The White House Counsel And Paid Liar Tripe

 

Simon Marks penned a fascinating article and work of journalism about one of the world’s most prominent anti sex-trafficking activists. It’s entitled, Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking. The article exposes some of the lies, half-truths, and inconsistencies told by Somaly Mam about her contextual history as a victim of sex-trafficking. The fabrications that she told gave rise to her prominence as a courageous face and voice of women and girls who were sold into sexual slavery. The fabrications that she told about herself and the fabrications that she helped others concoct and tell were also her downfall. She resigned from the Somaly Mam Foundation only a few days after the Marks article was published.

A woman was caught lying about her victimhood. This woman used her false victimhood narrative to raise millions of dollars for her foundation. She became a sort of celebrity, appearing on Oprah and making other television appearances. She visited the White House, gave speeches, and even met with the pope. She penned a book, detailing her made-up suffering. In short, this woman glamorized a false narrative of victimhood for personal gain. She is a liar.

Chemaly Tripe

According to the prominent feminist, Soraya Chemaly, we live in a misogynistic culture where we teach our kids that women are liars. According to Chemaly, we are taught to believe that women are liars. Chemaly doesn’t blame lying women for perpetuating and reinforcing such beliefs—that women are liars. She doesn’t advise women to simply stop lying.  Instead, Chemaly blames this distrust of women on misogynistic cultural attitudes about women, failing to articulate that these cultural attitudes may, in fact, be rooted in the reality of lived-experience—that women do lie—just like Somaly Mam and all the other paid liars who glamorize their false narratives of victimhood.

In her article, Chemaly tries to be ironic by noting that even though our culture has this supposedly misogynistic distrust of women, our culture tends to trust women to be mothers—“the largest pool of undervalued economically crucial labor.” The real irony here is that Chemaly, by painting mothers-as-victims of economic exploitation, perpetuates the very lying that reinforces these so-called misogynistic cultural attitudes—the very same grievance that she claims to be fighting against.

Just because mothers or mothering persons are not on a payroll for being motherly doesn’t mean that we, as a culture, undervalue them or that we exploit them economically. Just because babysitters don’t get paid as much as civil engineers doesn’t mean that we are biased against mothering work. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if we were to make mothering into a commodity, we’d actually be devaluing it—making it a sort of capitalist trinket to be bought and sold in the marketplace.

The fact that mothering labor has largely remained free from capitalist market exploitation is evidence of the fact that we actually do value mothers, mothering persons, and their labors. However, this doesn’t stop Chemaly from perpetuating the lies and false narrative of mothers-as-victim. Chemaly knows that we, as a culture, have tremendous respect and care for our mothers. That is why she perpetuates the lie that we undervalue and don’t care about mothers or mothering persons.

We all, as a culture, care about our mothers. That is what makes her false narrative so powerful. It is precisely because we care so much about our mothers that we listen to anybody (including Chemaly) who says that mothers may be victims of exploitation. It is precisely because we care so much about our mothers that victimhood narratives about them are so easily glamorized by Chemaly.

This is why Somaly Mam was so successful at raising funds. It’s precisely because we care so much about women and girls that Mam’s false narrative was so glamorized and powerful. It moved the powerful, the elite, and the wealthy to donate millions of dollars to her cause—to her foundation, ostensibly to help victims of sex-trafficking.

 If we really lived in the horribly misogynistic culture, as Chemaly would have us believe, then Mam’s glamourized and powerful story of victimhood wouldn’t be glamorous and neither would it be powerful. It would be a story that wouldn’t evoke much emotion at all—perhaps only the absence of emotion, a callous indifference.

This reality is something that Chemaly will likely never articulate in any of her articles. Her article detailing how women are victims of misogynistic cultural attitudes depends on the lie-by-omission of this reality—that, as a culture, we do care about women, mothers, and girls. Without this lie-by-omission, her work, career, and writing wouldn’t have any traction or weight. Nobody would pay any attention to her or her articles. Nobody would read her. Nobody would pay her. And nobody would care.

It is precisely because we, as a culture, do care about women that we pay women like Mam and Chemaly to give and be a sensationalist voice to women victims—even if that voice is a lying one. It is precisely because we care about women that we are willing to blame these so-called misogynistic cultural attitudes for painting women-as-liars, rather than blame the liars who lie. Chemaly would have us believe that these so-called misogynistic cultural attitudes precede the actual facticity of our lived-experiences with particular women—our experiences and interactions with liars.

Chemaly writes that “The pervasive message that women are untrustworthy liars is atomized in our culture. There is no one source or manifestation. It fills every nook and cranny of our lives. I find it sad and disturbing that children learn so quickly and normatively to distrust women. Any commitment to parity means challenging the stories we tell them. It means critically assessing the comforting institutions we support out of nostalgia, habit, and tradition. It means walking out of places of worship, not buying certain movie tickets, closing some books, refusing to pay for some music, and politely disagreeing with friends and family at the dinner table. It’s not easy. But, really, what’s the alternative?”

What’s the alternative? For starters, how about Chemaly, Mam, and other paid liars stop lying? Don’t lie. Somaly Mam can stop spreading lies about victims of sex-trafficking, undermining the real suffering of real victims. Chemaly can stop spreading lies about mothers-as-victims. She can stop spreading invective and misandric lies about men—their supposed culturally ingrained hatred for women as born liars. She can, instead of blaming cultural misogyny, tell women to not lie.

How about we teach women to not be liars because lying makes a person untrustworthy? Cultural misogyny doesn’t make a person untrustworthy. Lying makes a person untrustworthy. That is the “one source or manifestation” that Chemaly fails to address…perhaps because she is a paid liar? Not once, in her whole screed, does she address the fact that women lie and neither does she hold women in-general or any particular woman accountable for lying.

Instead, she blames The Patriarchy™–philosophy, institutions, traditions, religions, movies, books, music, and interactions with friends, family, and neighbors. Rather than hold folks accountable for telling lies, Chemaly suggest that we should simply label anybody who doesn’t trust the word of a liar as a misogynist.

