Rape, Special Snowflakes, and Amy Schumer

It’s just harder to be a woman in general, and you get treated differently in the world in general. Everyone deals with you a little differently. But I can’t complain about being a female comedian. For me, I can’t say it’s been harder. I’ve had a really nice road to where I am now and I’ve worked really hard and it’s paid off. –Amy Schumer

 

It’s just harder to be a woman. This seems to be the premise underlying most of Amy Schumer’s comedy. Going through a synopsis for each of her TV show episodes is like reading a litany of feminist grievances about how it’s so much harder to be a woman.

There’s the usual whining about menstrual cycles. And she does a lot of whining. There is a heaping helping of how women struggle with body image and how women’s bodies are objectified. There are complaints about double standards—one for sluts and another for studs. There seems to be a lot of comedy about sexually transmitted diseases. And, of course, rape is a topic in her comedy.

Amy coined the term “grape” in one of her comedy routines. The term references the so-called gray area of rape. Schumer describes this gray area in her own words:

“It’s not whether or not something is rape. It’s the gray area of how to handle it. It’s not always black and white, ‘he did that and he’s going to jail.’ It’s a really hard decision—how to handle it. Every girl I know has had a sexual experience that they’re really uncomfortable with, that was really questionable. In some cases it was absolutely rape, but they didn’t think it was the best idea for them to try to prosecute it.

So when I say the part of that joke—which I don’t say anymore because I did it on the show—‘some guys think a girl sleeping is a suggested no. That’s a no!’ When I say that, the whole joke is the hope that maybe a guy will hear that joke and know that this isn’t ok, because that comedian talked about it. And a girl will hear it and feel less alone, because she knows that it happens to other people. That’s my goal with that joke. I would never just make a rape joke to make a rape joke. It needs to have a point and be really funny. I think rape is the most horrible thing you can think of and that’s why people use it as a punch line.”

It’s all a very clever and comedic way in which to draw attention to some of the complex problems women face in regards to rape. According to Schumer, it’s also a very personal issue. During one of her appearances on “The Opie & Anthony Show,” she described her first sexual experience as rape, saying “one of my boyfriends kind of raped me. That’s kind of how I lost my virginity…I was like seventeen, hahah…we were drinking and hanging out and then I passed out and I woke up…and I go ‘what are you doing!’…I woke up to him having sex with me…We went and visited a college together the next day.”

She goes on to describe another gray area, saying “This never happened to me, but they’re like starting sex…and the girl falls asleep and the guy finishes. That’s a gray area… I don’t know. I’ve never fallen asleep, but I’ve had like two guys fall asleep while they were going down on me…I just like kneed him in the ear [and said] ‘get back to work!’”

Amy goes on to describe how it would be tough to date rape a guy who is passed out drunk or asleep, saying “That would be pretty tough…for you to be asleep, that would be so much more difficult…to rape a guy…I mean. I’ll try it.” She later describes herself as a “sociopath” and says that she likes to watch rape “porn, where the girl is sleeping and the guy wakes her up.”

This all provides a very interesting backstory to a speech given by Schumer at the “Gloria Awards and Gala” that was hosted by the “Ms. Foundation for Women” in honor of Gloria Steinem’s eightieth birthday. The speech went viral when Jennifer Vineyard published a transcript of it on Vulture. At last check, the article had over 186 thousand “likes” on Facebook and thousands more tweets on Twitter.

Schumer posted a tweet thanking those who passed around her speech.

According to those in attendance and many more who read the transcript, the speech was inspirational. Contained within was a powerful message about womanly self-esteem. There was also, contained within the speech, the description of a possible sexual assault, or, as Schumer might say, a “grape.”

 Folks were so busy indulging in Schumer’s message about womanly confidence and lauding her about it that they missed what may have been Amy’s admission of her sexually assaulting a man too “wasted” to give meaningful consent. An anonymous writer over at Thought Catalog published an article about this admission.

In Schumer’s speech, she talks about how great high school was for her, saying “I was running my high school…People knew me. They liked me. I was an athlete and a good friend. I felt pretty. I felt funny. I felt sane.” High school was great for her. She was a special snowflake there.

The transition to college didn’t go so well for her.

Schumer says that “being witty and charismatic didn’t mean shit. Day after day, I could feel the confidence drain from my body…I was getting no male attention, and I’m embarrassed to say, it was killing me.”

