Feeding the Beast

A Facebook friend posted today a link to some new Fox-promoted lie about Obamacare with the comment, "I'm always surprised people continue to believe this stuff."  I was surprised that she was surprised.  After all, she is a successful psychologist who specializes in treating addiction. More than most, she should understand that "believing" is not what drives the audiences of Fox and other media outlets that rely on people's insatiable appetites for outrage.  The fact is, most of us enjoy being outraged.  It's fun to get mad.  Anger makes us feel strong.  It motivates us.  That's because anger releases a cascade of stimulating hormones that make us feel more alert ("alive") and energetic.  No wonder many of us get addicted to these powerful mind-altering chemicals that we can manufacture ourselves, right in our own heads, in the privacy and convenience of our own homes.  (And by "us," I mean "me" because, being of the XX persuasion, I am hopelessly solipsistic.) 

There have been a number of articles about "feeding the beast" of public outrage, and I expect to see more about this as people start to feel trapped in cycles of frustration and helplessness that are relieved temporarily by experiencing a dose of righteous anger, only to result in a "crash" -- that is, until the next scandal engages our attention and pumps us full of adrenaline once more.  It's exhausting, though, isn't it?

There is a lot of anger addiction in my family, and I am an anger addict myself.  I was taught to fuel myself with my own anger the way other people are taught to use coffee, as a routine stimulant in response to fatigue, fear, stress or any event that I find excessively taxing.  That doesn't mean I walk around in a state of simmering rage or am prone to public melt-downs.  But it does mean I can be rather unpleasant to be around when I am girding my loins for battle with some unpleasant or tiresome task such as cleaning the house or tackling a mountain of paperwork.  I have long been conscious of how I manipulate my own brain chemistry in order to energize myself with a goodly dose of anger.

Ironically, by feeding the anger beast I often wind up depleting my reserves.  Instead of actually harnessing that anger to effect real change (such as actually re-grouting the tub), I pursue the "high" like the junkie I am, seeking more "hits" of outrage.  For better or worse, like everyone else I live in a media-rich environment where there are endless opportunities to divert myself, and endless opportunities to be outraged.

I suppose this came to mind today when I found myself idly peeking at Matt Forney's twitter feed instead of cleaning the bird's cage.  Yesterday, he had tweeted something about me, to the effect that reading my blog was "like watching a nervous breakdown in slo-mo" and that I should really be put on "suicide watch."  Both comments made me laugh, and I wasn't offended by either.  To be honest, I wanted to see if he had tweeted anything more about me!  ("Vanity, thy name is woman!")  Instead, he was on an entirely different toot, courting new sources of outrage by virtually dancing on the grave of Nelson Mandela.

Forney's post about why girls need less (or was it more?) self-esteem has already faded from collective memory.  These things seem to have a half-life of about two weeks. Now he is left with the unenviable task of keeping attention on himself with nothing but his internet connection, smartphone, and nastiest impulses to help him.

Not for the first time I am thinking that in terms of grinding, mind-numbing, thankless vocations, the endless pursuit of internet notoriety must be the worst.  And it isn't even like "trolling for a living" fetches up much of a "living."  One of my mild but persistent obsessions is trying to figure out how a guy like Forney manages to stay as porky well-fed as he does.  I can only speculate that even though he's long since dropped out of college, his mom is still sending him "care packages."  (Or is it that, in the words of Shakespeare, anger is his meat and he sups upon himself?)

When I first stumbled into the "manosphere" I couldn't believe my eyes.  I would never have guessed how many Angry White Men were out there.  I felt compelled to read boatloads of these blogs in an effort to grasp the depth and breadth of it, to accept that the resurgence of a "new" misogyny was real.  I started with Roosh (hence the name of the blog), but soon discovered he was only one of many men who really, really hate women and don't hesitate to express that fear & loathing with shockingly contemptuous and even violent imagery (from safely behind their keyboards of course).  And they had fans too, and many of those readers had their own tiny terrible blogs and tiny furious twitter feeds.

I'll admit that these guys (and a few of these gals) scared me.  I hate to admit that because that's exactly what they want to do: to control women by playing on their fears.  And then I got very angry, which is a natural coping mechanism, because anger makes the fear manageable.    

OK, I now see this New Misogyny really is a thing in our world (not in my own small "real" world, mind you, where I have never met -- or at least never had reason to recognize -- any guys like this).  I've entertained my worst fears about what it represents, and have come to the conclusion that it does not represent a serious social threat, at least in its current incarnation.  

So what's my excuse for continuing to immerse myself in the toxic morass that constitutes the "manosphere"?  Is there a 12 Step program for people like me, who are addicted to feeding their own internet-fueled anger?  And what are the salient differences between "people like me" and "people like them" anyway?  In terms of our respective anger addictions, it seems very few.

It strikes me that on some small level I have been engaging in a symbiotic relationship with the manosphere bloggers, a sort of "dance of anger" in which we take turns outraging each other.  Maybe there is more in common between, say, Matt Forney and me than meets the eye.  Like many dysfunctional relationships, we are each getting some pay-off, feeding some addictive and self-destructive need.

Anyway, enough about Rush Limbaugh-wannabe Matt Forney for now (and in a reasonable universe, enough about Rush Limbaugh and Matt Forney forever.)  Time to watch once more "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (yes, I'm still on my WWII Germany kick) and pull my Christmas lights out of the attic because God forbid I be the only house on my cul-de-sac without lights on it.

Involuntary Celibacy and Me; or TMI

One of the themes of the manosphere is that "sex" is a commodity that women control and men will go to any lengths to obtain.  Women use "sex" to manipulate men and get them to do their bidding, or else cruelly deny men whom they capriciously deem unworthy.  Men, on the other hand, require sex to be fully masculine.  It is their biological imperative to pollinate every fresh flower they see; it is to attract potential hotties that they are driven to labor, to achieve, to acquire.  For example, according to at least one "incel" (see previous post), JFK did not become a senator and then a president in order to please his striving father, or even to fulfill his own ambition for power; he was driven by his innate need for nooky.

It strikes me that both men and women share a tendency to blame the other gender for their own base impulses or thwarted desires.  One thing that women don't generally do, however, is feel "entitled" to the sexual services of men.

Now, I know the Angry Guys will say that is because women, just by virtue of having vaginas, can have all the sex they could wish for.  But that isn't exactly true.  Sure, even a flabby old crone like me knows of at least one notoriously seedy bar in my area where I could find a fuck buddy in ten minutes flat (make that five if I were buying).  I could find a partner for most of these incel guys at the same place, if they would just ratchet down adjust their expectations of what it is they believe they "deserve" -- just a mite.

I know a lot of women who are lonely and horny, who spend many nights yearning and burning, writhing alone in their beds, listening to vintage Sarah McLachlan and gnashing their teeth.  I know how that feels:  I have been one of them myself.

I have had several periods of "involuntary celibacy".  One of these periods lasted nearly five years, which, by anyone's reckoning, is a long dry spell.  It followed a seven year relationship with a man who had finally put me out of my misery broken up with me by announcing on the phone he was marrying someone else.  I was devastated, alternately in denial (spinning fantasies of winning him back) and suicidal (cuz that would show him).  It was a period of extreme depression and social isolation punctuated with bursts of manic, impulsive activity:  I moved several times, started and abandoned three different jobs. 

I had gained a lot of weight, and was living in rural Colorado, where I hardly ever met anyone, much less any eligible bachelors.  Still, I was a young lady with a high libido.  This was in the late eighties, the burgeoning era of internet dating, and I was among the first to try to hook up that way.  There were long, passionate e-mail exchanges with a bipolar lad in Canada and a slightly demented elderly gentleman in California, but to no avail.   