Anybody who doesn’t believe a woman who claims to have been raped—that person is a misogynist, according to Chemaly. Never mind the fact that there may have been no evidence to back up the allegation, if you don’t believe her, then you are a misogynist because you aren’t gullible enough to believe. This is precisely the twisted spin that we should expect from a paid liar.

Here is a Gallup poll from 2013 regarding honesty in various professions. Notice that lobbyists, members of congress, car salespeople, state officeholders, and advertising practitioners round out the bottom five least trustworthy people. There are good reasons to believe these people to be untrustworthy. They are paid liars, just like Somaly Mam and just like Soraya Chemaly. Their livelihoods depend on how well they can tell lies.

Marcotte Tripe

Take Amanda Marcotte’s perspective on the Somaly Mam scandal as a prime example of how to spin lies. In her article entitled Somaly Mam And the Cult of Glamourized Victimhood, Marcotte, similar to Chemaly, blames misogyny and The Patriarchy™ for the lies told by Mam.

According to Marcotte, if we didn’t live in such patriarchal and misogynistic culture, Mam wouldn’t have had to tell such lies about victims of sex-trafficking. If only our culture valued women, girls, and mothers, then Mam wouldn’t have needed to fabricate such outrageous lies about the suffering of women and girls. If only women and girls weren’t devalued so much, then the elite, the powerful, and the wealthy would have been more willing to donate to her cause—funding her foundation, and to other feminist causes. Yes, if only the elite, the powerful, and the wealthy were more gullible, then Marcotte and other liars wouldn’t have to work so hard at spinning lies to get paid.

According to Marcotte, Mam’s foundation and work (as well as similar work by others) is “feel-good feminism.” She says this kind of feminism sets the moral bar too low and that it plays on the desire to rescue poor damsels who are trying to overcome their tragic conditions—a morally easy position. She writes this, all the while peddling the lie that we, as a culture, don’t care about women, girls, and mothers.

She goes on to write that “It’s hard not to wonder if the bar is being set awfully low here. It’s easy to take a stand against underage sex slavery. It’s harder to take a stand against the widespread objectification and marginalization of women in the entertainment community, forces that help shape a culture where men feel entitled to have sex and act indifferently to the humanity of women…What women around the world need is not just people who stand up for them when it’s easy, when the villains are predatory pimps and faceless rapists. Women around the world need people to stand up for them when it’s hard.”

Notice how Marcotte spins the lies. Marcotte, spreads the invective lie that men feel entitled to sex with women because The Patriarchy™ and misogyny are so pervasive in the entertainment industry. As with Mam and Chemaly, Marcotte knows that we, as a culture, do care about women and that is precisely why she spins yet another victimhood narrative about women being objectified, marginalized, and dehumanized by powerful and wealthy men, forces who control the entertainment industry.

In order for Marcotte and other paid liars to procure more funding from these elite, powerful, and wealthy men, she spins the lie that these men are moral cowards, afraid to “stand up…when it’s hard.” This is simply another, but more subtle, exploitation of men who demonstrate care for women through their desire to rescue poor damsels—the very white-knighting and benevolent sexism that she referred to as “feel-good feminism.”

Marcotte goes on to describe the Mam scandal not as an “anomaly, so much as the inevitable result of a culture that puts more emphasis on heroic tales of triumph than on the bigger picture question of health and inequality. Mam made up tales of woe because she knew it would attract attention and fundraisers that a more sober assessment of realities would not. That she was right should give us all cause to wonder about reorganizing our social justice priorities.”

Yes, according to Marcotte, paid liars shouldn’t have to concoct outrageously fabricated tales of womanly suffering and adversity to procure funding for their causes. Paid liars shouldn’t have to work so hard. Fundraising for paid liars should be as easy as spreading invective lies about how men feel entitled to women’s bodies. Anything more is simply proof of misogyny and patriarchal objectification, marginalization, and dehumanization of women.

White House Counsel for Boys and Men

To put into perspective the effectiveness of these paid liars and how much our culture actually does care about the well-being of women and girls, it’s important to note that the Somaly Mam Foundation, since its formation in 2007, raised millions of dollars to touch “the lives of over 100,000 women and girls…” Here is a copy of their 990IRS tax form for 2011. What makes these charitable contributions to the foundation so remarkable is the fact that there were estimated to be 1,809 sex workers in need of rescue for all of Cambodia (217 in Mam’s Phnom Phen province). (See page 32 of this extensive Thomas Steinfatt study.)

Millions of dollars were donated and spent to rescue roughly 1,800 Cambodian girls. To put into perspective how much our culture actually doesn’t care about men and boys, contrast that fact with the reality that we can barely manage to scrape together 2,500 signatures petitioning the White House to create a counsel on men and boys, something that was created back in 2009 for women and girls. However, we can get nearly 300,000 signatures petitioning the White House to have Justin Bieber deported…for being an annoying boy.

At this point in time, men would be lucky to get some rope, a wobbly stool, and a hook for making their own noose to hang themselves. All the while, men face constant cultural opposition from morally retarded scumbags like Chemaly and Marcotte, claiming that The Patriarchy™ (and by extension, men) are a privileged class—a class so privileged that we can’t get shelters, White House counsels, or proper mental health treatment.

The scope of the problems facing men and boys is not simply a matter of whether or not there are fundraisers. There is the difficult problem of the empathy gap that biases against men and boys. There is the “Women are Wonderful Effect,” which is contrary to and often contradictory with the blatant lies and spin that Chemaly and others would have us believe about misogynistic cultural attitudes of bias against women. There is the women’s “automatic in-group bias,” which is remarkably stronger for women than men.

We could hold fundraisers 24-7-365, but if funding isn’t raised because folks don’t care, then there’s no point in holding fundraisers that don’t raise funds. Even if we were to procure some funds through private charitable donations, most funding for domestic violence shelters stem from government aid (primarily through the Office on Violence Against Women), not private fundraising donations.

