After about a year of no noticeable activity from Amanda Marcotte, she’s apparently back, taking another ineffectual swipe at the men’s rights movement[1]. However, her aim, like that of Feministe’s Jill Filipovic[2] seems a little off. In fact, Marcotte’s recent Pandagon essay denouncing the possibilities of success for a “progressive men’s movement” seems like an address to a fantasy world extant nowhere but her own imagination.
Progressive, of course, is the popular term for politically-left-leaning. It’s a term cultivated to induce listeners to infer that politically-right-leaning must therefore be regressive. It’s a neat rhetorical trick, and at its base, dishonest. (I’m surprised, are you?) While the actual men’s rights movement is apolitical, having no left or right slant, such exploration of terms necessary in an address of Marcotte’s writing, due to persistent terminological inexactitude in her rhetoric.
For example, predictably banging on the feminist bongo drum of rape; Marcotte backhands former Good Men Project contributor Hugo Schwyzer, asserting that what he does is “..perpetuate the myth that rapists are just nice guys who are confused about consent..”
But she breezes past the fact that “nice guys rape” is not a myth to be addressed by feminism, but a feminist talking point. It is a kissing cousin to the political constructs “rape culture” and “men can stop rape” all of which are simple re-toolings of the now defunct “all men are rapists.”
That great lie, due to reality pushing back on feminism’s modern rhetoric of hate, has been repeatedly re-phrased. “Men can stop rape” is among the recent incarnations of the malignant myth that rape is either normal, or that it is not committed by women. The popular feminist talking point “men can stop rape is also another way of dehumanizing men, of lowering them in moral position, by placing the blame for the crimes of a very few men and women.
Most hilariously, Marcotte looks at the ongoing demonization of the GMP by feminist ideologues as an indication that a men’s movement is unfeasible. To understand just how funny this is, a restatement of what might be obvious to some readers is necessary. The Good Men Project is a feminist web-site, founded with initial support from Ms. Magazine, along with the endorsement of a significant number of feminist writers, including Amanda Marcotte herself. She was one of the major contributors at GMP.
The site calling itself the Good Men Project attempted to position themselves as a men’s movement site, but in doing so, they couldn’t censor comments without giving away the con. As a result, every time they published overtly feminist, anti male garbage, actual Men’s Rights Activists flooded the comments threads with oppositional rhetoric. And simply by that persistent refutation of feminism’s standard lies, the GMP was driven to fall to infighting. The occasional attempts by the site’s editors to field a convincing address of men’s issues drove the core writers away, including Schwyzer and Marcotte.
They also promoted enough feminist agitprop that they have no credibility with MRAs.
Now, however, Marotte says “I dearly want men to have conversations about masculinity and manhood” and one paragraph later adds: “I still think those conversations can happen. But not by men organizing a “men’s movement”.
I have no commentary to add to that, so I’ll just carry on.
She numbers her apparent reasons for opposition to men working together without feminist oversight, but first in her list is: “1) We cannot fight the gender construct and gender segregation by reinforcing it.”
Feminism is simply traditionalism dialed up to eleven. The only serious differences between the two are that in traditional gender roles, men were respected for protecting, providing and dying when convenient for others. In feminism’s amped-up version of the same thing, male human value, outside utility, is dialed down to zero, and female infantilization is amped till the needle pins the redline.
Picture a slut-walk as 30-something women chant my-flaunted-boobs-are-not-a-social-signal, carrying signs which read “destroy patriarchy” while the entire parade is protected from city traffic and possible hecklers by armed police officers. You know, police, the armed agents of patriarchy; protecting a parade which aims to destroy patriarchy.
Marcotte then asks what she likely believes is a rhetorical question. “Why do men need a separate movement to deconstruct patriarchy?” This reveals Marcotte’s raison d’être, and says nothing about the men’s movement. It is typically dishonest. She should have put the period after the word movement.
Why do men need a separate movement?
Im glad you asked that, Amanda.
The poster placed by me in Vancouver, BC. After I did so it was defaced by feminists.
The concluding statement of the poster is “Men’s rights are human rights.”
The defacement responds to this statement, with a single spray-bombed word.
Wrong.
This is likely the poster which drove the feminists at the University of Toronto to scream “you are fucking scum” at a man attempting to attend a public talk by the man who has been justifiably called the Mr. Rogers of the men’s rights movement, Dr Warren Farrell.
Ours is the movement that has feminists screaming “you are fucking scum” at a young man whose views they didn’t know, whose name they didn’t know, and who, it turned out, was seeking the possibility of answers to why two of his friends had both committed suicide.