This was back when I still identified myself as straight, although even if I had realized I was in fact "hetero-flexible," I doubt it would have improved my plight.  Looking back, eighty percent of the problem was that I was functioning under a dark cloud of depression, practically exuding desperation, and obviously needed therapy (which I eventually got) even more than a roll in the hay.

This was also the period that I discovered pornography erotica and mail order, uhm, marital aids.  So it wasn't a complete waste...

A friend who was in similar straits used to joke that if she could order a man like a pizza, she would have tipped generously.  We joked about taking up horseback riding, about telephone poles, about the gnawing hunger to be taken, to be well and truly fucked, to be royally rogered while we thrust our noses into some random stranger's hairy armpit and inhaled his musky pheromones. 

We were, to put it bluntly, mad with unrequited lust.

I even thought about hiring a male prostitute.  (This was, after all, the decade book-ended by "American Gigolo" and "My Own Private Idaho", so the concept of men commodifying their sexuality had become a thing.)  I had no idea how to procure one, however, especially in my dusty little town snuggled high in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Even if I had stumbled upon Richard Gere (or even better, Brad Pitt) in some cowboy bar, I couldn't yet un-bundle my desire for sex from my desire to be desired.  And I don't think these angry male "incels" or frustrated PUAs are much different.  Whether male or female, we look to sex with a partner to provide confirmation of our own desirability. 

I broke my five year record as soon as I had moved to a larger city and found a career that (at least temporarily) I enjoyed and which put me in contact with a broader array of like-minded people.  In fact, I proceeded to make up for lost time by having a string of casual encounters colorful off-color adventures that I immortalized in another blog.  

Now I am an old(ish) woman.  My circumstances and needs are quite different.  I haven't had penetrative sex for a number of years, and I don't miss it.  Yet I can still remember the pain and frustration of my own days of involuntary celibacy, and sympathize with those men (and women) who rail against it.  

The Unknown Soldier

Taking advantage of the mini-break surrounding Thanksgiving, I further indulged my obsession with Nazi war crimes by watching "The Unknown Soldier," a documentary by Michael Veerhoeven that explores the reaction of the German public to the Wehrmacht Exhibitions that have toured that country in the past two decades. 

The point of the exhibition was to prove that the regular German Army played a huge and ongoing role in the extermination of the Jews, especially on the Eastern Front, i.e., Ukraine.  We forget that many of the Jews were not killed in death camp gas chambers, but were herded into ghettos (often established off the main streets of towns with hastily erected barbed wire), from which they were periodically, methodically, and openly marched through the towns to open pits or gullies a couple of kilometers away, and shot.  It is estimated that 100,000 Jews were disposed of at Babi Yar alone.  

The magnitude of these numbers always beleaguers my imagination.  When I lived in Grand Junction, there were 35,000 residents, and it seemed like a pretty big town to me (x 3? in one pit?)  

And much of this action was carried out by rank and file German soldiers.  Indeed it could not have happened without their direct involvement.  And their full and enthusiastic participation could not have been engaged unless they themselves were acting out their own ingrained anti-Semitic belief system.

The evidence of their involvement takes many forms, but most compellingly, in snapshots taken by the soldiers themselves and later lovingly preserved in family photo albums: "Grandpa's Service."  I was reminded of the shock that the Abu Ghraib photos caused, not only because they provided horrific evidence of war crimes by American soldiers (and American female soldiers at that!), but because the pictures had been taken and distributed so freely and joyfully.

The culpability of the common German soldier is not what I was taught in grade school, and it certainly came as a shock to Germans of my generation, whose fathers and grandfathers had been exonerated after the war.  Not surprising, then, that the Exhibit triggered protests, not only by neo-Nazi thugs, but by ordinary middle class Germans and even a few very elderly veterans themselves. 

I found the details of the documentary riveting.  For example, in one brief film clip, a German Red Cross nurse tenderly secures a blanket around a naked elderly Jew's shoulders as she calmly directs him into a mobile gas chamber... 

But the segment that made the greatest impression on me was the research that had been done on the fate of soldiers who refused to participate in the genocide: not a single one who refused to shoot Jews was disciplined in any way, much less court-martialed.  In other words, the soldiers of conscience -- and there were a few, there always are a few good people! -- suffered no negative consequences whatsoever as a result. Which puts the lie to the commonly cited belief that taking a moral stand always meant risking martyrdom.  In other words, the soldiers that shot Jews did so because they wanted to (or at least didn't mind doing so), and the soldiers that didn't shoot Jews did so because they didn't want to.

I hope German historians will continue to seek out and reward, if only posthumously, those individuals.  Because if there are important lessons to be learned by examining why, and how, people commit heinous acts, there are even more important lessons to be learned by examining why, and how, people resist evil.

Angry White Guys

Russell Brand recently remarked "We have more in common with the people we're bombing than the people we're bombing them for."

That quote has been rattling around in my head the last week or so, and I re-quoted it once more to my friends as we sat around the table after we had consumed our Thanksgiving feast, supplemented with a great deal of wine, yesterday.  Talk had turned to the Tea Party, and for some reason it seemed apt to muse upon the ways we have more in common with the people we imagine are our enemies than we do with the powers that be who are really running the show.

I actually know a Tea Partier or two (although neither, thankfully, was present at the table yesterday).  One is a childhood playmate who lives in a cabin in the Tetons.  I haven't seen her since I was eleven years old, and doubt I ever will see her in the flesh again, but we reconnected via Facebook as people do these days, and have been reading each other's posts ever since.  We even had a short, rather awkward chat late one night.  I'm really surprised she hasn't un-friended me by now because I'm sure it has become painfully apparent that we are diametrically opposed on just about any social or political issue there is.   

Lately she's been "sharing" a lot from a Facebook page called American White History Month, which has, as its banner, the slogan "Never apologize for being white!"  For some reason that slogan strikes me as pretty hilarious.  I've never felt I needed to apologize for being white even when, as I was on this particular Thanksgiving, I am surrounded by black and Latina women.  I mean, isn't that part of white privilege?  I hardly ever have to think about race at all!  (At least as it affects me personally.)

The reason I don't un-friend her is because I rather fancy having a small window, via Facebook, on an entirely different way of perceiving the world.  I rather relish being reminded that, if my mother hadn't fled her tiny Mormon hometown at the age of seventeen, I could be that woman myself: a woman who admonishes others to respect the flag and "put the Christ back into Christmas", who hates homosexuals and loves her grandchildren with equal passion, who posts recipes of rich desserts at least twice a day, and who recently shot an elk through her kitchen window while cleaning up after supper.   In a way, she is living my heritage, that of a very devout, albeit very bigoted, modern day frontier woman.

I don't un-friend her because I need to remind myself where I come from -- my own personal white American history -- and how far from "other", in fact, the members of the radical right are to me.

After finishing Michael Kimmel's book, Angry White Men, I am feeling a resurgence of compassion and connection to this corner of humanity as well.   Blame it on the holiday season, perhaps.  These angry white men, with their sense of "aggrieved entitlement," and their woefully misdirected anger, and their nostalgia for a patriarchy that is dismantling under their very feet -- these men are part of my heritage too.  And I'm beginning to feel guilty about making fun of them and shaming them and calling them morons.

