I’ve had a The Single Life and/or a ZOMG! Teh Menz post a-brewin’ for a while. The problem is that it’s entirely based on me responding to articles, several of which I read about a month ago. So it’s all getting a bit jumbled about in my head. That’s fun, though, right?
What’s going to end up happening here, though, is I’m just going to put up a bunch of links.
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People love writing about online dating. I’m no different, I suppose. I’ve written a bunch of posts about online dating. I haven’t written any lately, though, mostly because my ability to care about the whole thing is rather limited at the moment. Still, I’m always interested when other people write about it online dating. Mostly because about half of the articles end up being hilariously wrong or misguided.
Peter Ludlow wrote an article in The Atlantic as a follow-up to a different article written by Dan Slater. I read Ludlow’s first. That matters.
See, Ludlow’s article was all about how online dating has commoditized dating. I actually wrote about thatexact same thing many, many months ago. One of the big problems that humans have is dealing with a situation where there are too many choices. One of the other big problems that humans have is dealing with a situation where several of the available choices are pie-in-the-sky fantasy, at best. Too many pie-in-the-sky fantasy choices could be the name of the next big online dating site.
I would never make a claim, however, that online dating destroys commitment, either in theory or in practice. I think I was pretty clear in my own musings about online dating that I was going in with incorrect attitudes and presuppositions and that I was pretty damaged. All online dating does is allow damaged people to meet other damaged people they wouldn’t otherwise meet and spread the misery farther and faster.
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I read the Dan Slater article next, pretty much in the spirit of an anecdote that Ludlow then jumped off of with a sort of detached journalism. As such, I didn’t immediately notice that there were…shall we say, problems with the Slater article.
Last week, Dan Slater at the Atlantic wrote what may be the worst piece on online dating I’ve ever read, which is a truly remarkable feat in such a competitive field. Slater’s theory is that because online dating sites are a magical wonderland where men can meet and fuck an endless array of women, it means men will have no desire to get married and thus will be the ruin of marriage. If I were married to Dan Slater, I would get a lawyer on retainer now, because there’s projection all over this thing. And let’s be clear: Slater means men. He claims “people”, but as Alexis Madrigal (who, if you’re rushing to disagree with him, I should point out is male, so you might want to slow your roll, trolls) points out in the same publication, Slater didn’t bother to interview any women, much less any men that have a different experience from his buddy Jacob.
This is the second paragraph from Alexis’s article:
Narratively, the story focuses on Jacob, an overgrown manchild jackass who can't figure out what it takes to have a real relationship. The problem, however, is not him, and his desire for a "low-maintenance" woman who is hot, young, interested in him, and doesn't mind that he is callow and doesn't care very much about her. No, the problem is online dating, which has shown Jacob that he can have a steady stream of mediocre dates, some of whom will have sex with him.
That pretty much sums up Dan Slater’s article in a nutshell.
One of the real big problems with anyone who writes an article about online dating that’s primarily from one person’s perspective is that that one person might be wrong about a lot of things. I include myself in this. I don’t offer myself as a paragon of people who have experienced online dating, since I freely admit that I was kind of being a major asshole a lot of the time. Yeah, I might have just met some crazy people, but I probably didn’t do a damn thing to help myself, either.
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So yesterday Amanda Marcotte offered up the diametric opposite of the “guy who just wants to get laid” article with the “woman who desperately wants to get married” article. Those are also fun. Amanda offered her thoughts as a counterpoint to Jill over at Feministe and, for the record, I can’t be arsed to read the original article, since I really don’t care. What I want to highlight is something Amanda points out that is a fascinating underlying assumption of all of these sorts of articles:
Now, I’m not married and don’t want to be, in no small part because the institutional nature of marriage leads directly to this kind of thinking, wherein “spouse” is a job you want filled instead of an outgrowth of your love for another person. But there’s definite ideological argument of gender underpinning these stereotypes of why women and men marry. Basically, the implication is that real love between men and women is a myth. This fits into a larger sexist belief that men and women are “opposites” who put up with each other out of necessity, but who don’t really like each other very much. Believers in this believe that women need men, who are their social superiors, to choose them and validate them. (Being unchosen is considered a fate worse than death, which is why so many conservatives think that it’s a game winner to “argue” that feminists are just unchosen women who are bitter about our lack of validation from men—validation that is our sole purpose in existing, apparently.) In exchange for validating a woman’s right to exist by choosing her, a man gets someone to look after him and his home, provide him regular sex, and have children that will be named after him.
A while back I went on several dates with a woman. She was intelligent and accomplished. She also seemed to be quite well prepared for the whole settling down thing and decided that I was the one to do that.
My problem there was pretty simple: I just wasn’t that into her. I tried to convince myself to change my mind, but I couldn’t[1] bring myself to that. One of the interesting things about the way my mind works is that I draw pretty quick and accurate conclusions and then I spend about six months ignoring those conclusions until everything shakes out.
So what happened was I walked away from the first date, which went pretty well, all things considered, with Sons of Bill’s “So Much for the Blues”[2] running through my head. I then proceeded to not really think about her much and act like kind of a dick the next time I saw her. In spite of that, though, she kept trying. It eventually hit the point where every interaction we had came down to a conversation about how we couldn’t get along.
It was pretty much awful.
This particular story is a bit different from the “women planning their weddings even though they’re single and will probably be single for a long-ass time” thing in that I don’t know that she was planning to plug me into a five-year plan in a marriage binder filled with clippings from Modern Bride or whatever. I bring it up, though, because it’s pretty obvious she had a plan, she decided that I was the ideal person to fill in that part of the plan, and she didn’t notice that I was very much not on board. Then, even though I pretty much played the role of major dickhead, she still tried to get me to play that role.
I think this is the danger of seeing relationships as a job and the potential job applicants as being interchangeable. You ignore the person in front of you for the person who is in your head filling the role you think they should fill. It’s a good way to get yourself hurt and end up developing extremely negative opinions of your fellow humans.
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[1]Protip: don’t do that. Seriously, if something isn’t right, even if you can’t figure out why, just go with that. Life is easier that way.
[2]For those who don’t know, it’s basically a song about a guy breaking up with a girl and not giving a shit. Because he’s a total dick. And now he’s going to write a song about it, because breaking someone’s heart to write a song is a worthwhile trade. It also includes some of my favorite lyrics ever:
Yeah I wish I could write a song like Townes Van Zandt Then I could be a son of a bitch and no one would give a damn And I just keep telling myself that no one understands
Oh. Look. I’m still talking about feminism. Hoo-freaking-ray. Very well. Let’s to it. Oh, and be warned, there’s probably some potentially (hopefully) minor triggering discussion of rape and other forms of violence down there.
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I started poking around on feminist blogs around the same time I was starting to poke around on atheist blogs. The Venn diagram overlap on the whole atheist/feminist thing was pretty big for me, so it made a certain amount of sense to do exactly that. I tended to not comment, though, since being a commenter on a feminist blog seemed like a really good way to get your throat jumped on for saying something wrong that you didn’t even know was wrong.
That, in retrospect, was probably a good thing. I kept going back to certain blogs and I knew there were certain bloggers who would have interesting things to say about whatever the topic at hand was. I didn’t feel that I had to contribute at all, though. I showed up, I read, and I thought about what the blogger had to say. Sometimes I stuck around long enough to read the comments and see what other people had to say. Mostly, though, the key point is that I didn’t say anything.
I think this is the great weakness of the whole Web 2.0 experience. Most people naturally pay more attention to what they want to say in response to something than the thing that they’re responding to. That little box at the bottom that says, “Write your thoughts here, brosef!” shrieks out its Siren call and shorts out the part of the brain that is willing to sit quietly and listen, assuming that they didn’t actively strangle that part of their brain in grade school, of course.
That’s why you see so many comments on blogs that say things like, “You’re the worst writer in the world. Why do you keep doing this?” The other variation is, “Why are you writing about this? I prefer it when you write about this other thing.”[1] There is literally nothing easier in the world than not reading an article on the internet. I do it all the fucking time. In fact right at this very moment there are millions of articles on the internet that I’m not reading. Yet for some people the urge to go to some random article on the internet and tell the person writing it that, hey, they’re totally gonna start not reading the articles all up in this place starting a week from next Tuesday if they don’t start shaping up and writing ten thousand words about the glory that is the little dwarf guy on Game of Thrones and what he would sound like if he was calling NCAA basketball games alongside Dick Vitale is completely irresistible.[3]
Things get a whole hell of a lot worse when the sort of brain-dead simpleton who doesn’t understand that other people are allowed to have a different opinion end up on a feminist blog. And holy hell, do those brain-dead simpletons end up on feminist blogs. Here, I’ll let Amanda Marcotte and Natalie Reilly explain.
