Ah, the giddy stench of rampant hypocrisy – we know it well!
The problem with only pretending to be a champion of equality is that, at some point, you might get a dose of the real thing. And you won’t like it. At all. Because what you really wanted was special treatment, just for you. Snag is – if you complain about it, your entire gig is up. Continuing your campaign means arguing against real equality in order to get what you actually want!
It sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch – but that is exactly what is happening in the UK right now. Campaigners for women’s rights have long demanded that ‘misogyny’ be made a hate crime, and they may finally be getting their wish. Three cheers for Women’s Lib, right? Well, not so fast – it turns out that pesky government wants to make the law gender neutral! And how can we have true equality when men are equal too?
Horrified at the very idea, and maybe sensing that certain members of their staff are going to jail, The Guardian newspaper launched one of the first rebuttals. Their counter-claim being that if hatred against men were illegal, that might ’embolden hateful men’. Which is an interesting take on the matter, considering that hate has always been an equal-opportunities industry. For example:
- ‘There Is No War on Men—But Maybe There Should Be’ – Jessica Valenti.
- ‘Thanks for not raping us, all you ‘good men.’ But it’s not enough.’ – Victoria Bissell Brown.
- ‘Can you be a feminist and still f*** men?’
- ‘Bone up on your righteous man-hating this summer by rereading feminist classic, SCUM Manifesto’. – Julie Bindel
- ‘All men should be locked up in camps where they can’t hurt women.’ – Julie Bindel again
- ‘Why can’t we hate men?’ – Suzanna Danuta Walters.
- ‘A curfew for men? What a great idea’ – By Melinda Houston.
- ‘It’s time to come clean: All men are awful.’ Sorry about that – Andy Hill.
- ‘All Masculinity is Toxic’ – John Stoltenberg
Women Can Be Just As Sexist – And They Know It
It is only half a joke to say that certain journalists will be in trouble if misandry is becomes illegal – the courts would only treat it as an ‘aggravating factor’, not a specific crime you can be arrested for. That means if a woman stabs a man because she hates all men, she’ll be convicted of a hate crime and get almost as long in prison as a man would for sneezing. Likewise – if a man peeks up a woman’s dress, misogyny gets added to his rap-sheet and he is going to get an even harsher sentence than he would otherwise.
However, judging by other hate crime laws in the UK, it seems very likely that the law will eventually be extended to cover hateful speech as well – which would ban you from even joking about misogyny. This kind of thing, I might add, is something both The Guardian and also The Independent have objected to – and rightly so.
Men should be very wary of a misogyny law, in general. It would be far easier to abuse than an equal law because of the greater empathy people have for women. Simply put: when studies ask people if they would rather push a man or a woman in front of a car – both genders will vote to save the woman and shove the man to his death. These are all probable reasons why The Guardian’s argument is basically “bad people exist online”. In other words: it’s nothing but a lazy attempt to fire up sympathy for women at the expense of men (who are also abused online, a lot) – and then use that sympathy to tar her critics. It’s all a blatant cover for their fear that female misandrists and bigots might be held to account.
They may, however, rest easy: women get so much special treatment in the courts already, and men so little leeway, that men don’t have a hope in hell of misusing a misandry law. And that is regardless of what happens next.
Men Want Equality? That’s Sexist.
It’s also very telling that The Guardian article accuses men of ‘whataboutism‘ for simply wanting a gender-equal law. People like this have no interest in real equality because inequality benefits them. So much of what we read in the news relies on the idea that women are especially singled out as victims, and that their attackers are almost always men. The logical conclusion of this kind of information filtering – which we have talked about before – is all that hate and scorn for men is justified. Hence those articles above. When the stories of men and boys are erased, all you have left over are the stories of women and girls – and the media focuses on those obsessively. This is especially true when we examine a similar attack on equality launched by The Independent. A mainly sarcastic (and yet almost nervous) article which starts off by telling us this in the photo-caption:
“To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.”
