Jessica Valenti coughs up a ball of full retard

[Edited to add: Valenti’s Twitter mob is out complaining about how I am “trolling” Valenti with icky facts and bullshit like that. le sigh. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose…]

 

 

 

Remember this shirt, and how I promised to make Jess rue the day she paraded around like the stupid, fat, heartless bitch that she is? The day has come. Poor Jess had to activate both her brain cells to explain how wearing a hateful shirt doesn’t mean she hates men, and she does that by …. wait for it ….. explaining why it’s okay that she hates men.

 

Yep, she went full retard.

Let’s take a look.

One of the most common derisive taunts thrown at feminists – and one of the oldest – is “manhater”.

Gee, I wonder why?

It’s been around since the days of suffrage, and still gets used today, though its a pretty anodyne insult.

 

Hating men is so lulzy. It’s no big deal. Like saying you hate cockroaches. Who doesn’t amirite? Nothing to cause offense. It’s just hate, lololol.

Also, *it’s

Most feminists, like me, shun the label and work to convince people that despite the stereotypes feminists absolutely, without a doubt, do not hate men.

Oh, like this, for example? Is this how you show you don’t hate men?

But so what if we did?

Engage the retard drive.

It’s not that I recommend hating men or think it a particularly wise use of one’s time, but to each her own.

Cool. I suppose you’re good with people hating Blacks, gays, Jews, poor people, illegal immigrants and Muslims, too, because to each her own, amrite?

Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world, and everyone else struggles to make their lives work with less.

A small number of men (relative to the population) are elected by a group of mostly women voters. Sounds like patriarchy to me! And is everyone struggling Jess? Really? Seems to me your last big issue was wrapping the “goddamn clusterfuck” Christmas presents.

So if the worst thing that happens to a man is that a woman doesn’t like him …well, he has it pretty damn good. It’s not as if we’re living in some sort of Wicker Man-inspired dystopia, after all.

Yeah! Especially all those homeless men! And the ones with prostate cancer! And the ones working life-threatening jobs! And the ones in jail, facing longer, harsher punishment for no reason other than the fact that they are men! And the ones denied custody of their children! And the ones getting the crap beat out of them by women! And the rape victims! And the ones struggling in classrooms that punish them for being male! All those guys can shut the hell up because y’all have it pretty good and Jess does not hate men, do you understand?

Besides, when women hate men, we hurt their feelings.

Jody Arias would like a word.

So would the senior editorial staff at Jezebel, 40% of whom admit to physically attacking and hurting their male partners. So would the five million men who were victims of domestic violence in 2011. Seems like women are more than capable of hurting more than feelings, or do you not think women are human, Jess? Are we not capable of the full range of human responses, emotions and reactions?

When men hate women, they kill us: mass shootings have been attributed to misogyny, and sexual and domestic violence against women is often fuelled by a hatred for women.

Attributed by whom? By feminists? Gee, they have no vested interest in portraying men as monsters who kill women, all the while ignoring men who are victims of female violence.

What was that about not hating men again?

That’s why it’s so hard to take seriously any claims that “misandry” is a tremendous problem – they’re based on the idea that merely insulting men is similar to the life-threatening misogyny women face worldwide.

Boys failing en masse at schools that punish them for being boys, massive incarceration of poor men and men of color, an incredulous suicide rate, underfunded health care worldwide, used as cannon fodder in wars – yeah, misandry doesn’t hurt men at all. The boys murdered by Boko Harem would talk to you about that, except they all had their throats slit, while their sisters were allowed to live.

(Most recently, Newsday writer Cathy Young argued that men being called “mansplainers” or rape apologists is akin to the rape and death threats that women get online.)

What she actually said was “a Pew Research Center study last year found that online threats of physical violence are more often directed at men, and both sexes are equally likely to report experiencing “sustained harassment” on the Internet.”

Nice try, though.

But a younger generation of feminists has embraced what Slate writer Amanda Hess calls “ironic misandry”. Hess wrote last year that the rise in popularity of “male tears” mugs and man-hating inspired shirts and crafts serves as a sort of fuck-you to the constant barrage of harassment that feminists often face: “On its most basic level, ironic misandry functions like a stuck-out tongue pointed at a playground bully.”

Men attempting to speak on issues that affect them is not harassment. You are asked to defend an ideology that literally opposes equality, that lies to women, that infantilizes women, that celebrates genocidal racists, and when asked to offer a defense you run crying to moderators that you are being harassed.

Who is the bully again?

Guardian contributor Jess Zimmerman – and self-proclaimed “misandrist witch” – told Hess: “It’s inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it’s ridiculous.”

Except that when the actions of feminists are taken into account, it’s not the extreme position. It’s the norm. You just don’t like being called on it.

In other words, calling ourselves misandrists is both a way of reappropriating one of the most common insults feminists weather, and a way to blow off some steam after a long day of fighting the same battles we did 30 years ago. And honestly, if feminists really hated men we’d probably come up with a better way to hurt them than funny t-shirts that insist that their tears are delicious. (Men may have some very sensitive parts, but even the manhating-est among us doesn’t go around kicking them willy-nilly.)

No, it’s a way of attempting to deflect legitimate criticism. If your best defense against hatred is “I don’t kick random men in the balls”, you may want to rethink your position.

Despite all the fun-loving, internet-in-joke misandry, the vast majority of women and feminists do not hate men. Many of us might hate bad men: the sexists, misogynists and all-around jerks.

Your hatred prevents men from choosing parenthood. Your hatred prevents men from seeing their children. Your hatred prevents government services from assisting men and boys in any way. Your hatred demands men put themselves in harm’s way to protect you. Your hatred demands men cater to your every irrational demand and if you don’t think that harms men, you do not understand what harm means.

But our hatred is just a feeling, and not something that can impact men in any meaningful or oppressive way.

This hatred is not ironic. It encourages the world to continue to ignore the suffering of men and boys. You will be held accountable for that, Jessica.

Men who claim to be genuinely worried about man-hating or “misandry” are grasping at straws, and searching for a victim status that simply doesn’t exist. Guys are still doing pretty well, so let us have our “man-hating” fun while you go on ruling the world.

Let you have you man-hating fun? I don’t think so.

But keep one eye open. (Just kidding … sort of.)

Try it.

I dare you.

 

JB