When I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, the worst thing you could call me was anything feminine like bitch, girl or pussy. Some of the ass kickings I ever so lovingly dealt to my younger brother, if not for cashing in on my older brother “privilege” were on account of these types of insults. There was a direct correlation between the severity of the ass kicking and how feminine the insult was. I recall one time giving my brother a pile driver into the pavement and calling him a pussy to discourage him from telling our mom that I just gave him a pile driver into the pavement for calling me a pussy. However, I too knew how effective these insults were and I did not spare myself the opportunity to freely toss them around at people either.
Unfortunately, feminists are also well aware of this and in their pursuits to prove the world is rife with misogyny and that men hate women by design they sometimes throw this little factoid down like it was a straight flush in a hand of poker. BAM! Jessica Valenti dropped it in her book Full Frontal Feminism almost a decade ago:
“What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back, now. You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina.” Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.”
Madonna made a similar observation back in 2000 with her song “What it Feels Like For a Girl”.
Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short
Wear shirts and boots ’cause it’s okay to be a boy
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading
‘Cause you think that being a girl is degrading
But secretly you’d love to know what it’s like
Wouldn’t you, what it feels like for a girl?
This is the video where Madonna picks up some old lady, presumably her grandmother and hops into a sports car to go for a drive and spends the rest of the video hitting every parked car in the greater Los Angeles area as well as a kid playing road hockey before crashing into a pole in the middle of no where. Not sure what Madonna’s feminist message was supposed to be but after watching it I couldn’t help wonder if maybe the Saudi’s were on to something. Check that shit out for yourself below and tell me Madge doesn’t deserve a visit from the Department of Motor Vehicles and local law enforcement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKUVnsbl2fM
I would tell Jessica Valenti or anyone else for that matter that as a man, being called a woman is in fact the ultimate insult to me, and no, that is not royally fucked up. Jessica knows this all too well, it’s her readers that don’t which is what makes this such a profitable career for Jessica.
To understand why men are insulted for the most part at feminine insults we need some perspective. Imagine it this way. You are in a sports league with your friends. Tonight you have an important game. A lot of people are counting on you. They need you to be ready and mentally prepared. So you ate a good meal and got lots of rest the night before. You show up to the venue just before the game, you suit up and put all your hockey pads on. You lace up your skates good and tight and make sure your jock is sitting properly over your groin. You strap on your helmet making sure it is sitting properly on your head and that it is securely fastened. You grab your hockey stick and do one last check to make sure everything is good to go. You’re fucking ready. It’s time to do this shit. With pride, confidence and determination you charge out onto the baseball field.
You are no doubt ready to play some pretty serious hockey but you will be judged on your utility to the group’s collective efforts at winning in baseball. You didn’t bring a glove, your not wearing cleats or the sort of athletic apparel conducive to running fast and being agile. Your contributions to the collective effort will not be appreciated as you had hoped tonight.
That is what it is like being male except you are always playing one sport known as masculinity or, will at least always be expected to if you are hoping to be valued by society. If not you’re kicked to the curb, the dustbin of society with fewer social safety nets available to you than there are for women. It’s not that being a woman is an insult but when your social worth is judged by what you are as a man, calling him a woman strips him completely of every quality and aspect of the identity society has made him work so hard for to endear himself to women and prove himself to the culture. You can issue the exact same insult in different words. Rather than call a man a “woman” or telling him to “put his purse down” you can tell him to “man up” or show him what your desired standard of him is by saying “real men _______ (<- insert what you want him to do or be here)”. Now, some feminists might interject here and say “yeah, but real men can cry”, as evidence that feminism does offer men the occasional reprieve from masculinity, which is true to a slight degree. The important thing to note here of course is that it is usually only acceptable for men to cry when those tears pose no risk to a woman’s well being. If a man cried every time he had to help fend off an invading army or kill an animal to feed his family, tribe or community, you can rest assured his genes weren’t going anywhere and his tears would happily be bathed in. Generally speaking, male tears are most welcome when they validate the feminine or come as an overwhelming submission to other emotions in benign social contexts.
You might find that something similar happens if you accidentally call a Canadian an American. The butthurt isn’t rooted in the fact that being an American is an actual insult or something inherently inferior or degrading even if it is displayed that way to compensate for the insult itself, but the fact that we have been stripped of the aspects of national pride that form a Canadian identity. You might also find this if you mistake a Kiwi for an Aussie and vice versa.
