Tumblrina ‘Intersectionality’

Posted on | December 14, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

Excuse me for returning to this bottomless well of feminist insanity, but here’s a Tumblr post that went viral last week:

I think one of my least favorite types of responses to people speaking up on sexual harassment and sexual assault is are articles like “in wake of weinstein, men wonder if hugging women still ok”, and comments like “this is why men don’t pursue women anymore”, “i don’t wanna work with women cause i don’t want a lawsuit”, or “i don’t even look at women anymore cause everything is sexual harassment”. this is a particular brand of rape culture, men acting as if women are overreacting, as if men don’t have the basic social skills to know the difference between wanted and unwanted advances, as if women simply setting boundaries is “cramping their style” and “emasculating” them, as if the rules of respecting women are super confusing, so confusing that they’re supposedly forcing men not to interact with us altogether.

this is an act they’ve been putting on for decades: playing stupid, pretending not to know better and then getting upset when we tell them what “better” is. if that doesn’t show you how emotional and emotionally manipulative they are, i don’t know what does.

 

Notice where “they” is used as an all-inclusive reference to males — men have been putting on an act, men are “emotionally manipulative.”

If any man categorically smeared women in this fashion, he’d be called out as a sexist, but on feminist Tumblr, this hateful anti-male rhetoric gets 40,000 notes in a matter of days. However, it’s important to ask, “Is this true?” That is to say, is her complaint factually accurate?

No, I’d say. Many men genuinely are confused and perplexed by the vehemence of what I’ve called the Sexual Harassment Apocalypse, where trivial offenses by men — making a risque joke at work, or just behaving in ways described vaguely as “creepy” — are conflated with very serious misconduct, up to and including rape. We can all agree, for example, that Louis C.K.’s habit of inviting women to his dressing room to watch him masturbate was wrong, but then we repeatedly see feminist writers who employ various pejorative terms (“misogyny,” “harassment,” “rape culture”) to lump this kind of arguably criminal behavior into the same category as the well-meaning schlub who says the wrong thing after having one too many cocktails at the office Christmas party.

However, when men call attention to this problem, voicing concerns about the dangers men face in a climate of sexual paranoia, the Tumblrina condemns those concerns as “a particular brand of rape culture.” How dare any man protest his innocence by saying he doesn’t have “the basic social skills to know the difference between wanted and unwanted advances”? And she almost instantly got 40,000 notes on this!

A persistent problem of feminist discourse is that the movement attracts women who are basically anti-male, so that the feminist audience will always give the loudest applause to the writer who denounces men in the most categorical terms. This is why writers like Andrea Dworkin are endlessly quoted by young feminists, and it’s also why so many leaders of campus sexual assault “awareness” organizations are lesbians. The feminist movement incentivizes hatred of males. No careful student of the movement is surprised to learn that, for example, Women’s Studies Professor Breanne Fahs (who claims the “stigma” of obesity is “connected to patriarchy, sexism, and the oppression of women”) is a lesbian who wrote a hagiographic book about Valerie Solanas, the man-hating psychotic who attempted to murder Andy Warhol. Nor are we surprised that Professor Fahs writes journal articles that attack “heteronormativity and heterosexual privilege” in the field of “sexuality studies.” Anyone who says a word in favor of heterosexuality has transgressed against “feminist thought,” according to Professor Fahs, because having sex with women makes men happy, and anything that makes men happy is wrong.

OK, she doesn’t say that in so many words, but read her work — or the work of any Women’s Studies professor, really — and it’s difficult to overlook this recurrent theme in feminist rhetoric. Whenever we enter one of these cyclical periods of feminist rage, such as that unleashed by the #MeToo hashtag in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, men who notice these expressions of seething resentment quite naturally express concern about the potential effect on their own lives. Feminists then mock these concerns as evidence of men being “clueless,” because this is another recurrent theme of feminist discourse, i.e., that men are so intellectual inferior they are incapable of understanding anything.

