Noted in passing - I recently posted the following at Amanda Marcotte's blog, Pandagon. First, a comment from another reader, and following that, my response: (Click to enlarge.)
I composed this little essay with a lot of thought, knowing exactly what would punch their buttons. So how did I do it, then? Well, I negated feminist dogma simply and directly, with no apologies or explanations. That's how I did it. And not only did I negate the feminist dogma, I
reversed it - as you see in the first paragraph.
In the second paragraph, I enlarged upon the nub of the difficulty - that men as a group are being treated very shabbily, and effectively "voting with their feet". In the third paragraph, I prescribed the necessary medicine. In the fourth paragraph I rubbed feminism's nose in its own shit, and in the final paragraph I hinted briefly at action.
As you can see, there is no trace of misogyny anywhere in those paragraphs. Nothing intones any animus toward women whatsoever - in fact, women are not even the subject! But that did not stop one of the moderators from making the following curt statement before banning me. (Click to enlarge.):
So there you have it. As far as I'm concerned, this is smoking-pistol evidence that either most feminists don't know what the hell they're talking about when they fling the word "misogyny", or they are just being bloody dishonest. And yes, I did say "most". I speak from a deep well of personal observation, for I have seen the identical patterns replay themselves time and again! The single example which I am sharing here is thoroughly archetypal and emblematic.
When they cry "misogyny", it is a kneejerk reaction. It means that something menaces the core of their feminist identity. Yes, I can allow that they are
sometimes responding to
arguably genuine misogyny. But genuine misogyny is too rare to account for the frequent occurrence of this word in feminist conversation. It makes more sense to say that intellectual laziness accounts for most of it. Either that, or plain old guilt. They don't want to sort out the nasty possibility that a lot of men are angry for a damned good reason, and that a lot of women are (gasp!) to blame for this.
Note that I said
a lot of women. I did not say ALL of them! And since I have pointed this out, you cannot pretend that you didn't know I said it. Hell, you should have noticed it even if I
didn't point it out. But since I did point it out, you have absolutely NO excuse for pretending that I ever made any statement about women in general.
So if you mean to call me a misogynist for suggesting that "a lot" of women are to blame for x, y or z, this can only mean that your understanding of misogyny includes holding
women morally accountable for anything at all.
But the Pandagon moderator, whom I have immortalized in the above screenshot, hasn't even got that much excuse for calling me a misogynist. My own words at Pandagon make
absolutely no pejorative evaluation of women. This is simply not possible, given that women are not even being talked about. True, I made a passing reference to lesbian separatists, but if you think that "lesbian separatists"" equals "women", then I'm afraid I can't help you. And I didn't even say anything certifiably
bad about those lesbian separatists. So in the end, the moderator has no objective warrant to assess any so-called misogyny in the content of my writing.
The behavior that you see here is not atypical. It is entirely typical. Those who have not studied feminists at close hand for as long as we have done, may be forgiven if they can't quite plumb the drafty sinkhole of the feminist mind. It is a pitch-black moral abyss that goes down and down, and just when you think you've hit rock bottom, that bottom crumbles and down you go again! So be advised - they are every bit as morally vacuous as I am depicting here. No, ten times worse! And think of the implications, when such people gain cultural and institutional power.
Effectively then, the accusation of misogyny, coming from a feminist, is an abusive epithet and little more. It is in the same league with calling somebody a "stinker", a "shithead", a "douchebag," or even a "fascist". The word itself is purely emotive - there is no true intellectual content about it. That is, it will be gummed onto you gratuitously, independent of any evidence that you actually hate women. You need only hit the right emotional trigger in the sender, and for a feminist, any challenge to the feminist worldview -
such as holding women morally accountable -- is enough to do the trick.
