Confessions of a Neckbeard

[inverarity]

Following Christopher Priest's rant about the Arthur C. Clarke awards, there have been echoes reverberating all over the Internet, particularly as a result of Catherynne Valente's observation that a woman wouldn't get away with that shit.

This really shouldn't be that controversial. And yet, in the comments of Valente's own posts, as well as all the people talking about it, there are all these neckbeards engaging in lengthy diatribes about how it's so haaaaard to be a man and bitches be crazywomen can be so meeeeeeean!

I mean, some dude actually told Valente, after she recounted her own horrific childhood experiences of bullying and then stated that she's a rape survivor, that she had it easy! Because girls were totally mean to him in school!

Holy shit. Just STFU. STFU forever.

This strikes home for me because... I used to be That Guy. Okay, not the guy who told a rape survivor that women have it easy — I don't think I was ever that big of a douche. (If I was, I have thankfully blotted it from my memory and I'm just glad no one ever gave me the beat-down I deserved.) But I was your typical nerdy dude who was totally pro-feminism but could still pull out Mansplainin' 101 about how Women Don't Appreciate Nice Guys and Of Course No One Deserves To Be Raped But If You Walked Through Central Park At Night Flashing a Roll of Cash... and other classics in that vein.

I am pretty ashamed of my younger self, I am. (Not just for those things, but they certainly give me no small amount of painful recollection.)

I make no claim to perfection now. I try to engage viewpoints I don't agree with in a thoughtful manner, and if I still don't agree with them, I'll be measured in my disagreement unless it's just downright offensive or batshit insane. I keep a somewhat cynical eye on a lot of drama & social justice sites, agreeing with much of what is said, thinking that a lot more is rather unnuanced or self-serving or kneejerk, but unlike my younger self, I don't feel a need to jump in and say "U R RONG!" When I do get into it, I have learned to walk away from arguments that are unproductive or in which the other person is clearly a troll and sees all interactions as a win/lose binary that cannot be resolved until someone cries uncle.

The thing is, when this is an argument over Harry Potter, it's merely annoying, provoking a head shake and some eye-rolling, but when it's guys telling women that their silly lady-brains are seeing misogyny that doesn't really exist, it's contributing to the very thing they are claiming doesn't exist.

This also strikes home because of course I am a big genre fan, and I even like some of those big genre works that get neckbeards so het up when people criticize them. And yet, holy shit, the rage that spews out of the keyboard-wielding howler monkeys of the Internet when a woman criticizes the things they love!

Some (in)famous examples:

• Liz Bourke's eviscerating review of Theft of Swords.
  
• _allecto_ pretty much calling Joss Whedon a rapist.
  
• Sady Doyle calling George R. R. Martin creepy and misogynistic.
  
• Pretty much everything acrackedmoon writes at Requires Only That You Hate.
  

Now, I do not agree with what all of the above women say. And one can intelligently disagree with them. I mean, I think _allecto_'s criticisms of Joss Whedon, in particular, are reeeeeeeeally reaching (it's one thing to say you don't think his work deserves all its feminist accolades, it's quite another to say that perceived misogyny in his work means the man himself is a rapist). I haven't actually read A Game of Thrones so don't have much of an opinion on it, but Doyle does seem to stretch a few of her points a bit, and I understand she was pretty nasty to some feminist bloggers who disagreed with her. I love ROTYH, but I don't always agree with acrackedmoon (man, ACM, why you gotta keep harshin' on Evil Stevie? And I still like Harry Potter and The Name of the Wind, so nyah nyah!), and I think she can at times be a little too quick to go for the jugular.



But. All of these women get a shit-ton of nerdrage and fucking rape threats dumped on them. I read a lot of bombastic bloggers, male and female, and while men get namecalled and disagreed with, even at their most vitriolic it's usually more of a schoolyard let's-beat-each-other-up-and-have-a-beer-afterwards exchange that's as much backslapping as brawling. My worst and most nasty trolls did some taunting and dickwaving, but no one threatened me, and if they did, we'd both know they were full of shit and it was hot air. Kathy Sierra and Seanan McGuire have received death threats accompanied by personally identifying information.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?



ETA: Locked. Not because I'm a mean ol' lefty who can't stand to hear dissenting opinions (though I expect that's what jordan179 is going to claim), but because I have to go to work, I cannot access LJ at work, and I really don't want to read ten more pages of this shit when I get home.

Comments

Re: Victims

[tealterror0.livejournal.com]

You were unclear on this question in your original post.

I really was not. But if you want me to be absolutely crystal-clear: individual need.

Sure I do. It would be a society in which your "race" or sex did not affect anyone else's opinion of you save in very narrow biological terms (he sunburns easy, she can bear children).

Racism and sexism are not solely about personal opinions. v_v

If you have no idea what true racial and sexual equality looks like, how do you know how far away we are from achieving it?

Ummm...because minorities and women obviously have it worse off than whites and men?