Schumer talks about how she put on her Freshmen 30 pounds in “record-breaking time” and blames men for being too shallow to appreciate her. She blames men for her loss of confidence. She blames men for her experienced loss of status as a special snowflake.

Clearly, college was traumatic for her. The unchecked narcissism of her female ego was forced into a confrontation with the reality that she may not be a special snowflake—that she may be alone and indistinguishable—something that men learn to deal with when they experience rejection—something that Amy had little, if any, experience with until college. She seems to be completely unprepared and not equipped emotionally to deal with rejection. She seems unaccustomed to the lack of attention paid to her throughout childhood and high school.

This is all very traumatic for her and she is desperate for attention and restoration of her status as a special snowflake. She seems to believe that she is entitled to that status and so proceeds to entitle herself to the attentions of Matt—the first guy in college to finally pay her what she is owed.

Schumer says, “He barely spoke, which was perfect for all the projecting I had planned for him.” Make no mistake about it. Matt was nothing more than a tool to Amy. She used him as a tool to try and restore her self-esteem. To her, Matt was a means to an end. She wanted him to call and pay her with attention—something that other men had refused her.

When Matt finally did call, Amy was filled with a rush of excitement and began feeling like a special snowflake again. She shaved her legs and washed her armpits, running over to his dorm room, expecting to have a fun-filled day—a new day of many forthcoming days in which Matt would pay her the attention that she deserved.

Amy finally arrives and discovers that “It’s Matt, but not really. He’s there, but not really. His face is kind of distorted, and his eyes seem like he can’t focus on me. He’s actually trying to see me from the side, like a shark…He’s fucking wasted.”

Schumer goes on to disregard any moral responsibility to actively care about Matt. She disregards the fact that he is too “wasted” to give any meaningful consent to sex. She puts the narcissism of her ego before Matt and expresses that she “wanted to be held and touched and felt desired.” She says, “I wanted to be with him. I imagined us on campus together, holding hands [so that others could recognize that]…I am lovable.”

She gets into bed with him, but he smells like “skunk microwaved with cheeseburgers.” She says that they tried kissing, but his “9 a.m. shadow” scratched her face. His “alcohol swollen mouth” was like the mouth of somebody who had just been given Novocain. His penis was too soft for penetration.

At this point, she realizes that Matt is too “wasted” for sex and not worthy to restore her status as a special snowflake. Amy begins to again feel the deficit of attention owed to her. She begins to feel alone and indistinguishable. She feels “faceless and nameless…just a warm body…” She looks around the room and hopes to “distract” herself or “disassociate” herself from the surroundings and escape the depths of her low self-esteem.

Matt starts to go down on her, but he “falls asleep every three seconds and moves his tongue like an elderly person eating their last oatmeal.” His drool is the only wetness between her legs because Matt has passed out and is now snoring into Amy’s vagina. Matt’s failure to give good head is the last straw for Amy. She “escaped from under him and out the door,” never hearing from him again.

Let’s be clear. Matt was never anything to Amy. He was nothing other than an object-of-utility—a means to an end. She saw him as a means to restore her status as a special snowflake and demonstrated no care at all about him as a human-being. His extreme intoxication and inability to give meaningful consent was seen, by Amy, as a hindrance to her goals.

Not once did Schumer express or demonstrate an iota of care for his well-being as a human-being. Not once, as a sober party, did she act on her moral responsibility to refrain from having sexual relations with a person too “wasted” to give meaningful consent. Not once did Schumer grant a concrete context to the personhood of Matt. Again, he was nothing other than an object-of-utility.

She took from him all that he had to give and it wasn’t enough. She actively engaged in her own narcissistic self-indulgence and desire for attention and status, neglecting her moral responsibility to care for another human-being.

Schumer says that she is a sociopath. Given the lack of moral responsibility and care described in her speech, I’ll take her word for it. I believe her.

Schumer’s comedy is celebrated by various feminists as a different voice—a woman’s voice in a sea of misogyny. However, it may turn out to be a voice of unchecked narcissistic female ego, wrapped in sociopathic charisma and attention-seeking. That’s not really a different voice and neither is it a special one.

It simply is a voice—one in a sea of many who routinely claim that it’s just harder to be a woman because everyone deals with you differently.