Because making fun of these guys is beginning to feel like poking at caged bears.  Or bull fighting.  In other words, it doesn't seem like a fair fight because these guys can't win.  They certainly can't win an intellectual argument, they're on the wrong side of history, and they aren't smart enough to figure out how they are being played.  They are being encouraged (and encouraging one another) to believe "the problem" is immigration, feminism, or affirmative action, or just plain lack of nooky.  The source of their troubles, in other words, is always the class one or two rungs down the ladder.

"Divide and conquer," one of my friends said, as we soberly picked at our pie, and imagined a day when the angry white guys would wake up and smell the coffee.

Lost German Girl

I am currently reading Hitler's Furies, which examines the role German women played in the killing machine of the Third Reich.  Perhaps the greatest revelation is how few of them were held accountable for their murderous and sometimes sadistic deeds, and how even after the war, German justice was reluctant to credit the testimony of Jewish survivors against these women.  The few women who were actually brought to trial lied blatantly about what and where they had been; they tried to pin their crimes on their husbands or lovers; they were pregnant at the time (and therefore, for some reason, incapable of shooting Jews in the forest like rabbits); they "forgot" where they were or what they were doing; they were just following orders. They returned to civilian life, some of them in the very same occupations they had held while they were committing their most cold-blooded crimes (i.e., nursing).  

Perhaps it doesn't matter.  They're mostly all dead now, these Germans of my parents' generation, or else very, very old.

I am not a World War II buff by any stretch.  What fascinates me is human cruelty, and identifying the social and psychological circumstances in which human cruelty emerges and flourishes.  Women's capacity for violence has, until recently, been overlooked.  They are seen either as victims or in thrall to a dark masculine force, rather than as people who participate in murder or genocide willingly, even enthusiastically, in service of their own ambition or sadistic pleasure.

On a related note, I cannot quite shake my fascination with "the lost German girl" who was filmed during the evacuation of Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945.  She has been beaten, and seems exhausted and disoriented.  She is wearing military trousers and braces that seem to fit her too well to have been discarded by a male soldier.  She is clutching a deck of cards (or a bible? or a stack of worthless currency? or identification papers?). She has never been identified, and -- assuming she survived -- probably never wished to be.

A case has been made over at another blog that the photograph below is of the girl in the film, and, having compared the images over and over, I am also persuaded that they are the same person. The photograph is of an as-yet unnamed German woman who was serving in some capacity in the Wehrmacht apparatus in Czechoslovakia. (On the other hand, "the lost German girl" captured on film may simply have been one of millions of ethnic Germans expelled from various countries during this period.) 

It's difficult, watching the film clip, not to feel great compassion for the young woman, who, with her loose, blonde, blood-caked hair, snug jumper, somewhat cynical expression, and meandering gait, appears to be utterly contemporary.  And yet I am also haunted by what she has done, the choices she has made that have brought her to this dark place along a sunny stretch of highway.

On Men Hitting Women

I'm in the middle of reading Michael Kimmel's Angry White Men, which David Futrelle recently reviewed.  I'm getting a lot out of it; it's especially interesting to read about the phenomenon of domestic violence from a male, rather than a female, perspective.  For example, Kimmel points out that men use violence at home in an attempt to restore control they have already lost.  This is a slightly different angle than feminists take, who typically recognize a fairly simplistic strong male perpetrator / weak female victim dynamic, but it resonates deeply with my own experience.

Not that I've ever been in a relationship in which a man struck me.  Well, let me say that once a man I was living with slapped me across the face, hard enough to make my ear ring, but the relationship was pretty much over (I was in the process of finding my own apartment) when it happened, and I recall being quite stunned -- like, Are you fucking kidding me?   I simply turned around and walked away, and he didn't pursue until later in the evening, when he began to scream at me from the bottom of the stairwell (because I had announced I was turning off the utilities in the house, which were in my name).  In the midst of his tantrum, he suddenly fell and clutched his chest.  "I'm having a heart attack!" he cried dramatically.  

I calmly watched him writhe and moan from the top of the stairs as he lay in a fetal position.  I wondered how long I would need to wait before I called 911, in order to make sure he was really dead.  He stopped twitching, and became quiet.  After two carefully counted minutes, I decided to leave the house for a while, hoping to return a few hours later to find him cold where he lay at the bottom of the stairwell.

It didn't turn out that way, of course.  As far as I know, he's still very much alive.  The last I heard from him was when he sent me an invitation to his wedding a few months later.  He sent it to let me know he knew where I lived, to remind me that he still had some "control" in our relationship.  I just laughed and tossed it in the trash.  I wasn't afraid of him at that point.  I reckoned that if he had given in to his impulse to kill me, he would have bludgeoned me as I slept in the house we had shared.  In fact, I had always found him ridiculously, contemptibly weak, and he recognized that, which is why he hated me as much as he did. 

This is probably the worst story I can tell on myself.  Friends never fail to express shock and dismay at my cold-hearted behavior.  I'll admit I enjoy telling the story too because of others' reaction.  I suppose it's an indirect way to let them know about the darkest part of my personality.  So now you know why the pseudonym "La Strega" fits me so well; it's not just because I am "bewitching."

I didn't come from a family where men struck women.  My father never hit my mother.  Neither of my grandfathers ever hit my grandmothers.  It's impossible to imagine.  And it's not because these women couldn't be maddening, manipulative, and mean to their men.  It's because I came from a family where being a man was all about being in control, and obviously, a man who has to resort to violence is a man who has allowed his emotions to rule, and has thereby forfeited the perfect control which is his masculine responsibility.  

Neither did my father or either of my grandfathers ever strike their children, or even threaten to.  They never had to, not because we were always good, but because they had so much power in our family that no one dared to challenge their authority.  My father was, in our home, God.  He was, as Joseph Kennedy's daughter described him, "the architect of our lives."  Challenging the authority of my father would have been like dismantling the navigational system of a ship.  It would have been a terrifying, suicidal act of defiance.  And not because he would have punished us, but because, without Daddy, we had nothing.

In my family, it was the women (my mother, her mother, us girls) who were allowed free rein to express their emotions.  Emotional expression was the avenue by which women, not men, communicated.  My mother occasionally spanked us; more often, she threatened to by striking the walls with a wooden spoon, or throwing books and other objects.  Funnily, we were much less afraid of her than we were of our father.  Her lack of self-restraint simply reminded us of how relatively powerless she was.  It confirmed the contempt we already held for her because she was so dependent on our father.  We had already learned that violent displays are the desperate resort of the impotent.

I'm talking physical violence of course.  True, my father never raised a hand toward anyone in his life, and yet his words could eviscerate his opponents.  He hardly ever yelled; it was when he went quiet that the hairs on your arms would start to rise in apprehension. 

And to this day, I am extremely sensitive, and vulnerable, to sarcasm.  And also, truth be told, quite adept at being verbally cruel.

But Kimmel's position about the true power dynamic between violent men and their wives and girlfriends has helped me understand one of the problems I faced as a domestic violence advocate: my lack of true empathy for the female victims.  I just couldn't understand how a woman person could continue to "love" a partner who used violence: not because it was dangerous or painful, but because anyone who "loses it" physically puts himself in a "one down" position.  And why would anyone want to hitch her wagon to that?

Daw Da Hiya

I love Iggy Pop.  And I loved Ofra Haza.  I had no idea, until a commenter informed me tonight, that they had done a duet together.  Ofra Haza was an Israeli singer of Yemeni birth who enjoyed enormous professional success but had a rather sad personal life.  She contracted HIV from her husband and died of AIDS-related pneumonia within a couple of years of her marriage.  The disclosure of the cause of her death shocked the Israeli public, for whom she had been an icon of chastity and purity.

