Some personal thoughts on this wily breed …

This last summer, a straight male friend and I cozied up on his sofa with his laptop and, to sate my nosiness, perused his OkCupid account. My friend received a graduate degree in gender studies and is intimidatingly informed about both theoretical and pop feminism, which was invariably conveyed on his dating profile. In his inbox, women responded positively to his profile’s reference of the ”manic pixie dream girl” trope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJUxqkcnKA). “I’m just so glad you know about that,” they lauded. “It’s so refreshing to see a guy get it.” Their receptiveness made sense. In the online dating mineshaft, my friend–who not only appeared sane and had photo proof that he goes outdoors, but also displayed some awareness of feminism(!)–was a glitter-dipped gemstone. I was struck with revelation. Of course. The male feminist card gets you play.

Flash back a year, and I’m cozy on my own sofa with my own laptop, watching a video in which social commentator Jay Smooth speaks out (http://vimeo.com/44117178) about the Anita Sarkeesian controversy. In his video response to the violent and threatening reactions from men toward Sarkeesian’s criticisms of gaming culture’s hostility toward women, Smooth rebukes not only the offenders but also those who turn the other cheek, asserting that “we need to treat like it matters”. His demand to his “fellow dudes”: “When see something like that going on, have an obligation to speak out against it more often.”

In a different tab on my browser, I’d pulled up an interview with novelist Junot Diaz, whose The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao I was engrossed with at the time. In this interview (http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/the_search_for_decolonial_love/), Diaz discloses that despite the criticism many women writers of color received from men of color in the 80s, he himself feels a certain indebtedness to the women writers for creating “a set of strategies” that would become “the basis of art.” Diaz goes on to state that “what were producing in knowledge was something that I needed to hear in order to understand myself in the world, and that no one—least of all male writers of color—should be trying to silence.”

Here I witnessed two men behaving in what to me were very radical and admirable ways, defending women who had received sexist backlash from other men. I rarely saw straight men raise a skeptical brow at sexism, much less spoke out against it to other men. Like many others of their audience, I felt affirmed, supported, and grateful to have them as advocates. I felt full of conviction. These are real men. These men are how all men should be.

If you frequent the same nook of media as I do, it’s likely you know and love these men, too. Salon crowned Jay Smooth as one of the sexiest men of 2008, and between my circles and what I’ve observed on his Twitter and Instagram, there appears to be plenty of those open to the prospect of being “Mrs. Jay Smooth”. Junot Diaz, although more controversial, has also received praise for his feminist-oriented writing, and at the Facing Race conference in 2012 where Diaz spoke the keynote, the first (and second) question of his Q & A was an emboldened “Are you single?” These male feminists get a lot of love in the minds and hearts of straight women. We love them, and not in the way we love our Uncle Rays.

While they both are replete with admirable qualities, being outspokenly pro-woman is a giant, glossy cherry. They, too, are diamonds in a mineshaft. When most men I encounter at bars, on television, and in the news make remarks about women that make my insides feel grimy, a man who attempts to veer off the sexist path will lower my guard. Of course I greet the change of pace with relief, ease, and even a bit of sexual attraction.

Back then I would read and watch Smooth and Diaz, wish to the plush stuff above that more men would be like them, then close my laptop, leave my apartment, and in my own small life, meet, become intimate with, and perpetually get bamboozled by disingenuous men. During my last year of undergrad, as I upheld Smooth and Diaz as acmes of good men, I would meet a man who led a feminism reading group and become involved with the women, pissing them off to vision-blurring rage. I would meet a man who writes his thesis on Audre Lorde’s idea of a lesbian consciousness but was always the last to leave a party, eyes darting around for inebriated women, prospective bedmates. I would meet countless self-proclaimed feminists whose mouths would ask, “Have you read Gender Troubles?” while their body language asks, “Is that the passcode to your pants?” And I would pardon these men over and over again, because they behaved, at least initially, like my male feminist role models. They, too, presented themselves as advocates for women, and they, too, all sounded like I thought “anti-sexist” men should sound.