Emily Pankhurst also shares my opinion. For those of you who might not know, Emily Pankhurst was one of the early Suffragettes in Britain who campaigned for wealthy women to get the vote. She handed out white feathers to young men who had not voluntarily joined the British Army to fight Germany. This white feather was a symbol of social shame and a black mark upon a man’s masculinity in that his cowardice was preventing him from fulfilling his obligations to protect the women of Britain. I have never read Jessica’s book Full Frontal Feminism but I trust that she addressed this point accordingly and called out the highly celebrated feminists who got women the right to vote for effectively calling every young man in Britain she handed a white feather to a “girl, bitch [and] pussy” as that is exactly what that white feather meant, the difference being that it sent men to their deaths, but hey, Misogyny kills.
There are other examples of this throughout world history as well where women’s collective voice sought to force men into roles that would help define masculinity. The book Women, War and Violence: Topography, Resistance, and Hope (available for a paltry $239.93 CAD on Amazon) points to the women of the Iroquois Nation of 1600 as an example of where women gained power over traditionally male affairs. Through an act of rebellion similar to the type that American women did to bring about prohibition, these ladies engaged in something called lysistratic non-action which means to boycott sex. Women were able to gain a powerful voice that determined when the men of the tribe declared war and peace.
“This nonviolent action has been considered the first feminist rebellion in the United States.”
Sadly, this voice wasn’t used to stop war, and it wasn’t used to include women in the fighting of war itself. It allowed women to determine what wars provided the greatest yield towards the collective interest. Feminists were so busy giving each other congratulatory pats on the back after the discovery of this opportunity to coopt the achievements of the Iroquois women that they overlooked a tiny event that followed roughly 50 years later. The somewhat ironically named “Beaver Wars”; one of the worst atrocities to take place on North American soil that almost completely wiped out the Huron, Erie, Shawnee and Susquehannock tribes.
Like the young men of Britain, the young men of the Iroquois nation likely didn’t want to go to war, but the value of this role to the women of the tribe was enough to send young men eagerly to face their potential death. In the face of a bayonet or a ball headed war club, these men either displayed their masculinity or the lack thereof. Your survival and the survival of your society were contingent upon this. Consider that many dead soldiers are found with pictures of wives, girlfriends and loved ones in their pockets. This has in some scenarios been how dead soldiers were identified. Air force pilots often keep pictures of the women they love in the top liner of their helmets. Sailors have done the same. In a non military example, Sir George Leigh Mallory’s daughter indicated that he started the climb of Mount Everest carrying a picture of his wife with the intention of leaving it on the summit. The fact that the picture was not found on his body is one of the things some point to in order to make the case he did in fact make it to the summit. Feminine qualities are wonderful things that our society needs just as much as the masculine, but they don’t do much good on the battlefield, or while hunting, or while gathering food, or facing shitty elements or exploring new worlds in pursuit of something our society needs.
We live in a society today where wars are less frequent, but the masculine role is still required elsewhere in its operation and maintenance. While male innovation now affords women the opportunity to step out from their equally limited but otherwise relatively safe roles, women often still demonstrate strong attraction to these masculine characteristics even today. While Masculinity is often described as a role or set of roles, it has also developed its own unique character that is not necessarily associated with the role itself. Some people might describe the whole “bad boy” image as one of being extremely masculine regardless of what the persons function within society is. A gay man who is somewhat effeminate can easily adopt a masculine role like that of a police officer and protect others. Feminine women can do this as well.
It can often be very interesting to see how men develop when they measure their own social value in a manner that is outside of the reach of women, such as is the case with gay men. Some gay men can be described as exhibiting mannerisms commonly associated with femininity to some degree. Even Jessica Valenti herself listed the word “fag” among her list of feminine insults. There is even a word for gay men who are deemed excessively feminine; “flaming”. One could theorize that a man not trying to attract a woman himself is liberated from adopting a masculine identity or masculin mannerisms. Furthering that, it might be arguable that on some level, psychologically speaking, some gay men may need or at least feel the need to adopt more feminine mannerisms and qualities as they draw themselves into direct competition with women for men in the social dating pool. Whatever the case, the very fact that some gay men voluntarily adopt feminine mannerisms not only provides evidence that men are not turned off by a feminine identity, but that they will willingly cast off a more masculine one in order to compete more effectively for mating partners from the desired pool of sexual prospects.