Chemaly posed the question. “What’s the alternative?” The alternative is the demonstration of care for men and boys—something that is sorely absent from our culture. One of the most radical socio-cultural changes that could happen would be the cultural application of care for men and boys. If we want to change society, if we want to end violence, gross economic disparity and stratification, racism, colonialism, wars, the inhumanity of our prison systems, then we will need to radically shift and change our cultural attitudes and biases against men by demonstrating real care for them.

The first thing we can do as a demonstration of our care—sign Warren Farrell’s petition to create a White House counsel on men and boys. If we care at all about the well-being of men and boys, we can demonstrate it by taking 2 minutes of our day to sign the petition. It’s a simple and easy start.

 

For a more in-depth consideration of this White House counsel on men and boys, please read about Warren Farrell’s efforts and attempts to create it.

The Guilty Pleasures Of “Feminist Philosophers”

[Here is a trigger warning for immense selfishness, hypocrisy, stupidity, and moral retardation cloaked as philosophy.]

Those of you who read my blog know that I have a guilty pleasure—“feminist philosophers.” This guilty pleasure is better than chocolate. They are usually a bit more challenging than typical feminists in that they at least try to obscure some of their misandry, dog-shit ideas, and immense stupidity within the container of philosophy. They are usually a bit more cunning.

However, over at “feministphilosophers,” I found this article disguised as “Some Thoughts On Epistemic Responsibility.” I’m not going to bore the reader with a discussion on epistemic responsibility. I am, however, going to show the immense selfishness, hypocrisy, and stupidity of this “feminist philosopher,” one who calls herself “themistokleia,” the teacher of Pythagorus—“the father of philosophy.”

In her own words:

This woman “ran to a man” for protection. She specifically and deliberately brought danger and the threat of harm to this man. He voluntarily allowed himself to remain in harm’s way for two hours to protect her. He was willing to offer up his male body as a sacrifice to this damsel in distress.

As such and according to this “feminist philosopher,” this man’s sacrifice was more “traumatizing” than assault and attempted rape. The two hours of his risking bodily harm to protect this damsel was not sufficient. He should have done more. He should have risked more for her, “but that was all he did…”

Such is the mentality of many men, women, feminists, and even feminist philosophers—those who should know better. Such is a total lack of other-awareness—total gynocentric selfishness. She was not aware of the sacrifice that this man made by allowing his male body to endure the risk of violence for two hours—all to protect her. What if he had an anxiety disorder? What if he had PTSD and was suffering from previous experiences of violence against his body? What if he was a survivor of rape or assault and running to him for protection forced him to relive all those feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and suffering? Selfish people like Ms. Themistokleia do not consider these other possibilities. Doing so would require other-awareness and empathy—something contrary to their total gynocentric selfishness.

If she wasn’t so selfish, she’d have realized that this man could have been assaulted, maimed, mutilated, stabbed, shot, or otherwise also be made into a victim of violence that she brought to him—making him responsible not only for her safety, but his as well. She was not aware of the danger that she put him in to protect her. She does not value his body at all or even care that she put this man’s body in harm’s way by deliberately running to him for protection. She does not at all acknowledge his sacrifice or the sacrifices made by men who have been cultured to perpetuate violence against men in defense of women like her.

Such are the expectations placed on men in our culture—to “be a man,” be brave, and make your body an object-of-utility for women and for society in-general. She used this man as an object-of-utility, as a protector—putting his body in harm’s way before her own, only to berate and shame him later for not doing enough to protect her. Women like this “feminist philosopher” demand it and say that if a man doesn’t sacrifice enough, then he is even more traumatizing than assault and attempted rape. This is another way in which the male body is made the most culturally acceptable locus of violence—through the gynocentric selfishness of women like “themistokleia.” As she writes her “thoughts” on the morality of epistemic responsibility, she neglects to fix her own moral retardation and hypocrisy.

I don’t know for a fact that Ms. Themistokleia supports Anita Sarkeesian’s critique of the video games industry, but I think it’s a fair assumption that she does, as do most feminists. If Ms. Themistokleia does support such a critique, then she is profoundly hypocritical. As a philosopher, one would think that she’d have the clarity of thought needed to identify hypocrisy. However, as a “feminist philosopher,” she may lack the clarity needed to realize that she is simultaneously arguing for and against the actions of men who rescue damsels in distress.

On the one hand, she is arguing that a man didn’t do enough to rescue her. On the other hand, she would be arguing that men who rescue damsels in distress are perpetuating the soft-sexism of benevolence—a form of white-knighting, where men rush in to rescue the poor and weak women who are believed to be incapable of defending their own stupid positions or rescuing themselves from their own stupidity.

I’m not going to rescue you from your own stupidity, Ms. Themistokleia. I’m going to point at it, laugh, and enjoy it for all its guilty pleasure. Such things are better than chocolate. If you’re too stupid to see your selfishness and hypocrisy, you have no business in any philosophy department. You have no business doing any philosophy at all. The only academia for you is some gynocentric women’s studies department where you are free to escape any and all rigorous or critical thought. Only there will you be free to perpetuate a culture of violence against men. There you will have the freedom to be callously indifferent to male suffering and sacrifices that are made for you by men who don’t even know you—free to be as selfish, hypocritical, and stupid as you like.

As you wrote, “I don’t ever want to be the man on that bench to someone else,” and so should nobody ever want to be as selfish, hypocritical, and stupid as you. At least the man on the bench had empathy, compassion, and enough morality to recognize that you were in danger…and that’s a lot more morality than you have—completely failing to recognize the danger you put on him and the sacrifice made by him to protect you. Fuck off with your moral retardation, Ms. Themistokleia. Also, drop the mockery you are making of Pythagoras’ teacher. You’re not worthy of the name.

The Male Body And The Masculinity Police Part II

We live in a culture where violence against men is prevalent, normalized, excused, and celebrated by the media and in popular culture. Laugh if you want, but the best humor is practically indistinguishable from tragedy. The best comedians understand suffering. The best jokes are lamentations.