Roosh Rallies the Troops! (And Bans Me Again)

Today, Roosh trumpets into the void: "It's time to start delivering death blows to feminists!" 

Ladies who tweet, beware: Roosh and his most fervent disciple Matt Forney are already all over you like flies on shit.  They post the most inflammatory crap they can summon in their overheated imaginations.  (The topic du jour was why girls with eating disorders make the best victims of "game").  Then they sit back and trawl Twitter to harvest the oh-so-predictable outrage.  Anyone who links to a Roosh's (or Matt Forney's) name or their sites gets immediately "retweeted" and perhaps even treated to a special in-person "appearance" from Roosh (or Forney) himself.  In Roosh's case, he will poke around in the girl's twitter account, blog, or whatever else he can find, post a picture of the girl if one is available, and then invite his readers to wank off to her image ("Would you fornicate?").  Classy, huh?  Of course, most of the victims could not care less and quickly disengage from (or block) their would-be tormenter.  I mean, being targeted by Roosh is kinda gross, kinda like stepping in dog feces, but a typical girl wipes her feet and soldiers on...  It's not like most women are unfamiliar with this sort of uninvited attention / abuse.

But Roosh, at least, has wearied of this particular game.  After one female student in the UK blew him off on twitter last night, he spent several hours composing a new screed, this time upping the stakes in the Battle of the Sexes that he and his flying monkeys are fighting (entirely in their own minds).

"We have reached a level of influence that ignoring us is no longer an effective means of attack.  By leaving us alone for so long, they gave us the needed time to carefully optimize our belief system and recruit committed soldiers to the cause."

Well, uhm, actually, I think the problem may be that people have not yet figured out that the "manosphere" is one big trolling operation, and that leaving these trolls alone is probably the only way to shut them up.  Most people are more bemused than alarmed when Roosh pops out of their twitter woodwork.  Once they've figured out who he is, he is summarily blocked:  Ah! a person of no importance at all to anyone.

I have no idea what it means "to carefully optimize our belief system."  And frankly, after a day of marking student essays, my brain is too fried to even try to decipher this.

"An attack last year from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a formidable adversary with millions of dollars in resources, strengthened us more than hurt. We overcame them like a dog scratching away a flea."

Well, it's true the SPLC took some heat for its creation of a list of "misogynists" to keep an eye on; some folks thought they were trivializing their mission by bothering to include rape-apologists like Roosh and Paul Elam.  Personally, I am reassured that at least one social justice group (mostly thanks to the unflagging efforts of  David Futrelle) are monitoring these guys.  Personally, I consider these guys and their followers to be hate groups, pure 'n' simple, straight up.  And it's no coincidence that manosphere blogs tend to be fertile ground for racists, homophobes, and conspiracy nuts of all stripes.

(Also, forgive me, but Roosh is seriously underestimating the power of fleas.  As the owner of four dogs, I can attest that none of them has been able to "scratch away" the problem, and at this point I should seriously consider investing in Frontline or Advantage stocks.)

"Even when they cherry pick quotes of [sic] context, the intelligent man (who I cater to) can easily see through the distortions by doing his own research.  He's just a couple of clicks away from learning that media portrayals are dishonest and one-sided."

Cherry pick what quotes?  Distortions of what?  Media portrayals of what?  And if idle googling is your idea of "research"....  Well, suffice to say there is a reason we uptight academics don't allow students to use wikipedia as a legitimate source for academic papers.

Actually, the saddest bit of the passage above is Roosh's cynical claim that he "caters to the intelligent man."  Even Roosh knows, on some level, that his followers are a horde of sub-literates whom he manipulates and exploits in an attempt to maintain his own pathetic "lifestyle" -- a lifestyle that consists primarily of living in cheap sublets, hanging out in internet coffee bars, and preying on Ukrainian teenagers.

"We won't change the minds of most women, and we won't convert the most die-hard of white knights, but the most powerful of their upcoming attacks will have the main result of converting more men over to our side."

OK, women are, what -- like, 52% of the U.S. population?  Now add in the "die hard white knights" (I assume this will include most of the husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons, friends, allies, and colleagues of said women?)  What are you left with now?  A veritable handful of pathetic sods and wankers who can't get girlfriends because they are socially inept?  Wow, I'm quaking in my boots, man!

"They're damned if they come after us and damned if they don't, due to the antifragile construction of our network. This suggests that a tipping point has been reached and it no longer matters what they do, because our ideas have already pollinated mainstream society."

Oh, dear.  When Nessim Talib recently complimented Roosh's summary of his book (via Twitter), I knew it was gonna go to poor Roosh's head.  (And the fact that Talib was roundly laughed at by his Twitter cronies as a result seems to have escaped Roosh entirely). 

And as for the word "pollinated"... yuck, can this idiot produce one single post that doesn't reference his own spooge? 

"We're at the point where we have enough musculature that we can pick up the big stone off the ground... through one simple action:  holding our enemies responsible for their words."

As evidence, Roosh points to the fact that many "mainstream outlets" have chosen to kill comments sections entirely rather than host streams of feminist outrage vs. anti-feminist rhetoric. And yeah, I'm impressed with your new "musculature."  Now, instead of looking like "a noodle-armed terrorist," you look like "a defined biceps-armed terrorist."

"Seeing these comments is a good sign, but it doesn't go far enough.  The next step is to hold them responsible for the rest of their lives." 

 Roosh proceeds to hatch his diabolic, moustache-twirling scheme of world domination by explaining how the "manospherians" can ruin (ruin, I tell you!) the lives of "feminists" by tweaking Google searches.  In other words, make sure any search for a "man-hating" blogger or journalist results in a link to some manosphere blogger's evisceration of her "reputation."  There, that will teach 'em a lesson!

"The views of every female hatemonger must be preserved in Google" so that "future employers... know of her belief system."

Projection, much? I mean, here is a guy who has admitted that, if he were to do it all over again, would NOT have revealed his true identity online.  I am sure James C. Weidmann (aka "Roissy") who was unwillingly outed (and subsequently terminated from his job) would concur.  Old farts Paul Elam, a former "addictions counselor" and Bill Price (whom who I understand is a former car salesman) had little in the way of "careers" to lose to start out with. 

"It's fun to lash out at them on Twitter, [but] we must also choose a more permanent and Google-able medium to create a historical record of their behavior." 

Well, I'm not sure what is more pathetic here:  Roosh's idea that "Google" will some day stand as the "historical record," or that any person who stands up against hate groups has anything to fear from either future employers or history itself.  

Seriously.  I use a pseudonym for my blogging and online activity, not because I fear being outed to my employer (whom I am fairly certain could not care less about anything I have ever posted), but because I am just a teensy bit paranoid of nut jobs (like the partially hinged, moronic commentators of Roosh's blogs) showing up at my doorstep or workplace unannounced, AK-7s in hand.

If the sort of "activism" that Roosh is promoting ( = inflammatory posts followed by online harassment) succeeds at anything, it is convincing many people that there continues to be a need for "feminism" at all... 

Because here is the thing:  Until recently, I would not have identified myself first and foremost as a "feminist."  That is to say, until the past couple of years, I took feminism for granted.  Of course, I supported the principles of feminism: equal opportunity, equal responsibility, regardless of gender.  I just figured that those principles had become so deeply embedded and interwoven into the fabric of western culture that I no longer had to pay attention.  The battles had been fought and won by the generation who came of age a decade before me, and my "job" was to just carry these on.  

