You may think The New Misogyny (as, I’m told, David Futrelle calls it) and the harassment and threats and sometimes plain old violence that go with it are a problem, but there are those who think the problem is instead noticing the link between misogyny and harassment—>violence.
Steve Zara @sjzara
That video seems thoughtful and describes real problems for women, but I think the leap from masculinity problems to murder is too much.
Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale
@sjzara What angers me re: that video & the hashtag &Valenti’s op-ed etc. is the cruelty of the women who think this tragedy is about *them*
Steve Zara @sjzara
I think you are homing in on what disturbs me – it’s about trying to spin tragedy for political purposes.
Steve Zara @sjzara
. @mirandachale I get deeply uncomfortable when it’s put to me that a view or campaign position is beyond any criticism, any discussion.
Melynie Withington @MelynieAZ
@sjzara@mirandachale Same thing with gun control campaigners.
Andreas Draganis @ADraganis
@MelynieAZ@sjzara@mirandachale to play devils advocate here: when are they allowed to weigh in, only after directly affected by tragedy?
Steve Zara @sjzara
@ADraganis@MelynieAZ@mirandachale Surely, all the time, because their issues are general. It’s the linkage with tragedy that seems odd.
So what is happening here is that women or feminists are “trying to spin tragedy for political purposes.” So Rodger’s murder-spree was a simple tragedy, it was in no way political, and it’s bad, suspect “spin” to view it as political.
Why?
Why would that be the case? How could that be the case? Given the manifesto and the videos and especially the just-pre-murder video, how can his murders not be political? I suppose it’s conceivable that he just felt like murdering some totally random people and the pre-murder video was a misdirection…but it’s not very plausible.
I think when somebody makes a video announcing a plan to murder and reasons for the murder, and then commits the promised murder(s), we’re allowed to take that announcement at face value.
We do that when jihadists make pre-murder videos, I think.
Even without videos and manifestos, certain kinds of murder are pretty unmistakably political. The murder of James Byrd, the guy in Texas who was dragged behind a truck and battered to death, was pretty unmistakably political, despite its random quality. The murder of Matthew Shepard was pretty unmistakably political.
Or take the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Would a Steve Zara frown in concern at people who “spin” that particular “tragedy” as political? Would a Miranda Hale express anger at the “cruelty” of the black people who think this tragedy was “about *them*”? I hardly think so.
But when it’s women? Oh that’s different.
Why is it different?
Because it’s personal..
Duh.
Haven’t feminists ever heard that the personal is private, so shut up?
If this is cruelty then it is the sort of cruelty I wholeheartedly endorse. Am I allowed to be cruel too?
Just what the heck would these people think politics is? Does it have to involve a bill, or elected representatives?
Politics is in many levels of human behavior. People “play politics” all over the place and especially when there is disagreement that involves a way that society creates divisions. Politics is precisely why there is a social “tug-of-war” being played over the concepts of misogyny, mental illness, and more.
If any disagreement breaks down into black and white slurs of groups of people instead of disagreement with the individual you are trying to communicate with politics is involved. If someone continuously tries to de-emphasize a topic with literally no reason but feelings, politics is involved. If someone is unable to argue a point without bringing in parts of the social hierarchy into equation, politics is involved.
It’s amazing the number of ways there are to twist around a legitimate subject. I hope there is a formula to this. It certainly feels formulaic.
A deeply discomforting and fucking enraging part of the “New Misogyny” is its encouragement of dull minded non-thinking. Thinking women and men are being criticized and damned for observing evidence and then making a reasoned analysis. . . what the fuck is wrong with their own thinking abilities? Their null hypothesis appears to be “I am not a belligerent pompous contrarian gas bag and never will be” and they proceed to twist their minds around disproving it. Why? What possible contribution could their braying make toward an equitable secular world? Or even an understanding of the world as it is?
I read it as simply nasty and, dare I say, narcissistic and selfish. . .