We have multi-billion dollar “sports” industries (e.g., the NFL and UFC) that glorify this violence against men. Families gather on Sundays to celebrate this violence. Corporations make billions on the cultural normalization of this violence against men–making the male body the most culturally acceptable locus of violence. All the while, folks scream “CONSENT,” failing to understand how these cultural norms influence consent, failing to understand that freedom is not the perpetuation of violence against men, failing to understand that consent does not change the underlying fact of violence committed against men. Freedom is not two men beating each other unconscious for entertainment or some false idea of sportsmanship and competition. If you believe such types of violence are freedom and sportsmanship, you have an impoverished sense of both and you are likely perpetuating a culture that glorifies violence against men.

We have a war machine that keeps turning–making billions more in profits off this exploitation, destruction, mutilation, and expendability of the male body. There is no end to it. It never stops because our culture demands it. We defend our freedom to consent to violence against the male body. We are proud of our “heroes.” We celebrate them. We love them for subjecting their bodies and the bodies of other men to violence.

If we learn to hate this violence against men and speak out against it, we are told to “shut the fuck up.” If we learn that all war is anti-male because all war is violence against men, our masculinity is policed and threatened because we must be “weak bitches” to complain about male suffering. Even feminists who claim to be working on male issues mock such complaints about male suffering as “man feelz.” Some of these feminists insist that male suffering is actually male privilege.  Anything else is “assholery.”

There is real “assholery,” our prison systems. They are monstrosities of prison guard unions, corporations, legal institutions, and law enforcement agencies that are partially sustained by our war on drugs. It is a war that throws men into cages and commits violence against them for non-violent drug “crimes.” Instead of “rehabilitation,” we punish these men with prison rape and other violence. Instead of recognizing our sick culture, we blame the drug addict for wanting to escape. As Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” While the “right” wags their finger of shame and screams for harsher punishments and more violence against these men, the “left” wags their finger of shame and clamors about “rehabilitating” these men to a profoundly sick culture that demands their submission, failing to recognize that our culture may need more rehab than these men, failing to recognize that these men are not dominating and that such violence against them is not male privilege and neither is it the privileging of masculinity. In fact, they often claim that such suffering of men is actually the devaluation of women.

Yes, in our sick culture of male submission, the suffering of men is caused by a society that doesn’t value women. In fact, it is claimed, that violence against men is actually the oppression of women. That’s what makes sense in our sick culture because the obvious truth is “assholery.” If a man learns to say that men suffer violence because men are systematically devalued in our culture—that man speaks pure misogynistic truth.

Only in a profoundly sick culture would violence against men be interpreted primarily as the devaluation of women, rather than the obvious–the devaluation and oppression of men. Only in a profoundly sick culture would violence against men be seen as the overvaluing and privileging of men and masculinity.

Fuck that and all you folks who fail to recognize that the male body is the most culturally acceptable locus of violence. Violence against one man is a “degradation, terror, and limitation to all” men. Most men and boys limit their behavior because of the existence of potential violence against them. Most men and boys box their emotions away to create a front of stolidity, an avoidance of the crushing reality that our culture demands their submission, obedience, oppression, and acquiescence to a culture that doesn’t value them, considers them cannon-fodder, expendable capital, human resources, objects-of-utility.

My dad is 76 years old. I had the “freedom” of watching him break into tears a few weeks ago as he recounted some of the horrors that he saw while in the Army. This is a man who never shed a tear or spoke a word about his suffering and the suffering of his Army buddies until he was no longer strong enough to “be a man.” At 76, he’s no longer strong enough to keep that shit boxed in. It was an emotional prison for him. There is nothing heroic about it. PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and being used as human cannon-fodder is not and should not be celebrated as awesome heroics of willpower. It’s a prison for men. It isn’t male privilege and it isn’t male domination. Such things are male submission. Such things are what my father did and experienced in submission to a culture that demanded it of him. Such things are what men do in submission to a culture that doesn’t value them.

This is our culture. This is violence against men. It is prevalent, normalized, excused, celebrated, glamorized, and glorified. If you speak out against it, you will be subjected to further ridicule, shame, aggression, and oppression by the masculinity and language police. You will be accused of misappropriating words that are reserved for women because there is no such thing as violence against men. It’s not a real thing. It’s just plain old violence. Laugh if you want. It’s funny how that works–how tragedy becomes comedy, how the best jokes are lamentations, how the suffering of men makes for the best punchlines.

The Male Body And The Masculinity Police

The most culturally acceptable locus of violence is the male body. The policing of masculinity assures this fact. Call this policing and violence whatever you want. Call these things The Patriarchy™ if you want, but neither of these things are male privilege and neither of these things are male domination. I prefer to call these things the lived-experiences of men.

I generally dislike “The Good Men Project” because most of their articles are milquetoast and because they try to understand the lived-experiences of men through the lens of feminism(s). This is problematic because ALL feminism(s) assume The Patriarchy™ (so far as I can tell) and proceed from that problematic assumption to make what are often wrong-headed assumptions about masculinity and men. However, I will give credit where it is due. Beth Leyba wrote this article the other day, “I Hate the Broncos: Daring to Question Whether Football is Worth It.”

In her “daring” article, Leyba gets a few things right. She writes. “Football is a brutal sport that sometimes ends up destroying the lives of those who play it.” She says that she was never a fan of football, but that her apathy about this sort of violence against men “morphed into moral opposition” because of the costliness of the sport.

She notes the physical damage done to men via multiple concussions and relates this to her own experiences with an injury that she suffered on a swing-set. She writes about football being a sport that “literally chews people up and spits them out.” I agree with her, but swing-sets, unlike football, don’t generally chew people up and spit them out. Note how it takes a remotely similar and personal experience of injury before she is willing to toss out her apathy regarding this sort of violence against men. I really want to give her the benefit of the doubt and be kind here because we have similar conclusions about violence against men; though we arrive at these conclusions through very different routes. From her feminist lens, a swing-set accident “has helped to crystallize” her feelings about the grotesque amounts of violence against men that exist in our culture.