If it's anything other than color-blind and sex-blind, which is what I advocate, then how do you know that (for instance) the modern West is more racially and sexually equal than the 18th century West, or for that matter World War II Imperial Japan?

...Seriously? Um, well, there's no slavery for one. Women are allowed to work, all adults are allowed to vote (technically)...was this supposed to be a trick question?

By your definitions, I see absolutely nothing effective that anyone can do to help the situation.

You are correct. No one can do anything, as an individual. As a group, however--or a social movement, say--something most certainly can be done. Historically speaking actually, progress on these fronts has always come about because of social movements, not because individual people changed their minds about race and sex.

Blah blah blah liberals are the real racists blah blah

Thank you very much for psychoanalyzing me over the internet. I feel like I know myself so much better now after having someone I've never met explain to me exactly how I think.

EDIT: Did you read the article about colorblind racism?

Re: The Sainted Martyr Treyvon Martin

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

... that the first media reports had very dishonestly edited Zimmerman's conversation with the 911 dispatcher;

This is true but it doesn't really matter.

It matters because the whole notion that Zimmerman was obsessed with Martin's race comes from the dishonest editing of the tapes. Zimmerman didn't even mention Martin's race until asked "what race is he?"

... He still followed Martin despite being expressly told not to.

True, but merely following someone does not constitute reasonable provocation to assault and battery.

How does being 17 years old or carrying skittles or iced tea make one incapable of launching an unprovoked physical attack on somebody else?

Because normally we don't expect 17-year-old kids to attack people, ...

???!!!

Sorry ... did you grow up in a very low-crime area? Teens just under the age of majority, if at all "bad," tend to commit a lot of minor crimes, precisely because they know that they won't do a lot of time if convicted of them.

... especially people older and bigger than them, ...

Zimmerman was about 30 lbs heavier than Martin, but also several inches shorter than Martin. Since Martin probably didn't know that Zimmerman was armed, it may well have looked like not too unreasonable a fight to start and expect to win.

... for no reason.

Ah, but if Martin was part of a "thug" culture -- as his Twitter account implies -- he had a "reason." Just not a very good reason.'

Zimmerman would have been "dissing" Martin by asking him questions and following him. Martin would have felt that his "street cred" was imperiled if he suffered such an insult without administering a beating to Zimmerman.

I would also like to repeat that I find it really strange that you think a 17-year-old attacking somebody for no reason is a more likely turn of events than a white guy (or I think he's half-Hispanic or something?) thinking a black kid is suspicious and so shooting him.

Because 17-year-olds are notoriously impulsive, because Martin's Twitter site indicated that he belonged to a thug culture, and because thug cultures are notoriously aggressive, and because people usually do not shoot other people for absolutely no motive other than "you're suspicious."

Oh, and Zimmerman is Hispanic, though to me that doesn't matter that much. Nor does it matter much to me that Martin was black -- if he'd belonged to one of the white criminal subcultures, I'd suspect that he started the fight for the exact same reasons.

[tealterror0.livejournal.com]

I would benefit the most from a society in which the minimum possible irrational prejudice existed.

I highly doubt that. What if the irrational prejudice was "Jordan179 is awesome and deserves to get anything he wants"?

"Affirmative action" is highly relevant to the issue, since it shows that whites and males can suffer racial and sexual oppression,

No it doesn't.

Because Jews tended to have higher than average marks, colleges in that day set maximum quotas of Jewish students they would accept.

Quotas are a bad idea, I agree.

Today, we directly oppress East Asians in the exact same manner, despite the fact that they are "persons of color" in the (absurd) PC parlance.

First of all, recognizing the fact that you have certain advantages over other groups, and so compensating those groups for their disadvantages, is not oppression. (Asians are oppressed in modern America in a number of ways, but academic admissions does not tend to be one of them.)

Second of all, saying things like "absurd PC parlance" and putting persons of color in square-quotes really does not help your argument.

Or do they deserve to be selected against because of the sins of their ancestors?

Well, kind of. Because of the sins of our ancestors, we have many advantages that blacks, latinos, etc. do not. As such, we have an unfair advantage when it comes to academic admissions and job applications (read this article if you haven't yet).

Asians, for various sociohistorical reasons, do not suffer from this disadvantage when it comes to academic admissions. In many other areas they do however suffer racism (including in academia itself of course; just not in the admissions process for the most part). Admittedly I could be wrong about this--I don't know a lot about this topic--so I may be making a fool out of myself on this point.

You directly asked me a question about the shooting of Trayvon Martin, otherwise I would have said nothing about it as it was not very relevant to the issue at hand.

I didn't expect you to turn around and defend Zimmerman. Maybe I should've.

Women being incapable of insulting men right back because what, the Privilege Police will come arrest them for Violation of Male Privilege?

Nice strawman. If they do, that will only be taken as more evidence that they are a "bitch" and so on some level deserve to be shouted down.