“It’s irresponsible of you to accuse PUAs of being misogynists and potentially dangerous. Where’s your evidence?”
“Well, there’s this guy, for starters….”
“It’s irresponsible of you to exploit that tragedy for political purposes!”
That’s some catch, that Catch-22.
My hypothesis: Because otherwise feminists would be right.
Steve Zara:
Brave, brave Steve Zara. Standing up for free speech in a world where nobody is allowed to criticize feminism.
A man announces his intent to kill a bunch of women because he hates them. Is it misogyny? Clearly, that’s #UpForDebate!
Because, my dear Ophelia, you obviously misunderstand the difference between boys-will-be-boys which is hahaha all in good fun why can’t you take a joke and actual violence, which we all abhor, as good people always do. And let no one fail to notice that we are good people – our concern for fairness and avoiding broad-brush characterizations of people and their motives/actions certainly makes THAT clear, doesn’t it?
That said, let’s notice that rape is overwhelmingly a crime of dominance and power. Dominating behavior that demeans the victim and forces the acknowledgment of the rapist’s superior status (power-wise). I see this all the time at the dog park. Even female dogs will hop on and hump away at other dogs (male and female). Rape is about status and dominance. Male-on-male rape likewise – this is well recognized. Nobody accuses the men who get raped of dressing too sexy or being too flirtatious. Why is that? Is it because we never want to think about, much less talk about, men being raped because eww?? Because if it is men raping men, our whole mindset that it’s all the women’s fault goes straight out the window??
Yet rape is unmistakably violence – amirite? Would ANYONE argue otherwise? Of course not – we all abhor rape, as good people always do. So why are we unwilling to look at the root causes there, as well?
The root causes there are the root causes here: the link between misogyny and harassment—>violence Misogyny is one subset of the root cause, of men (yeah, it’s overwhelmingly men, so that’s accurate – suck it if you don’t like plain speaking) – REAL men – dominating others to prove their superiority – and thus worth – within society. Why does it come down to a “might makes right”-overpowering-kind of scenario? Why do men – REAL men – so often lash out against the less powerful in these violent, and violently demeaning, degrading ways? Making someone die “like a little bitch”, as that douchenozzle Todd Kincannon characterized it, shows how this is all about status and manliness – the poisonous fruits rotting on a patriarchal cultural tree. Why, and how do we change this, and where do we start??
Todd Kincannon: http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2014/05/a-bad-dude/#more-13713
Look around us, Claire – in the public schools, what subject is under attack? It’s not English; it’s not Algebra; it’s not Art (well, maybe Art) – it’s SCIENCE O_O
The part of your quote that I bolded above – what is that but the foundation of the scientific method??
Why does it surprise us that, with the biological sciences in particular being vilified by “people of faith”, that we should see a commensurate condemnation of basic scientific thinking everywhere?
One of the criticisms of Christianity in particular and how it has NOT contributed to resolving the US’s racial divide is that Christians like to define “racism” as a “personal problem” – a spiritual malaise, if you will. If the racist individual will just “acceptJesusashispersonalsavior” and “get right with God”, then that person’s racism will go away. There is no way to legislate changes to people’s hearts, they say, so therefore, this societal problem can only be addressed on an individual-by-individual basis. I see a similar attitude with regard to Santa Barbara – this was ONE PERSON’s “spiritual malaise” or perhaps “mental illness” or “personality flaw”, so we can look at him and his actions as an aberrant individual behaving in aberrant ways. There’s nothing “societal” about it – it’s JUST ONE GUY!! How DARE you try to make it society’s fault???
The rest of us regard societal problems as requiring societal solutions. After all, societal interventions have done far more to create an equitable society featuring equal protection under the law and safeguarding individual rights and freedoms than any religion ever has.
@Bernard Hurley 2
>”Am I allowed to be cruel too?”