I quickly learned to (theoretically) run for the (hypothetical) hills when I ran across certain terms. The big ones were “rape culture,” “privilege,” and “mansplain.” Oh, god, how I hated seeing the world “mansplain.” It was the most aggravating possible word because it was the word that got pulled out when it was time to say, “Shut up, man, you have nothing valid to say.” You’ll note that I very specifically do not say it was the word that came out when I guy was attempting to do his best imitation of an entire bag of dicks. You also might want to note that I throw the word “privilege” around on a fairly regular basis and that I recently used the term “rape culture” quite a bit in a way that indicates that I am well and truly not on board with that sort of shenanigan. So what gives?
The problem, as I alluded to before, was that I came into the whole “lurking at feminist blogs” space from a position where I didn’t really have a strong sense of what was going on or a comprehensive thought about the whole thing beyond my basic “women are people, too,” thing. For the most part I believe that the whole “women are people, too” attitude is enough. As far as a general, all-around standard for living and working and generally interacting with women goes, simply being aware of the fact that women are people and, therefore, deserving of being treated as people and not, say, interchangeable mobile sex toys, is all you really need. If you want to go any deeper than that you need (and, by extension, I needed) to go much, much further beyond that point to a place of true understanding and unfortunately the first couple stages into that journey are the hardest and most likely to be annoying.
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I think there are three levels of what I will call political correctness in speech.
The first level is the, “We’re not gonna be PC here,” level of general jackassery. That’s where you get the people who say, “I’m going to say this extremely offensive thing because it pisses off all of the right people and makes everyone think I’m a big, tough culture warrior.” This is where you get the people who (most likely intentionally) ask, “Why can’t I use the n-word even though those black rappers get to use it all the time?” These are people who understand words only at the level of how to use them as weapons. They’re assholes.
The second level is the people who understand that, say, it’s not okay to use the n-word and there’s a really good reason for it. They get that saying racist or sexist things is bad mojo and they try to avoid it because it’s a bad idea in general and it’s the sort of thing that will create an unnecessary level of social stigma. Most people, I think, are in this second category. Some are well-intentioned people who don’t want to be offensive assholes. Some aren’t well-intentioned people who don’t want to seem like offensive assholes. At times it can be hard to distinguish between the two, though, since the words that cannot be used are often esoteric and weird and the rules come out of nowhere. Also, they’re often likely to seem really arbitrary to the uninitiated.[4]
When I say esoteric and weird, too, I mean that it’s sometimes something that comes across as extremely nitpicky. If you want an example go to a website where feminist-types hang out and use the word “hysterical” in a sentence. Hysterical is one of those words that’s become commonplace in the English language to describe something that’s just a totally crazy reaction to something,[5] usually in a negative way. Most people use the word innocently, since it’s a not-terribly-uncommon word in the English language and it's been stripped of all context about how being "hysterical" is a woman problem and a specific "women become hysterical because of their weaker constitutions and general woman-ness" problem. They don’t know there’s a problem, they mean nothing by it, and suddenly they’re being attacked by someone who wants them to know they’re the Devil.[6] That can be pretty damn confusing.
The third level is the people who have really, truly thought through words and the implications of said words. Or, in reality, they’ve thought through a bunch of words and, in doing so have opened themselves to the possibility that a word they use today might be totally offensive to someone and they don’t even know it. It’s hard to be a person who does this. I’d say that it’s also probably impossible to be a person who does this 100% of the time. Hell, I’d say anything over the 75% range is pretty damn good.
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Anyway, what was my point? Oh, yeah, mansplaining. To the uninitiated, that’s a portmanteau of “man” and “explain” and generally means, “a man who shows up and explains how the world really works to those silly-headed wimminz.” That word annoyed the hell out of me. It was the Swiss Army Knife of ending conversations. Some dude would wander in out of the cold and say, “Hey, I’ma let you finish, but first I think you need to know…” Someone else would then be all, “Mansplainer! How dare you mansplain to me in your mansplaining way with your smarmy mansplaininess!” Everything would then proceed in an orderly counterclockwise motion down the shitter (unless it happened in the southern hemisphere, at which point it would be a clockwise motion. Also, feel free to berate me for my anti-antipodean bias in the comments).
What I eventually figured out (I guess, since I’m talking about it) was that the guys accused of mansplaining were completely and totally violating the most simple precept of my proto-feminism. They weren’t really behaving in a fashion that indicated they believed that women were, in fact, people. Rather, they were treating women as inferiors who didn’t get it and needed someone to show up and explain to them how things actually worked. The annoyance on the part of the women in that situation suddenly made a whole hell of a lot more sense.
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The problem here is that men so completely and totally own the conversation space in this area that most men don’t even notice it. This gets back to the whole privilege thing. As a white male I am seen as the default viewpoint for everything from gender relations to politics to television programming, mostly because the people sharing that viewpoint are either also white males or some sort of not-white and/or not-male person who has been conditioned to speak in white male-ese. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it should be a thing. I’m also generally blind to my own privilege because it’s simply a default way of looking at the world that I share with a disturbingly large majority of the people in the United States and Europe and also much of the rest of the world due to the legacy of European colonialism.
So if I were to go to, say, a feminist blog and see that the writer is making an argument about how the world works that I just don’t see my initial response might be to argue. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with disagreeing and sharing an opinion. Where the problem comes in is when I show up and say, “Oh, no, you’re totally wrong because you don’t understand how the world works. Lemme explain it to you.”
The simple fact of the matter is that doing that in any context is arrogant. It’s also stupid. In any case where I’m interacting with a woman of similar intelligence and cultural background and we’re discussing, say, music as non-musicians we’re probably on equal footing. If we’re discussing auto repair and she’s never opened the hood of a car I probably know more than she does. If we’re discussing what a woman has to think about as she’s walking down the street she knows way, way more than I do about it and I need to shut the fuck up and listen if I want to learn anything.
It’s really that simple. Women are people and should be treated as people. But it’s important to acknowledge the reality that women operate in a world that gives them a different set of rules and challenges than men. It’s stupid, for instance, to go to a female friend and say, “What does it mean when a woman [insert cliché question men ask women, generally in the context of dating]?” The appropriate answer is generally, “I don’t know, why don’t you ask her, since there’s no such thing as a universal language of women.” To turn that around and say, “There’s no such thing as a generic woman, therefore no women have ever actually had to worry about rape or job discrimination,” is really fucking stupid, too.
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The worst part about all of this, at least in what I’ve observed, is that the place this is most contentious is when the conversation turns to sexual violence. This goes back to my assertion that there are only a small number of predatory assholes out there, but that the small minority preys upon guys who aren’t predators but who also really don’t get what’s going on the multiply their numbers and their influence. This is where we get around to the whole concept of rape culture.
In my observation it works like this:
Woman: I have to be on guard against rapists at all times by doing [insert list of things here]. It’s exhausting and I wish it wasn’t that way.
Man: Well I’m not a rapist so you don’t have to be that way around me.
Woman: You might not be, but I don’t know that yet so I still have to be on guard.
Man: You’re calling me a rapist? How dare you!
Woman: No, I’m not calling you a rapist. I’m saying I don’t know that you’re not a rapist and I can’t afford to take that risk.
Man: Bitch! I ain’t no rapist. You need to stop being such a bitch and learn how the world actually works outside of your feminazi fantasies.
That’s not a conversation that’s going to end well.
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Oh, and there’s an added wrinkle. Let’s say that Mr. Mansplainer above does actually turn out to be a rapist. Guess who’s going to get blamed for not taking the proper steps to watch out for her own safety? If you said the woman you win.
What do you win? Um, how about this YouTube video of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl?”
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[1]There’s a third variation on this that doesn’t really apply and is more of a Facebook phenomenon in my experience. I generally see it specifically with status updates put out by bands.
Let’s say that you follow the band Funkyfunktopus and love their new album Garage It, Bitches. You’re all about Garage It, Bitches, but you’re also all about Calling Punky Brewster’s new release Ginger Sparklepony, which is similar but different in a good way.
Whoever’s responsible for Funkyfunktopus’s Facebook page is bored. So that person puts up a status that says, “Hey, guys, looking for some new music to listen to in the van. Anybody got suggestions?” So you’re all, “Oh, hells, yeah. I’ma tell them about the wonder and merriment that is Ginger Sparklepony.” So you click to share about Calling Punky Brewster but see that there are already 12 comments.
Four of those comments are some variation on, “I’m listening to this dope-ass disc called Garage It, Bitches by some band you’ve probably never heard of.” Three of the remaining comments will have some format that’s to the effect of twelve albums followed by an, “Oh, of course, Garage It, Bitches. SMILEYFACEEMOTICON.”