Frankly, the emergence of the New Misogynists changed all that.  I am no longer complacent, and suddenly the historical struggles of feminism -- all the way back to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin -- have become fresh, compelling, and relevant to me.  And for that, I suppose, I can thank the gentlemen of the "manosphere."

The Suffragettes

When I was a child, my image of the early 20th century Suffragettes was based on watching Glynis Johns as Mrs. Banks in the 1965 movie "Mary Poppins."

In other words, they were silly, blowsy middle aged ladies in corsets and ridiculous hats, strutting around, smashing windows, chaining themselves to iron gates, and blithely neglecting their domestic responsibilities.  (Never fear, by the end of "Mary Poppins", Mrs. Banks has seen the error of her ways.)

However, the resurgence of the New Misogynists -- many of whom would frankly like to return to a pre-suffrage America -- has made me more curious about, and appreciative of, the ladies of the Suffrage Movement. 

You can watch Hilary Swank and Frances O'Connor in an HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels", playing the respective roles of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.

By the end of the film, both women have endured relentless mockery, betrayal by the competing "old guard" women's party, the corruption of law enforcement and congress, incarceration as political prisoners, beatings and torture. The scenes depicting forced feedings are particularly horrifying.  Ultimately, of course, Paul and the single plank National Woman's Party triumphed:  The 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote in 1920.  

"Iron Jawed Angels" is not a great film.  I must admit I'm not a huge fan of Swank's onscreen persona; she always reminds me of a camp counselor with her toothy grin and endless, intense enthusiasm.  I'm also getting a bit tired of seeing Anjelica Huston cast as "the villainess."  And I found the use of contemporary songs in the sound track a distracting anachronism.  There is an entirely unnecessary "love interest" of course -- I guess so the audience won't assume Burns and Paul, quel horreur, were lesbian lovers?  However, the movie is fairly unique in its telling of an important and seldom-taught piece of history, and it reminds those of us who have been following the New Misogynists what a return to "the good old days" would look like.

Spete Tells It Like It Is

Over on deadspin.com, a guy who goes by "spete" (that is, I assume it's a guy) posted the following comment, immediately garnering many "likes" and positive comments from a handful of female readers:

Men's Rights Activism is one of those things that sounds reasonable in theory and is a complete fucking disaster in practice, kind of like Communism. In theory sure, someone should probably keep an eye out for every group, including this one particular group that has been in charge of pretty much everything for the entirety of human civilization. Just because their group has had the vast majority of political and social power throughout history doesn't mean that individual men might not be getting screwed over from time to time, it sounds perfectly reasonable to have someone looking out for their interests too.

Unfortunately in practice it's just a collection of the craziest, bitterest, stupidest, most batshit groin-grabbingly bonkers hateful misogynist assholes that can be found on the internet who spend 100% of their time alternating between poor pitiful me sobbing and screaming about what horrible bitches all women everywhere are. These guys are a hemorrhoid on the puckered anus of the internet. Even furries are a less embarrassing community than those mutants.

Another male commenter, GiovanniBattistaFidanza, professes bewilderment at the MRA phenom:

What are these guys whining about? Like 99% of all my interactions with women have been fine. They're pretty accommodating, they seem mostly friendly, even when I'm off my face. The only time I've had any stink-eye thrown my way was when I was being horrible a.k.a. hilarious. Women pose absolutely zero threat to me, and it's not the worst thing in the world having a few around every so often.

Reading these comments gives me hope...

Iggy Pop: A Man I Love

Yeah, something tells me Iggy has never felt insecure about his masculinity, either.

Sunshine Mary Turns Me Off

There aren't too many people that I want to imagine having sex, but of all the people in the world that I want to imagine having sex the least, I would choose Sunshine Mary.

It isn't just because she looks like Dana Carvey as "The Church Lady".  Or that her hair and glasses remind me of my own worst fashion choices in the eighties.  Or that she writes posts such as "In Defense of Duty Sex" (Close your eyes and think of England?).  No, it's not just because she is personally fashion-challenged and garbs every hateful thing she says in a cloak of piety.  Although that's all part of it.

It's because she is incredibly mean-spirited.

In response to a post on Dalrock about sad, remorseful divorcees (or, in his words, "post marital spinsters"), in which he quotes a pathetic woman who wrote on Cafe Mom that "When I pleasure myself (which unfortunately has been necessary since the split), I always end up in tears because it reinforces how lonely I am," Miss Mary gloats: "Welp, I don’t need to “pleasure myself” since, unlike Ms. Fabulous Frivorcee, I have a husband to do that for me, but I will cop to experiencing a rather delicious thrill of schadenfreude upon reading that sentence."

She hastily amends that she is just "kidding," that "actually, her letter is heart-breakingly sad. I’m glad she wrote it if it will save others from her awful fate. If more women are honest about the reality of divorce, as opposed to the fantasy, perhaps it will serve as a warning to the herd."

Her attempt to paint herself as caring and concerned makes her initial remark all the uglier.  Plus now I am left with the unfortunate image of Sunshine Mary's husband "pleasuring" her coupled with the proximity of the phrase "a rather delicious thrill."  Blecchh.

It's the Stupid, Stupid

I have been reprimanded more than once over at manboobz for using "ablist" language by referring to some of the manosphere writers as "lunatics" or wishing that they would climb out of their basements and get "real jobs."  And today I note, with some chagrin, that someone on the bluepill reddit was offended that I dismissed the redpill boys as "morons" instead of more kindly conceding that they are "misled."  Well, in fact, I think they are both.  Morons are, after all, easily misled.

When I am in another forum, such as manboobz, I try to conform to the rules of that culture.  As a visitor, I show respect to the community over there by parsing my thoughts in ways that do not offend other members.  In my blog, I write exactly as I please, and I try to express myself as truthfully as I can.  Similarly, when I was in the middle east, I wore "hijab" out of respect to the mores of the culture that was hosting me, and did not consider myself a hypocrite in doing so.  In my own home, I am not obligated to avoid offense; I am obligated to live and speak my truth.  And I wear whatever I damn well please.  (Which today means a t-shirt covered in bird poop and riddled with cigarette burns, so there!)

Granted, my "truth" is based on my own life experience, on what I have been exposed to through reading, observing, reflecting, and just plain hanging out (as a white, bisexual middle-class woman) on this planet for nearly sixty years.  

And truthfully, I do believe that many of the New Misogynists suffer from personality disorders.  And I truthfully believe -- based on reading many, many, many comments -- that their followers are not only poorly educated, but suffer from real intellectual deficits.  

And, yes, I am somewhat contemptuous of people who do not try to better themselves.  Ignorance is not a sin, but willful ignorance is the greatest sin in my book.  If someone tells me I am wrong, and explains why, I try to exercise enough humility to consider that he/she might be right, even if that means I must (gasp!) be wrong.  Because experience tells me that when I am feeling most defensive is when I am most likely to be encountering an important learning opportunity. 

People who cling to ideas that are not only wrong, but also harmful to others, in the face of all evidence to the contrary (whether this is creationism, misogyny, denial of privilege, denial of climate change, or transphobia) are ignorant.  And that ignorance is either stemming from (1) some willfulness on their part, (2) pathological delusion, or else (3) plain old garden-variety stupidity.  

People who are not stupid, but who take advantage of others' stupidity in an attempt to gain power or prestige, are, on the other hand, bad. (Think Karl Rove / Dick Cheney and Bush Jr.)  One of the things I find most despicable about "Roosh" is that he appears to have started out in life with the requisite number of brain cells and support to have done something useful (he has a B.S. in microbiology), but he squandered his gifts because his need to be perceived as a "leader of men" (an alpha among betas) trumped his willingness to achieve success through hard work and self-discipline.  He's a very bad person who chooses to treat women badly and who encourages stupid men to follow their worst (most base) impulses.