Yes. Because as others are noting, that behavior is not about being correct about the evidence, it’s about winning. Being dominant. These people don’t like opponents or concepts they don’t like looking dominant, and they definitely don’t like women that look dominant either. The neurotransmitter that most closely maps to dominance is testosterone and it plays the same role in women’s cognition that it does in men.
I’m unsurprised that there are active patterns in social behavior that try to suppress the ability of women to actually learn to exercise dominance as a general skill. Patterns of behavior that extend to how they get treated as a group. Women are allowed to try to win when the behavior becomes political too.
@Bjarte Foshaug 6
>”My hypothesis: Because otherwise feminists would be right.”
Yep. It’s about winning, not being correct about the world.
@Blanche Quizno 8
>”The root causes there are the root causes here: the link between misogyny and harassment—>violence Misogyny is one subset of the root cause, of men (yeah, it’s overwhelmingly men, so that’s accurate – suck it if you don’t like plain speaking) – REAL men – dominating others to prove their superiority – and thus worth – within society.”
I totally agree. Teaching appropriate use of dominance is a skill that is sorely lacking, and socially biased in how it is taught. Don’t like what that person or woman is saying? Resort to dominance tactics. Don’t like that concept being discussed? Leave you mark on it to de-emphasize it like a dog instead of rationally and logically disagreeing with it using evidence.
This is Zara’s stock and trade. Notice the language choices, “deeply uncomfortable,” is one of his favorites. He puts great effort into deploying the symbols of civility and respectable debate. This masks a mind that is much more reactionary and intractable than onlookers credit.
Steve Zara gets by a lot of peoples’ radars because most of us are (this is baffling to me, but so are many things) easily convinced an interlocutor is substantively civil simply because they deftly wield the forms of civility. Zara has perfected the image of the reserved-sober-thinking English gentleman.
He’s a moral train wreck in reality. Look at the company he keeps. Look at the social crowd he flatters. Behold him being deeply uncomfortable at people making the obvious connection between a political murderer and a political problem. Contemplate the fact that that, not anything else, is the most important thing in his mind. The thing to be commented on.
To me, to not politicize this recurrent slaughter of the innocents would be to simply accept that it is inevitable. That is something we can’t accept. It is social – misogyny or at least indifference or lack of empathy is common. It is political – ready access to firearms stirred up by a fear-mongering lobby is a grave matter of public policy. Put the two together and the effective range of one hateful PoS can be measured in kilometers instead of a few meters.
And contemplate—-I bet a lot of you didn’t know this—that Steve is a gay man. Do you imagine he’d be wringing his hands this way over an obviously motivated murder of a gay man? Do you suppose he’d call it improper politicization if LGBT organizations called for an honest assessment of the societal forces that approve of anti-gay violence?
No. And that tells us something about Zara’s moral compass and consistency of ethics.
Josh, I asked him exactly that in our heated Twitter exchange. He didn’t answer.
What he did instead was a very irritating kind of diversion: just repeatedly saying “Of course I get some things wrong, don’t we all” – just repeating that formula instead of actually engaging with anything. Ugh.
Predictable.
Sorry for dragging this thread into a whole thing about Zara. I know that’s not the issue. One of my pet issues, as you know, is the great number of Nice Reasonable people who effectively derail issues. And how we—not all of us, but yes, too many, and yes, people we know and like—nearly always fail to detect them. I think it’s a pretty pressing problem that seriously hampers social progress.
@ Josh, Official SpokesGay 11
>”“deeply uncomfortable,”
I too have encountered a great many non-specific mutterings of distaste from people unwilling to say precisely why something is disturbing beyond a vague waving in the direction of the thing. Or when they do try to articulate it it’s all just feeling about the thing with nothing substantive.
There is nothing civil about determining what you think of a thing based on feelings. At best it’s a reason to look closer. When forms get in the way of reality or actively make looking at reality harder, fuck the forms.
