The Man-Approved Feminism of the New “Mad Max” Film

(Adapted from a Facebook comment.)

I have not yet seen Mad Max: Fury Road, although I am very excited about seeing it sometime soon. I re-watched The Road Warrior over the weekend, and have thoroughly enjoyed the various retrospective pieces about the film series. Perhaps even more so, I have felt an extreme sense of Schadenfreude with regard to the way certain people of the MRA persuasion are reacting to the film, generally without even having seen it. Apparently a movie set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which men are not the sole focus of attention is absolutely terrifying to some people (and not for any reason having to do with the “post-apocalyptic part.”)

A piece by Breitbart writer John Nolte, as quoted and summarized by bspencer at Lawyers, Guns & Money, offers praise to the film’s view of feminism, at least as Nolte perceives it, from a presumably conservative viewpoint (it is Breitbart, after all): Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, February 13, 2015

The Angry Black Dude Post No. 1, The Difference Between Cockroaches and Butterflies, January 27, 2015

I don’t like being the Angry Black Dude. I really don’t. There are enough of them (and with good reason). Being an ABD is social suicide: Anyone (white or non-white) with rudimentary knowledge of past and present and a conscience knows you have the right to be angry, yet your indignation still annoys them. Then there are the folks who either do or do not know (more like refuse to acknowledge) the history of race relations and have no conscience whatsoever, and your righteous anger undoubtedly pisses them off. ABDs, like feminists, cannot win. It’s a lose-lose situation, socially speaking.

I remember once I was outside of a bar in the Lower East Side around the time of the Ferguson protests. I became drunkenly acquainted with a group of people (Millennial non-whites) who started talking about what was going on in Missouri, and one of them said something like, “But c’mon, dude, not all cops are bad.” Which instinctively roused the ABD within me from dormancy. I was tactful, though: I implied (calmly) that the protesting — or rioting, depending on your viewpoint — was in response to a larger, endemic malady. These are the rhetorical hoops an ABD must go through so that he can be listened to and not simply heard.

My significant other has been asked lately (by Millennial non-whites), “Why a black guy? You’re such a pretty girl so why him?” Which of course makes me feel like shit. I’m reminded of Iago’s warning to Brabanito: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.”

What Does Feminist Porn Look Like? Russell O’Connor, Everyday Feminism, September 7, 2013

Most porn has a predominantly male perspective. The directors are usually men, and most porn is made for men. As a result, the camera often embodies the “male gaze“: It looks where a man (a stereotypical straight man, that is) would look.

As a result, women are presented exclusively as objects of desire and never as subjects of pleasure.

This is why men are so strangely absent from much straight porn, except as disembodied penises.

This can easily appear, as J. Bryan Lowder once said on Slate, as a strange form of reverse objectification.

But, as Lowder notes, there’s a simple reason for this: Most porn made for men is shot in such a way as to allow the male viewer to project himself into the scene. The woman is thus presented as available to any man who wishes to use her.

A penis needs to be present, but the man to whom it is attached had better not be too present, lest he threaten to become the focus and the male viewer be threatened with homo-eroticism.

Only the woman is to be seen, and she is there for the pleasure of the male viewer. [Emphasis in original.]

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Satire Has Nothing on Actual Right-Wing Publications

If I wanted to lampoon overblown right-wing rhetoric, I might write a mock children’s book entitled Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!

Someone already beat me to the punch, except they’re apparently not kidding.

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This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.

Good thing it’s “written in simple text.” That’s far from the best one, though. Check out Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate: Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, May 26, 2014

Why the ’90s are literally disappearing from history, Andrew Leonard, Salon, May 17, 2014

So what do we keep, and what do we let go? Much is made in Silicon Valley today of the notion that access is replacing ownership. We don’t need to own cars in the age of ride-sharing. The “cloud” will take care of all our computing needs. We don’t even have to employ full-time workers, we just grab them from TaskRabbit. We rent, we share, we outsource — this is the millennial way. Owning is just so feudal.

Much of this is rhetorical bullshit aimed at justifying $10 billion market valuations for the likes of Airbnb and Uber. But there is grist to it that can’t be dismissed.