I’m not sure that she understands the depths of this violence that permeates our culture, considering how it took the traumatic swing-set accident to cause her to shed her apathy, but she can see that our culture celebrates this violence against men. She notes that “football brings people together” for tailgate parties, for thanksgiving tradition, and etc. Hell, if not for this culturally accepted violence against men, most sports bars would probably not exist.

I just finished watching “Super Bowl XLVIII,” where millions of people all across our country and throughout sports bars tuned in to cheer about this violence against men. I’m not going to link to the tweets, but there were assholes celebrating the fact that Richard Sherman (a player for the Seahawks) suffered an ankle injury during the game.

There is also human cock-fighting, better known as the “UFC.” Yeah, sycophants can dress it up as strategy and as a violent form of chess, but it’s still primarily violence against men. It was only a few weeks ago where millions of people tuned in to watch Anderson Silva kick another man so hard that Silva horrifically broke his own leg.

Look at the suffering of this man. Anybody can see that these sports are a form of violence against men. This fact is so obvious…just look at him.

It shouldn’t take a traumatic swing-set injury for a woman (especially a feminist who is supposed to be knowledgeable about gender issues) to acknowledge this fact and sweep aside her “apathy” about this violence. It shouldn’t take one’s own personal experience with a loosely related concussive injury to bring about the empathy needed to understand such blatant suffering of men.

If you can’t see this suffering, or if you’ve only now begun to see it, perhaps you have been blinded to it because your theories about The Patriarchy™ have blinded you to it. Perhaps you have been so busy in-fighting with other feminists and jockeying for status on various feminist hierarchies of oppression that you have simply failed to see the obvious. These men are not dominating. These men are submitting to a culture that glorifies violence against them. These men are submitting to a culture that demands their suffering through the policing of masculinity.

We live in a culture where violence against men is not only culturally permissible, it is celebrated as heroic. Our president and congress perpetuates this norm. President Obama delivered one of the biggest standing ovations at the SOTU address. (You can watch the ovation here.) The ovation was for Cory Remsburg. It was an ovation to celebrate his heroics—being deployed 10 times by our military, having his body mutilated and sacrificed, paralyzed, blinded. The standing ovation was a policing of masculinity such that men-as-cannon-fodder are praised. Our entire congress cheered about the dehumanization of this man. They cheered that he was put through a meat grinder and spit out as a hero “who never quit.”

“Ahhh…but these are adult men who are well-paid to take these risks and subject their bodies to violence,” say fans and apologists of violent sports and the military. I say rubbish. These men were all conditioned via culture to “be a man.” One of the first questions I was asked when I spoke with military recruiters was whether or not I played high-school football. I don’t think this was any sort of unusual question asked by military recruiters. It makes sense that the military would want boys and young men who have a history of having had their personhood mutilated through violent “sport.” Hell, one of the first things done to young men, when entering the military, is the shaving of their heads—to try and strip young men of individual personhood differences—making new recruits a gaggle of “maggots.”

This conditioning (abusing) starts at a young age. Take, for example, the horrific show, “Friday Night Tykes.” It’s all about the policing of masculinity in boys, making them into violent monsters who are willing to harm other boys, robbing boys of their emotional well-being, robbing boys of their personhood, distorting masculinity into this grotesquery of socio-culturally acceptable violent behavior.

This kind of policing of masculinity ensures that the male body becomes the most socio-culturally acceptable locus of violence. This is not male privilege. This is not male domination. This is male submission. These are the lived-experiences of men.

So, when Ms. Leyba and other feminists write about shedding their apathy toward this violence against men, it’s hard for me to take seriously their often made claims about feminism working on men’s issues–how feminism cares about men, and how The Patriarchy™ hurts men too. If Ms. Leyba had actually cared about men, she would never have had apathy about them in the first place.

Ms. Leyba, take off your feminist goggles for a moment and try to understand the lived-experiences of men. You don’t need to be bonked on the head in one of your swing-set accidents to do this. Simply look around. You will see the policing of masculinity. You will see a culture of male submission. You will see the male body as the locus of culturally acceptable violence. That is not male privilege. That is not male domination. Such things are the lived-experiences of men.

[Edit: Part two is published.]

Free Cock Is Not Oppression

As you’ll answer it, take heed
This Slave commit no Violence upon
Himself. I’ve been deceiv’d. The Publick Safety
Requires he should be more confin’d; and none,
No not the Princes self, permitted to
Confer with him. I’ll quit you to the King.
Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn’d;
Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d. –Congreve, The Mourning Bride

The Jezebel ladies are busying themselves concocting evidence of their oppression. It’s a “spectacular tale” of a man who is too weak to last more than two hours online as a woman. In this tale, a man is said to have created a fake online dating profile of a “pretty average looking girl.” His inbox quickly filled with perverted messages and offers of free cock. The man was so disgusted at all the free cock thrown his way that he had to delete the profile and spend the rest of the night “with a very bad taste” in his mouth.

The tale is suspect, but we all know that free cock is everywhere. Men give it away like it’s worthless. There is no doubt in my mind that this is probably typical of the experiences of women with online dating profiles. I doubt that it is unusual at all for a woman to get 300 messages in her inbox from men who are desperate for female affection, approval, and sex. There is no doubt in my mind that men send “dick-pics” and clamor, bother, and sometimes harass women for their affections and attentions. There is no doubt in my mind that men deal with gobs of rejection and there is no doubt in my mind that some men handle this rejection in very poor ways—becoming relatively “hostile” after being told that they are not interesting, not good enough (too poor), or, in various ways, that they are not worthy of affection and attention. The harsh reality for some men is that some women will never bestow upon them a position high enough in the male hierarchy of dominance to be “worthy” of affection, attention, and sex. We all know it’s true in-general, even if this specific tale is suspect. Free cock is everywhere.