And there I see a common clearly political behavior pattern posted by Ophelia while typing up a response. They don’t have anything of substance, just feelings about. So it’s time to change the subject. “No! Don’t look at my reasons!” *Runs away*
There are lots of things in the world these days that make me “deeply uncomfortable.” My response as an adult is to address them, not run away from them. Zara and his fellow travelers would like this all to go away because it makes them “uncomfortable.”
Who is “them” in “they’re making it about them”? I don’t think it’s about me personally, but about how women are seen in our culture. It’s about a toxic belief system that encourages hatred and contempt of women, and a sense of entitlement to sex as if women are things and not people. Saying that women pointing this out are “cruel” is what is actually cruel. The denial even in the face of all the evidence is unbelievably cruel and insulting to all women. The guy wrote a bloody manifesto saying things like this about women in general, not about the specific victims he shot, .”I would have an enormous tower built just for myself, where I can oversee the entire concentration camp and gleefully watch them all die. If I can’t have them, no one will, I imagine thinking to myself as I oversee this. Women represent everything that is unfair in this world, and in order to make this world a fair place, women must be eradicated.”
He didn’t choose his victims because he knew them personally, they could have been any women in his line of fire.
Women represent everything that is unfair in this world, and in order to make this world a fair place, women must be eradicated.”
Notice that, if it were a black man who had done this, all we would be hearing is about how this is clearly a problem within the black community, black men -> criminally inclined, etc. etc. etc. Our hypothetical black criminal is a symptom of larger dysfunction and malaise within his group. Or an Islamic man – clearly, bad religion! Beware – this group is dangerous!!
Because the privileged majority has *no problem* dogpiling onto a minority. The more a minority is kept down and denigrated (no pun intended – different word origin – honest!), the more majority privilege is protected. Since our overriding privilege here is white privilege, it comes as no surprise that white women are joining in. You get people voting against their own interests all the time – this shouldn’t be news – and white women DO benefit from white privilege.
Here, we’ve got a problem. This was, by all accounts, a privileged white man. He was wealthy! He could afford to wear $300 Giorgio Armani sunglasses, for goshsakes!! For all the details of his ancestry, he looked and identified as white. He was obviously male. To acknowledge that he is simply a symptom of larger dysfunction and malaise within this group would be to compromise, even jeopardize, the privilege this group enjoys. Though technically a minority, this group controls the lion’s share of power, wealth, and the resulting privilege that comes with the ability to use power and wealth to disenfranchise and reduce all the other groups.
THAT is why there is such hue and cry to keep this individual reduced to his own personal identity. It was HIM, not US. And HE was obviously such an outsider – HE had nothing to do with US!
That’s what it comes down to. This guy’s obvious dysfunction threatens the mythology of the superiority in all things of the elite, privileged group. That group will do *anything* to avoid scrutiny of that house of cards that they’ve constructed to support their identity as deserving to be the ruling class. They realize on some level that the slightest puff of scrutiny of those claims could well bring the whole structure down and mean the end of this game they’ve enjoyed winning for so long. That is why the attacks against anything that bears the slightest resemblance to this sort of systematic scrutiny.
I, for one, am very glad you did. As a recent arrival into your realm, I did not understand the antipathy toward Steve Zara – my only exposure to him was the few excerpts you (pl) had quoted. His various harpy challengers sounded far more shrill and unpleasant, frankly.
But I did not understand his tendency to use the terminology of civil discourse toward uncivil ends. The more quotes of his I have seen, the more uncomfortable I have become with that juxtaposition – a pleasant-enough presentation truly goes a long way toward allaying suspicion and rational critique. “Oh, but look how nicely he presents his views! And how conflicted he obviously is! Who but a lovely human being would be both so well-spoken AND so thoughtfully conflicted??”
So thanks. I was wanting to ask for that information, but didn’t feel it would be appropriate to do so. You’ve done me a valuable service in bringing me a bit more up to speed.