There is so much cognitive dissonance in the manosphere, it makes my head hurt.  Sometimes I wonder if these leaders (i.e., Paul Elam) really started out believing the crap they now spew, or if they simply, over time, have acquiesced to their own lies.  Of course, in the hot house environments of manosphere blogs, where no received wisdom is challenged or examined, everyone's mind becomes duller, even the most critical (hostile) reader's. 

Look, I'm no brainiac either.  The worst thing about aging is that every day, I feel myself slipping, cognitively.  I struggle to keep abreast of the information and skills I need just to do my job, for example, and joke (?) that as soon as I retire, I will refuse to adapt to one more technological change.  Every day I am aware that I have less control over my future, so no wonder I find myself looking backwards.  I need to exercise more, both physically and mentally, just to maintain basic function.

If there's one reason I will quit following the manosphere, it is because I cannot afford to expose my already-deteriorating faculties to so much Stupid.  Ditto watching television.  In the same vein, if there's one reason I hate teaching remedial English, it is because exposing myself to so much bad writing is eroding my own writing skills.  Sometimes I find myself embroiled in some internal argument with, say, Bill Price's wife, or recoiling from some new horror from Matt Forney or JudgyBitch, and I wonder what the hell I am doing.  I should be taking a physics class or learning to crochet instead.

That's just how this tired old lady sees it on a cold, cloudy Friday morning. 
 

Time For a New Wardrobe?

A former student flagged me down as I was crossing campus.  As is often the case, I apologized because I couldn't remember her name.  "That's OK," she said.  "It was fifteen years ago, after all."  "But still, you remembered me," I said.  "I recognized your dress," she said.

Modern Day Chastity Belts

So this has been making the rounds, both in manosphere and feminist places:  rape-repellant sportswear.

It's been amply pointed out that whoever engineered this getup is absolutely clueless about rape prevention, since he/she thinks that it is merely a matter of preventing a penis from entering a vagina.  In the case of stranger rape, what are the chances of this saving your life at the point of a gun?  

Still, it made me chuckle a bit as I recalled how I devised my own "anti-rape" outfit while I was traveling solo from Kabul to Istanbul when I was 22 years old.  I basically wore a lot of tight layers:  underpants, layered with a pair of stout tights, and on top of that a rubber girdle.  Over this I wore a slip, a blouse, a sweater, a jumper dress, and a coat.  

Boy, it was hot in there.  Also, going to the toilet (overflowing squat toilets, mind you, on moving trains) took me about twenty minutes and gave me quite a workout.

However, I did encounter one incident in which my home-made rape prevention outfit was called into action.  Going through eastern Turkey, the conductor fetched me out of a "family" compartment where I was happily hanging out with a troupe of friendly Kurdish folks, and forced me into the back of the train, where an empty car had just been added.  He then proceeded to (attempt to) rape me.

He didn't have much luck.  He was a relatively slight man (probably about 150 pounds) and I was a stout woman (probably about 175 pounds), and I immediately employed a kind of passive-resistance technique, curling up into a ball on the seat, like a very large hedgehog might.  He couldn't even cop a good feel;  with all my layers of snug, thick clothing, groping my breasts and buttocks was probably as exciting as patting down a well-upholstered couch.  Frustrated, he began smacking me on the shoulders (fortunately not in the head, which was the only exposed part of my body), and then finally stomped out of the car, whereupon I immediately made a beeline back to the safety of my Kurdish family.

When I complained to one of the male members of the family, he asked me wearily what I had expected, traveling alone?  At least he couldn't blame me for the immodesty of my attire.  

There were a few such scary moments to come, however careful I was to avoid being isolated or surrounded exclusively by males.  The aggressors and would-be rapists were almost always men in positions of slight authority, i.e., hotel keepers, ticket agents, museum guards.  Women, if they were in the vicinity, were usually quick to come to my defense.

I considered trying to pass as a man, but my body type (in those days, distinctly pear-shaped) and childishly round face made that difficult to achieve in western dress.  And, as a Turkish friend later pointed out, would hardly have made less of a target of rape in those parts of the world. 

Fan Mail From A Squirrel

"Ella the Squirrel" asks me, "What future do you predict for the manosphere?"

Well, Ella, first let me say I am incredibly flattered (and bemused) that you would think I have any idea.  If you have read much of this blog, you'll realize that I --- like most old fogies  Baby Boomers --- am much more engaged in reminiscing about the past (specifically, my own past) than speculating about a future, especially a hypothetical future that I am, every day, less and less likely to be around for.

However, thanks for your question.  Let me haul out my reading glasses crystal ball, and give your query an honest crack.

Hmm...  I'm not seeing much here, Ella. The future looks cloudy, with a strong possibility of rain -- whoops, that's the local weather forecast!  Never mind... 

I'm still not seeing a damn thing, Ella.  Perhaps that means that the MRM (Male Rights Movement) doesn't have a future.  Maybe because it doesn't have a present?  By that I mean it doesn't exist as a movement at all, but rather as a symptom -- a symptom of severe post-Reaganomics social / economic distress.

As you no doubt know, the "manosphere" is a loose confederation of PUAs (pick up artists and gamers), MGTOW (men going their own way), and MRAs (male rights activists, or, as Paul Elam of "A Voice for Men" would have it, MHRAs).  Feminists and other intelligent, thoughtful-type people (who may not identify themselves as feminists, but, frankly, who are) clump them together, recognizing that they are linked by a common thread of misogyny (= fear and loathing of women) w/ a big round dollop of racism.

What also unites the followers of the "manosphere" blogs is that they are really, really unhappy (frustrated) + really, really stupid.   What unites the leaders of the "manosphere" (i.e., the writers of the blogs) is they are, for the most part, utter and abject social failures w/ outsized senses of entitlement, whose only experience of (or hope for) recognition is in being followed by... well, by a bunch of desperate morons.  (And these days recognition (for whatever reason) = success, hence the phenomena of reality television "stars" and the fact that news media have become little more than celebrity gossip mills.)

The leaders of these manosphere blogs (Roosh, Roissy, Price, Elam, Forney, et al.) eke out slender livings by pandering to an audience of losers.  And I call them "losers" not in anger, but in pity:  young (or developmentally delayed) white guys who are being cast out by a global economy that no longer values them, or rather, that is no longer willing to accord them privilege simply by virtue of being white + male.  

They perceive themselves as being "overtaken" by women and by brown people.  The reality is that they are, for the first time in thousands of years, simply being forced to compete with those "minorities" on an increasingly level playing field.  (Still, it has to be pretty scary. "Who stole my cheese?"  I mean, I can only imagine...)

I am not without sympathy.  But then, I've always been kind of a softy.

I was reprimanded over at manboobz for calling these guys "dinosaurs" who were heading for extinction (because I was being too hard on the dinosaurs, as I recall).   But I will resurrect that poor analogy, nonetheless.  The "manosphere" may survive, but the so-called "movements" it purports to be incubating will not.  Oh, I'm sure there will always be a place for lonely guys to give each other dating advice, just as (for some inexplicable reason) girls keep buying Cosmopolitan magazine.  Just cuz when we're young, we're horny and clueless...