Real Rape Culture

The son extends her power; he is her security and her gallant champion; he is her ‘little man.’ She wants her young son to behave like a little man and strut a bit. She is amused by shows of precocious virility and can tease him cruelly…The mother builds up the son’s male ego and then cuts it down, ridiculing it contradictorily for both its crude power and its inadequacy…Such women can protest a chief’s action by treating him like a child They rely on ridicule and shame to get their way. No man can completely forget his former total dependence on a woman…men can never quite free themselves from the subliminal fear that they may yet slip back unawares into a childlike state and become once more women’s appendages and playthings. As women’s irresistible wiles seem endlessly varied, so are the forms of male subservience. –Yi-Fu Tuan, “Dominance & Affection: The Making of Pets”

Much of masculinity hinges on this sort of coercion. Our culture has an impoverished view of freedom in regards to freedom exercised as male power. In reality, “male power” is not an expression of domination, but of submission to these sorts of coercions. In this sense, all women who use this coercion are rapists and all coerced men are victims of rape. In this sense, there is rape culture. In this sense, the locus of culturally acceptable violence and rape is the male body.

As Obama and other politicians tug at our heartstrings about the women and children victims of violence in Syria and in other places around the world, they simultaneously coerce men into exercising their “male power” by submitting to the committing of violence against other men and to violence against their own bodies. Like dogs who know the consequences of disobedience, so are men. The making of a man has typically been the making of a pet.

It’s time to rethink the nature of power, dominance, and submission. “Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength–life itself is will to power–self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this…” (Nietzsche, BG&E). It’s time to rethink feminist narratives about so-called “male power.” Power is always at play, especially in gender dynamics. If you buy Nietzsche, it is an underlying fact of existence and human experience. Whether power be expressed as dominance or submission, through coercion or under coercion, nobody escapes it. Men who express this “will-to-power” by submitting to these sorts of coercions–they are not dominating. It is not our privilege. It is yours.

Economics, Coherence, & Gold Diggin’ Whores

The comedian, Bill Burr, has a funny bit called an Epidemic of Gold Diggin’ Whores. It’s an instant classic of comedy. It also echoes the sentiments of men who have dealt with these sorts of women. To men in the manosphere, gold digging is simply another phrase to describe female hypergamy–the tendency of women to “marry-up” and/or use men as objects-of-utility and to dehumanize men as nothing but tools to be used by women to accumulate various sorts of wealth.

Readers of my blog should know by now what I think; it is morally retarded to treat men as objects-of-utility and that it is also wrong to treat women as objects-of-sexuality. I don’t think there should be anything too controversial about treating people with respect and kindness, compassion and empathy. There shouldn’t be anything too controversial about a morality that precludes folks from treating each other as means to an end. (See the Golden Rule and Kantian morality-lite.)

This is where I’m prepared to take some flack. One thing noticed within the “manosphere” is a lot of noise and complaining about hypergamy and the gold-digging-whore. The complaints are justified as people should speak out against their being treated as objects-of-utility. However, more often than not, the men complaining about it are Randian Objectivists, American libertarians, and other sorts of free-market fundamentalists. I don’t want to get into a critique of various economic systems. That is a discussion for another blog, another paper, and another time…and, frankly, such discussions usually degrade into a boring circle-jerk of mildly autistic utilitarians arguing about the best way in which to quantify qualitative things.

What I do want to point out is that the men who often make so much noise about hypergamy are also the men who make a lot of noise in favor of economic systems that are inherently hierarchical. As Chomsky rightly points out, these economic systems permit “a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society.” The assumption is rubbish.

The simple reality is the direct correlation between money and freedom. The more money one has, the more freedom one has. There is nothing too profound about that, but it is a simple reality that gets overlooked by Randians, American libertarians, and other sorts of free-market fundamentalists.

These economic systems of wealth distribution typically have tremendous economic disparities. As such, they are systems of tremendous concentrations of power—systems of economic domination and authority. They are economic systems based on an impoverished understanding of human freedom. They are systems of wealth distribution that are inherently hierarchical.

If you want to defend such systems, go ahead. Do it. However, you have absolutely zero moral ground on which to stand for complaining about hypergamy or gold-digging-whores. Female hypergamy is simply the flipside of male hierarchies of dominance. If you’re going to defend such economic systems of dominance, you have no room to complain about hypergamy.