I’m thinking of making a drinking game out of this. That’s because there are only two valid responses to this kind of bullshit: drink heavily or throw the laptop out the window. Oh, sure, you could stop being on Facebook forever, but who does that? Nobody, that’s who. Sure, we all threaten it once or twice a week, but you know that no one actually leaves. I mean, where else are you going to hear pointless political rants from your racist, gun hoarding uncle or find out what that guy you hung out with for three weeks in the seventh grade had for lunch (migas at that place on Grand by the old tire factory, for the record. Next week he’s gonna Instagram his cholesterol screening) today? Google+? As if, honky.
By the way, I don’t think that the word “honky” gets used enough. I’m starting a campaign, which I’m sure will be exactly as successful as my campaign to get people to use the word “Biden” to describe anything that’s a big fucking deal. Think of the synergy in that, by the way. Like, your buddy misses that once-in-a-lifetime show where Calling Punky Brewster opens up for Funkyfunktopus because he has an epic case of the shits. So you get to the finale and the lead singer of Funkyfunktopus calls the lead singer of Calling Punky Brewster onstage and then a priest shows up and they announce that they’re getting gay married right then and there because it’s all legal in Illinois now[2] and then they call you on stage and say, “It’s because of this guy telling us about each others’ band on Facebook that we’ve reached this point. And then they give you lifetime administrator privileges on their Facebook pages to kick off any asshole who responds to a request for music suggestions by telling them about themselves as if they didn’t know that they were fucking musicians and they’d put out an album recently.
So the next day you see your buddy and say to him, “Dude, you should have been there. It was a total Biden, honky.”
And your friend will be ashamed of his weakness and make sure from that day forward to get a proper amount of fiber in his diet and never travel anywhere without a metric shit ton of Imodium and Pepto.
That, my honkies, would be one hell of a Biden.
[2]Note: gay marriage not currently legal in Illinois. It will be soon, though, as long as Francis Cardinal George has nothing to do with it, which he doesn’t. Yet for some reason we can’t see a single news item about the impending Illinois gaytopia without also seeing that the beanie wearing regional director for the Church of Kiddie Fucker Protectors, Inc. wants to lecture us in an entirely boring and predictable way about how sexual immorality is bad if it involves more than one dick and both people involved are consenting adults who would really, really like to contractually join themselves together.
I would like to propose a solution to this problem. Someone should be hired to write complimentary op-eds alongside Francis Cardinal George’s boringly predictable rants. It should start simply and on topic. Like, the op-ed should be about how interracial marriage is a truly bad idea because it will convince the good (white) folks that the bad (not white) folks are people and might create children who are a combination of white and brown and who believe that there’s nothing different between white and brown people, when god obviously ordained that the white people should be burdened to use their superior brains and mint julep-drinking capabilities to tell the brown people which of their crops to raise and that they should get little money because they’re just not smart enough to understand how hard it is to sit on the porch with a lemonade and masturbate all day.
After that it should become progressively more surreal. Like, maybe the next time Francis Cardinal George tells us how gay marriage will ruin America someone can write an article about how the Brooklyn Dodgers are sure to destroy the professional baseball league with their little Jackie Robinson experiment. Then they can write about how the University of Chicago Maroons are surely mocking god’s plans by creating their farcical Big Ten Conference and the idea will never catch on.
Also, I hereby nominate myself to get this job. Since newspapers are all going out of business and probably can’t afford to pay me I’ll offer a compromise. They just have to find some way to make sure that the attractive single ladies reading know I’m “single and ready to mingle” as the kids say. And they have to put the most flattering picture ever taken of me next to my byline:
Also, I’m officially at more than a page and a half of footnote for less than half a page of post. That’s gonna end well.
[3]In the interests of full disclosure, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck I just wrote there. I do not watch Game of Thrones. I also do not watch Dick Vitale unless I’m watching a pizza commercial during some sort of non-DVRed televised sporting event. It just seemed like the sort of absurd bullshit someone would put into the comments on a blog.
[4]I’d like to point to this Scalzi bit on transgender folk as a prime example of what I’m talking about. He mentions at one point that he’s learned that the term “tranny” is offensive. Several commenters come in later and ask why it’s a problem. Someone even popped in and said that they’re a transgender person who doesn’t find the word offensive at all. I don’t consider Scalzi to be a category two person, but a category three, since he’s obviously thought long and hard about his language use and how to minimize using it in a damaging way. Even so, he admits to a blind spot. That’s where it gets complicated. Sometimes people aren’t aware. Sometimes, too, a person has an experience with someone who says, “Oh, I’m totally okay if you call me a [insert word here],” and then the person generalizes that specific interaction to everyone in [applicable group]. So they meet someone else and say, “Oh, so you’re a [word]. Awesome. My best friend in high school was one, too.” This new person reacts in horror and all of the sudden bad shit is going down.
[5]Also, too, the word “crazy” or any other word that’s a pejorative term that applies to mental health.
[6] This, by the way, delves into another one of my not-at-all favorite internet argument things. I say something someone else finds offensive. That person tells me they find it offensive. I say, “Oh, shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to cause offense and didn’t know that there was anything wrong there.” The person then pulls out the internet-catch-all response: “Intent is not magic.”
On one level it’s true. My complete lack of intent to offend you doesn’t mean that I won’t offend you by accident. On another level, though, if I didn’t actually intend to offend you and didn’t even know that what I was saying could be taken as offensive then you really ought to cut me some slack. If I keep doing it the terms should change. But ignorance should be a defense, as should simple human fallibility.
The fact of the matter is that my whole thing about people reading shit on the internet and only thinking about how they want to react cuts both ways. It applies to the dudes who don’t think women should talk about anything. It also applies to the women who want to jump all over a dude who says something that comes across as insensitive. If it’s a guy who’s obviously an asshole and who’s trolling then, by all means, have at. If it’s a guy who’s trying to say something that’s on his mind and he tosses the word “hysterical” in because, y’know, fairly common English word that’s been divorced from its original context it’s probably not the end of the world.
Okay, in truth Amanda Marcotte is usually on fire. I tend to miss it, though, since she’s one of those blogger types who I only see when other people link to her. That, in and of itself, is weird, since I have Pandagon on my RSS feed. That particular issue is one of technology. Most of my RSS stuff is an actual feed that says, “Hey, look, here’s a new post by this guy.” Pandagon, or, really, Raw Story, doesn’t seem to work that way. So I tend to forget that, yes, Amanda Marcotte writes things. But then I end up hitting, like, six posts in a row, which can be kind of awesome.
That’s really too bad, since Amanda Marcotte regularly catches fire. I mean that in a good way, by the way, not a spontaneous human combustion way. Because that would be bad.
In fact, let’s make that a blanket statement: Geds thinks that it’s bad when people are actually on fire. Done.
Either way, the thing in question that causes me to make the statement in, re: Amanda Marcotte and fire is five posts in a row at Pandagon that made me say, “Hell, yeah!” Several of them are directly related to things I want to talk about with the whole feminism bit, so let’s get right down to it.
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The first time I came into contact with the notion of anything even closely resembling the term I now know as “rape culture” was out at Western Illinois University. It was a relatively innocuous flyer on the wall of my dorm next to the elevator. I have zero recollection of the exact wording on the paper but I remember the gist, which was basically, “If you have sex with someone without their consent you’re committing rape and here are indications that consent haven’t been given.” What then followed were things like, “She’s not awake,” and, “She’s too goddamn drunk to know what’s going on.”
I, it should go without saying, was not sexually active at the time. I was a good little Evangelical and being a good little Evangelical meant that I wasn’t going to have sex before marriage. Still, the whole thing struck me as being somewhat Byzantine. I mean, really, I thought, what if I was in a position where I thought consent was given, then it was followed by drunkenness and then suddenly, boom, someone is calling me a rapist?
I am now genuinely embarrassed to admit that I had thoughts like that. I am also willing to admit that I had thoughts like that because I knew fuck-all about relationships and sex and, well, women in general at the time. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. It’s also a good excuse, since I was one o’ them no sex before marriage virgins at the time, which meant that I’d never given any consideration to the notion of consent before as it wasn’t even a remotely important issue to me.
Have I mentioned that feminism wasn’t really a thing that we talked about in church?
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I stand by my theory that the MRA-types prey on guys like me. I think that in issues of sex and consent there are four general male camps: there are those who naturally don’t worry and don’t need to worry about such things because they’ve gotten laid a time or four and generally understand the difference between yes and no. There are those who don’t think about such things very often. There are those who don’t really know anything and can be swayed through their ignorance. Then there are those who are rapists or just general rape-apologizing assholes who want to muddy the whole thing up for their own nefarious purposes.
