isn’t current.
Something major is shifting in the cosmos and the fearful males are blaming the females — we are always used as the diversionary tactic for the sins of men. And in the tradition of the witching trials of the dark ages — women are women’s worst enemies.
So what we have is a bunch of privileged males trying to wear the mantel of victimhood. Everything that they are brought on themselves as priests and followers of the Patriarchal domination of the world is now blamed on women.
Some women will continue to teach their daughters to be submissive and obedient to the male. But many of these daughters will reject the Patriarchy. And this is what scares the faux male victims — women are rejecting the male myth. The authentic male is far more interesting that the mythical mask many males wear.
The patriarchy clings to the mythology of their bibles.
Fearful women will continue to deny that they are feminists — which merely means that both male and female are equal human beings. These women will encourage the male victim myth.
Here’s Melissa at Shakesville:
She calls it the worst thing you’ll read all day.
Alyssa Rosenberg on Aug 9, 2012 at 10:38 am
It’s almost like if “all” men do not hate women, they have done nothing wrong. Vindication! It doesn’t work that way. I have met gay men who hate women, surprised?
When Tiger Woods was caught out acting like a big fat pig, instead of suggesting that perhaps cheating on your wife with any number of bimbos who slid out of the ground after discovery, may have been seen as kind of disgusting behavior many were screaming “leave Tiger alone”.
In fact, some men secretly applauded wishing they too knew “how to swing that club”. While Tiger’s wife and children were the real vicitims in this betrayal, it was “poor Tiger” who stirred up the most sympathy because the focus was on what it would do to his career.
Contrast that with the female service member who brought charges of sexual assault against her fellow officers and was told to shut up or get out. Going public earned her a few boos for daring to put the military on display and her legal claims went unheard.
We “choose our victims” in this society depending upon who they are. Men always “win” in this contest.
If George Zimmerman can be made into a “victim” almost any male stands a chance.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around Esquire printing it and who this guy is.
You and me both.
They are sooooooo afraid. Terrified really. That article reeks of terror. With good cause. Because, and I have spent 65-plus years working on this hypothesis, they ARE inferior – and they KNOW they’re inferior. There is not a man so far with whom I have discussed this topic who does not completely concur. The idea that a man actually has to work to attain something is totally foreign to men, especially white men, but all men to some extent; thus, they are ill-equipped to duke it out on meritocracy. There are exceptions, of course, but this is the general rule, the most obvious example being Hillary versus Barack. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Need I say more? (Except that they view her primarily, of course, as old and fat.) Very few men can handle the day-to-day and that’s why most of them get married; they need someone to take care of them.
So, why do men have more power? Honestly, I think it’s because women (generally speaking) simply do not have “power” as a goal in and of itself. (Women tend to value things like education, child care, peace, problem-solving.) Now, however, even though power is not a goal, we are taking over simply because we are more competent. This will take time (and the planet doesn’t really have that much time left), but it is inevitable. Men do not have the skills to compete or the skills to perform. And they’re essentially done by the time they’re 50. (I will be more than happy to take on any man over 50 who wants to prove he is not done – without Viagra, of course.) So they are fighting like crazy to keep us pregnant and barefoot.
These are all generalizations, I freely admit – and I must say I do like the men quite a bit and am very accepting of their limitations (except sexually, that really pisses me off) – but that’s what my experience has taught me. And I’d rather live with the truth than pretend otherwise.
mjames – agree with your hypothesis, with one exception – ALL men are not inferior in ability (implying most are) – they areall just inferior in terms of relying on that ability to get ahead – their modus operendi is burning the forest to weed out the trees – using the established partriarchial handbook to ensure that others more able (women and a few men) are not able to challenge them for king of the hill status .Most Women do not do that – by and large, although that is also a generalization but I suspect it would be statistically valid if women would abandon the partriarchial training and start to speak from the brain.
My apologies – not all men are inferior on relying on their ability to get ahead. I would them be impugning the wonderful men who come here and to other sites and are meminists – like Ralph and Rock and others. My apologies. I get carried away. Put it down to …. senility?
My gawd there’s a 11 year old girl whose father water boarded her for punishment … how many little girls aren’t even safe in their own homes?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/11-year-old-girl-doctor-dad-waterboarded-punishment-report-article-1.1132728
HT. You need never apologize for saying what you think. In fact I generally agree with you but most men are too busy trying to minimize white male privilege to think it through. 😉
I know, there are exceptions. For sure. But, when a jerk like this guy starts spouting, I see red. He is a scared little boy, nothing more. The men I talk to, of all ages, and our conversations are most cordial and friendly, are comfortable giving women their due and, in many cases, this means admitting that women can handle an awful lot of things with greater ease than they can manage. The only time it becomes difficult is when some guy is overly defensive (probably with good reason). And, I do think that some of these guys of any age (especially the Ivy Leaguers) grew up expecting to be first in line, expecting not to have to compete. Then, when they actually have to compete and they find themselves losing to women, it is very difficult for them. But, if there is one thing they should have learned at those venerable institutions, it is critical thinking. Something about their need for the veejay (and I’m only talking about those guys) scares them into a mindless state of stupidity. If women were really into power, that would be how to use it.
Interesting theory, mjames. At the edges of my mind, I’ve thought the 30-year feminist backlash was caused by men’s fear of being exposed to their mediocrity. Female athletes outnumber males this Olympic season. I would have given credit to the feminists who pushed for opening up sports to women in the 70s and all the girls who embraced it. Gabby Douglas is a superb example of the pent-up aspirations of women and blacks to excel and achieve greatness. Fox News also criticized Gabby for wearing a red suit rather than wrapping herself in red, white, and blue.