The Men's Rights Movement in its present incarnation will go the way of the KKK and the John Birch Society, increasingly marginalized and irrelevant.  The legitimate grievances of the MRM (fathers' rights, acknowledgement of sexual and domestic abuse of men) will be subsumed under the broader liberal agenda (and I predict feminists doing a lot of the legwork in those regards).  Men Going Their Own Way?  There have always been a portion of involuntary celibates (of both genders) and "hermits" (of both genders), and nothing necessarily "wrong" with that: some people just aren't suited to "coupling", yet still enjoy rich and rewarding, albeit eccentric and somewhat lonesome, lives.

Of course, to a great extent, the "manosphere" is a phenomenon of the internet.  People are (I certainly am!) still thrilled to be able to "connect" to others with similarly "esoteric" interests.  The internet has made it possible for people with relatively uncommon conditions or identities to find one another, to connect, to share, and to build on that.  

I'm not trans, but my Best Beloved is.  How we envy the trans kids today, who have so much more information (and power) at their fingertips!  How different would my SO's life have been, had she known she was so far-from-alone in the world?  The internet has in this way fueled social justice movements, by bringing people together.

Of course, the dark side to this is that the internet also brings together people who are marginalized (or feel themselves to be unfairly disadvantaged) in a very different way, and provides them with a refuge, an answer.  In the case of the "manosphere" boys, that "answer" is scapegoating women (and minorities) for their troubles.  Paradoxically, the internet also isolates, and draws already-isolated people into cults. And ultimately does them great disservice.

But the "manosphere" is ultimately likely to remain primarily an internet phenomenon because it cannot stand up to public scrutiny.  In the court of public discourse, the New Misogynists will lose.  That explains why they are so ambivalent about straying outside of the "intertubes" into the "real world."  And why, aside from their kamikaze-style leaders, most members scrupulously avoid having their real identities known:  most people are not willing to commit social suicide.  

To publicly identify oneself with this stuff (as Roosh has, in essence, admitted on more than one occasion) = to burn one's bridges forever.  Elam and Price are old farts, so who cares?  On the other hand, Roosh and Forney are relatively young -- yet they have tattooed their bigotries and hatred onto their identities more permanently and damnably than any white supremacist ever tattooed his face.  There is as yet no laser surgery powerful enough to erase the evidence they have strewn upon servers across the world that they are, simply, terrible people... 

Returning to the "patriarchy" is a lost cause.  The followers of the manosphere, however much they may enjoy indulging in false nostalgia, know that the tide of the world is irrevocably turning against them, and the few of them willing to be swept out to sea for such a lost cause will be remembered with the approximate admixture of pity and contempt as we now accord the long-dead soldiers of the Confederacy: the poor, stupid, deluded bastards!

Does this answer your question?




 

Danielle Messia

I'm a cemetery freak, and any trip to Europe will have to include visits to Highgate in London and Pere Lachaise in Paris.  

Today I was watching the documentary "Forever," about people who visit Pere Lachaise, and was introduced to one of its residents, a singer I had never heard:  Danielle Messia.  Of course I immediately bought one of her CDs and have been listening to it all afternoon.  Although my French is pretty bad, I do love me a good chanson, and this one is damn fine: sad and brave and heart-breakingly defiant.

Why Is It Always a White Guy?

Salon featured an excerpt of Angry White Men by Michael Kimmel.  I hope it will help give me insight into the phenomena of MRAs, MGTOWs, and PUAs.

Seattle's First Singing MRA

May I introduce Uncle Fran?  He was a fixture on a popular local comedy show Almost Live, and quite possibly the first MRA folk singer.

Child Support

One of the issues the MRM brings up a lot is child support, and how unfair it is that men have to pay it.

I am not unsympathetic to men who have to pay child support for children they never wanted.  I think it is unethical for a woman to get pregnant on purpose (or accidentally on purpose) when she knows that the male partner is not on board.  However unethical that is, it is not illegal, nor could it be.  What they tend to overlook is that the support is to the child, not the woman, and no one reasonable can disagree that the child is the one utterly blameless party in these fiascos.

I am also sympathetic to parents who legitimately struggle to make their payments because, for example, they have lost their jobs.  States need to respond in adequate and timely manners to adjust their responsibilities and help keep them out of arrears.

Notice that I have carefully used the term "parents" (not "fathers") above.  That is because women pay child support, too, a fact that we often overlook, although it is increasing (as are the penalties against "deadbeat" moms).  The custodial guardian is not always the man; it's not even necessarily either of the biological parents.  It's sometimes the child's grandmother, or another relative.

I was reminded of that today when I overheard a female student, who appeared to be in her early twenties, tell a classmate how happy she was to have finally found a job that would enable her to start paying her child support regularly.  She was $7000 in arrears, a significant sum for a girl working as a waitress while trying to graduate from college.  What struck me was her positive and determined attitude about her responsibilities.  She didn't think the system was unfair; she didn't seem to have an ounce of resentment.  On the contrary, she was clearly looking forward to meeting her obligations.

Russell Brand Redux

Russell Brand is on fire in this interview.

I agree with everything he says.  But I'm still going to vote.

On the Lack of Domestic Violence Programs for Men

Gosh, I get tired of hearing MRAs whine about the lack of shelters for male victims of domestic violence.

Some years ago, a younger and more eager I spent a long dark winter in rural Colorado volunteering for victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault.  Mainly this consisted of being called in the middle of the night to drive twenty or thirty miles to meet a strange woman at a desolate McDonalds or in the back room of a police station.  It also involved accompanying women if their cases went to court.  As an advocate, I held hands, explained legal procedures, made referrals to social services, and fetched coffee (in other words, provided moral support).  The area in which I was living had an appalling rate of DV.  Unemployment was high (end of a local shale oil boom), couples were stranded in their houses for weeks on end due to the frigid temperatures, and alcoholism and drug abuse were rampant. 

It didn't take long before I burned out.  I probably imagined I was going to help pluck women like Tracey Thurman from the jaws of death, but my experience was that most of the victims were simply not very sympathetic characters, nor were they entirely "innocent" in terms of their roles in instigating violent squabbles.  Many of them had mental illness or chemical dependency issues that no amount of well-intentioned feminist theory or police intervention could address.  And most of them didn't want the kind of very limited help I could provide.  

Once they had been stitched up and sobered up, most of them made beelines back to their SOs.  There were so many things wrong with their lives (boiling down to poverty + an utter lack of imagination) that their relationships with their husbands or boyfriends were the only sources of stability and "love" that they knew, and even when that relationship was as dysfunctional as hell, it was what they could count on. 

The area I was in didn't have a shelter at the time.  Instead, we relied on a string of "safe houses" which were the modest abodes of volunteers like myself.  The unsung heroines who opened their homes as havens were periodically exposed (often by the very women they harbored), so we were always scrambling for more. It was exhausting, unrewarding effort for little payoff, and although I admired the director and her valiant team -- all unpaid volunteers BTW -- I soon conceded that I was not the right person for this particular job.

I know from personal experience that men, too, are assaulted by women.  A few years ago I dated a man who had a history of being struck by his female partners.   He recounted one prolonged argument with a girlfriend which had culminated in her "cold cocking" him in the head with a telephone, knocking him senseless.  He didn't press charges, and I was appalled to learn that this episode had hardly diminished his attraction to her -- although it was, in retrospect, a kind of red flag in terms of our own prospects.  (In fact, although I was never remotely tempted to assault him myself, he was so maddeningly passive-aggressive that I broke up with him within a few tempestuous months.)