This is something that I’ve never understood about men. If women want to ride my cock, they gotta pay. I’m the one doing all the work in bed. It’s my sweat all over her and the sheets. It’s her fucking orgasm and foreplay that is a job. Yet, men give away cock like it’s worthless. Dudes, get a fucking clue and stop giving it away! For the sake of fuck, at least make her pay for a juicy sirloin to replace all the jizzed-out protein.

All you men who give it away, all you do is reinforce the entitlement mentality of women who believe that their being present is plenty. You reinforce the idea that women don’t owe anything to the relationship—that they deserve a free-ride of cocks and that they don’t even have to break a sweat. Even the most aggressive cock-breaking volley-ball girls barely break a sweat after saddling up. You may be able to find a few coked-up girls who really get into it—the kind of girls who end up with sweaty hair, mascara, and cum dripping down their cheeks, but those girls usually have emotional disorders and are simply trying to bury their emotional problems in various sorts of drug induced escapes.

Women typically feel entitled to free cock. Don’t believe me? Rejected girls are often the most vindictive, hateful, and slanderous cunts of thunder ever unleashed upon the world of men. Try telling a girl no. Tell her, after she makes it clear that she wants your cock, that you’re not interested in giving it to her. Tell her that she isn’t interesting, that her soul is dog-shit and that she has nothing to offer other than boobs and booty, that she is a piece of shit and a total failure as a human being, that you don’t find her attractive and that she isn’t even good enough to be a cum-bucket. Tell her that she is just a white girl with bird lips and that she is never going to be any good at sucking cock and that she needs to stop pretending that she is doing any favors and learn to compensate for her inadequacies by becoming “kinky.” Tell her that her vapid life of shoes and pop-culture and materialism are soulless pursuits of dog-shit. Watch what happens. If you Jez-ladies wanna know what “hostile” means, see this rejected woman.

It’s typical for these Jez-ladies to complain that men feel entitled to a shag after paying for dinner, drinks, and a movie, being chivalrous and paying compliments, but there is nothing like the hostility of a rejected woman who feels entitled to free cock…and for doing nothing other than being present with her pussy. So, before you Jez-ladies start complaining about all the free-cock-oppression, assess your own entitlements and privileges. Before you condemn men as being “hostile” about rejection, perhaps you should consider how well most men actually do handle rejection, for hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Free cock is not your oppression. It is your privilege. Get a clue.

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.

The Wife Is Not Your Friend

Here is an excellent video about male emotional dependence and retardation. Men/boys are conditioned to believe that a wife is to be man’s closest friend but in reality, a wife is no such thing—rarely ever even close. When a man depends on his wife for friendship, it opens the man to emotional manipulation and exploitation. His emotional development retards and his relationships with other men becomes shallow and relatively meaningless talk about sports or some other fetishistic activity that deflects away from meaningful talk.

I talked with a man the other day who had labored for more than 30 years at the same job. I asked him how much longer until retirement. He wasn’t sure, but his wife…his “best friend,” chimed in immediately. She had the date coldly calculated to the month—knowing exactly how long his income would last. The wife kept better tabs on the husband’s career and money than the husband because she isn’t his friend. She doesn’t “love” him as a friend or human-being. She loves his function as a tool to provide for her—to satiate her greedy-pig lifestyle.

I considered talking to him about how he could have retired years ago, if not for his greedy-pig wife, but he believes that he would be helpless without her. And this is probably true to an extent, because without her, he would be emotionally crippled. Without her telling him who to be, he would suddenly find himself empty, in an emotional vacuum of loneliness, and face-to-face with the reality of his underdeveloped self—a self that exists only in relation to and dependent upon the dictates of his wife.

She would have it no other way. She would never dare look at her husband as a person, lest she face the reality of her exploitations of him. She needs him to be emotionally crippled and dependent upon her, for if he were to ever develop a self—independent from her, she would no longer be able to enjoy the fruits of his labors. As the host should never become aware of the parasite, the husband should never become aware of his exploitation…and as a parasite has little concern for the health of its host, so the wife has little concern for the emotional well-being of her husband. So long as he remains obedient and shows up every day for work, so long as he suffers in silence (or better yet, believes he isn’t suffering) the parasite remains content—calculating coldly the days until he is used up and time to be retired.

The wife is not your friend. No friend is going to make a friendship contingent upon a diamond ring or other sorts of trinkets to be placed on fingers or shelves. A friend doesn’t treat you as a tool or as an object-of-utility to be thrown away if broken. A friend actually cares about your emotional well-being as a human-being. Any woman who demands rings and other trinkets for the continuation of the friendship—she is not your friend.

Bill Cosby’s latest performance is a 90 minute set dedicated to this distinction between “the friend” and “the wife.” At 76 years of age, he still has the comic genius and the skills to reiterate, in a hilarious way, that his wife is not his friend. Men need to understand this. Men need to actually *listen* to their so-called friend. The Cos warns men that actually listening will reveal that she doesn’t give a damn about you. She gives a damn about what you do for her. Pay attention and listen. Hear what she actually says. A friend doesn’t demand rings and trinkets in exchange for friendship.

The wife is not your friend.

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.]

Nothing Further to Discuss

Since I got involved in the pro-male issues, I’ve faced four recurring criticisms.

1. “You’re a homo.”
2. “You make sweeping generalizations.”
3. “You have mommy issues.”
4. “You must have been in a relationship with a real bitch.”

Number 1 is irrelevant as my sexuality typically has nothing to do with the issue(s) discussed. The criticism usually comes from a traditionalist conservative man or from a woman. The man is usually attached to his gynocentric identity. The woman usually feels disempowered over the fact that she has no control over my sexuality. Either way, my sexuality is typically irrelevant to the issue(s) discussed. If you bring it up, we have nothing further to discuss.

Number 2 is simply an asshat’s misunderstanding of qualifiers. This asshat likely has some confusion about basic logic. Either way, it’s not my job to educate asshats about such things. When an asshat makes such errors, we have nothing further to discuss.