The recent political attempts to take control of the women’s reproduction choices was a tell. I continue to delight in women’s wins and push-backs.
When they were criticizing Gabby for wearing the color she did, I kept wondering if she had any choice in the matter at all!! Isn’t there a committee or something that chooses the colors and uniforms. I doubt if she had any input at all, and still she got blamed. By some very stupid people!!
Dear Dog, that is repulsive on so many levels. And this cretin and his cretin wife thought this was good discipline? He wrote a book on near death experiences – ah that explains it, he was just conducting experiments to confirm his theories. The fact that the wife is involved… what can one say. I would kill anyone that harmed my children, but perhaps that’s because I was a single mom and was not subservient to anyone. Ah sheite, I can’t even comment rationally on stuff like this. forgive me.
Sorry, my reply was to Dak’s comment about the man waterboarding his daughter. See – senility have overtaken me.
I’m past ready for a matriarchy. One run by feminists.
The candidates, congressional members, CEOS, the Pope and his posse, and management are predominately white men making decisions for us in an attempt to control us. As women move more into posiitons, cracking white male privilege will seem like a diminishment. Evening that playing field will be so “unfair.”
Sadly, most of the women moving into positions of power these days are not for women.
I was just wondering where you’ve been, HT. Hope everything is okay with you & the fur kids. How’s the shoulder? Much better, I hope.
ecat – Yeah the fur kids are okay. I’m just working through the loss of my brother, my cousin and a long time friend, all within the last six months and have withdrawn from everything. I’ve been reading every day but….. Grief is a helluva terrible thing to cope with – and that should tell you how bad it is. Normally it would be “a helluva thing with which to cope” because one never ends a sentence with a prepostion. Today is a good day I think.
How are your fur kids?
It has to be exceptionally difficult dealing with 3 losses so close together. One at a time is tough enough. So sorry for your losses. And, loss of close friends & family is one of the tribulations of aging that doesn’t get mentioned much.
My furballs are doing pretty good. Another cat just got all of his teeth pulled and, believe it or not, he is feeling much, much better. I’m doing my best to cover college tuition for the kids of several vets in Central Florida.
ecocat, you are a saint. I shall be back – as I mentioned, today is a good day and I’m brimming with bile. Tomorrow, who knows. And yes, no one ever tells you that aging involves loss on a mammoth level. Mind you, I don’t think there is anything that can prepare you – it just hits. Take care and thanks. Your comments do lift my spirits.
Please, someone tell me what year it is? I must have had a Rip Van Winkle nap & missed The Revolution. It seems just like earlier today I was dealing with a condescending, white male who actually works FOR me.
Then there was this yesterday on Talk of the Nation – http://www.npr.org/2012/08/08/158433079/virtual-harassment-gets-real-for-female-gamers
Female gamers have set up this blog: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/ The comments from male gamers that they’ve posted are – well, judge for yourself.
This is an oldy but goody – love reading it from time to time: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
Funny how what we used to consider nerds are now among the worst misognysts around especially as they are very well versed on cyber stalking. reminds me of that situation a few years ago where a well known computer engineer and gamer – can’t remember her name galldangit – was stalked even to the extent of death threats and interference in her private and professional life because she blogged about the misogny in gaming and the computer world.
I am so sorry. Grief is the most important individual ( psychological) emotion that we have to endure. I was a care giver for my mother and then my father. It’s been three years. The kind words and eyes of “I know” are welcome. But it is so personal. I wish you the best.
Thank you pd – yeah, it’s very difficult for us all. How we survive intact is just a testament to our amazing strength of will, or so I keep telling myself. I thought it was bad when my mom and dad went – 13 days apart. Now I’m dealing with loved ones younger than me. We all are dealing with loss so you all know what I’m living. I thank you very much for your kind words.
It is so hard not to react with a “capital punishment solution” because a visceral look could make you go mad. You are left with scratching your head, vomiting, or screaming back with some “I hate you too” attack. The fact he thinks the reaction proves his point is worse than the first pass he made at it. I would love to meet the woman who emasculated him. His hate is a arterial wound, he will never recover. What in the hell happened to him? I have a question, is it because we can give them birth, and this peculiar thing is “dirty” to them. Or is it really as simple as loss of power, the contest, “I’m better than you”? I’m beginning to think we will have to be invaded from a more advanced civilization.
Is this why we have to put up with all those ads for Viagra and Cialis?
That little girl in the elevator is my shero!
I hate to use this metaphor but they arm rapists and then refuse to let women defend themselves by blocking their access to birth control.
I see that Stephen Marche also blames baby boomers for his lot in life. Why don’t they just line us all up and shoot us and bury us in mass graves?
Who is this jerk and why is he being paid to write this kind of trash?
He’s Canadian. It’s not even his problem.
As a Canadian, I apologize. One wonders why people like David Frum, Mark Steyn, Stephan Marche and probably many more go to the U.S. and peddle successfully their drivel. Probably because they can’t make enough money or have as many people reading their stuff, so they need a fertile ground to make their millions and with the exception of Frum, these people really want money and fame. Frum already has millions so it’s an ego thing.
I don’t understand why you get an opinion if you have no dog in the fight. Why is it all the unreasonable journalists that get exported here? I still haven’t forgiven the UK for Piers Morgan. That’s nearly an act of war … sending a buffoon like that over here. I suppose it’s worse yet that CNN hired the ickster.
Jeez Louise……………….what the hell is Marche selling, this bitch ain’t buying his mussable fucking anger and rage.