Thanks for asking.
And that on the heels of this increasing mountain of evidence of feminism’s true foundation, that of hatred and violence – Marcotte has the confidence to claim men should abandon their struggle for basic human rights, in favor of service to a depraved cult. This indicates either a bottomless stupidity from Marcotte, or the megalomaniacal scheming of a true sociopath. However, whether stupidity or psychopathy, it doesn’t much matter what route a feminist takes to arrive at bigotry.
Marcotte also inanely defines the goals of a men’s movement with a fanciful claim that feminism’s mandate is “about ending patriarchy and ending arbitrary, stifling gender norms.”
This is literally nonsense. Which is to say, it is a statement devoid of meaning. Patriarchy, in feminist parlance, is a boogeyman, endlessly reshaped to serve as a rhetorical device, and “arbitrary, stifling gender norms” is a similarly undefined blob.
Following her first apparent reason for opposition to a men’s movement, she also claims that female leaders are anathema to potential men’s rights activists. Marcotte clearly has never heard of Girl Writes What, Typhon Blue, Dr. Tara Palmatier, Kristina Hansen, Erin Pizzey, Dr. Elly Tams or any other of the many women who contribute at AVFM. And that is just at AVfM. Marcotte also does not recognize any of the other very high profile women currently challenging gender feminist hegemony of the discourse on men’s issues in the mainstream; women like Barbara Kay, Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia and Katherine Young among others.
I believe I’ve mentioned earlier on in this article that Marcotte appears to address a “reality” with the peculiar quality that it exists only in her mind.
One of the more puzzling elements of her peice is a pronounced tendency “report” on the MRM in a seemingly blithe unawareness that her pronouncements, once published, will stand in sharp contrast to the increasingly public reality of the actual Mens Rights Movement (the real one, not the one in Marcotte’s imagination)
“While it’s true that feminist work is often interpersonal with a side dose of self-help, most “men’s movement” types seem to think that’s all there is to it.”
I suppose she’s been absent from the scene for some time, perhaps she needs to catch up. However, Marcotte claims it is feminism’s policies, and solid, discreet and measurable goals that keep it on track.
Now that women are 65% of graduation outcomes in higher education, there’s only 35% to go. Good news everyone!
But, according to Marcotte, inserts mine:
Reproductive rights [only for women], eliminating sexual and domestic violence [by pretending DV only involves female victims], equal pay [for unequal work], power-sharing at home [assuming any man is stupid enough to marry], gender-neutral Easy-Bake Ovens….
This is apparently what is claimed as a reality check, preventing feminism from devolving into everyone sitting around validating everyone’s feelings, no matter how anti-social or reactionary.
In the summer of 2012, the box-cutter wielding male feminist informed me that his feelings trumped my logic as his cohorts tore down posters reading “men’s rights are human rights” before all running from the police I had called from my cell. What was that Marcotte said about preventing feminism from “devolving to everyone sitting around validating everyone’s feelings, no matter how anti-social or reactionary”?
I couldn’t have made this up, and honestly, this isn’t even sporting. Didn’t Marcotte used to be able to write a rational and cohesive article at one time?
Any men’s movement will fail to have such a reality check, since current policies and social structures already benefit men over women.
Whoops, I forgot about the alternate reality the Pandagon blog inhabits, where men are not 4 out of 5 suicides, where men are not 70 to 90 percent of the homeless, where men raped in prison are not the subject of boringly predictable jokes, where men are not 93% of all on-the-job fatalities and where infant genital mutilation is not called by another word to render boy mutilation socially acceptable so the severed foreskins of infants can be used to produce better wrinkle cream for aging female bigots like Marcotte.
But ingore all that, and the several hundred others items omitted here for the sake of brevity, and just keep telling yourself “current policies and social structures already benefit men over women.”
If nobody ever looks at specifics, it’s almost possible to believe in such fantasy.
And remember, according to Amanda “The best way to end gender oppression of men is to push for women’s equality.”
Lets parse that. To end men’s gender oppression, elevate women.
So men, in other words, forget that you are humans with rights, forget the hate from feminists, forget the violence used against you, just be a good-man, and do what you’re told. And if you don’t, even just a little bit, take a look at the Good Men Project for how you will be treated.
Does it seem to you that feminists aren’t even trying anymore? Or maybe they really are just that stupid.
[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/12/18/why-progressive-mens-movements-are-bound-to-fail/
[2] http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/12/18/why-the-good-men-project-debacle-matters/