I fully agree, but I don’t think they quite see the irony of saying that. Following their own logic it is easy to see who is privileged – the people who don’t want an equal hate crime law. We haven’t even gotten past the header image and already the article is in flames. After all, it is the unique privilege of women to be openly bigoted towards men and boys – so having that taken away feels like oppression. Realise that they are outraged specifically because the government refused to give them special treatment. Or, to put it in their own words:
“Women, eh? Always saying they want equal treatment, then the moment it’s offered to them, they start to complain.” – The Independent
“To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.”
And what better photo to pair with a misandrist caption than a group of ‘cosplayers’ from ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’ – a story of female victimhood so fetishised it is outright Victim Porn (to coin a phrase). And that goes double for the online TV series. For those who don’t know, ‘The Tale’ is about a group of (mainly pretty and mainly white) women whose lives would seem like fantastical luxury to a black man in the 1800s. The most interesting part of the story is how many people seem to think it’s basically a documentary – including the writer of this Independent article. But how seriously can we really take this person who scorns men by saying things like:
“It seems there’s nothing women can have – not even their status as a marginalised sex class – that men will not expect them to share” – The Independent
A reminder: This line was written by a feminist woman in a feminist newspaper that openly airs female issues, and she is trying to reframe true equality for men and women as discrimination against women. She lives in a country that has a special minister for women (but none for men), multiple grants and services aimed only women (none for men), and universities where the vast majority of students are female. And this is hardly the only newspaper that does this. So how on Earth are women marginalised? Their problems are taken extremely seriously!
You would be utterly insane to believe her
As much as she tries to frame it with jokey lines and shrug it off, this article basically admits to the reader that the very idea of men being given equality shocks people like her. It shocks them so badly that they must pretend to be living in a bizarre and impossible anti-female fantasy land in order to gain sympathy. The only true thing ever said in ‘The Handmaiden’s Tale’ is the mandatory declaration that it is a work of total fiction – something sadly missing from these articles. The truth is entirely the reverse of what she claims to think.
Not only does Misogyny have no scientific basis – an unequal misogyny law would be another little step towards a gender-flipped version of ‘The Tale’ – a world where men are legally slaves of women and unwillingly killed off in huge numbers while the female gender reclines in comfort and reaps the benefits. Anyone else staring to think we shouldn’t have either law? Well good- because we should not.
These Anti-Equality Articles Are Ideologically Driven
Much like ‘Big Brother’ in Orwell’s 1984, these attackers of true equality are trying to shut down the debate and control the language around it. Perhaps most telling of all is the way they try to hide their real agenda in language like this (taken from The Independent’s article):
“It is true that men and boys are harmed by the insistence that all male people be masculine. True, too, that it hurts for all members of a group to be judged by the actions of a violent minority. Nevertheless, these are the conditions upon which the perpetuation of male supremacy relies. To ask that the negative side-effects of being a member of the oppressor class be granted the same status as those of being a member of the oppressed class is to miss the point. Any suffering that comes from wielding power can only be relieved once that power has been relinquished.”
That is crazy ideological gibberish of a kind you normally only get in radical Feminist Gender Studies classes. It is basically intended to sound very academic and be confusing enough to the average reader that you blindly accept it or roll over it. However, this is the most important part of the entire text, and forms the core of her ‘thesis’ – so I will try to translate as best I can:
Maleness is a poison hurting men, but only a minority of men are evil (this is us making a concession here, by the way). Nevertheless, these evil men oppress us all with an iron fist (despite the female Prime Minister). Female hatred of men is justified because men are The Evil Gender. Giving The Evil Gender equal protection from hatred horrifies me because women are The Victim Gender. Women will never stop being sexist bigots towards men unless men give up literally all power, agency, and status – and hand it over to women. Any hate or violence women direct at men is purely the fault of men (and masculinity) because they are The Evil Gender – which is why men should just give up and let women rule supreme.
