The self-confessed feminist Amanda Marcotte wants us to know that the word misandry, or “hatred of men”, is “nonsense”. In a post at her blog “Pandagon”, she writes:
“Growing up and wanting something from women and finding out that they can say “no”—despite the fact that they were put here to serve you!—is often extremely distressing to men. The invention of the nonsense word “misandry” goes back to this. Men who fling it about are, in my experience, usually referring to women refusing to give them something they believe they’re owed: sex. . . etc”
No Amanda, men who fling that word around are usually referring to something far more basic.
They are usually referring to HATRED OF MEN.
And what part of that idea can you not wrap your mind around? I am a man, and I have no difficulty understanding what “hatred of men” might possibly mean – although such feelings might only be a form of male privilege, right?
But seriously – Amanda Marcotte calls misandry a “nonsense word”, yet she never tells us why it is a nonsense word. She just calls it a nonsense word, and evidently thinks her mere feminist say-so should be enough to command our belief. After all, she’s a feminist, so she ought to know, right? She’d have been less slippery and more honest if she’d said nonsensical instead of “nonsense”. But never mind, I’ll do my best with the material as given.
All right. If I am not mistaken, “nonsense” signifies “lacking sense” – hence, a “nonsense word” would be a word that lacks sense. So according to Amanda Marcotte, the word misandry lacks sense. I would like to interrogate this a bit, so I will share, as follows, the definition of misandry given in the Oxford English Dictionary (click to enlarge):
All right, maybe I’m bloody thick, but I’m not discerning any lack of sense here – not quite yet, anyway. According to the venerable O.E.D., misandry has a very definite sense indeed – and that sense is tersely intoned in a way that cuts right to the root. So what the hell is Amanda Marcotte’s problem?
If there is any “nonsense” hereabouts, I believe we could cull it from Amanda Marcotte’s very own words. One might sensibly assume that when people talk about misandry, they mean to address the subject of disaffection toward men. I would certainly think so – wouldn’t you? But to hear Amanda talk, you’d think that hatred of men doesn’t even exist in this world at all.
According to Amanda Marcotte, when men “fling” this “nonsense word”, they are not really talking about anti-male bigotry in society. Most people would sensibly assume they were talking about that, but Amanda Marcotte knows better because she is a feminist!
You see, thanks to her more evolved feminist sense, Amanda Marcotte knows that when men “fling” the “nonsense” word misandry, they are only voicing their sexual frustration and desire to control women. Mind you, Amanda knowsthis about men – she just knows it! She doesn’t even specify which men – she just says “men”, and says it in print from the safety of her blog screen. So she ducks the responsibility to name any particular MAN, and look him squarely in the eye, and stand behind her words. Clearly Amanda Marcotte is nothing if not an intellectual coward. But hey, that is how feminists roll – or at least in my experience.
Let’s put this in vulgar, Anglo-Saxon English: Amanda Marcotte is pulling stuff out of her ass. But then, Amanda is a feminist, so she can do that, right? I mean, feminists are just ”privileged” that way, aren’t they? Regular people like you and I might question whether a self-confessed feminist may speak with authority on men’s minds and motives, and we might severely interrogate the authenticity of their pretended knowledge. But then, we are not feminists, are we? So what do we know? Pulling stuff out of your ass is simply the feminist way, and we shouldn’t get all wound up about it, should we?
About three years ago, or so, Amanda Marcotte published an article in the left-leaning online journal Slate. On that article’s comment thread she posted a statement which, I am told, has since disappeared.
Here, Marcotte does far worse than to trivialize false rape accusation – as if that wasn’t bad enough! She strongly insinuates that if you are a man, and won’t be silent about the rape of male human rights in the criminal justice system, then you are a “rapist waiting to happen.” That is the only construction I am able to draw from Amanda Marcotte’s words, and if she means anything different from this, then she owes the non-feminist world an explanation.
Ironically, Marcotte’s idea that outspoken men are rapists-in-waiting is, if not precisely a false accusation, most certainly a false imputation – and in my considered opinion that puts it on the same moral spectrum of operations as false accusation. One readily sees how this cultural soil, so common to feminism generally, would contribute to the flourishing of actual false accusation.
In early 2007, Amanda made clear her feelings about the Duke lacrosse false-rape fiasco. Decent people everywhere will now admit that this episode was a vile blot upon our history – an attempted lynching under color of judicial procedure, with left-wingers and feminists in particular roaring their approval. As for Amanda Marcotte, she published (and later deleted) the following infamous statement on a blog post titled “Stuck at the Airport Again”:
“I‘ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good fucking god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and fucked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”
Amanda elsewhere made clear that in her opinion, if you defend the Duke defendants, you are “rape-loving scum”. I know that she later tried to spin all of this as hip, ironic sarcasm or something like that, but I’m not buying it. If she did not authentically believe what she was saying, then why on earth would she wish – ironically or otherwise – to give the impression that she did? My own impression is that she stuck her foot in her mouth, and then tried to cover her ass – an ungainly sequence of operations as I’m sure you’ll agree.