Consider these little questions. Does wealth curb hypergamy? If all humanity had a middle-class standard of living and a good education, would hypergamy and the gold-digging-whore wither away? I say yes. Hypergamy exploits these economic stratifications of male dominance and submission. Without such socio-economic strata, men wouldn’t be exploited via hypergamy…and neither would hypergamy exist in its current forms. As such, if you’re going to argue against hypergamy and the gold-digging-whore, and if you’re going to be coherent, you must also argue against socio-economic disparities and stratifications that are the flipside of female hypergamy. If there’s no gold to dig, where will the gold-digging-whores go? Just sayin’…if you complain about hypergamy, and at the same time, argue in favor of economic systems of wealth distribution that are inherently hierarchical, you’re full of incoherent gibberish. It’s time for you to rethink your life and economics. You guys can rant all you like about the vile nature of female hypergamy and how it makes men into objects-of-utility, but nothing will change so long as there are drastic socio-economic disparities.

Before any of you start calling me a commie pinko, realize that capitalism and socialism are two different mechanisms of wealth distribution. Neither of those systems “create” wealth; they simply distribute wealth in different ways.

Technology has always been the key. From the Stone Age to the industrial revolution, machinations and manifestations of tech drives the changes in efficiencies that “create” the quantitative surpluses of capital and other forms of wealth that often translate into qualitative improvements in life.

If you take the perspective that capitalism and socialism are simply different mechanisms of wealth distribution, you can perhaps see that these mechanisms are forms of technology (a sort of social technology, think marriage as tech). Perhaps both are obsolete pieces of technology.

They are obsolete because we have the surplus wealth to ensure that nobody starves or freezes to death on this planet, but people do so every day. We have 19 million empty homes here in the US, yet we have millions of homeless men. Obviously wealth didn’t get distributed, even though there is plenty—a surplus of homes and other sorts of wealth. We have the surplus wealth to ensure a quality education and relatively high-quality living standards for everybody, yet millions of folks live in relative squalor and can barely even read, if they can read at all. Folks everyday live lives as dullards and have miserable existences with no real freedom because they were born into a cycle of poverty with shitty parents who had shitty parents and so on. If you want to defend capitalism or socialism, or some sort of hybrid of the two, you’re going to have a difficult time of it with me. We have the surplus, but neither system seems sufficient to ensure that the wealth gets distributed to those who need it the most. As such, perhaps both are broken pieces of tech. Perhaps we need entirely new economic systems of wealth distribution—an entirely new way in which to look at economics, a new sort of social tech. Whatever your perspective on the matter, there is no way to be a free-market fundamentalist, coherent, and a complainer about gold-digging-whores. Get a clue, fuckwits. If you support a system of socio-economic stratification with gobs of economic disparity, you also support gold-digging-whores.

[Note: As women climb up the economic strata, there will be a rise in the number male gold-digging-whores. So, stop with your accusations of misogyny. A gold-digging-whore is not necessarily a woman, but they usually are women.]

Fat Acceptance is Moral Bankruptcy

Don’t Be That Bitch

Misandry isn’t a real thing. Misandry is an empty word that doesn’t refer to any real thing or any real experiences of men-in-general. Sure. There may be one-off examples of individual women who hate a particular man or men-in-general, but that’s not misandry. Unlike misogyny, there are no widely exercised cultural norms that perpetuate misandry, not of the sort that men-in-general would experience. Misandry is simply a made-up word and may as well be the present king of France or the bald emperor of Kentucky. –Some Douche

If there is any doubt about the existence of misandry within our popular culture, consider some of the blatantly misandric things said by the pop-culture icon, Nicki Minaj. In this article by Gordon Smart, she says that men want to be treated like dogs and that there is nothing wrong with being a bitch to men.

Also consider that in one of Nicki’s music videos she had this to say about men.

Find me da best ass-eater…kiss my ass and my anus ‘cos I’m finally famous. Give me all of yo money and all of yo residuals…now suck on my ass!

The prurient talk doesn’t bother me. I’m no prude. However, the blatant misandry is troublesome. Her comments are representative of speech that normalizes the dehumanization of men.