As I observe the public appraisal of two men I don’t know and the bad behavior of the men I do, I can’t help but make loose connections between the two. The men I know who behave disingenuously, the nominal feminists, seem to have had their acts reinforced somehow. And I worry that the appraisal of men who can articulate a feminist critique begets scheming imitators, men who file “feminist” in their rolodex of pick-up artistry because they’ve seen it result positively. Lack game? Try this formula: mention x feminist theorist, y lamentation about political issue that attacks women’s rights, z assertion about sexual consent. That tactic alone may work on someone, and that’s utterly scary.

I attended a large university in Seattle, and one drawback of being surrounded by educated and well-read people is that, if there’s a benefit, they can be magicians with language, chameleons about who they are through the use of words. With issues as intimate as dating and feminism, it’s not only ironic to be deceived by empty sentiments of anti-sexism, it’s dangerous. What troubles me is that for many women I know, sexual assault and date rape remain a common experience, despite “male feminism” becoming more fashionable over the years.

In my ideal world, the misogynists would be ultra-detectable, with facial pocks and sulfury odors and grunt “wiggle your glazed donut ass for me.” I would even take the world as I thought it a few years ago, where misogynists talk like Tucker Max and live in Greek houses and call women “biddies.” But confusingly, misogynists are sometimes men who speak softly and eat vegan and say “a woman’s sexual freedom is an essential component to her liberation. So come here.” It’s a tricky world out there. And while I’d prefer a critical approach to gender from men I elect, read, and even bed, in my experience, the so-called feminist men I’ve met deep down have not been less antagonistic or bigoted toward women. What I see over and over again is misogyny in sheep’s clothing, and at this point, I would rather see wolves as wolves.

Given the dearth of men who acknowledge, much less pretend to care about, sexism, my words may seem as salty as twice-brined pickles. But as my friends and I joke, we don’t have to be grateful for the crumbs of lazy and fraudulent feminism men give us. And in seriousness, I don’t want to get duped anymore. I don’t want to let my guard down in the company of a man who received a graduate degree in gender studies, deny his sexual advances, and hear from a mutual friend about how angry and baffled he was at my refusal, because he was “expecting it.” I no longer want this sort of surprise-in-hindsight, but I also don’t want to relinquish all hope, and that is going to require extreme critical flexing toward so-called straight male allies.

My wish to the plush stuff above is no longer for men to imitate Smooth and Diaz on a cursory level, but to make efforts toward more personal reflections of sexism without ulterior motives of appearing more desirable to women. My revised wish, as well, is for me and other women seeking relationships with men to get better at detecting and calling out insincere male feminism, discourage and endanger it, rather than allowing it to continue to flourish through positive reinforcement. My wish is that when we do let our guards down again, that we will be safe in doing so.

i think we all need to realize the truth that men can't really be feminists, much like upper middle class suburban whites cannot be black panthers. Rhetoric, posturing, schmoozing are all very well and good but at the end of the day what exactly is a dude meant to achieve by doing gender studies at university? What is he meant to learn from the experience apart from a different twist on the art of negging, for PUA and feminism are both preoccupied with how the insecurities, historical injustices and vulnerabilities of women work.

The other thing I added on the site is that if it's so goddamn easy for people to come and fake knowledge and conviction in this area simply to get into the pants of it's adherents, something must be terribly wrong with the tools of that discipline and the way in which they are used. Why is this?

swirlsofhistory posted:

If you say that lady's name really quickly it sounds like "men win".

I guess they usually do.

I don't quite understand the disconnect between the feminist preoccupation with 'safe spaces' for argument and debate and discussion, and then letting men study their discipline under the assumption they're doing it in good faith? the misogynist phone call is coming from inside the building!

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

swirlsofhistory posted:

If you say that lady's name really quickly it sounds like "men win".

I guess they usually do.