It’s that fourth category that needs to be dealt with. More importantly, it’s that fourth category’s influence on the second and third categories and, to a lesser extent, the first category that needs to be dealt with. Asshole rapists, I firmly believe, are a small minority. They need a critical mass of people in the not-asshole but also not-fully-cognizant-of-the-issue majority to hold sway in the conversation.
That’s where I get into the “Amanda Marcotte is on fire” stuff. To wit:
With all attention being paid to rape culture lately—which is good!—I’m seeing a not-so-good consequence of it, which is a number of people, some well-intentioned, perpetuating the myth that rape frequently occurs on accident. This myth has grown up in place of the discredited (though still popular) myth that women “cry rape” to cover up for their slutty choices, and it goes a little something like this:
A man and a woman drink a lot of alcohol and have drunken, consensual sex. In the morning, the woman—who, being female, is hysterical and quick to jump to conclusions—feels that she wasn’t fully consenting, so she calls the cops. The man, who innocently believed it to be a consensual encounter, gets charged with rape and sent to the clink because of the SCARY FEMINIST laws that say that women with a blood alcohol limit over X cannot consent, so any sex with them is rape. The moral of this story is that innocent men are raping women left and right because they sincerely thought they had consent, but (because of hysterical, probably anti-sex feminists) drunk sex is now illegal. But only for men. Because of all-powerful, man-hating feminism.
My expertise on drunk sex is approximately zero. My expertise on being drunk and hanging out with drunk women is higher, however. As such I can say with a certain amount of authority that the scary-ass drunk-sex-leading-to-rape-accusations shit is pretty highly exaggerated because drunk people still know what they’re doing. Someone who goes out and says, “I wanna get shitfaced and laid!” will probably then go forth and do exactly that. This is where we get stories of embarrassing drunken hookups and walks of shame. This is not where we get stories of rape.
As such, I’ll again let Amanda Marcotte take over the narrative:
Call it the Legend of the Accidental Rapist, if you will, but it’s horseshit. This is not what rape under the influence looks like. I link the Yes Means Yes post “Meet the Predators” constantly, but it’s time to do it again and keep doing it until people actually read it. Because it tells a very different, social science-and-actual-experience-backed story about rape and alcohol. Let me tell you that story:
There is a man who really likes raping women. It gets him off, the power and control he has, as well as the fear in her eyes as she realizes yes, this is really going to happen. He enjoys doing this as often as he can. But he doesn’t want to go to jail for it, nor does he want people to ostracize him socially if they discover he’s a rapist. (If nothing else, that makes it harder to find new victims!) So he attacks drunk women. He may even ply them with alcohol to get them drunker. He does this for two reasons: 1) They are easier to overpower and 2) No one believes them because they were drinking. After the rape, if the victim says she was raped, all you have to do is refer to the Legend of the Accidental Rapist, and everyone will rally to support you while dismissing the victim for being a sloppy drunk and a hysterical bitch who is too hopped up on feminist horseshit to think properly. Even better, most victims know that’s how it will go down, so they probably won’t say anything at all, leaving you to keep raping without much interference.
Amanda linked to a post called Meet the Predators in the block quote I used up there. Here it is. Go look.
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The truth, as they say, will set you free. That’s something I needed to know as a rather naïve undergrad a decade ago. Rapists prey on guys who are like I was back then, though, too. They need guys like past me to operate. It’s blatantly obvious to me now that someone who is too drunk to stand up or actually unconscious can’t consent. It’s also blatantly obvious to me that there’s a difference between someone using drunkenness to rationalize a bad decision and someone being too drunk to consent.
That, really, is the fine line that the rapists and rape apologists want to walk. “You’ll never again be able to make a drunken hookup at last call,” they say, “Because then she’ll cry rape in the morning.” That’s not where the line is drawn at all.
More importantly, it’s obvious to me that this isn’t where the line is drawn. It’s really a collection of attitudes that allow that. Primarily the idea is the old one that men are uncontrollable horndogs and women are all frigid bitches who only use sex because they want to snag a man. So when they get drunk and cry rape what they’re really saying is that you, man-who-doesn’t-understand-women, is that you didn’t pass the test and you’re about to get fucked for life by those damn predatory bitches. That, and I say this as someone who has basically zero working knowledge of how these things work, isn’t how it works.
My point is this: it’s both far more complicated than the posters I saw on the wall at WIU and far simpler. It’s more complicated in that there’s no clear line that drunken hookups = nonconsensual sex. It’s simpler in that most people are already aware of that but the people who see that as an opportunity want to blur that line and make it so that everyone who’s ever been a bit buzzed and a bit excited and heading home with someone at 2 am suddenly has to think, “Oh, shit, now I’m gonna get accused of being a rapist! I can’t have that!”
That’s where rape culture comes into play. It’s far easier to say, “Hey, let’s say this isn’t a thing and then maybe blame it on the victims for being slutty-ass bitches,” than to say, “Maybe we need to be aware of the situation and I, myself, need to be more careful.”[1]
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The fact of the matter is, at least in my experience, guys know when other guys are skeevy assholes. Ask any guy and he’ll tell you that he knows some guy who gives off that rapey vibe. They don’t use that particular term, though. They’re most likely to say something like, “I wouldn’t leave Biff alone with my girlfriend.”
Sometimes they’re just saying, “Biff is a pig who hits on every woman in sight.” Sometimes, however, they’re saying, “Biff is a sex offender list registry waiting to happen.” Generally, too, guys know the difference there. It’s really not that hard, either. Believe it or not, but women know it, too. If you as a guy who isn’t a skeevy pig, are willing to sit down and talk to the women you know about it they’ll tell you, too.
I’m going to throw this suggestion out there to all single guys who are worried about it: do so. Sit down with the women in your lives – whether they’re family, friends, or potential future sex partners – and talk to them. If you aren’t a skeevy rapist type who they instinctively avoid they’ll fucking tell you what’s going on and what guys in your social group are guys about whom they’re concerned.
It’s not quite as easy as walking up and saying, “So, who do you think is a rapist?” though. I mean, that might be a worthwhile conversation starter if everyone is worried about Biff and wants to make sure that he’s kept in check. But don’t just assume it will be that easy.
For instance, I recently ran into a female acquaintance. We were talking and I mentioned a guy we both knew. She told me that he hits on every woman he sees. That merely confirmed something I suspected about him, since the first time I met him he was making a woman I also first met that night uncomfortable with his attentions.
That said, I’ve always considered him harmless (part of that was because I watched the woman in question react to him, which was more along the lines of annoyance and pity than anything even approaching fear). He was basically that kid in high school who is so socially inept that he’ll ask every girl at the lunchroom table if she wants to go on a date with him. The conversation I had about him the other night confirmed that for me. He didn’t seem to register as a threat so much as an annoyance.
What makes the difference in the lines between the well-adjusted and socially normal not-rapists, harmless but socially maladjusted and somewhat pathetic dudes, and actual rapists is that there’s a concerted effort to blur those lines. The blurring of the lines only serves to help one of those groups. If you haven’t figured out which group it is yet, I’ll give you a hint: it’s the rapists. They have a pretty good chance of allying themselves with the harmless but socially maladjusted guys, though, because those guys might not be rapists but they’re likely to worry that someone might accuse them of being a rapist just because they’re hitting on every woman who comes in their line of sight.
I guess that, again, it gets back to my all-encompassing theory of women: they’re people, too. Treat them as such and you’ll be fine. Sometimes that means not having sex with them when they’re drunk and passed out (because, really, duh). Sometimes that means talking to them about other people you both know and making a mental note about who to keep an eye on in the future. Sometimes, and I suggest this with absolutely no flippancy whatsoever, it means discussing books or football or dogs or TV shows or whatever.
Because, again, women are people. They have actual, honest to dog interests and they might just enrich your life by sharing them with you. And that, my friends, is the best way to stop the whole rape culture bullshit. If men would stop thinking of women as nothing more than mobile vagina deployment platforms it would help everything immensely.
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[1]This, by the by, seems like something that’s also applicable to the gun control “debate” in this country. There’s a vast gulf between “outlaw drunken hookups” and “try to stop rape” that’s pretty much the same as the gulf between “ban all the guns” and “put reasonable rules in place that limit who can have guns and what kinds of guns they can own.”
It occurs to me, though, that we don’t live in a society here in America that wants to have a reasonable conversation about guns. The reasoning, such as it is, is probably pretty much the same as why we can’t seem to have a reasonable conversation about rape. A reasonable conversation, after all, might require someone, somewhere, to curtail their activities and we can’t have that as long as the person being asked to curtail their activities is part of the privileged class.
And, yes, I’m drawing a direct parallel between the gun owners who refuse to even entertain the notion that maybe there might be a time and a place to sit down and talk aobut guns as an actual integral part of the whole issue of gun violence and rapists. If anyone who’s reading this can’t see how the previous paragraph creates a reasonable space to compare the two, feel free leave a comment and expose your own lack of critical thinking skills down below.