If Nicki Minaj wasn’t a significant contributor to popular culture, she’d just be a “one-off” example as described above by Some Douche. However,  Nicki Minaj is a pop icon with a large fan base of “barbz,” as she calls them—her 16+ million twitter followers. Her “ass-eating” video (the one quoted above) has almost 60 million views. She has sold millions of albums and was the first female solo artist to have 7 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, all at the same time. She recently finished up the 12^th season of American Idol, serving as a judge.

Clearly, Nicki Minaj is a cultural influence. As such, there are a lot of people who listen to her and there are a lot of people who practically worship her, as if she bestows upon them great misandric words of ass-eating wisdom.

The illiteracy of her fans is irrelevant. They love her and she is “insperation” to many of them as their “Queen Bitch” and Nicki loves her “bad bitches.” That’s her “fuckin problem,” as she barks below in one of her tweets.

Regardless of what you think about her “ass-eating” music, her misandric comments, or her cultural influence, referring to women as “bad bitches” seems dehumanizing to women. Notice how one of the commenters on the Instagram photo below wrote that Nicki is a “horrible example for young kids.” However, her bad bitch fans quickly jump in to defend the Queen Bitch, saying that she is an example of success for other bitches…because ass-eating is the pinnacle of success for a Queen Bitch and all her bad bitch followers.

Perhaps I’m simply anthropomorphizing the Queen Bitch and all her bad bitches. Perhaps Queen Bitch Nicki and all her bad bitches really are just a pack of ass-eating dogs?

If that’s the case, then I suppose it’s my bad for projecting human characteristics on the Queen Bitch Nicki and her bad bitches. Yes, bitches will be bitches, not humans-being. Apologies to the Queen Bitch and her bad bitches for thinking that they might actually be humans-being. I won’t make that mistake again, even if the Queen Bitch asserts her humanity and claims to be a “genuine human being,” as she does when asked about her role as judge on “American Idol.”

The perception that people had of me completely changed because there are no cue cards, there’s no scripts, it wasn’t me performing a song…My core is a genuine human being who roots for other people. I didn’t want to blow smoke up their ass. I wanted every contestant to leave with something that they could remember.

Funny how she believes that at her core is a “genuine human being” who doesn’t want to “blow smoke up” the asses of other people, yet, at the same time, the Queen Bitch takes great pride in being a Queen Bitch who wants others to find for her “da best ass eater.” She has moral problems with blowing smoke up somebody’s ass, but no problem at all with dehumanizing men as ass-eating dogs—too incompetent to “touch the dishes or wash the clothes,” as barked in the tweet below.

Yup, “cleaning is 50/50,” but men shouldn’t be doing dishes or washing clothes. Nope. They should only be cleaning out the Queen Bitch’s asshole, like a good dog, getting every last “cornball” and dingle-berry—paying her with “residuals.” It’s a privilege bestowed upon them by the Queen Bitch. This seems more a 99/1 split against the guy, but Queen Bitch isn’t known for doing math, so I’ll let that math problem slide like a turd off the tongue of an ass-eating dog.

Here are some more misandric turd nugget barkings of ass-eating wisdom from the Queen Bitch’s Twitter account.

Even though it might be “cute,” men shouldn’t bother with cooking either. Their hands might smell of seasoning. The Queen Bitch prefers her dogs to smell of ass. The smell of seasoning isn’t nearly as sexy as the smell of ass, not for the Queen Bitch who prefers the butthole pleasures of “da best ass-eater.” Even though these ass-eating dogs may look “cute” while trying to cook, the Queen Bitch’s dogs have to learn their boundaries.

The Queen Bitch can’t have her dogs straying far from home.

It’s important for the Queen Bitch and her bad bitches to train their dogs right, giving them a treat or a scolding accordingly.

Bitches can’t have their dogs wandering about, off the leash—eating another bitch’s ass. Nope. Ass-eating dogs must learn to crave the Queen Bitch’s treats, a mash-up of some ass with some Queen Bitch cooking; keep that cute little doggie confused about sex and food and ass-eating.

Another lesson that the Queen Bitch bestows upon her bad bitches—the importance of extending that confusion on to her children.

The Queen Bitch barks that she wants to be a mom one day and that she wants to “start becoming the woman who I want to parent my child.” I’ve already apologized for anthropomorphizing the Queen Bitch, so I won’t make that same mistake here and again. I can only assume that when she barks of having a child that she actually means having an ass-eating puppy.