"Rape threats" are not only immoral and illogical but actually illegal,

And that makes so much of a difference when it comes to anonymous comments! No, wait...

I'm suggesting a solution which is actually within the power of each individual woman to achieve and does not require generations of social change.

What you are suggesting is not a solution.

Let me go through this very slowly. Plenty of women already have thick skin. As a matter of fact, you suggesting that the major issue here is that women are too sensitive not only displays in bright, shining lights your male privilege, but also is fairly sexist in and of itself.

It does not matter how thick skin women might have. What matters is that they are forced to have thick skin when men are not. I'm sorry, I don't care how immune to criticism you might be, rape threats and insults on the level of "Shut up you fucking bitch" are never just going to roll off your skin like water. Mainly because, as Valente (I believe) points out, this shit happens in meatspace as well.

Women do not need Jordan179 to explain to them why they must Fight Back. They know that already. The only real solution we have is social change. Yes, this takes decades, and yes, it's outside the power of individual women. It's fucking difficult. If you really cared about ending sexism, you'd help out with the project instead of taking potshots from the (white male privileged) stands.

Re: Victims

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Did you read the article about colorblind racism?

I read it two years ago, the last time someone pointed me to it. It's a load of crap. To begin with, it's a contradiction in terms, unless we define "racism" as "any statistical disparity between the condition of races on any matter whatsoever," which is a definition of "racism" that pretty much ensure you will find it in any culture in which two races differ in any subcultural aspects whatsoever, since culture affects average capability at specific tasks.

I direct you to the extensive writings of Thomas Sowell on the topic, specifically Race and Culture. Oh, and by the way -- he's a Person of Color, so you have to defer to him.

Haha nice joke in the subject line you're a comic genius

[tealterror0.livejournal.com]

It matters because the whole notion that Zimmerman was obsessed with Martin's race comes from the dishonest editing of the tapes.

No it doesn't. It comes from the fact that our culture considers all black young men to be inherently suspicious in a way non-black young men aren't. If you don't know this, then this shows (yes) your privilege.

True, but merely following someone does not constitute reasonable provocation to assault and battery.

Please stop debating with the me inside your head; it's really starting to get annoying.

Teens just under the age of majority, if at all "bad," tend to commit a lot of minor crimes, precisely because they know that they won't do a lot of time if convicted of them.

And so Trayvin Martin thought, "Sure, I only came out to buy some snacks, but what the fuck, I'll beat this random guy up"? *shakes head*

Ah, but if Martin was part of a "thug" culture -- as his Twitter account implies -- he had a "reason."

Oh God, now you're psychoanalyzing a dead teenager based on a fucking Twitter account? In the future, before you bring your mighty brain to bear on the mindsets of people you've never met, at least get your information from a website that's not right-wing:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/08/2738118/what-trayvon-martins-social-media.html

"He loved rap music and enjoyed cracking jokes on Twitter about street culture." [emphasis added]

and because people usually do not shoot other people for absolutely no motive other than "you're suspicious."

*beep* *beep* Your privilege is showing!

Re: Victims

[tealterror0.livejournal.com]

since culture affects average capability at specific tasks.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before you started spouting the "Black people are worse off not because of their genetics, but because of their culture!" card. As if centuries of oppression by whites had no impact on black culture.

I direct you to the extensive writings of Thomas Sowell on the topic, specifically Race and Culture. Oh, and by the way -- he's a Person of Color, so you have to defer to him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell#Critical_reception

"Sowell was also criticized for an editorial in which he stated that the Democratic Party played the Race card, instigating ethnic divisions and separatism, and argued that a similar situation occurred between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda."

Yeah, I think not.

http://lilt.ilstu.edu/gmklass/pos334/archive/sowell.htm

The unsucessful races have been put off by hard work and seem as beneath them to do it. The races that become sucessful "pay their dues" by hard work and saving that eventually leads to bigger and better things. The races that are not willing to work or save become stuck in their ways and remain poor.

Holy fucking shit is he suggesting black people are disadvantaged because they're lazy? Because that is straight up, 100% racism.

EDIT: Allow me to explain. "Black people are lazy" is a very old racist trope that goes back centuries. It doesn't necessarily have to do with genetics--plenty of white slaveowners thought they were taking black people out of the "barbaric culture" of Africa into the "civilized culture" of the West.

Even if I admit that this culture difference exists, and I'd like to see the data first, the fact that Powell just takes this difference as a brute fact without analyzing why there's a difference shows he's not really interested in ending racism. Again: You think maybe the whole "centuries of oppression" had an impact on this? Perhaps? Maybe?

Re: That's enough of that

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I linked to your post from my blog. You are welcome to ban me for this. I can see from the comments that nobody wants to hear from any Unprivileged people who disagree with your premises, so I didn't ask anyone to comment on your blog.

Too bad -- I like your AQ stories.

Re: That's enough of that

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to ban you (as much as I'm sure that would delight you), but I am locking this post because I have to go to work now.