What Zara’s doing is more of that goddamned whitemalelibertarian “everybody else’s life is just a thought experiment to me, because I’m so BRILLIANT” bullcrap. Why, their right to pontificate endlessly about everything completely and totally trumps people’s rights to live and not get harassed or killed. And it’s one of the major reasons I have no respect for the skeptical movement. It’s more about “HEY, WE’RE SMART!” than “let’s HELP people.”
What’s funny is that saying ‘don’t politicise the issue’ *is* politicising the issue. Here’s my word on the subject, from my tumblr:
“It’s quite simple, really. Whenever something happens in the ‘real’ world, whenever people get injured or killed due to neglect or human malevolence, there is always a cavalcade of gainsayers admonishing everyone not to ‘politicise’ the tragedy (at least whenever it’s a tragedy that can be lain at the feet of white men). Whenever there’s a shooting, the NRA falls all over itself to say that anyone who might propose reasonable gun control measures is ‘an opportunist’ who should be ashamed of themselves for taking advantage of violence for their own political ends. Whenever men attack women (in such a way as to garner widespread attention), there is a contingent of people who deny that widespread misogyny and rape culture had anything to do with it, and anyone who claims otherwise is ‘an opportunist’ who should be ashamed of themselves for taking advantage of violence for their own political ends.
We’re unlucky enough to be able to experience both of these groups of people rising in response to the horrible violence perpetrated in California. Despite the fact that the perpetrator participated in misogynist communities, despite the fact that he posted a video manifesto that positively dripped with hatred of women just before he fulfilled the threats he made with a gun. We’ve been warned on the one hand that Americans’ ready access to firearms had nothing to do with this man’s ability to slaughter people, and on the other hand that his obvious misogyny had nothing to do with his targeting of women. We’re told to shut up, not to draw any conclusions (or even engage in any kind of discussion) about the issues that this violence raises.
The thing is, these people (let’s call them ‘denialists’, since that’s what they do) always tell us to shut the fuck up, no matter what. They beat us about the head any time we talk about feminism, about social justice, about welfare or gun control or climate change or a million issues that involve compassion for other humans. So when the denialists tell us ‘don’t politicise this tragedy’, they’re turning the tragedy into a political attack against us.
There’s a difference between politics and culture, just as there’s a difference between politics and policy. Politics entails using real-world events to orchestrate attacks on one’s opponents or to shore up support amongst one’s allies. That’s not always a bad thing; often, it’s a vital and necessary activity in order to successfully enact policy and/or shape culture. But political activities are not synonymous with policy or cultural activities. Pretending that they are is inherently political, since it serves no purpose but to attack your enemies and bolster your allies.
But, of course, we cannot expect anti-feminists and misogynists to be consistent.”
@UnknownEric the Apostate 23
>”And it’s one of the major reasons I have no respect for the skeptical movement. It’s more about “HEY, WE’RE SMART!” than “let’s HELP people.””
That’s because they decide to turn on the “skepticism” (that hyper-skepticism thing) when someone wants to help people (or direct attention at people that need help) that they don’t want to be reminded need help. It’s not the skepticism as much as it’s the lack of reason at applying skepticism. Reason, skepticism, and logic are all tools with rational uses, and irrational uses.
@Seth 24
Yeah, the circularity is amazing. “Don’t do that thing that we do when we want to compete in groups!”.
It all boils down to Fight/Flight/Freeze responses in each interaction that is in itself political and thus justifies the need to:
*Emphasize/de-emphasize/hide one’s own and the existence, motives and information of others
*Manipulate/deceive with respect to the existence, motives and information of others
*Redirect challenges and questions away from oneself and on onto others
*Create connections to terrible/wonderful but irrelevant objects outside of the subject of the political interaction
*Center the discussion on anything but the subject and it’s logical connections
All leading to frequent and unnecessary references to authorities, social groups and categories of things with no rational link to the situation at hand, or a more distant link that avoids the precious emotionally sensitive subject.