Given all the above examples, it’s clear that the Queen Bitch has very little regard (if any at all) for the humanity of men. The initial misandric barks made by the Queen Bitch—the ones that dehumanized men as dogs who want to be treated like pets, those are “widely exercised cultural norms,” as Some Douche would say. If they were not cultural norms, then they wouldn’t be part of our popular culture. As Madonna and other celebrities from years past brought forward into popular culture the humanity of folks within LGBT communities, this Queen Bitch does the inverse. She brings forward into popular culture the normalization of dehumanized men.

I am a man. I am not a dog and I do not want to be treated like a pet. I certainly do not want to be “da best ass-eater” for a solipsistic narcissist like Nicki Minaj…and neither would anybody who values their own humanity. If you’re a man and you value your humanity, realize that this Queen Bitch and her pack of bad bitches are nothing but ass-eating dogs and that is all.

Asshat trips and ruins X-Files

 

Women’s fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It’s men’s way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they’re actually tied up. –David Asshat Douchecovny

I usually don’t give a fuck about the dumb shit that oozes out the mouths of asshat celebrities, but this vomit needs cleaned.

It’s not typically men who buy all the imbecilic fashion magazines and it’s not men who typically obsess about shoes. I couldn’t (and neither do most men) give a fuck about such things. It wasn’t typically men who watched (or gave any fucks whatsoever about) that vapid show describing the entrails of women who live in the city—“Sex and the City.” And neither is it typically men who buy and read the “50 Shades” trilogy that infantilizes women and is literally about binding women.

By Douchecovny’s vomit-logic, I suppose it is the fault of men for shoving down the throats of obese women a diet of Big Macs and junk food. By this vomit-logic, these poor and helpless women are at the mercy of and bound to men’s influence on the fashion industry. As such, men are to blame for women who suffer with all sorts of eating disorders because men rule the fashion industry. Clearly, this must be true because men give so many fucks about fashion.

The fashion industry is a way for masochistic women to bind themselves. If women want to spank themselves by wearing the latest imbecilic fashions and shoes, don’t blame men. It’s women’s own vapid and materialistic behavior. Nobody, especially men, “forces” that on them. All I (and most men) ask of women is that they get their fat asses on a fucking treadmill a few times per week and to exercise some self-control over their fucking carbohydrate intake. Nothing about that entails imbecilic fashion or ridiculous shoes or absurdist expectations about beauty. The expectation is that women be humans, moral agents in charge of making their own decisions about their health, diet, and physical fitness.

Men, on the other hand, are expected to not only do all the fucking cardio, but they are also expected to do all the fucking anaerobic weight-lifting to build mass and look like a physically useful G.I.Joe/human-tool. On top of that, men also are well expected to regulate their diet and look ripped with no fashion at all—just their shirtless fucking chest protruding out from their human-body-tool, being a symbol of their alpha-male virility and utility. “Yeah, I’m your man ‘cause I can lift heavy shit for you and ‘cause I can beat up other beta-males, baby.”

It doesn’t end there. Oh fucking no. Men are also expected to earn a living and have a well-developed mind—a mind that is marked with a fucking science degree that earns him at least 6 figures of income. Even more, that income is expected to bring security to a wife and kids because that income is expected to be rendered to a wife and kids—without which, he is not really a man, probably just a loser or a homo or a child-man who refuses to “grow-up.”

Who is “bound,” you fucking asshat?

Violence Against Women: Spreading Gynocentric Lies & Fear

Domestic violence and abuse are practically gender symmetrical. The cycles of violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships are incredibly complex and blaming one gender over the other is an oversimplification and wrongheaded approach for addressing these problems. This gynocentric focus on violence against women discriminates against male victims of this sort of violence and abuse. The gynocentric focus neglects violence against men, which is the overwhelming sort of violence in this world.

If you can’t see that violence against men is far more prevalent than violence against women, you have lost touch with reality. The very act of elevating violence against women as some sort of divine slight that is in some way worse than violence against men is sexist. The vast majority of all violence in this world is violence against men. Again, if you fail to see this, then you have lost touch with reality. If you fail to have compassion or understanding for the humanity of those affected by this violence, you are probably blinded by your hate or callous indifference. 