It looks mighty clear that Amanda Marcotte was part of the feminist virtual lynch-mob that wanted to “string ‘em up.” I recall how most of the star feminist bloggers took rabid part in this drama, and showed their solidarity by displaying, on their various websites, a small jpeg graphic with a candle and the words “virtual vigil”. Regrettably, I lacked the presence of mind, in those days, to archive a copy of that little web sticker.
Amanda Marcotte was determined, in the teeth of all notabilities, to believe that the Duke lacrosse defendants were guilty of the charges filed against them. This conclusion was a fixed point in her mind and nothing could budge it – no, not even common sense, common decency, or contrary evidence which towered to the skies. To Amanda’s mind, the defendants were guilty until proven innocent, guilty after proven innocent, and guilty no matter what! Objective guilt or innocence meant nothing to Amanda Marcotte and, I presume, still don’t.
So this is the self-confessed feminist who would have us believe that misandry – meaning ingrained prejudice against men – is a “nonsense word”. This is the self-confessed feminist who would have us believe that false accusation of rape is nothing to get wound up about. This is the self-confessed feminist who would have us believe that men who DO get wound up about false accusation, are potential rapists. This is the self-confessed feminist who presumes to speak with authority upon men’s minds and motives. And finally, this is the self-confessed feminist who hides behind feminism, and will not look any MAN in the eye and say, to him, what she says about “men”.
From all of this frightful tangle a pattern emerges, to which we now direct our attention.
Please observe that Amanda Marcotte, the self-confessed feminist, does not want to admit that misandry is a real thing. She calls it a “nonsense word”, but with the help of the Oxford English Dictionary we have shown that this word has a very definite sense. The notion of contempt for men or the male sex is not, by any stretch, incoherent, or self-contradictory, or at odds with rational possibility. In sum, it is not non-sensical – nor, hence, is the word which signifies it.
So we are forced to conclude that when Amanda Marcotte calls misandry a “nonsense word”, she means that no such thing as actual misandry exists in the world. There is nothing else that she possibly could mean.
Her use of “nonsense” rather than “non-sensical” is simply a mental roadblock, meant to impede examination and forestall clarity. Thus, in one clean stroke she poisons the well against any critical view of her story about men’s minds and motives. After all, if misandry doesn’t exist, then her account of reality sounds like the only game in town. And Amanda Marcotte’s account of reality is, frankly. . . the feminist account. So if you wonder why so many feminists bristle at the idea of misandry, now you know. They’re bristling at the competition.
If you disallow the idea of misandry, you also disallow the idea that hostility could be directed against men as a class. When you do THAT, you set up all men, everywhere, as a collective sitting duck for manipulatory ideologies. And to make the recipe complete, you must promote the idea of misogyny as vigorously as you denounce the idea of misandry. That way, you may construct a narrative of class hostility against women (rather than men), and make available to women a potent moral weapon which is unavailable to men.
Amanda Marcotte clearly wishes to isolate men from each other and prevent them from existing politically. Feminists everywhere conform to this pattern of operation. For by admitting the reality of misandry, you empower the male voice exponentially, and feminists everywhere show an instinctive understanding of this. Amanda Marcotte certainly does.
This also explains Amanda’s presumption of omniscience when she speculates about men’s minds and motives. In her view, men may exist as a class only if this is understood to be a ruling class fitted for destruction. So her intellectual cowardice at looking a MAN in the eye, reveals the brittle nature of her underlying narrative. Too much concrete reality, too much existentiality, and the entire man-hating paradigm would crumble. You might say, that for misandry to flourish you must deny the existence of it.
Amanda Marcotte’s embarrassing gaffe on the Slate comment thread falls right into line with our discussion. That she pooh-poohs the entire issue of false rape accusation, flows from her subtext that misandry does not exist – for to admit the seriousness of false accusation would greatly pave the way to admitting the existence of misandry. At the very least, it would tend to fuel the rise of political class consciousness among men, and to legitimize male class struggle.
Finally, Amanda’s other painful gaffe, while stuck at the airport, betrays the identical underlying theme. False accusation of rape, in her universe, simply does not happen – because, you know, “women don’t lie” – and whoever begs to differ is rape-loving scum! For to admit that false accusation indeed does happen – to come clean about the lie that women don’t lie! – would rip the mask off cultural misandry itself and reveal its pustulent face to all the world.
A bright red thread emerges from all of the foregoing discussion. It is this: that when men cry out angrily against evil things which are done to men as a class, a severe cultural backlash will predictably follow and feminism will be at the very core of this backlash.
That sums up MISANDRY better than anything else that I can think of.
And Amanda Marcotte is man-hating, false-rape apologizing scum.
– Fidelbogen (THE COUNTER-FEMINIST)