I don't quite understand the disconnect between the feminist preoccupation with 'safe spaces' for argument and debate and discussion, and then letting men study their discipline under the assumption they're doing it in good faith? the misogynist phone call is coming from inside the building!

i don't think it's fair to assign bad motives to all the creeps and semi-predatory "feminist" men. for some people it may be a "move" sure, but i think the vast majority of men like that are just oblivious assholes. it may seem contradictory that they could be well-read in that sort of feminist stuff and still be sleazebags but a lot of men are just sleazebags, "feminist" or not, because they don't really reflect on it and what they expect out of women because they have trouble seeing from outside their own shoes and they suck. i bet there's a good chance that smooth guy and the oscar wao dude do a bunch of shitty stuff too. some people are okay though, it's just you can probably find some conservative old man that never paid any lip service to or read any feminist thought but that's been faithfully married for 40 years and always treated his wife and other women with respect just as easily as you can find the sincerely good guy male feminist types

postposting posted:

they don't really play the ukelele they're just trying to get in your pants

the semiotics of one's OKC profile are important to ensuring the integrity of your personal brand.

roseweird posted:

iwc i am almost moved to respond but the combativeness and dishonesty of your posture when discussing such issues is no longer engaging to me

iwc... dishonest... wtf

roseweird posted:

no, iwc, i mistrust you and will not condescend to discuss the merits of feminism and gender studies with you in a thread made by you for the purpose of gawking at lame pop-feminist dirty laundry and questioning the very validity of gender studies as a discipline on that basis. you should find something else to care about, you have nothing useful or even really provocative to say on this subject

i did not 'question the validity of gender studies as a discipline' at all....i don't mind if you want to misrepresent me but fair dinkum, slide down from your high horse if you wish to do so.

Although i suppose that arguably you telling me, a straight male, to find something else other than gender studies to care about is a sort of meta-support for the thrust of my argument, so cheers for that.

Panopticon posted:

ilmdge posted:

say a guy doesn't have a strong opinion on abortion. isnt his opinion on abortion nearly irrelevant anyway?, it's not as if he's actually going to contribute to keeping the right to choose legal or like it's going to have a strong bearing on how he behaves in day-to-day life. most likely it just means he was born into a family that votes democrat and not much beyond that. but i'd be willing to bet a lot of modern women would see that issue as a dealbreaker. at least the ones born into democrat voting families. eh, or maybe this post is wrong becuase it's nice having beliefs in common you can whinge about.


as we all know, women are the gatekeepers of sex. since women are more loyal to democrats, and since men have to adjust their beliefs to sleep with women, it seems to me that democrats are going to outbreed republicans. date rape, therefore, is the last gasp of the right in the face of centrist liberal hegemony. the fascism of sex, if you will.

this is overcomplicating things: chicks'll always dig bad boys....christ look how many times hugo schwyzer slept with his students or tried to kill his girlfriends, he was getting invites left right and centre until he dropped his commitment to the bit and started having a childish weepy breakdown on twitter.

roseweird posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

i did not 'question the validity of gender studies as a discipline' at all



Ironicwarcriminal posted:

something must be terribly wrong with the tools of that discipline and the way in which they are used

in the few months i've been at uni i would say the same thing about the way Geography, my passion, is approached, it doesn't mean that i think it's invalid.

i'm just curious as to why gender studies, with a huge focus on criticism and a long standing 'personal as political' ethic, is not more attuned to these types of dudes and their? For what it's worth, i still think that say, economics as a discipline has far larger blind spots.

I've actually spent some effort defending it to my partner who is largely of the belief that it exists in order to 'help rich white girls manufacture a sense of identity and struggle that they haven't earned'....ouch

roseweird posted:

i'm not an antifeminist slob, you can tell because i told my girlfriend her opinion about feminism was wrong

hahaha so me defending the idea of gender studies having some merit becomes 'telling my girlfriend her opinion about feminism is wrong'. is every field of discussion as black and white as your avatar?

roseweird posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

i'm just curious as to why gender studies, with a huge focus on criticism and a long standing 'personal as political' ethic, is not more attuned to these types of dudes



you formed an entire dumb opinion of an academic discipline based on some marginal internet pop-politics no one who matters has ever heard of

every one of your replies in this thread has been you sarcastically relaying what you think my opinion is, or playing some silly in-group, out-group distinction game about who is allowed to talk and who isn't. But that's been helpful in fleshing out some thoughts on rhetoric, education and social positioning so again, cheers, i'll buy you a beer some time.