Men and Feminism, The Belle Jar, May 19, 2014

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What I’m Reading, May 21, 2014

By Flickr user Romeo Reidl from Budapest, Hungary (Respect sexworkers statue) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsInvisible Sex Workers, Charlotte Shane, Jacobin, May 14, 2014

Journalists, policy-makers, and self-appointed experts repeatedly say that the Internet facilitated an explosion of activity for sex sellers of all stripes, yet that activity was somehow entirely covert. Similarly, the “end demand” crowd, who would like to see the sex trade eradicated but catch flack for explicitly supporting policies that criminalize those selling it, assert that sex work proliferates because of an endless male appetite for bought sex.

But very few sex workers use the “Dark Net,” and even that private corner of the web is now subject to busts. So some connecting of the dots is long overdue. If sex workers are so hard to find, how do clients responsible for making the sex industry the “fastest growing and second largest criminal industry in the world” find them? How do the cops who continue to arrest them?

The Feminist Version of American History You Never Hear About In School, Maureen Shaw, PolicyMic, May 13, 2014 Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, April 30, 2014

By Constitution_Pg1of4_AC.jpg: Constitutional Convention derivative work: Bluszczokrzew (Constitution_Pg1of4_AC.jpg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsLibertarian Law Prof Debunks Bundy Nonsense, Ed Brayton, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, April 25, 2014

As some of the more militant libertarians, especially the anarcho-capitalists, flock to the support of Cliven Bundy in his standoff with the federal government, most of the libertarian-minded law professors are debunking their absurd claims and pointing out how gloriously wrong those people are. Josh Blackman is one of them.

First, Bundy seems to reject the Constitution’s property clause. (It was a wonderful twist of scheduling fate that I assigned the “Property Clause” in ConLaw the week after the Bundy Ranch standoff. ) In an interview he said that the federal government has “no jurisdiction or authority” on his grazing rights. Under the Property Clause, Congress has the power to “dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” The land at issue was owned by the United States prior to Nevada statehood as a territory. I suspect Bundy will argue that his family has obtained a prescriptive easement on the land, as it has continuously, openly, and (absolutely) hostilely, grazed on the land for 170 years. Though, adverse possession is not permissible against the federal government. Continue reading

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What I’m Reading, April 25, 2014

By Robin klein (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsPut Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, evolved beyond the fist mistermix, Balloon Juice, April 19, 2014

The Will/Krauthammer justification for unlimited campaign contributions is that it is free speech protected by the Constitution, and it’s just a happy coincidence that the political party they back has more money to spend on political donations. Now that they’ve installed a Supreme Court that agrees with them, they’re trying to turn the reasonable consequences of free speech into some form of persecution.

Hellraiser vs. The Hellbound Heart, Mark Pellegrini, Adventures in Poor Taste, October 12, 2012

Personally, I prefer Hellraiser over The Hellbound Heart just as I prefer Candyman over The Forbidden; I found it took all the elements I enjoyed from the story and improved upon them. However, there were a couple of items from the book which I either liked better or thought added a bit more to the story. In the book, when Frank summons the Cenobites, they make him feel every orgasm he’s ever had in his entire life all at once before tearing him to pieces (as opposed to the movie, where they just eviscerate Frank as soon as they arrive). This was important to the plot in that the spillage of Frank’s semen acted as a catalyst to his resurrection when Raury/Larry spilled his blood in the attic. Additionally, this version better represented the “pleasure and pain unified” concept which the Cenobites are supposed to embody. I suppose the only other detail from the book which I wish had made it into the film is what happened after Kirsty made her deal with the Cenobites. In the book, they give her a time limit and as each minute passes she can feel an invisible “noose” squeeze tighter around her neck. This added a bit of suspense to the climax, as Kirsty struggles to get Frank to verbally admit to his escape from Hell.

Technically, this is from “Hellraiser 2,” but shut up.

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What I’m Reading, April 18, 2014

"MEGAMAN X STAGE 1" by fanboy-supermegaman [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)], via deviantARTThe angry fanboys, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, April 14, 2014

Feminism isn’t going away. Also? The last thing that would make it go away is condescending assholes calling it feminazi bullshit and threatening to rape all the feminists. All that does is show how desperately it’s needed.