This may seem like a parody of what she said, but it is actually about close as I am able to get to the actual meaning. Reading the rest of the article, you will probably come to the same conclusion – if you can decipher the kooky ramblings about Patriarchy and Intersectional Oppression. These people infantilise women as eternally powerless victims, and marginalise men as aggressors and oppressors. They have absolutely no concept of men’s suffering. Worse – they sneer at it with sarcasm and take it for granted. They have re-framed society with crazed ramblings so that they can define gender as a “hierarchy”, and men as an ‘oppressor class’ – and thus the eternal enemy. To this brand of militant feminism, men are the dark force of our world; they are the evil permeating humanity.
You can see this in ten seconds by asking any woman on any RadFem site what they mean by “hierarchy” and “hegemonic” and “oppressor”. The answer is that they see men as the competition, and therefore the enemy – and so all men must be torn down, and replaced with only women. Thus is ‘equality’ achieved – in the twisted language of the Militant Feminist Ministry of Truth. No thought is given as to if these fundamental premises are flawed in any way – they don’t have to be right. The objective is power – not sense or truth. That’s why the reaction here is to try to shut down men with accusations of bullying, stalking, sex crimes, oppression and ‘whataboutism’. They know, instinctively, if they can make people think that ‘somewhere, somehow a woman is in danger’ they will knee-jerk hard and simply cave in.
After all, if you speak up then you become a sexist in the eyes of the world because you are allowing women to be in peril – and this is the threat that is at the core of every emotional argument they make.
Deconstructing The Oppression Narrative
Men must be the only ‘oppressor class’ in history to spend the lives of its own members so cheaply and in such vast numbers to protect its ‘victims’. The (suspiciously Marxist-sounding) narratives of feminism are utterly alien to the gender that dug all the world’s ditches and cleaned all the world’s sewers – often with their own bodies, at the cost of their own lives. We only accept this cost because of our instinctive drive to protect and nurture women and girls – regardless of the lethal consequences to men and boys. Far from being bastions of equality, the words of The Guardian and The Independent damn them and reveal their supremacist ideals. The nervous tone, pleading for inequality, betrays their true intentions as passive-aggressive power-hungry backdoor ‘usurpers’ angry at the idea of men having any equality.
Both articles – and likely every similar rebuttal – are a combination of projection, wilful ignorance, a drive to seize absolute power, and a mindset that sees Victimhood Point-scoring as a way to generate support. They claim to be for equality – and yet neither article actually asks for it, and The Guardian does not even mention the word. Instead they use the elevated empathy of men for women as a weapon. This tallies with the utter scorn for male victims running through many other articles by both papers. However, unlike them, “The MRA” [sic] has no problem whatsoever with people working to fix women’s issues. We do not see gender as a competition. And we have no scorn or hate for women. We simply want to fix men’s issues as well, and refuse to be kept out to the debate.
To that end:
We’d Like To Make A Counter-Proposal:
Let us offer these people an olive branch: if you refuse the misogyny law too, we will give up on the misandry law. However, if you want a law protecting women, men must have one as well. That is how equality works – and we will not tolerate another situation where women are specifically protected from slavery while men are specifically not included.
Sounds fair, right? If feminism is really about equality, they should have no problem with equality. Anyone who celebrates the concept of Free Speech should, however, have a very big problem with this legislation. As I have mentioned – it is very likely that hateful speech will eventually be included, and even if the law is equal that might mean an end to any legal criticism of feminism. That may be what feminists want – but they shouldn’t. To refuse honest criticism is to embrace lies – and that is something we simply cannot stand for.
Thank-you for reading. If you disagree, or have a comment, please let us know!
Sums it up. As one feminist journalist said in her article: “Can’t we have something without men wanting it too?”
Well written, as good or better than the usual pro-feminism articles on men that I see on Medium.com and other places. Hope you can get a boost in readership from Avoiceformen or similar websites.
I couldn’t геsiѕt commenting. Perfectly
writtеn!