Fight
Fight the analysis of misogyny as an individual concept. Fight misogyny as a motive of the killer. Fight the role of guns. Fight the idea that group privilege is related to this situation or anything. Fight the people trying to make connections and arguments that one does not like. What one chooses to fight tells stories about them.
Flight
Flee from supporting one’s reasons for changing the subject or trying to introduce a subject. Flee from logical connections that one finds personally uncomfortable. Flee from considering problems with one’s self and groups or symbols/ideology. Flee from information or arguments that might make a disliked group look good in any way. What one chooses to flee from (things they don’t respond to or redirect from) tells stories about them.
Freeze
I’m not so sure about this one. But if it’s a legitimate category it bears thinking about. It may be mostly behind the scenes and in hard to interpret length of time for reply.
It’s a morally neutral system though. What matters is if the emotionally based political behavior can be reasonable and logically justified. Everyone should be familiar with how it works.
I am comparing this with the story of David Copeland, the London nail bomber. Though he was not as articulate as Rodger he left people in no doubt that he hated Black people, hated Asian people and hates homosexuals – apparently in that order for he left his bombs first at Brixton Market (significant African and Afro-Caribbean population) then at Brick Lane (majority Bangladeshi population in the immediate area) and then at the Admiral Duncan Pub in Soho. Though this last is famous as a gay pub it is one with a very mixed gay and straight clientele and a general tourist attraction.
Though Copeland inflicted serious injuries on many people, he only managed to kill one straight pregnant woman and two gay men, all white.
In the wake of that no-one (and I do mean no-one at all) argued that the identities of the dead over-rode the fact that he was a racist and had set out to kill Black people, as all available evidence indicated.
It only happens when people are attempting to escape the implications of unchecked misogyny. Strange!
To wade a little late into the Zara-bashing, I’m less antagonistic toward him than some but I’ve become more so recently.
I’ve enjoyed some interesting discussions with Steve over quite a few years. When he’s been wrong, he’s seemed to graciously admit it.
But those discussions were either academic or hypothetical. And now I come to think of it, when I say ‘graciously admit’ i mean he said he’d have to think about it before disengaging. More recently, I’ve found the idea of his going away to think about things and reporting back with better ideas ringing hollow, particularly because I’ve never seen any of the better ideas. But I could easily have missed them.
Why the change in attitude? Because by chance I’ve seen him say more stuff about actual people’s lives than previously. As others have already said, he seems to see those as academic or hypothetical situations too. I can never quite pull that trick off. I think that in general he’s genuinely trying to understand something, but it usually seems that what he’s trying to understand is why everyone’s telling him he’s wrong, even though the criticisms are usually very similar, regardless of the subject. And then he goes away to think about it. And then says the same sorts of thing again next time he pops up.
I think he means well, but he’s missing something fundamental (something we’ve seen missing in notable others) and has had ample thinking opportunity by now. I think he might be able to learn but I don’t have enough patience left to be one of his teachers.
Josh has criticised me in the past for showing support for Steve. Josh’s instincts are better than mine, I’ve regretted not listening to them more than once.
Yes, I think that “graciously admitting” stuff is one reason (there are a few) I find him so irritating. It’s a show: as you say, he just says it, and then does nothing.
Another reason is that he’s way too into that kind of show; into self-display, and self-admiring proclamations about himself. He’s got new ones on Twitter right now. Like:
That’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s the self-admiration aspect that just makes me want to hurl.
And he does all this nonsense while pontificating about matters that affect other people but not him. It’s not a good look. And he can’t even seem to grasp that much – apparently because he’s just too enamored of his self-image as Thoughtful and Inquiring.
Yeah. Some people here will remember that Steve and Paula both became particular darlings of the RDF mmnnmmn mnnmmn years ago, I was never sure why their comments in particular earned them the accolades it apparently did.
I have a better understanding now.
Why am I so bad at judging character? I need to go away and think about that…