As these anecdotes suggest, I am no saint.  I am impatient and easily frustrated by people who can't, or won't, take a strong stance for themselves.  And I recognize the line between victim and perpetrator can get mighty blurry when it comes to domestic violence: in most cases I was involved with, the woman was just as likely to have "provoked" the violent altercations that resulted in her fleeing her partner.   The problem was the size/strength differential that resulted in "him" with a scratch down the side of his face, and "her" with a broken jaw. Most of the male "perps" were not so much "evil" as really, really dumb -- too dumb to recognize how trapped they were in their own cycles of inchoate rage, dependency, helplessness, and lashing out -- despite repeated, predictable negative consequences...  200 pound toddlers, for the most part.

Of course, regardless of gender, or relative culpability, all people need refuges when they are at risk of injury in their homes.  I just don't want to be the person to create and staff these shelters. 

So why are the MRAs who demand male DV shelters pissed off that feminists like me haven't made that happen yet?  


Well, why haven't you done anything more than complain?  Paul Elam and John Hembling are paying themselves salaries with the money some of you are donating!  It's been years without any "activism" beyond harassing feminists and one very lackluster demonstration.  Why aren't any of you challenging AVfM's handling of your contributions?  Could it be that you don't really care as much about showing "compassion for men and boys" as you do "fucking up [women's] shit"?
 
Listen, guys, I'll be the first to donate $20, canned food, and a big box of toiletries.  You only need to get out from behind your computers, and start raising some funds.  In my neck of the woods, there are a number of thrift stores that support shelters for women, so there's a suggestion for you.  Put down your gym weights, pick up your tool boxes, and start renovating that safe house for teh menz that your community so desperately needs.  You can do it!  (And if you need advice or support, I'm sure you can find some nice feminists to help you -- you have only to ask.)

Just for God's sake quit your bloody whining before I [sarcasm alert] really give you something to whine about!

New to the Manosphere?

A succinct and temperate sympathetic introduction to the Men's Rights Movement from the Daily Beast.  Note that most of the folks at manboobz were highly critical of the piece -- especially of its kid gloves treatment of The Spearhead.  The consensus was that it emphasized MRM's "legitimate" grievances and downplayed the violently misogynistic rhetoric that is the MRM's most salient characteristic.  Still, it gives the newcomer some basic information.  Ironically, given how gently the author, R. Tod Kelly, approaches them, the MRAs are busy hating on this article.

Matt Forney Can't Go Home Again

I think there is a general consensus that Matt Forney is a Terrible Person, no?

After reading one of his recent posts, it's also clear that he is a Complete Wuss.

In "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within," he recounts a terrifying experience in which, while visiting a convenience store in upstate New York, he is forced to interact with a black guy.  Forney knows the black guy is "a bum" because he is "clad in a plaid shirt and dirty jeans."  Forney assumes he is being "hustled" because he is "dressed like a rich guy."  (Now I've seen at least three pictures of Forney, and in none of them does he look like someone who has more than two nickels to rub together.  If this guy was indeed targeting Forney in order to menace him, it is more likely because he sensed Forney's fear, which made him seem vulnerable.)

 Forney reports that his old Rochester neighborhood is becoming gentrified, whilst the "sprawling ghetto" surrounding it is being invaded by "scum" "emboldened" to "terrorize" nice [white?] neighborhoods.

As far as I know, Forney has only lived in three states: New York, North Dakota, and Oregon (and the latter two quite briefly).  However, based on this vast experience, he can declare that the entire nation is quickly morphing into one huge coast-to-coast Portland.  [Sigh! If only!]

Forney feels himself to be a stranger in a strange land... "like a soldier [!] returning home from a war to find the same people doing the same things, still going nowhere in life..."

The reader wonders how a few months tasting the music scene and railing about fat girls in Portland equates to a tour of combat, but the part of "still going nowhere in life" would seem consistent with Forney's own lack of direction.   

Forney muses, "While I'm a success in my personal life [again, I really need some photographic evidence here], there's one urge I'll never be able to fulfill: the desire to belong."  

I'm such a softie that I find Forney's claim of "personal success" heart-breakingly delusional. 

Anyway, having had this epiphany -- that he will never belong anywhere -- Forney announces he will be undertaking a second hitch-hiking trip, even though "the optimism, the joy of discovery is gone" (since he already knows the whole country is actually just Portland after all).

It's not simple curiosity or desire to visit "California, the Grand Canyon, the South and whatnot [sic]... " that sends ol' Forney down that ribbon of highway, but rather "a compulsion to insert myself into stressful, life-threatening situations... because I'm a junkie searching for an adrenaline high."

(BTW, unless Forney is planning to bungie-jump into the Grand Canyon, I can assure him that a visit to our national treasure is actually a pretty low-risk venture.  I was there a few months ago, along with about a dozen other seniors in various stages of decrepitude.)

Then Forney adds, "And because if you feel like an outsider no matter where you are, one place is as good as the next." 

Oh really?  Cuz that's not been true in my experience.  For example, having lived in both Italy and Saudi Arabia, I can attest that I found Italy to be a much better place to be an "outsider" in.  Just take my word on this.

Forney caps this post by musing, "If you romanticize this kind of thing [?], I'm pretty sure you're missing the point."  Of course, romanticizing his own lack of direction, his inability to connect with people, to establish or even maintain relationships, is exactly what he is doing here.

Now why do I call Matt Forney a wuss?  Well, I'll have you know that I myself was rather an adventurous traveler back in the day.  For example, when I was twenty-two -- younger than the intrepid MF himself -- I traveled solo from Kabul to Istanbul on buses and third class trains.  ("Midnight Express," anyone?) And I was a girl.  Sure, there were some tense moments, which made for great "stories" later, but I can proudly declare that I never "lost" my "bearings" the way Forney did when he was approached by a black man on a busy street in Rochester in broad daylight.

20/20 Manosphere Story

In the event anyone wanders over here who hasn't already heard:  20/20 will be doing a story on the manosphere tomorrow (Friday) night.  As I commented over at manboobz, at least my friends and family will learn I haven't been making this shit up:  the New Misogynists are really A Thing.  Of course, the MRM are already complaining that Elizabeth Vargas was unethical and "hostile" in her interview with Paul Elam --  Sunshine Mary declaring it a "crucifixion", and Roosh speculating that his interview will paint him "an outlaw rapist."  Bound to be fun to watch.

Irreversible

Note bene:  Since posting this, Forney removed the image I refer to, and also wrote that "a bunch of feminists" (who, me?) had complained about it -- which just demonstrated how "weak" women were.  What impressed me was that it showed how Forney is constantly crawling the internet and twitter for any references to himself.  Yeah, he's that narcissistic and/or starved for attention!

Does anyone recognize the image below, of a woman entering a sottopassagio to cross a Parisian street?  It's from a 2002 French film, "Irreversible."  The movie concerns the brutal rape and beating of a young woman, and the aftermath of that trauma on her boyfriend. The prolonged (real time) rape scene which follows this image is so harrowing that it is scored into my brain.  The night I saw this film in a theatre, several members of the audience had to step out into the lobby.

I hadn't thought about that movie much until I stumbled upon this image on Matt Forney's blog (stolen, out of context, as a decorative graphic for promotion of his podcasts or some such nonsense).

To know what this image is meant to represent -- a woman unknowingly and literally walking into hell -- and to see it used so casually took me aback.   I wouldn't expect Forney's readers to recognize it; I doubt many of them are foreign film buffs.  But Forney somehow found it and planted it in his blog, and I doubt it was an accident.  How could Forney have purloined this image without knowing its origin?  Or had he, at some point, watched the movie and thought, "Wow, that chick is hawt!"?  WTF is WRONG WITH THESE GUYS?!