Number 3 is probably true, but most of us have “mommy issues” anyway. My mother was an abusive cunt, but most mothers are this. Most mothers beat their kids. Mothers are perpetrators of psychological and/or physical abuse. (Stop lying to yourself. Mom pulls your strings and you know it.) There is nothing new about this fact. It’s relatively boring and brings nothing new to the discussion. If you bring it up, we have nothing further to discuss.

Number 4 is true. I’ve been in relationships with “real bitches.” However, that doesn’t nullify any of my arguments. In fact, it validates many of them. So, if you bring it up, we have nothing further to discuss.

The Patriarchy™ Fetish and Marble Cake

I admit it. I have a guilty pleasure—feminist-philosophers. No, feminist-philosophers are not necessarily oxymoronic, though some of them are morons. Take, for example, Iris M. Young.

Young studied philosophy and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University. She became a professor of political science and was well known for her work in “theories of justice, democratic theory and feminist theory.” Sadly, Young lost a battle with cancer in 2006 and the world was deprived of “one of the most important feminist thinkers in the world…one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter century.”

While researching this much respected philosopher, I discovered one of her papers, “Humanism, Gynocentrism, and Feminist Politics.” It is a brilliant and fascinating paper. It is a must read for anybody interested in The Patriarchy™, gender politics, and philosophy.

In this paper, Young presents two remarkably different versions of feminism—humanist-feminism and gynocentric-feminism. Young admits that these two types of feminisms are often contrary to and sometimes contradictory with each other. She also admits that both feminisms share the common narrative thread of male-as-antagonist. The overarching antagonist to both narratives is the male dominated culture that oppresses women—The Patriarchy™.

This antagonist represents weak and lazy writing. It’s a tired, uninspiring, and one-dimensional villain. This antagonist no longer has a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. The Patriarchy™ is the Snidely Whiplash of feminist narratives—a cartoonish caricature of evil, the archenemy of all women, humanity, and civilization. It is not an artifact of “poetic faith.”

As such, The Patriarchy™ is not a real thing. It is only an imagined thing—a fetishized object of imagination that exists in the minds of feminists and other morons. It exists to perpetuate a shallow and one-dimensional narrative that presents women as objects-of-victimization. It is the sort of thing that feminists love to hate. It is loved because it can be blamed for everything. It is hated because it is the villain. Without The Patriarchy™, there would be no feminist narratives. Without Snidely Whiplash, there would be no Dudley Do-Right. The Patriarchy™ is one half of a shallow and one-dimensional dichotomy of good vs. evil that exists in feminist narratives. It’s not any real thing of lived-experience. It is only an imaginary thing of imagined-experience.

To better understand this shallow dichotomy and the silliness of feminist narratives, let’s look at two of the most significant and influential feminist narratives as presented by Iris M. Young. Both narratives present women as victims of The Patriarchy™. Both narratives present The Patriarchy™ as an antagonist, a villain like Snidely Whiplash who twiddles his moustache and has no human depth beyond a sadistic lust for the devaluing and disempowerment of women.

Humanist-feminism

Humanist-feminism, according to Young, is best described in the works of Simone de Beauvoir. Young refers to this sort of feminist thinking as “Beauvoirian.” At its core is a revolt against being imprisoned in femininity. For these Beauvoirians, The Patriarchy™ “has ascribed to women a distinct feminine nature by which it has justified the exclusion of women from most of the important and creative activity of society—science, politics, invention, industry, commerce, the arts.” The Patriarchy™ forces femininity upon women. As such, humanist-feminism was a revolt against femininity and, by extension, a revolt against The Patriarchy™.

What makes this Beauvoirian revolt so fascinating is the fact that it is founded theoretically on the philosophical distinction between immanence and transcendence. Immanence roughly designates being an object. Transcendence roughly designates being a free-subject that defines its own nature and “makes projects that bring new entities into the world.”

It is argued by humanist-feminists that The Patriarchy™ does not allow women to become such transcendent and free-subjects. Instead, women are relegated to being objects of domestic and sexual service to men and for the benefit of men. As such, the full humanity of women is restricted by The Patriarchy™. This is, according to humanist-feminists, a brutalization of the personhood of half the human race for benefit to the other half. The Patriarchy™ mutilates and deforms women into objects—the non-human Other. Young writes that this “distinction between transcendence and immanence ensnares Beauvoir in the very definition of woman as a non-human Other…”

By defining humanity as transcendence, as a free-subjectivity above mere life and the processes of nature that repeat in endless cycles, women can only exist as victims—“maimed, mutilated, dependent, confined to a life of immanence and forced to be an object.” In short, humanity transcends, but women are imprisoned to a life of immanence. Humanist-feminism was a revolt against this sort of immanence, reproductive biology, domestic concerns, and motherhood—the things Beauvoir found most oppressive to women.

As such, Beauvoirians devalue women…just like The Patriarchy™ devalues women. The humanist-feminist revolt against The Patriarchy™ is patriarchal. As such, humanist-feminism is The Patriarchy™. They smash The Patriarchy™ by being it.

Gynocentric-feminism

According to Young, “gynocentric feminism defines the oppression of women very differently from humanist feminism. Women’s oppression consists not of being prevented from participating in full humanity, but of the denial and devaluation of specifically feminine virtues and activities by an overly instrumentalized and authoritarian masculinist culture.” Gynocentric-feminism is not a revolt against femininity. It is a revolt against the devaluation of femininity. It is a revolt against The Patriarchy™ by embracing what The Patriarchy™ always “ascribed” to women. As such, gynocentric-feminism is The Patriarchy™.

For gynocentric-feminists, femininity is “not the problem, not the source of women’s oppression, but indeed within traditional femininity lie the values that we should promote for a better society. Women’s oppression consists of the devaluation and repression of women’s nature and female activity by the patriarchal culture.” Again, The Patriarchy™ is still to blame because it “threaten[s] the survival of the planet and the human race. [Patriarchal] values exalt death, violence, competition, selfishness, a repression of the body, sexuality, and affectivity.”