Ron Paul Wants Tax-Exempt Status, But Doesn’t Want To Obey The Rules, karoli, Crooks and Liars, April 16, 2014

I just love the way conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. Ron Paul’s organization, Campaign for Liberty, is being fined by the IRS because they insist on filing incomplete reports, but if you listen to him whine on Fox News, you’d think he was being persecuted, and horribly so. Continue reading

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Gender Equality is Not a Zero-Sum Game (or, Why I Call Out Prison Rape Jokes, Because They’re Not Funny)

The following is a comment that I left on a post at The Good Men Project, in a comment thread I have returned to multiple times over the past month. I stopped participating after it pretty much devolved into typical whiny zero-sum thinking, i.e. that addressing inequalities affecting women by definition means neglecting the issues that affect men. What I am finding is that, while there are undoubtedly issues that disproportionately affect men, they generally result from prejudices and attitudes intended to favor men. For example, it is probably true that courts favor women when making orders for child custody and child support in divorce cases—but then, men are the breadwinners and women are the ones who stay home and care for the children. Men have fought hard for generations to maintain that order, and this inequality we see now is really just one tiny advantage women have found amid the oppression. Furthermore, by raising these issues in the context of criticisms of feminism, men are essentially trying to put the burden of improving men’s lot onto women. “Please ignore your own inequalities for now,” the argument seems to go, “while we address these issues that affect men.” Dudes, we can do better than that. Anyway, here’s the comment I left, with a few embedded links added in:

You raise a good point, and one that, due respect, is not so good. In regards to the point that is not good, I feel like I am banging my head against a wall, so I won’t dwell on it for long.

The good point you raise involves the issue of gendering and rape. Yes, most of the public discourse around rape focuses on women. You seem to be assuming, though, that it is women who are keeping the issue of rape against men suppressed in public discourse. I respectfully disagree. The gendering of rape defines it as something that happens to women. So if a man is raped, he is demeaned by the entire concept that rape is something feminine. That is something that we men have done to ourselves–the concept holds that a man who is raped is somehow less of a man, because only women get raped. Men have the power to change that concept.

Yes, men get raped. Quite a bit. They get raped in prison, but “prison rape” continues to be a topic of humor. Where are the men standing up to that, challenging the idea that prison rape is not funny, the way that feminists have been challenging sexist humor for at least two generations? Those men, and the women who support them, exist, but they are few in number. (The same can be said for female-on-male rape, which much of popular culture still does not view as a crime, cf. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeIsFunnyWhenItsFemaleOnMale)

Also, what organizations or people are standing up for male victims of rape? If you look closely at most major organizations that support victims of sexual violence, they actually don’t discriminate based on sex. It’s just that men don’t come forward. Why don’t they? Again, because they are unlikely to get any support from other men.

If men are serious about fighting male-victim rape, they need to start fighting male-victim rape, not just complaining about it to feminists.

As if to illustrate my point, a quick Google search for “male rape victim support” turned up a front page of results for organizations in the UK. American men need to get on this. Even if all you do is refuse to laugh at prison rape jokes, it is something. Here are a few resources to get you started:
http://www.mencanstoprape.org/Resources/resources-for-male-survivors.html
http://www.malesurvivor.org
http://www.aftersilence.org/male-survivors.php
http://www.pandys.org/malesurvivors.html

The only other point I will address, even though I’ve heard it so many times and it such a ridiculous argument that it will take a miracle to talk sense to anyone, is the issue of the selective service. If selective service registration is the best example you can come up with for discrimination against men in favor of women, then we guys are doing pretty damn swell. See, there are two problems with the argument:
1. (Assuming you live in the U.S.) we have not had a military draft since the early 1970’s, and there is less than zero political will to reinstate it. I can’t speak for countries that do have mandatory military service, but many of them require service of both men and women.
2. Regarding combat roles being reserved exclusively for men, that is no longer true in the United States, and many men (and some women) fought tooth and nail to keep women out of combat. Many women fought tooth and nail to be allowed in combat units. It strikes me as daft to claim women are privileged because they are, until recently, excluded from something some of them want to do.

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