A Dialogue With Cunts

Lucy Cage takes issue with twats on the internet.

I like arguing on the internet. I like the buzz of righteousness that it affords me, the “Ha!” of a thrust hit home, the parrying of an attack with a well-chosen put-down. I like it even though I pay the price for participating in ground-down teeth and frankly pretty impotent rage. But it’s a widely-agreed upon truism that arguing on the internet about feminism is the most teeth-grindy experience of all. There’s even a cartoon about it , which itself was triggered by a Tweet-war involving a graphic artist who made some mildly irritated remarks about the way male fans reacted to her and which subsequently generated a unspooling web-wide meta-conversation about sexism, and finally, with the frantic “What about us poor men!” hysteria raging on its own comments thread, ended up proving its argument that any cyber-debate about the oppression of women becomes an opportunity for men to bleat in outrage about themselves.

[The cartoon is mandatory viewing for anyone who's ever read a music site message board - Ed]

My experience of the Great Cyber Sex War is limited, but I can see what the cartoonist (a man, although that was an unpleasant surprise to those who whined about what a beastly, bitter, man-hating feminist-who-would-never-get-laid the artist must be) was getting at. I threw up my hands in despair and signed out of a music-based forum the day another poster described me as “scary” because I tended to argue back as forcefully as some of the pack-trolls who stomped about in that particular male-dominated little world. Unlike my three or four most shouty opponents, I was very careful not to resort to ad hominem attacks, because I felt (ultimately pointlessly) I had to be on best behaviour to ensure that my points were taken seriously, so the scariness must have been solely down to the fact I, unlike any of the very few other female posters on the forum at that time, had a dogged relish for the arguments that flourished in the politics threads. How fucking sad that a woman who can hold her own in a political debate is seen to be something to be afraid of!

Today, I read Suzanne Moore’s “Time To Get Angry?” on The Guardian’s website and felt properly cross enough to throw myself into the ring. Never mind the frustratingly par-boiled examples she gives and the general impression of incoherent rather than righteously focused rage; never mind the lack of clarity in her suggestions for progress; never mind indeed the bizarre fact that she fulminates about the lack of anger in the feminist movement (there are still whole seething Eyjafjallajokulls worth of anger to tap into out there, Suzanne: you don’t need to start your own crusade as you rather touchingly suggest), or the fact that she’d turned up at The Guardian having taken the Mail’s dollar for the past few years (co-option or fighting the enemy from within? Hmm. I can’t bring myself to give her anything like the benefit of the doubt on that one): it was the responses that came after which horrified me. Whatever Moore said and however effectively or otherwise she put her case, nothing reinforces her call to anger like the unbridled hatred displayed in the comments section.

What a peculiar, exhausting, frustrating and depressing pile of muddle-headed nastiness it was to wade through. If anyone had any doubt about the depth and intensity of misogyny in society, reading that little lot would have convinced them it is alive and thriving on The Guardian (of all fucking places) website. The utter lack of comprehension about what feminism is sent shivers of despair down my spine: as far as the eye could see were hordes of pissed-off, hard-done-by men, furrowing their collective monobrow over being hated by the horrid wimmin. Hardly a pro-Moore “Yay! Go sister!” to be heard over the squeals of indignation. Depressing stuff. All feminists are apparently female furies, who view every male human being as a rapist or murderer-in-waiting and apparently every last one of them is motivated by bitterness rather than a considered ethical or political desire for justice and equality (though what they are so very bitter about remained elusive to their decriers: perhaps it’s an ineffable womany thing). Most infuriating and ignorant of all were the charges laid against feminism. -> -> ->

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 11:14 am. It is filed under Lucy Cage and tagged with feminism, Lucy Cage, Riot Grrrl, sexism etc, somethingtocryfor, Susan B. Anthony, Suzanne Moore, The Guardian, The Revolution, web 2.0, “No Dialogue With Suspect People. No Dialogue With Cunts”. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Wallace Wylie says:

March 2, 2011 at 2:27 pm

Reading comments on the internet is almost as bad as dipping your face in an open sewer. It’s shocking how much disgusting crap people are spouting. Being serious about something, anything, (not the Todd Rundgren album, though I am) leads people to just try and say things that will get under your skin. I almost never mention that I’m vegetarian, but if it comes up and people ask me my reasons, no matter what I say their reply is almost always “But meat tastes good”. End of argument. If you try to engage you look like a humourless idiot. I think you’re onto something with the more disturbing tone of some of these arguments though. It reeks of “Hey women. If you keep getting hysterical we’ll take away your rights and then what’ll you do?”, as if beneath the surface rights only truly exist for the strongest of males, and they, out of love, bequeath these rights to women. The idea that many people imagine rights to only truly exist in a social Darwinist sense is a frightening one, but every time I read internet comments I feel that it’s true.

Brody Omniverse says:

March 2, 2011 at 2:40 pm

Excellent article, thank you for taking the time to write it. I’m a record collector and music junky and it’s horrifying that there’s men within these communities that think and act in this manner.

Chad Parkhill says:

March 2, 2011 at 3:02 pm

Bravo. Well said, Lucy.

mmc says:

March 3, 2011 at 4:22 am

As a teenager, I took so many positive feminist anti-sexist messages from the 90s alternative and indie cultures that I honestly thought it was near-impossible that you could be a sexist douchebag AND be into cool or obscure music. It just seemed like you had to have evolved on that level or else you’d be shunned by everyone in those scenes. And almost all of the friends I made through mutual interests seemed to confirm this. To the point where I even thought, as a teen, that riot grrl was excessively radical, because it didn’t seem like a big problem/issue in my generation/world.

