Gossip! Or: How To Be A Privilged Ass

So being new to the blogosphere I haven't really had the chance to throw myself into the kind of rough-and-tumble arguments I'm used to having spent 10 years (ugh, really?) on LiveJournal.  The thing you kids have to understand is that LiveJournal is different - it's basically the rough yet ridiculous high school of the Internet.  People are mean there - me included.  It's the kinda place where a simple disagreement over terminology ends with phrases like, "Fuck you and your mother, you racist cunt!"  Rough and tumble, you get the idea.  Having spent my e-adolescence (i.e. my real-life 20s) in such an environment, I tend to come off as a bit hostile to the more sheltered parts of the Internet, such as the horrible PolyWeekly forums, where the response to genuine disagreements over issues like silencing of queer voices or transphobia is a lot of weird passive-aggressive versions of "Fuck you and your mother." No, really, at this point I pretty much dare any reader of this blog to go to the PolyWeekly forums and try to start a substantive conversation about identity issues and see how far it gets you.  No, I AM FUCKING SERIOUS, I will pay you ten dollars, I just want to watch.

Oh, the point!  So unlike the drama of LiveJournal or the faux-niceness of a lot of message boards, the blogosphere (I will never not un-italicize that, not ever) seems to be about a sort of refined politeness, a salon, if you will, where we all meet and exchange ideas and recursively link to each other endlessly because really, 80% of serious blog content is just linking to another blog.  Social status in the blogosphere, as I understand it, seems to be about three things: how many people link to you, how many people comment to your posts, and how many new blog posts an argument on your blog can inspire.  Obviously under this rubric, we're doing pretty poorly (which is not our fault, as nobody is arguing with us in the comments! Get with it, kids!).

But I did find myself drawn into one particular drama-fiasco by two bloggers I'm not particularly fond of.  What's fun is I can be impartial observer.  The two blogs in question are the feminist blog Tiger Beatdown (already winning points for best name) and L'Hote which is a really boring blog by some dude.

Here's the rundown:
Sady at TigerBeatdown makes a funny although rambly post with another blogger about men, uh, sort of.
Our man Freddy from L'Hote gets offended at Sady's humor (which is really what makes her blog appealing) and her characterization of men who identify as feminist and wear "This is what a feminist looks like!" t-shirts and attend Take Back the Night rallies with the intent of getting laid.  So he makes a stupid comment:

"Look, I have to tell you: your whole enterprise here, the whole long and short of it, appears to be an edifice designed to give you a platform that paws at discourse while denying the possibility of you ever getting called on anything. I mean the whole apparatus of the place. It’s like this constant recursion of LOLspeak/serious speak/LOLspeak, this Russian dolls style thing you’re so enamored with. It’s just a mechanism to introduce a self-limiting aspect on what you want to say; you want to be heard and to be taken seriously, but you want the out to be able to say that you were just goofing. Well, goof away, it’s the Internet, and it’s your dime, but understand that you are denying intellectual rigor when you do so."

Look, peeps, I don't need to see your eyeroll, because no matter how many times I read this comment, I DO IT TOO.  Even better, in the same comment he linked to this bit of brilliance about the sad, sad tale of men in the feminist blogosphere.

OK, so here's where I'm going to out myself: I'm a misandrist, straight up.  On the whole, I am not a fan of straight, white, cis men as I do not like their version of masculinity, and I generally find them tiresome and obnoxious at best: at worst they are violent, harassing, and dangerous. This isn't to say I don't like men.  When I say I'm a misandrist, I mean I hate popular male culture and the behavior that it engenders, and that I do not automatically assume men are my friends or allies until they prove themselves to be so, regardless of how they identify.  I don't think men and women are considered equal in our culture so any attempts to equate this to misogyny or any other form of harmful prejudice are not going to resonate with me because that would be facile and stupid.

Despite my misandry and my years of e-experience, I chose to engage with Freddy, because, why the fuck not?  I guess I was bored.  So let's have a quick rundown, my lovelies, of how not to act if you are a man displaying sexist behavior in a feminist space - and really, let's remember this applies to anyone who is attempting to be an ally in a space where we have privilege, right?


Freddy said something stupid, wrote a stupid post about it (already previously linked) and then Sady decided to slap him a new one.  And he whined, because HOLY FUCKING SHIT some feminists were not nice to him even after he told them he was a feminist and he cared!  THE GALL OF THOSE BITCHES.  So he writes a new post about how insecure Sady must be and how mean they were to him but he wants to know if he did really fuck up, well, please tell him, but also, he's a nice feminist guy and they were mean because they made jokes about his peen.

OK honestly, I did, for a brief moment in all this, feel bad for the guy.  Getting called out on your privilege is hard, making an ass of yourself in front of hundreds (thousands?) of readers is hard, and being defensive is a natural reaction.  A small part of me wanted to believe Freddy when he claimed he really wanted to know if he was doing something wrong, and if so, how to fix it.  So I wrote several comments to him - frank, but not particularly mean - explaining how he'd fucked this up and what he could do to un-fuck it, as did many other nice feminists.

Freddy continues to make stupid, whiny posts because Freddy is not particularly interested in examining his own behavior and luckily he has an echo chamber of high-fivin' bros to reassure him that any feminist - regardless of whether we're fans of Sady's or not - who finds fault his his ridiculous behavior is just a goose-steppin' idealogue spewing our hatred of men all over the 'tubes. 

I guess they're not wrong, in which I mean, this kind of behavior really does reinforce for me why I happily, cheerfully identify as a misandrist.  I get to live in a wonderful bubble called the Bay Area which already means I've pretty much weeded out the conservatives and libertarians for the most part.  Better yet, I get to choose my own circle of friends which means that although I do in fact surround myself with men socially, I never have to hear in my real life the kind of shit that Freddy spews.  And it's funny, because Freddy clings to his feminist label as a way to bludgeon actual feminists, while I only think maybe one or two out of a dozen guys in my social circle would actually identify themselves as feminists.  But the thing is, these guys have proven themselves to be loyal, trustworthy, listenin', right-on dudes, even if they don't have a background in women's studies or really care about identity politics.

And that's what Freddy and his ilk - and let me tell you, they are Legion - will never understand.  For them, "feminism" as a label is seen as a shortcut to the kind of acceptance and validation they crave from women, yet they don't understand that is earned through actions and behavior, not by what you claim to be.