Excuses
In May, 2014,
Mike Hillman ("The Modern Urban Gentleman")↱ offered his reflection on excuses for misogyny:
The impact of the killings has, for me, been as much a response to the multitude of reactions to the attacks as to the motives of the man behind them. I have come to have a new appreciation for how hard-wired men are for casual misogyny, and how critically precarious that wiring is — how easily a spark can grow to a fire that devours innocent lives.
This murderer found solace and support in a community of self-appointed martyrs, bearing the cross in the fight against the destruction of some false conception of manhood, calling themselves the “men's rights movement.” In this twisted worldview of victim-hood, the feminist agenda has emasculated society and every woman is a soldier in the war to destroy male-kind.
The MRM spins into action anytime a woman publishes, tweets, or speaks any perspective that may be out of line with millennia-old gender roles. The vitriol spewed by these keyboard warriors is disgusting and, frankly, criminal, including their threats of rape and dismemberment of a woman who dares to speak her mind. This phenomenon has become so predictable, so par-for-the-course, that it has had the ironic effect of strengthening the case for the feminism it rails against. (Lewis' law has been coined to describe “that the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”)
This dangerous mode of thinking propagates among self-absorbed, isolationist circles: online forums, Twitter, gaming platforms, tea parties, Ayn Rand book clubs, and the gutters of Reddit. (Look, I know extreme, fabricated victim-hood exists within enclaves of the left, as well. But the utter disconnect with reality exhibited by the MRM and the dangerous lengths to which these folks have gone puts them in an entirely different category of alarming.)
He also shares his appreciation for Arthur Chu's article on misogyny, we've
encountered that one before↗, and it is important for
various reasons↗.
As Hillman put it:
I, for one, spent all of middle and high school employing these tactics, finally “earning” a long-term girlfriend after years of rejection. Needless to say, that relationship didn't work out. But I and many other of my “nice guy” ilk have had no other frame of reference for male-female relationships than the guy-wins-girl narrative so ingrained in our culture.
The danger lies in that when only one outcome is imaginable, it becomes an entitlement. And when an entitlement is repeatedly denied, a resentment builds. And when a resentment grows to a point where it can no longer be borne, tragedy strikes.
Chu's perspective struck a nerve in more people than just me. I posted his article to Facebook and it has been re-shared an incredible 102 times in 24 hours (far exceeding any of my countless efforts to push our Curiata.com posts to that level of virality).
Chu also linked to another crucial illustration of male misconception. An unattributed reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog The Dish shared a story that Sullivan reprinted in 2012 in which a high school freshman, “disgusted” by homosexuality because a man once made an unwanted pass at him, was stopped in his tracks when his teacher pointed out that it was the first and only time in the student's life he had endured something that women deal with nonstop from the onset of puberty.
And somewhere in between, he considers the Men's Rights Movement:
It is, of course, true that #NotAllMen are intentionally anti-female, abusive, or predatory. But there exists a deep-seated masculine entitlement that the MRM actively denies and the more well-adjusted man unintentionally ignores. We are so integrated into our patriarchal system that we can't see the forest for the trees — and I count myself among this group even now, though this conversation has at least made me aware of my ignorance.
Last year,
Amanda Marcotte↱ also gave the question of excuses specific consideration, including examples like what happened in Alabama, where TRAP laws had passed, including the bit about admitting privileges:
In his decision striking down Alabama’s targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) law, Judge Myron Thompson has an interesting digression about how serious the growing circle of anti-choice abuse has become in Alabama. A clinic in the state hired a doctor, referred to as Dr. H1 in the decision, to cover the clinic’s new hospital admitting privileges requirement. There were efforts to keep her role quiet, but anti-choicers found out anyway. From the decision:
Although she was not performing abortions herself, protestors came to her private practice and began to confront her pregnant patients, just as they had Dr. Palmer’s. Again, they held signs depicting third-trimester abortions. The local leader of the pro-life movement told Johnson that he would protest Dr. H1’s practice for as long as Dr. H1 continued to serve as covering physician for the clinic.
This type of abuse is particularly aggravating because anti-choicers claim that they want clinics to have hospital admitting privileges to protect women. The argument is that, even though the hospitalization rate for people who have abortions is among the lowest of all outpatient procedures, clinics need a doctor who can admit patients just in case. So, this clinic goes ahead and hires a doctor whose sole responsibility is to be there in case a patient needs hospital care, and anti-choicers harass her out of her job—for taking on a responsibility that they themselves demanded that someone take on.
Or the bit about tampons:
In another disturbing example, feminist writer Jessica Valenti was the target of a harassment campaign for arguing in a piece that tampons should be free, or at least more affordable. The flimsy excuse for the harassment against Valenti was the “free” part, but the tenor of the abuse made it clear that the harassers are more upset about the “tampon” part. Many seemed angry and disgusted by the very fact that women menstruate.
And then she explains:
The pretenses for blasting someone with white-hot misogynist anger are becoming so thin as to be transparent, both online and off. Just as anti-choicers holler about “life” while targeting people trying to get any kind of care—prenatal care, contraception, sexually transmitted infections testing—at women’s health clinics, the misogynist crowd will use a bunch of bad faith excuses for why it’s acceptable to target someone for choices that are really none of their business.
Unfortunately, the problem hasn’t been helped much by the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning the Massachusetts law requiring protesters to stand 35 feet away from a clinic entrance. Part of the rationale for the decision was the argument that the people standing in the clinic entrance are just trying to “help” by “counseling” women. That argument was clearly made in bad faith, as anti-choicers involved in the McCullen v. Coakley case offered no evidence that their “help” was actually helpful or that women were seeking it. Furthermore, if “help” has to be shouted directly in someone’s face, it simply isn’t help by any normal definition of the term. It’s harassment.
But that bad faith argument worked. In its decision, the Supreme Court blessed the use of bad faith arguments to excuse the harassment of women, even when those arguments are laughably flimsy. That, taken with the way the Internet makes misogynists feel like they have a real community, suggests that what we’re seeing in Alabama may be just the beginning. There’s no cap on how silly the argument justifying misogyny has to be now, and the circle of eligible targets is growing.
And it's true, misogynists are running out of excuses. Then again, this is in part because those excuses end up supporting terrorism and mayhem. Ted Cruz blames transgendered leftists for the actions of a hardline, right-wing Christianist; he also picked up the endorsement of the nation's most succesful Christianist terror supporter, Troy Newman, whose partner in crime is an actual terrorist. In our own Sciforums community, we've seen a rape advocate swoon over a mass murderer, and lately the misogynist line has holed up in Know-Nothing territory. These absurdities only remind that the misogynists are running out of excuses.
Yet they continue to hold out, and this is only possible because of prevailing societal misogyny that presupposes against the humanity and human rights of women.
Which, in turn, is hatred, pure and simple.
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Notes:
Hillman, Mike. "'Rights of man' and other false excuses for misogyny". Curiata. 28 May 2014. Curata.com. 17 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1malERg
Marcotte, Amanda. "Excuses for Anti-Choice and Misogynist Harassment Grow Flimsier". RH Reality Check. 2 September 2015. RHRealityCheck.org. 17 December 2015. http://bit.ly/1OaUbeZ