Oh, and I’d say that asking someone to think before they attempt sexual relations with a potentially-non-consenting partner is right up there with asking someone to eat more vegetables or brush their teeth, too. It really should just be an expected act from a responsible individual. Hell, I could draw a parallel to the idiots who think that CFL lightbulbs are a break on their personal freedom. But I won't, because I don't have that kind of time.
I’m basically done with the Being Me stuff. That doesn’t mean that I’m done with the thought processes behind it, though. There’s just a bunch of stuff that kinda-sorta fits in context but didn’t fit in the narrative I chose. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. It just means that I’ve been working somewhat harder on composition and not throwing all the shit I could find against the closest vertical surface.
Part of it, too, is that there are a couple of topics that I think are important but that I hesitate to say anything about except in a roundabout way. The big one on that list is feminism. That’s one of those things that privileged suburban white boys don’t talk about much on the internet unless they’re the type of privileged suburban white boy who wants to go to feminist sites and tell the people there that they’re all feminazis and they just don’t get how hard it is to be a privileged suburban white boy, man.
There’s also the bit where I came to the party kinda late and in a kinda sidelong fashion. I lacked a language to discuss the topic outside of things that had been fought and re-fought long before I arrived. As such, I defined the whole thing for myself to my own satisfaction and then I pretty much moved on. It wasn’t my fight, it wasn’t my place, it wasn’t my thing.
This was further complicated by the fact that feminism and discussions of feminism hit me at about the same time I was withdrawing from Christianity. I needed something to continue to fuel my neuroses in regards to my relations to the female gender in the absence of all the Jesus stuff. Rape culture, male privilege, the notion of the male gaze and all that other stuff fit the bill perfectly. I basically replaced, “Oh, shit, Jesus gonna hate me if I have sexual thoughts about women,” with, “Oh, shit, that woman is going to assume I’m a rapist if I so much as look at or talk to her in any way, shape, or form that isn’t completely and totally on-the-level professional.” So, hey, rationalization for the win, amirite?
So let’s say that’s not a thing anymore. Let’s say I want to talk about something that I consider to be damn important. Since my circulation on this blog is decidedly small, anyway, I figure I can go right ahead and do that.
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Back in December I wrote a post about Soundgarden that ended in a bizarre little aside about an early ‘90s Christian surf rock band that went by the moniker Dakoda Motor Co. I ended up comparing Dakoda Motor Co. to No Doubt and making this observation:
What Dakoda lacks in bare midriffs and pointed social commentary compared to No Doubt they make up for with, um, happy Jesus-y stuff. So they’ve got that goin’ for ‘em.
It turns out that this comparison was less apt than I thought. The true secular match for Dakoda was Letters to Cleo, which I’ve called the most tragically underrated band of the ‘90s.[1] But that’s not my point at all. My point is the observation above.
One of the things that occurs to me, and this post of awesome songs by ‘90s bands fronted by women kind of confirms it, is that I came of age during the golden years of riot grrrl feminism. That particular golden age did not make its way past the doors of my church, however. The difference between the Dakoda videos and No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” that lead to my statement quoted above wasn’t really an observation about one obscure Christian band against one major secular band. It was an observation about the Christianity in which I grew up against the larger world in which I grew up. We simply did not talk about important social issues in church.
Okay, that’s not actually true. We did talk about social issues. What we talked about, though, was how awesome it was going to be when everyone accepted Jesus and made Jesus the center of their lives and Jesus fixed all the social ills of the world. It should surprise no one anywhere, ever, that Jesus’s fix for the world would be to make everything look exactly like the church thought it should look. As such, in a weird way, Dakoda Motor Co. was making a social statement. The statement was just, “Jesus is awesome and will make everything awesome.” That’s a fantastic sentiment. It’s also completely and totally wrong.
So let’s talk about feminism.
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Actually, I’m gonna yield the floor to the honorable Gwen Stefani, Esq. to make a few remarks.
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I really don’t have that much to say about feminism as a personal thing, now that I think about it. It all boils down to the statement that I began using in college when I was introduced to the idea of feminism as a thing to be embraced and celebrated as opposed to a thing to be feared and ridiculed. Mostly, though, it boils down to why I hate using that statement.
The statement I started using was, “Women are people, too.”
The statement I would have preferred to use was, “Women are people.”
Actually, the statement I would have preferred to use was nothing. It seemed pretty obvious to me that women are people. However, it strikes me that in a world where we talk about how, say, President Obama fared in elections with women and minorities that we’re saying two things: first that women are a minority and second that neither women nor minorities truly count. Post-election Republican rhetoric certainly followed that logic.
Looking back I realize that I didn’t get that idea from the Bible or church. I got that idea from Shirley Manson, Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Sarah McLachlan, Kay Hanley, and Gwen Stefani. Hell, I even got it from Alanis Morrisette and Courtney Love.[2] It was simply an accepted part of my life that there are women out there and that women have something to say and that what they had to say was valid because it was part of their experience and their existence. That didn’t necessarily mean I had to care what they wanted to say, but I don’t think that’s really a litmus test.
There are lots of white guys who say stupid shit that I don’t feel the need to listen to, after all.
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The problem that I have talking about feminism, I think, is how feminism fits into my Unified Field Theory of Group Dynamics. Whenever you get involved with a group there are a collection of self-proclaimed gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers think that it’s their duty and sacred mission to keep the riff-raff out and make sure that only the properly informed and vetted are allowed into the discussion.
This, by the by, is why I love the feminist book store sketches on Portlandia. I don’t really see Fred and Carrie making fun of feminists there. I see Fred and Carrie making fun of a certain variety of feminist. For that matter, they’re making fun of a certain variety of atheist and a certain variety of Christian. They’re also making fun of me.
Part of my Unified Field Theory of Group Dynamics requires me to admit that I’ve appointed myself as a gatekeeper of something, too. In my specific case it’s music. I am a proud child of the ‘90s. I judge all music based on how it stacks up to the music I started listening to in the ‘90s and, more specifically, how it stacks up to the music I liked in the ‘90s.
To that end when I run into one of those people who says that there hasn’t been a single good album since 1979 I say, “Man, you’re out of touch. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam are so much better than Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.” Then I turn around and shake my fist at the damn kids listening to their Biebers and their One Directions and their Taylor Swifts.
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If you have two brain cells to rub together you’re looking at my example above and saying, “Whoa, wait a minute. There’s a difference here.” You’re correct, there is a massive difference.
My boss might be a Black Sabbath fan. There’s a reasonably good chance that he’s not going to fire me for being a Soundgarden fan or make sure that I get paid 75 cents on the dollar, either. If I were to get elected President in 2016 there’s pretty much zero chance that it would be declared historic on the grounds that I’m the first Soundgarden President. I probably wouldn’t get death threats for it, either.
On some level I’m a fan of Soundgarden because that was the world in which I came of age. If I were a 13 year-old in a van in 2004 I might have ended up with Nickelback as my band of choice.[3] If we go back to 1984 it might have been U2.[4]
What I’m saying is that context matters. We find things when we find them. Self-proclaimed gatekeepers, however, tend to think that’s not the case. They don’t want anyone to join a group unless the new people join in exactly the right way and with exactly the right motivations.
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The reason I bring all of this up is because it occurs to me that being a child of the ‘90s did actually equip me to discuss feminism in 2012. I couldn’t tell you what the difference is between 1st wave and 2nd wave feminism. I’m still a little fuzzy on the difference between Gloria Steinem and Gloria Allred.[5] I’m a little baffled at people who find it necessary to label themselves as “sex-positive,” because who the fuck isn’t sex-positive?[6]
I think I’m properly equipped because I heard No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” about seven thousand times between 1995 and 1999. No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” is pretty much a perfect introduction to what feminists are talking about in 2012, what with the rape culture and the slutwalks and the notion of white male privilege.
The reason I tossed “Sunday Morning” into my bit where I gave the floor the Stefani was because that, too, encapsulates a central point of my theory on feminism as asserting that women are people. I don’t know if it’s intended to be a statement about how women are treated like “Just a Girl” is, but I do know that I like what it has to say.
You're trying my shoes on for a change They look so good but fit so strange Out of fashion so I can’t complain
Seems about right.
Meanwhile, though, this is already much longer than I thought it would be. So let’s make it a two parter.
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[1]I’m not gonna lie to you, Marge. That’s probably based 90% on the fact that, holy shit, Letters to Cleo was way too amazing to be a marginal one hit wonder and 10% because I want Kay Hanley to find my blog while doing random Google searches for Letters to Cleo. Because Kay Hanley is awesome and right up there with Louise Post and Shirley Manson in my book o’ kick-ass ‘90s rock frontwomen.