According to Young, The Patriarchy™ produces “phallogocentric categorization,” a moral rationality and language of sharp distinctions, of abstract rights and justice. However, the feminine is supposed to produce loose categories, a flowing of language that envelops and folds in on itself, reflects itself in a continuous and particularistic ethics of care—a continuous menstrual flowing of garbled gibberish. The feminine virtue is supposed to place the particular over the abstract and universal, all the while denying the “nature/culture dichotomy held by humanists… [asserting] the connection of women and nature,” rooting the feminine in the body-experience, rather than in some sort of abstract transcendence.

Gynocentric-feminism places a high value on the woman’s reproductive processes. It is supposed that these processes give women a “living continuity with their offspring that it does not give men. Women thus have a temporal consciousness that is continuous, whereas male temporal consciousness is discontinuous.” As such, males are said to be more alienated from their children, but more connected to their work and other endeavors of artifact creation. In this way, being woman is not being an object. Bringing forth life into this world is one of the most important endeavors-of-creation…and only women can do that.

Gynocentric-feminism inverts humanist-feminism—completely upending prior notions of women’s oppression. Yet, smashing The Patriarchy™ remains a goal of gynocentric-feminism. They smash The Patriarchy™ by embracing it.

Implications

Where humanist-feminism destroyed the value of the feminine, gynocentric-feminism restores it. There is dignity for women within their bodies and within their uniquely female body-experiences. Gynocentric-feminism shows that this connection with the body produces uniquely feminine virtues, language, and experiences of which men are not privy. In fact, men are not privileged at all in this way. Men are alienated from these experiences, from a “living continuity” with their children, and relegated to such experiences by proxy—through intellectual creations, hierarchal competition, and through functioning as an object-of-utility for a woman, for women, and for society-in-general.

This reality requires a reassessment of what male privilege means. Young writes, “If we claim that masculinity distorts men more than it contributes to their self-development and capacities, again, the claim that women are the victims of injustice loses considerable force.” She eventually questions, “what warrants the claim that women need liberating…of what does male privilege consist?” She has difficulty swallowing that bitter red pill. She has difficulty being straight and saying that we’ve been wrong about The Patriarchy™ and male privilege.

Although, she never disavows patriarchy theory, she does put forth a clever analogy as a way to try and change the subject, to escape responsibility, yet still fetishize and blame The Patriarchy™. In regards to gender, Young states that “we need a conception of difference that is less like the icing bordering the layers of cake and more like a marble cake, in which the flavors remain recognizably different but thoroughly insinuated in one another. [And this]… social change requires changing the subject, which in turn means developing new ways of speaking, writing, and imagining.”

Translation

Young wants her cake and eat it too. She wants to change the subject and direct attention away from the wrongheaded notions about male privilege and female oppression. She wants to create a narrative in which female oppression and privilege simultaneously exist in one menstrual flowing of garbled gibberish—a marble cake. She does not come forward to clearly say, “Oops, we were wrong about male privilege and The Patriarchy™.” She does not apologize for the decades of bashing and shaming men about their so-called privilege. She makes no apologies for the centuries of oppression men have endured as objects-of-utility for women and for society-in-general. She does not make any apologies for wanting her cake and eating it too.

Young is playing a game, essentially saying “it’s the fault of The Patriarchy™ that we were wrong…even though we weren’t really wrong. The Patriarchy™ forced feminists to make distinct icing and borders on their narrative-cake. It’s the fault of The Patriarchy™ that feminists didn’t create a marble-cake-narrative in which women could be simultaneously oppressed and liberated, thoroughly insinuated in one another. It’s the fault of The Patriarchy™ that The Patriarchy™ was allowed to be the primary antagonist of any feminist narrative.” This is Young’s elaborate game of victim-blaming.

Why did you men allow us to blame you? It’s your fault that we falsely accused you. Had you men simply valued us women, we would never have falsely accused you men of oppressing us. Never mind the countless bodies of men who sacrificed their lives for women and for society-in-general; that’s oppression of women too. Valuing us is not-valuing us. Oppressing us is not-oppressing us. No matter what men do, it’s the fault of men that women are simultaneously liberated and oppressed, valued and not-valued, empowered and not-empowered. Men and by extension, The Patriarchy™, are to blame for everything.

Conclusion

Young, like most feminists, clings to her fetish—her imagined-experience of The Patriarchy™. She refuses to develop a more comprehensive narrative. She refuses to create a narrative that gives depth to the lived-experiences of men. She refuses to relinquish her hatred of men. She prefers blaming men for everything. This is her love, her hatred, and her fetish. She clung to these until death.

Sadly, this is what makes Young’s paper so brilliant and fascinating.  It illustrates the grasp of this fetish—The Patriarchy™. A philosopher as clever as Young fails to relinquish her fetish. Even after clearly making the case that prior notions of The Patriarchy™ and male privilege were wrong, she maintains that men are still to blame. Even when she knows that it’s not the fault of men, she still blames men—The Patriarchy™.

By painting men as The Patriarchy™, men can be made a cartoonish caricature of evil. Men become as shallow and one-dimensional as Snidely Whiplash—the archenemy of women, humanity, civilization, and all things good. Men become The Patriarchy™, the non-human Other.

This is the narrative of feminisms. This is the common thread that binds together feminist narratives. This is the dehumanization of men as the antagonist. It is the fetishizing of men as The Patriarchy™–an imagined thing, a fetishized object of imagination, a villain.

This villain no longer inspires the “willing suspension of disbelief.” This villain is not an artifact of “poetic faith.” This villain represents weak and lazy writing. The Patriarchy™ is bad literature…and so are feminist narratives.

The way forward may be some sort of “marble cake,” as Young describes, where gender differences are distinct, yet thoroughly insinuated within each other. However, before that can happen, a narrative granting multi-dimensionality and depth to men is needed. A narrative consisting of compassion and consideration for the lived-experiences of men and boys is needed. That will never happen as a feminist narrative. So long as men are written as the antagonist, as The Patriarchy™, men will always be the Other–the icing on the outside, apart from the cake, apart from humanity.