What we learn, if we study what feminists say, is that their rhetoric about “equality” is a deliberate falsehood. Feminism is based on a belief in male inferiority. The feminist believes herself to be so vastly superior to men that they are expected to sit silently while she lectures them on what’s wrong with them, namely everything. She needs no evidence whatsoever to accuse a man of “sexism,” because all men are sexist (a word that is simply a feminist synonym for “male”). Nothing a man might say in his own defense is considered valid by feminists, who reject the possibility that any man could ever be right about anything.

Any student of feminist rhetoric perceives that what actually motivates them is a sadistic desire to humiliate men, to punish men for being men — an ideology of hatred, manifesting an appetite for revenge: Jessica Valenti has a big nose, and she’s never going to forgive men for that.

“Not guilty” — I plead innocent, your honor. I’m not responsible for Jessica Valenti’s childhood insecurities, because I was nowhere near New York City when she was growing up there, envious of snub-nosed blue-eyed blonde girls (and hating the boys who liked those girls better). I’ve never met Jessica Valenti, and so I can’t be blamed for her miserable self-pity, her substance abuse, the men who catcalled her, etc.

“Not guilty” — men are allowed to say that, right? We have the right to ask that we be judged as individuals, rather than lumped into a category and condemned collectively as part of the “patriarchy.”

A man need not have lived a life of sainthood to reject this collective guilt trip, which is based on a feminist ideology that blames “male power” for everything wrong in the world. Is some nerdy college boy to blame for the sins of Harvey Weinstein? Is the $12-an-hour day laborer at fault for the predations of Bill Cosby or Bill Clinton? You might think so, if you pay attention to feminist rhetoric condemning men quite generally as perpetrators of “rape culture.” But I digress . . .

“Intersectionality” is sometimes used as by feminists as an excuse for hypocrisy in the name of progressive solidarity. For example, when O.J. Simpson murdered his wife, the National Organization of Women (NOW) punished its L.A. chapter president, Tammy Bruce, for organizing a protest focusing on Simpson’s history of domestic violence. It was wrong to condemn O.J., according to NOW leaders, because violence against women is acceptable when a black guy does it.

OK, they didn’t say that in so many words, but that’s how “intersectionality” actually operates. Feminists jumped on the #BlackLivesMatter bandwagon, smearing police as racist monsters, unconcerned that demonizing cops might jeopardize women’s safety. Feminists expect us to believe that the epidemic of criminal violence in Chicago, for example, is good for women. Because “intersectionality.”

Guess what the same Tumblrina has to say about black men?

Black boys need to be taught to value and respect themselves more often

I also wish you guys would stop saying things like “black men are trash”, “black men ain’t shit”, or worse, “black men are worthless” etc. cause it’s ugly and counter-productive

 

Yep, the Tumblrina is black, so while she’s willing to engage in feminist man-hating generally, she wants to exempt black men. But wait! She’s got more “intersectionality”:

We rarely use this word when it comes to men, but it’s true, a lot of straight men are easy. like they have very low standards for who they sleep with, how they do it, they don’t care whether she’s clean, whether she’s std-free, whether she’s on the pill, whether she’s nice and treats them with a basic level of respect, nothing, they only really care about how she looks, if that. literally anyone who gives them attention, they’ll take it, and it’s really sad, and that’s what we mean when we say they don’t really value their lives. and i honestly think their reckless behavior stems from something deep within themselves. idk what it could be, but i have theories, maybe not being raised the right way, maybe peer pressure, maybe deep rooted self-esteem issues, idk

To which a gay Hispanic man replied:

Gender roles + that’s how male depression manifests
Male depression is markedly different than most people’s conception of depression, with self-medication through drugs, and sex, and reckless behavior and it frankly needs more attention.

 

So, “straight men . . . have very low standards” and engage in “reckless behavior” because of “deep rooted self-esteem issues,” according to our intersectional Tumblrina, a claim that inspired the gay man to blame “depression” and “gender roles.” These theoretical speculations, however, lack any basis in fact. Go check CDC data on the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and you’ll discover that it’s not “straight men” who have the highest rates. For example, 48% of black females are infected with herpes, compared to less than 9% of white males. And as for gay men, they “are disproportionately impacted by syphilis, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs),” according to the CDC. In other words, the facts are 180 degrees opposite of what is claimed on Tumblr.

Need I remind you that Tumblr is “effectively worthless”?

 

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