[2]I’ve never really liked Morrisette. I’m not that big a fan of Courtney Love and Hole, either. That said, I was having a text-based conversation with a friend about ‘90s music the other day while listening to a Pandora station with Letters to Cleo, Garbage, Veruca Salt, Republica, and the Breeders as seeds. I made my standard, “But Hole still sucks,” statement. My friend pointed out a couple songs he thought were good from them. Then the station threw “Celebrity Skin” down my earholes and I had to admit that, yeah, that song was pretty good.
Also, too, it’s probably important to bring country music into this one. I started listening to mainstream country in the late ‘90s because I made some terrible decisions during my sophomore and junior years of high school. There were a bunch of really good country singin’ women in those days. So, y’know, there’s that. I still like Terri Clark.
[3]Ugh. Kill theoretical me. Kill theoretical me now.
[4]Totally okay with that.
[5]Okay, I’m not. I mean, I fucking linked to stuff about them. But it seemed punny to me at the time.
[6]This one actually does genuinely baffle me. My sole interaction with someone who labeled herself as “sex-positive” was on o’ them online dating things. And I tell this story because it amuses me to no end.
I got an email from someone who lived a thousand miles away. The email said, and I paraphrase, “I’m going to be in your area next week. Want to get a drink?”
I, it should be noted, am I proper dipshit. So I went to her profile and looked around for some indication that, like, she was planning to relocate and looking for friends or something. Such things were not forthcoming. There were, however, keywords like “casual sex,” and “kinky,” and “sex-positive.” So I was genuinely confused and sent back an email that said (and, again, I paraphrase), “Sure. But why?” The response then pretty much spelled the whole thing out and the gist was that I should have been paying more attention to the “casual sex” bits.
The first time I lost weight I had a somewhat incorrect interpretation of what it would mean to no longer be the fat kid. Life for most people is pretty much event based. We all think that when A happens then B and B means that I have arrived. So when you’re the fat kid who gets picked on you think things like, “When I lose weight everyone will like me.”
The harsh truth of life (or, maybe not, depending) is that nobody chooses to like or dislike you based on your weight. Well, most people don’t. Some people are shallow assholes like that.
Still, I did not know that. Or if I did know that I chose not to believe it. That might be one of those six one way, half a dozen the others sort of things.
With my goal in mind I worked obsessively. I dropped 110 pounds in about nine months. If my weight went down by less than 3 pounds a week I started to worry. If anyone presented me with food outside of my narrow limits I got mad (including birthday cake, might I add. On my own birthday). I also worked out five or six days a week, generally by riding my bike twenty to thirty miles.
I’m naturally athletic to a certain extent. I’m coordinated, I’m physically capable, and I can generally pick up a sport pretty easily. I’m never the best player in any given game, but I’m usually not the worst by a wide margin. That said, endurance athletics really aren’t my thing. Once I get in the groove I can take a bike for 20 to 30 miles pretty easily. I just can’t do it fast. And by the end of my rides I’d be huffing and puffing. This, of course, is the goal of exercise.
Everyone needs motivation when there’s a little ways to go and they just want to die. When I needed motivation I thought about my friends. Specifically, I imagined that my friends were laughing at me and telling me that I’d fail. My motivation came from wanting to say, “Fuck you, I did it in spite of you,” to my friends.
That’s…that’s a little weird.
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Like I said, life is pretty much event based. That isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing. It’s an inevitability of the human condition and the way we think about time. We want to see a beginning, a middle, and an end so we invent them. Then we tell stories about them.
My events, being the social outcast loner type, were all of the events that said, “You’re accepted,” or the seemingly far more common, “You’re not accepted.” Generally the future ones were places where I could, theoretically, finally say, “I have arrived and people like me,” and the past ones were all places where that had explicitly not happened.
I didn’t really get invited to parties. In high school I found that out because I’d hear people talking about their parties the following week. In the few years after high school I thought I’d left that behind. Then I started hanging out with a bunch of people who I met at church and hung out with at least two to three times a week at officially sanctioned events. I thought we were really good friends. Then it gradually dawned on me that I was still the odd man out. I learned about it the same way I learned about it in high school: by hearing people talk about stuff they did when I wasn’t around.
It hurt. I didn’t know why I wasn’t being included and, more importantly, I didn’t know how to ask. To this day I don’t know why I wasn’t included in things. I don’t think it’s because they didn’t like me.
I do know, however, that when I needed motivation to accomplish my own things I was able to summon more than enough from imagining proving them wrong. I reserved all of my spite for the people I called my friends.
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When I first ran across the Pick-Up Artist community it seemed like it was just a bunch of people tossing around truisms that I’d picked up over the years. That’s the funny thing about the internet. There are all kinds of people who have all kinds of ideas and they generally present said ideas in such a way as to seem pretty reasonable.
So when I first ran across the idea that the way to get women was to treat them like shit it made a certain amount of sense. The logic was fairly inescapable. It’s common knowledge[1] that chicks dig bad boys, after all. So the idea of finding a woman, treating her like shit, and thereby getting her attention and lovin’ made a certain amount of sense.
I didn’t pay that much attention, though, because being a jerk to get my own ends really wasn’t that high on my list of things to do.[2]
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Eventually I realized that the PUAs were basically a sub-set of the Mens’ Rights Activist groups and those guys were self-evidently assholes. I also realized that there was a specific and familiar air of resentment that fueled both groups. I recognized it because, well, it was a message that resonated with me.
See, when you’re the socially maladjusted nerd you wait for those moments that offer you validation. The best person to provide that validation is the most attractive girl you can find. If you date the most attractive girl in your class it must mean that you’re cool, right?[3]
If you pay attention to how the PUAs and MRAs talk about what they do (and, y’know, who they did it to) it’s obvious that they literally do not give a shit about women. All they’re doing is making sure they can brag in front of the other guys. This is the irrevocable mark of the guy who is still smarting from rejection and doesn’t know any healthy ways to deal with it. So he takes it out on someone else.
If anyone then tells him he’s being an asshole about the whole thing he resorts to bullying. It’s that same high school locker room level of bullying, too. The PUAs will say that anybody who criticizes them must be an inferior specimen of manhood. Or gay. Or a quisling trying to curry favor with women who will never sleep with them.
It’s pathetic, really.
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The only way to defeat resentment is through a combination of self-sufficiency and empathy. I believe that resentment and empathy are opposing forces. The tie breaker in the tug of war between the two is how the person making the choice views him- or herself. If you’re confident in who you are it’s much easier to choose empathy. Empathy requires vulnerability and powerlessness to function. Resentment covers up vulnerability and trades powerlessness for the feeling of power that comes from lashing out and causing pain to others.
Resentment, in short, allows a form of bullying. It’s why one of the common responses of the bullied is to become a bully. It’s much easier if you’re the sort who overcomes some bad thing to then see that same quality in another and resent them for it or to see people who you believed could have helped you escape it but didn’t and resent them for not taking action.
Resentment, in short, is a gateway to hatred. That’s why it’s the opposite of empathy. And we’re going to talk about that next time.
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[1]”Common knowledge” and “accurate notions about reality” are often non-overlapping magisteria, after all.
[2]Being a jerk in general, though, is always an option. As is being a jerk for the lulz. What’re ya gonna do?
[3]This, I’m convinced, is the source of all of the TV shows and movies and whatnot where the big, fat, selfish slob is dating/married to the hot chick in spite of the fact that all the slob seems to have going for him is a long-suffering companion and (generally) a sense of humor. Although I will say that the trope got subverted in Superbad between Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. That one at least set up Jonah Hill as the loveable loser who managed to learn how to not be a selfish slob. I think.
Now, remember how I said the thing I really like about raping a woman is the control it gives me over her? Well, getting a woman pregnant is even better. Because long after I’m gone, she still has to deal with me and what I’ve done to her. She has to deal with what’s happening to her body. She has to deal with doctor visits. She has to deal with the choice whether to have an abortion or not — which means she has to deal with everyone in the country, including you, having an opinion about it and giving her crap about it. And if she does have an abortion, she has to deal with all the hassle of that, too, because folks like you, of course, have gone out of your way to make it a hassle, which I appreciate. Thank you.
On another note, I saw a quick headline yesterday that said a poll indicated Romney had erased Obama's seemingly insurmountable lead among women. Now, I'm a regular over at FiveThirtyEight and I know all there is to know about why following individual polls is stupid. But I'm baffled at the notion that women, who have consistently and historically voted for Democrats through the past several cycles and also voted heavily for Obama to the tune of 56-43 in 2008, would be evenly going for Romney. A double-digit lead to a virtual tie is pretty hard to explain.
No one who I usually look to is discussing it, though, and I are confuzzled.