What is a word that gay women are sometimes referred to as? Butch, tom boy? These aren’t particularly endearing words either but it might serve to suggest that these are the qualities and characteristics some lesbians feel they need to assume as part of their identity when drawn into competition for women with men. Valenti seemed to overlook the fact that stripping a woman of her gender identity can also be insulting.
While we are on the topic, what about homophobia? As I stated earlier, I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s when homophobia was in its prime. Calling me gay back then was a horrendous crime. But it was much worse if you called me gay in front of a girl or group of girls. I never cared if my friends liked skinny girls, fat girls, long haired girls, red headed girls, black girls, aboriginal girls, Asian girls, handicapped girls, but a dude? Nope! Not happening. You couldn’t even be associated with a homosexual back then. You could not be associated with anything that did not place femininity as the central piece of that which is most valued. Didn’t stop me from slapping my team mates on the ass saying “good game” while they left the bench or left the field as has long been customary. If someone mistook me as a homosexual today I would not feel the compulsion to correct them. To be a homosexual is about as insulting as being called vegan. A preference for one thing over something else is the most irrelevant of ways to categorize people unless you work in marketing.
Personally speaking, I do not fault or begrudge the transgendered community for their elevated interest in being accurately referred to with their desired pronouns as this will determine what side of the gender fence their social worth will be situated. Many if not most of them know and understand everything I have mentioned all too well, if not to a greater degree than the cisgendered in that they are put at a biological deficit to identify as a gender that does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.
In other examples of how masculinity, or the impression and image thereof is rewarded and valued by women, consider the level of hybristophilia shown towards serial killers and otherwise sick fucks in prison. According to some reports, Ted Bundy at one point was receiving up to 200 love letters a day from women all over the world while he was on trial. Women showed up in droves outside of his courthouse fashioning themselves with long hair parted in the middle and wearing hoop earrings that was believed to be what described his preferred type of victim. Ted Bundy might have been considered attractive, but Josef Fritzl (locked his daughter in his basement for 24 years and raped her repeatedly) wasn’t and women were filling his inbox with love letters as well. Charles Manson was engaged to marry a woman one third of his age although it turned out that she was just in it for his corpse. The more prolific the killer, the more attention he gets. While I wouldn’t credit these men as having true masculinity in the standard sense of the role behind that word, women are rewarding them en masse for criminal behavior which was most often carried out on other men and presented an image that was a mutation of what hyper masculinity is presumed to be.
Opposite to the point above, some school shooters and mass murderers have expressed their lack of social worth in the eyes of women before going on a shooting spree in a public place. Elliot Rodger and Chris Harper-Mercer are several recent examples. Adam Lanza, the mass murderer of Sandy Hook Elementary School was a social outcast, and from the look of him, there is little mystery as to why that might be.
As another example of how men either instinctively know or learn very early on in life that our worth is measured by our utility to women or the perceived set of values associated with it is that some of the most outspoken critics against our advocacy is other men. David Futrelle has made a full time career out of defending some women’s feelings over the physical well being of men. We here in these antifeminist communities relentlessly expose evidence of feminism’s underhanded and misguided advocacy to the crying protests of numerous people including not just other men, but men who are afflicted by the very things we advocate for. Have you ever met a feminist father who is being denied access by the courts to his kids? Don’t laugh, these guys exist.
In relating this to myself, when I was in university, trying to find a woman was an obsession, a full time job to the detriment of grades. That was part of the reason many of us went to university. To find, develop the skills to provide and care for a woman who we would one day share our lives with. It was the undercurrent of almost everything many of us did. I find it hilarious to think that my ultimate life’s goal was to somehow attract and be worthy of someone who holds the very feminine characteristics and traits that feminists pretend I find so insulting or that I am too good to wear myself.
If women didn’t like and demand masculine traits in men, they wouldn’t exist. If women wanted feminine traits in men, I’d be so flaming and fabulously feminine that I would set cars ablaze from 70 feet away, I would not be allowed in wooded areas during fire bans and iced tea would sizzle the moment it touched my lips. It is not an issue of men being too good to be feminine, the issue is that being feminine wouldn’t make men good enough for many women.
Sorry to fuck up your day feminists. Go ahead and file this one under misogyny.
Ryan (Math4Feminists)