Men are humans too. We suffer and struggle for dignity, for love, for compassion. Those who promote this gynocentric focus, who so callously deny compassion to men, do nothing to effect change. They do nothing to reduce violence in this world. In fact, their hatred and callous indifference is a violence of silence that violates the humanity of men and women and our interconnectedness. Like it or not, to be is to be related. Violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, violence is perpetuated by the narrowness of mind and illusion of vacuous human individuality. No person is an island because we are all related/interconnected. Violence against one person affects the whole community. The caring (or lack thereof) of a whole community creates the violence. If you want to make changes, then you cannot deny the violence against men. You cannot deny the culture in which men grow up. The culture, the community in which men live creates violence. You cannot simply say that men alone create violence because it is their nature to be violent. That is as bad as saying that blacks or Irish make good slaves because their nature is to be subservient. I challenge you to rethink your callous indifference/hatred toward men and realize that there is far more to the story than simply screaming about violence against women and the blaming of men as violent base animals. Men are humans fully capable and worthy of the deepest depths of compassion. If you believe otherwise, I challenge the depths of your humanity.

The above photo was pulled from the j4mb blog:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/facebook-censorship-of-an-image-of-a-male-victim-of-domestic-violence/

You’ve Got It All Backwards

American Heroism: A Story about Doug Stanhope and Erectile Dysfunction

Doug Stanhope is one of my all-time favorite comedians. He is an artist, a true master of his craft. Of course I follow him on Twitter. A few weeks back, he tweeted about a marine who threw a fit of road rage. Here is the video. There were a lot of people criticizing the marine for going bezerk. There were many wishful thoughts for the marine’s death, some comments about his flag-draped coffin and etc. I thought those comments were a fine and comical way for people to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.

No offense to the good soldiers who signed up to protect the country and slaughter other people, but where else can murderous psychopaths go for work these days? With the faltering economy, it’s hard to make a living as a killer. Hard times are upon us and joining the military seems like a good choice for the aspiring killer. It’s a sound career move. He’s doing the right thing for his career and country, paying taxes, bills, and supporting his wife and kids. He shows up for work everyday, jazzed up on some ‘Merica…Fuck Yeah tunes, ready to do some killing, some maiming, and some torture. We spent thousands of dollars training him to be “all he could be” as a killer in the military. If he got a little confused about who he is supposed to kill, it’s something that society can overlook. Clearly, it’s easy to confuse a traffic accident with the enemy or a terrorist threat. It’s a mistake that any man could make. People should lay off the criticism of his actions. Minus his confusion, his actions were a perfectly acceptable way to resolve conflict. As such, he is good man, a protagonist, a hero in the American story.

 As with any good story, a protagonist needs an antagonist. Enter the degenerate pacifist lovers of peace who sat in their seats recording the actions of this good man. Notice how the villain sits in his car. He remains calm, only to enrage our heroic marine even further, deliberately pointing out to the marine that his silly monkey-taunts were not effective. This only magnifies the marine’s experience of impotence. Heroes who experience this lack of power must act out with ever more aggression. Violence is the hero’s only power and this power is an expression of the hero’s lack of power. America’s hero is impotent. He has no power, only violence. He is just a pawn. His life is practically meaningless. The totality of his identity is his impotent power–his violence.

 Feminists will typically point to our hero’s behavior as a shining example of male privilege, domination, and power–the patriarchy in all its glory. Feminists may point to our hero’s behavior as proof that men are vile monkeys who will abuse each other and women to compete in some patriarchal hierarchy of dominance. Feminists and his critics will say that our hero’s behavior is evidence of his power, when in fact, our hero’s behavior is evidence of his weakness.

 If this society gave a damn about men, we would give men options other than violence. We wouldn’t sell them false ideas of heroics. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t create murderous psychopaths and call them heroes. We wouldn’t call the peaceful guy who sat calmly in the car a faggot or a coward. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men that their value is derived from their ability to slaughter other people. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men to be some sort of heroic pawns, willing to sacrifice their lives in a blaze of violent glory for pride, for money, for woman, for some corporate entity–America. If this society gave a damn about men, compassion for men wouldn’t be a revolutionary action. If this society gave a damn about men, Doug Stanhope and others would have no reason to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.