I'm beginning to suspect there's a methodology issue, though. Quinnipiac put out an Ohio poll that has Obama seemingly up 16 with women, 56-40, with early voting women voting Obama at a 59-35 clip. PPP shows Obama up 54-44 in Colorado, 51-45 in what appears to be a combined Iowa/Wisconsin poll, and 53-43 in North Carolina. Also, he's up 57-41 in Virginia. That is, admittedly, a small sample size. Moreover, PPP showed Obama up 54-42 with women in results released on 10/24, which would be almost exactly in line with the metrics from 2008.
Yeah, this is cherry-picking, but I'm lazy and the PPP polls are all in one place so I can look at them. Until Nate Silver and/or Nate Cohn (or, as I like to call them, "the Nates") write up something to explain what the fuck happened there, I'll just sit here, secure in the fact that I already voted, and be slightly confuzzled.
You may have noticed that Augusta National and its boss, fake good-old-boy Billy Payne, has gotten its green polyester-pantsed ass in a crack now that a woman named Virginia Rometty is running IBM, and the boss of IBM traditionally gets a membership into Confederacy Acres, but Virginia Rometty lacks the essential penis, so the club's retrograde policy toward half the human race gets another airing. Only this time, it's not just some bothersome activist that they can ignore, it's a dues-fully-paid member of the corporate elite.
Confronted with these facts, New York Times golf writer Karen Crouse opined that she'd rather not cover the Masters until it moves its withered hindquarters out of the 1850's, thanks.
So far so good, right?
Contacted by The Associated Press, Times sports editor Joe Sexton said the comments were, "completely inappropriate and she has been spoken to."
Obviously a woman saying she doesn't want to cover golf at a sexist institution is being inappropriate. Also obviously the men folk must put that uppity little lady back in her place. If we don't do that now, who knows what will happen next? They might go out in public and start careers and even vote.
Hell, they might start to think that they're people. People who are even equal to the men folk. We certainly shouldn't allow that.
Cat Valente is one of my favorite fiction authors, mostly because, holy shit can that woman turn a phrase. I believe I've mentioned that from time to time.
The SFF corner of the internets had a blow-up last week. If you want to know what happened, Scalzi (who also had something to say on this sort of thing a while back) has the history and various weirdnesses available. Here's the basic story, though: a respected male writer took a giant dump all over the slate for the Clarke awards and the internet went into a frenzy of (mostly good-natured) craziness. Because that's what the internet does.
Valente made the point that, sadly, gets made after every one of these things happen. I don't say "sadly" because it's tired and, geez, why won't these women just shut up about it. I say "sadly" because I'm genuinely saddened that we keep having to see these things at all. I wish people could figure out that a woman who voices her own opinion isn't a bitch or a harpy, but a woman with her own goddamn opinion. I wish people could figure out that, "You deserve to be raped, you bitch," is not now, not ever, and will never, ever, ever, EVER be a correct response to anything, especially someone simply stating her opinion.
I also wish that all the men that then say that the woman in question is complaining about nothing and really should just leave everything well enough alone would do the world a favor and count the number of times random strangers have threatened to rape them for the sin of publicly stating an opinion and shut the fuck up until the reach the number, oh, say, 1. That would solve a lot of problems right there.
I’m frustrated. I’m tired of the disparity of voices, of who gets written off and who gets their blog posts discussed in The Guardian being dismally predictable. I’m tired of still having the “when men say it it’s awesome and when women say it it’s bitchy” conversation that was supposed to be sorted in 1985. Not because I have a whole bunch of horrible shit about awards that I’d like to say. I don’t. But I have to tell you that I don’t, so that you’ll think I’m a nice girl, so that I don’t come off as threatening, so that you’ll listen to what I say and not just write me off as an angry feminist…what? Bitch. Because feminist bitches are not to be listened to, don’t you know. They are not to be considered, not the way Priest was considered, even by people who disagreed, even by people who thought he went too far and too personal and too much.
It's not exactly as flowery as the Dirge for Prester John, but that'll preach...
There’s no place worse to be than The Friend Zone, amirite, guys?
We all know what The Friend Zone is, I hope. It’s that terrible purgatory wherein you get to spend a whole bunch of time with that one member of the female gender who is, like, completely perfect for you in a making out and boobie-touching sort of way, but she just won’t let you touch her boobies and totally won’t make out with you. It’s an awful thing to behold, truly.
And we all know how one gets put into The Friend Zone. It’s when you, as the guy, say something like, “We should go on a date,” or, “You know we’re perfect for each other, right?” or you keep “accidentally” touching her boobies when you’re hanging out, and then suggest that maybe she should let you actually touch them in a non-accidental sort of way. But no matter what you do she just plain doesn’t let you touch her boobies or make out with her because she just doesn’t want to ruin your friendship.
Of course that whole thing is bullshit. She’s just trying to use you. Or keep you as a backup.[1] Or string you along out of some sort of crazy-ass sadism because women are evil, controlling bitches like that.
You know, when I put it in those terms, The Friend Zone doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. I literally cannot figure out why anyone would want to stay involved in a relationship wherein one person has been put in The Friend Zone. Obviously the woman doing the putting into The Friend Zone is some sort of using, controlling bitch, so why would her poor victim even want to touch her boobies?[2] She’s obviously controlling him with her feminine wiles and the poor sap has been brainwashed by boobies.[3] Boy, howdy, does it ever suck to be that guy.
Wait, no. That still makes no goddamn sense.
Okay, let me try to figure this out in some way that does make sense. Okay, what about this: let’s take a hypothetical approach wherein the female in question really does want to be friends and the male in question is a whiny little dipshit. Then let’s see where this whole thing goes. Conceptually, of course. Theoretically, even. Because we all know that this scenario is, like, totally impossible in reality.
Let’s say that the woman in question genuinely doesn’t want to date right now. This could be a general thing and she’s totally off the dating scene. It could also be a specific thing and she doesn’t want to date the guy in question but, like, if Orlando Bloom showed up and said, “Ya wanna go for coffee?” she’d be all, “Yes, Legolas, oh, god, yes.” It’s not likely, but, hey, it could happen.
Let’s ask the question, “What could possibly going through a woman’s head when she puts some poor guy into The Friend Zone?” This, of course, depends on any number of factors. We must consider them.
There are the general environmental factors. Has she recently experienced a big life changed, including a career change, a death in the family, a cross-country move, or something similar? Is she currently engaged in some sort of long-term self-improvement project, including going back to school, trying to write the great American novel, putting more of her time into charitable giving, or finally learning how to make those awesome pastries she’s always wanted to learn to make? Is something taking up a shitload of her time, such as finishing her Masters while working full-time, a huge project at work, an ailing family member, or a recently purchased house that needs a lot of work? Has she recently gotten out of a long-term relationship? Has she recently gotten out of a short but intense relationship? Has she experienced a string of bad relationships with guys who suck? Is she, for that matter, currently in a relationship?
Once we get through the general environmental factors we need to ask specific factors. Does she tend to date dumb jock types while you happen to be a pointy-headed intellectual type? Are you pretty much her only friend and confidant? Does she happen to be best friends with your sister?
These are all valid, nay, important questions to consider. This list is also far, far from exhaustive. Chances are that these or similar questions are all part of the mental calculus a woman puts into a potential relationship.
Guys, on the other hand, pretty much only ask two questions:
1. “Is she hot?”
2. “Is she single?”[4]
If the answers are, “Yes,” and, “Yes,” respectively, then there shouldn’t be any roadblocks in the way. Any woman who does put up a road block, then, is being some sort of scheming bitch who is trying to destroy the guy in question. Because, really, what else does a relationship need?
The problem with this difference in approach is pretty simple: the guy signals that he doesn’t actually give a shit about the supposed object of his affection. If it’s only worthwhile to be friends with someone if she’ll make out with you and let you touch her boobies, then that person has been reduced to tongue, lips, and boobies. It’s really that simple.
As such, the guy who sits around and bitches about being relegated to The Friend Zone sends the message that he is not and never will be boyfriend material. Because, really, why would anyone want to date someone who doesn’t actually give a shit about them? I suppose that there are women out there who are like that, though. So maybe Captain Friend Zone needs to go find one of them. Chances are he’ll be doing the object of his attention a great service if he does.
For the record, I’m not saying any of these things as someone who hasn’t fucked this up. I totally have. I’ve simply made it a point to learn from my mistakes.
