Monday, August 25, 2014

What percent tolerance for allied male woman-hatred?

Fellow men like Francois Tremblay, who repeatedly use violent and/or paternalistic language in response to women disagreeing with them (see the gallery at the end of this post), bring up a question I want to discuss: what level of tolerance should there be for expressions of hatred from self-styled "male allies" against women who they believe are falsely claiming to be feminists (or are "pro-BDSM, pro-porn or pro-prostitution," or the like)? Zero tolerance, full tolerance, or somewhere in between? It seems Tremblay grapples with with edges of this question in his one of his recent posts.

What argument is there for anything but zero tolerance? If you can "talk back" to (as in, slur, hate on, violently address) women who are not radical enough for your anti-gender-male sensibilities, what stops a self-identified "sex-positive feminist" man (I talked to one of those today, it was awful) from watching you and thinking "if it's men's place to insult and swear at women who are doing feminism wrong, that means I can harass the SWERFs and TERFs at will!"?

And what if you're wrong? Imagine for a moment that you are not the Obelisk of Objectivity and that the basic principle of skepticism does in fact imply the possibility that the feminists you agree with (in Tremblay's case, self-identified radical feminists) could be wrong about whatever it is you believe the other women are wrong about. Then, I want to ask, what are you doing? You are using violent attacks to support a campaign for the relief of human suffering that does not even concern your own suffering, much less would actually address the suffering of the people in question.

But let's make believe the above concerns are moot. What level of tolerance should we allow? 100%? Can I just go ham on any woman I see who I myself determine, let's say, to quote Tremblay, "promotes genderism, the Patriarchy or the oppression of women", calling them self-hating women and that their violent ideology makes them utter fucking idiots who should get therapy for having the sufficient mental imbalance to call themselves feminists? Obviously I can't just treat a woman who I disagree with as if they were just like men who e.g. think rape should be legal. So where do you draw the line, and why? What say you, radical-"allied" men?

We shouldn't even need to employ hypotheticals for this case. If you really believe that there are women, in this male supremacist world, who are promoting ideas of male supremacy, what rational implication is there besides thinking of these women as victims of that male supremacy who you, as a man, should leave alone? Why not let women talk to, convince, educate, and even fight other women? Why do we need another man going off on women? If you're a man, why not show respect to all women?

Further, why not focus on men? If you have energy to tweet and comment about how those "fuck[ing] liberal" women should "die in a fire", you have energy to confront Charlie Glickman, Charles Clymer and all the other "feminist" men who promote the ideology you enjoy deriding women for buying into. You have finite time and resources in your life, and if you actually care about women, rather than your own ego and feel-good masculine posturing and "reputation", what is your excuse?

Gallery - Francois Tremblay and other men hate (on some) women


Yes, fuck those women. Only certain women are cool and not fuck-you-worthy.
Said in response to a "woman". Y'know,  like the class of people in Papua New Guinea who are burned as witches
Those self-hating lesbians sure are garbage, aren't they, my fellow straight man?

Not Tremblay, but the resemblance of paternalism is striking

1 comment:

  1. This is a perfect example of why "male feminists" are absolutely and completely useless. If I had listened to people like you a few years ago, I would be hopelessly lost now. Thank Bob idiots like you are rare.

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