Amy and I dated for about three months, then spent the next year and a half or so in this kinda-sorta pseudo relationship thingy that was bad for everyone involved. For whatever reason she decided it wasn’t going to work and then tried to Friend Zone me, with a certain level of success, most of which had to be qualified by me pointing out that I did the passive-aggressive douchebag thing for most of that time. After we stopped talking I realized from time to time that I actually missed her. It wasn’t that I missed sitting around thinking about how great it would be if she let me touch her boobies. It was that I missed having her around as someone to talk to and as someone who I knew would know Thing X about Subject Y that I, personally, knew fuck all about or would want to talk about Subject Z that I knew most other people I know couldn't be arsed to discuss. Ergo, I hadn’t broken up with someone, I’d lost a friend. I missed that particular friend and there was no getting her back.
Meanwhile, at a later, non-disclosed point in time I met a woman I came to value as a friend. She was in a relationship when I met her. I eventually figured out that she was actually someone I would date in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself.
Eventually she broke up with the guy, which I considered a good move on her part. It wasn’t because I knew I could then make my move, but because she wasn’t happy and I wanted her to be happy because she totally deserved to be happy. The fact is that by the time that happened our friendship had progressed to the point where I didn’t want to potentially fuck it up by making a pass and finding out she totally wasn’t interested.
The fact of the matter is that I know the standard guy response to that situation is, “Ask her out. Who cares about the consequences?”
I do, that’s who. And I care because in the final analysis I ended up being more unhappy that I didn’t let Amy Friend Zone me than that she didn’t let me play with her boobies and make out with her and shit.
Turns out the dreaded Friend Zone isn’t necessarily such a bad place to be.
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[1]I originally wrote this as “Or keep you as a backpack,” which would be really, really weird.
[2]I mean, other than the obvious reason. Boobies are fun to touch, after all.
[3]Brainwashed By Boobies is also the name of The Curb Tacos’ debut album. Out June 12th.
[4]This question is, sadly, optional for some guys.
It's because, in males more so than females, the sex drive is completely detached from the rest of the personality. The part of the male brain that worries about job security or money or social reputation or legal consequences has almost no veto power over the sex drive. You've heard guys say they were "thinking with their dick" or "I was thinking with the little brain" or "I took an order from Captain Bonerhelmet." That's what they're referring to. [Emphasis mine]
I have a huge problem with the line of thought in the bolded sentence. My problem is that it’s in an article that’s ostensibly written as a defense of women against the predation of men, but that single sentence negates pretty much every good thing that the article could have said (which, sadly, were few and far between). See, by offering an awful and convenient evo-devo explanation the author totally takes all responsibility for men’s behavior out of the hands of men. Don’t believe me?
Science doesn't seem to totally understand why the "base urges" part of the brain reacts differently in men. Maybe it's just a matter of having 10 times as much testosterone in their system, or maybe society has trained us to be like this, or maybe we're all spoiled children. My theory is that evolution needs males who will stay horny even in times of crisis or distress, and thus cuts off the brain's ability to tamp down those urges. Whatever -- nailing down the cause isn't the point. [Emphasis mine]
Um, yes, as a matter of fact, nailing down the cause should be the point. It should be the entire goddamn point. And just dismissing male tendencies in the horniness department as “men need to be horny during distress” is fuck stupid. You know what happens to be a really good way of getting your dumb, horny ass killed? Stopping to rub one out while being chased across the savannah by a hungry lion, that’s what. You know what’s a really bad idea during one of those “times of distress” that might include things like “famine” and “drought” and “spending a year stuck in a city besieged by ravening hordes of Huns?” Bringing more hungry mouths into the world, that’s what.
I, personally, would think that the more logical evolutionary developmental advantage within humanity would go to the one who can control his sexuality. Yes, there’s the whole propagation of the species through survival of the fittest and wider dissemination of the genes is a total Darwinian concept that makes perfect sense. But humanity has something that your average mayfly, cuttlefish, or prairie dog lacks: the actual intelligence necessary to engage in long-term thinking. Actions, after all, have consequences. My dog doesn’t necessarily have the capacity to understand that, but I sure as shit do.
That, for the record, is pretty much how society works. We have laws and cultural mores for a reason. Some of those laws might be stupid. Some of those cultural mores might be outdated. But the underlying concept of laws and mores is essential to the proper functioning of human society. So if you take fifty-percent of humanity, throw your arms up, and say, “Fuck, I don’t know what to do, they’re evolutionarily incapable of understanding consequences,” then YOU. ARE. NOT. HELPING.
It’s as simple as that.
That’s the problem with this entire exercise, though. The article attempts to say that it’s somehow “society” or “evolution” that causes men to treat women like shit, then passively says, “Well, what’re ya gonna do, boys will be boys, after all. We can’t be trusted around boobies.”
Step one is to say that, no, it’s not okay. Step two is to hold that line. Step three is to smack any whiny, over-privileged twit who tries to go over that line without consequences. Step four is to smack anyone who lets him get away with it.
It’s really not that complicated. This isn’t to say it’s particularly simple, as there’s a lot of inertia and unexamined privilege that must be overcome in order to create real, lasting, necessary change. For the most part it should be an issue of changing mores. Make it unacceptable to be a douchebag. Make it clear that certain actions are sexual assault. Then, when someone crosses that line, don’t let him say, “She was asking for it.”
This is usually when someone comes out with the ol’, “But what about those crazy bitches who accuse guys of rape because they’re, y’know, crazy-ass bitches?” To be honest, this is problematic. I have no doubt that there are women somewhere in this world who will run around all willy-nilly claiming that every single guy who’s ever looked at them is engaging in sexual assault.[1] This, unfortunately, is a problem we have to deal with all the time in society.
What’s to stop my neighbor from accusing me of stealing his laptop? What’s to stop someone walking down the street from calling the cops and claiming I tried to run her over with my car? Nothing. Nothing at all. This is the risk of living within a society.
Accusations of crimes related to sex are also far, far more complicated and fraught with social peril than accusations of property theft. In most cases it’s literally a case of the word of one against the word of another without any witnesses. That’s truly problematic and does open well-meaning people up to spurious and false accusations that they cannot disprove.
The solution to this seemingly intractable problem, though, is not to simply allow one half of the population to get away with anything they want because, fuck, man, what’re you supposed to do? That’s the world we live in right now. Boys will be boys, after all. They can’t be expected to consider the consequences.[2] Besides, she should have known better than to put herself in a position where those uncontrolled and uncontrollable boys would see her and she sure as hell should have known better than to have a history of being sexually active. Really, if a woman has had one penis inside of her then that means she wants to have every other penis inside of her at any given time, regardless of whether she knows the guy or likes him or wants to have sex at this particular moment.
That doesn’t sound fair to me. And if it sounds fair to you, chances are you’re some sort of MRA and/or PUA douchebag and, quite frankly, the only solution to that is castration with a rusty X-Acto knife. Sorry, bro, you know what they say, “Life’s a bitch, then you marry one.” Har-har.
David Wong does try to avoid the exceedingly negative implications of his argument:
No, this doesn't excuse anything. Obviously, "She was asking for it!" is still a bullshit rape defense. All I'm saying is when you see guys actually get annoyed or angry at the sight of a girl showing too much skin, or if you see them eager to degrade or humiliate the girls at the strip club, this is why. It's probably why some Muslims make their women cover themselves head to toe.
While the disclaimer at the start is nice, the rest of the thing is pretty fucking stupid. It makes sense if you genuinely believe that men are uncontrollable horndogs, I suppose. But, again, all this does is say that it’s all the woman’s fault. Humiliation, abuse, and strictly enforced dress codes are not an issue of men recognizing their limitations, either. They are the artifacts of control, plain and simple.
And that is why we need to change up the cultural mores and stop saying that men can’t be expected to control themselves or consider the consequences of their actions. It’s not some strange, amorphous “society” putting these limitations on women and allowing men to run about in a blissful fog, free of any consequences of their actions. It’s men. You know how I know that? Because I happen to know that men are in society, men have most of the power in society, and the way society is formulated is strangely skewed to give men more power and privilege than women.
So, yeah, that’s all I have to say about that for the moment. Stay tuned, though, since I’m going to veer off of the David Wong article and take all a y’alls into a place I’m sure you don’t want to go: The Friend Zone.
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[1]Seriously, I knew someone in college who was a social work major and one day, out of fucking nowhere, put this big, long diatribe out (on Facebook, if I recall) about how every man in the world was a rapist and not to be trusted. Except her current boyfriend, of course. She also accused me of being a tool of the Devil and attempting to undermine her once because she got it into her head that I had been pulling the strings on something that I had only a tangential connection to. There is little doubt in my mind that, yes, she could end up accusing some dude of rape because he bumped into her on the sidewalk.
[2]Some people, of course, genuinely can’t think past the action to the consequences. I do not think that this is or should be thought of as a normative male modality. I think that your average male is completely and totally capable of controlling himself, but we as a society have not given enough incentive to do so. I’ll also note that the primary drivers of the laws and law enforcement in our society are men. Strange coincidence, that…
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