Cut to the late 2000s.

One of my coworkers is in a fairly prominent indie rock band, and likes to joke about how he and his thirtysomething friend slept with a bunch of barely legal hotties who worked at the friend’s American Apparel store, and how the 90s was a terrible time to get laid because of all the feminazis.

A friend I grew up with, who was exposed to all of the same influences, recently made a music video that’s been viewed several thousand times on Youtube. It’s sort of a love song and the premise is ambiguous but there is a girl in the video that he pursues to no avail. The top comment, as in not just written by someone but thumbs-upped by 8 others, is “the girl is not attractive at all.”

When it comes to 90s-vs-2000s I am consistently the equivalent of the 60s peace-and-love hippie who is horrified by the 70s and the death of the dream…

Everett True says:

March 3, 2011 at 9:11 am

((from Facebook)

Ralf Synowzik, Sarah Datblygu and Englane Read like this.

Alexander Nutt
http://xkcd.com/386/ < --- seen this? made me laugh.

Sarah Datblygu
I've been arguing with cunts all week! Check out my superior mass debating skillz: http://www.facebook.com/turnyourbackonpage3

Hannah Golightly says:

I studied Sociology for a while back when I was 17. My teacher asked the class “hands up if you think women should be paid the same as men for the same work” All hands went up. “hands up who thinks men and women should have equal rights” All hands went up. “hands up who here is a Feminist” Two hands went up- mine and another girl. The ‘typical’ girls in the class looked at us like we were lesbians. The teacher explained that everyone in the class who put their hands up before agreed with Feminist ideas. He asked “so hands up who here is a Feminist” About six hands went up.

The problem is that men need to feel that they have something to offer women and some feel like Feminism takes that away from them. They have a right to feel like that about their own identity being challenged because it is. The problem really is that if women do the same work (for example) for the same pay as men, then the men have nothing ‘to offer’ and this upsets them. It comes from a good place when you look at it from this accepting-of-gender-difference-in-priority-and-identity point of view… but understand that in NO WAY does that advocate the mistreatment of women or slander against them. It is THEIR problem and they shouldn’t blame women for having it, just because they haven’t evolved into discovering new ways to express their masculinity that keep up with the changes in the ways that women can express their femininity in society- yes! That’s right! Women can even wear trousers now!!! Come on guys, find a solution to YOUR IDENTITY CRISIS. Get your confidence back by embracing some other expression of manhood. Then you will be happy and so will we.

I have presented a coherent argument to shed some light on the man’s perspective since none of the specimens in the above debate were worthy of putting forward and articulating their side in a solution-orientated way. They just started ‘bitching’ instead. Quite why men’s problems should fall on women to solve, when women had to campaign and solve our own problems of gender inequality I don’t know…

If I wanted to answer one of the guys quoted above on his own terms I’d just shove in his face the obvious: if you want to stop ‘working for us’ if it’s not appreciated, then we can stop giving birth until we get paid to do so and while you’re at it, we’ll want paying for the care of the elderly and children we do, for cooking dinner and any typical activities that women (despite our apparent equality) in society still do far more of than men even when in full time jobs too… and don’t even get me started on the fulltime working single mums of 3 who get royally f-ed by society and never get enough of a break. I don’t know how they cope. Three cheers to those who do so.

I want to live in a world where men and women are equal as people, where competition is won by the best, where compassion and protection and courage and kindness are rewarded and where these debates become quaint relics of a long distant past which humankind looks back on as as unsophisticated as cave men (and women)… let us all create that world now in our own lives and let the world take care of itself, including these misguided and obviously hurting specimens of suffering men quoted above, who need healing and love.

March 3, 2011 at 9:19 am

p.s. I am referring to the men quoted in the article not the men commenting here, obvs.

Gandhi's Toenail says:

March 4, 2011 at 1:14 am

I’ll put my hands up to that – being a man is still a better lot than being a women. Don’t mistake me as being someone who denies there is still work to be done. The point is that the issues surrounding it have become distorted.

Referencing Peggy McIntosh’s article is a dangerous game, as while it contains a lot of truth (certainly religion- sanctioned oppression of women is easy to corroborate), it also contains a lot of dubious presumptions. For example,’If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.’ – really? Do smirk- accompanied issues of presumed sterility not raise their head? Or the fact that a family-less man in his autumn years will likely be considered a solitary and more than a little odd by wider society? Call those presumptuous as well, if you like, but no more so than the original point. There are arguably more benefits to being a man than a women, but don’t suppose there aren’t any negatives to partially counterbalance these privileges. We’ve certainly got things easier on the reproductive side…yet fathers are often not considered as important as mothers in a parental role. Custodial statistics bear that out.

Your article contained a lot of salient points and arguments – being a Net bloke myself, I can attest to quite appalling examples of dunderheaded sexism amongst my peers – but it weakened itself by also being rendered in blustering, reactionary tones that occasionally mirrored the witless rigidity of its targets. Good for you from straying from ad hominem screeds while online, but you haven’t done much good here with your post-encounter appraisal.

In my view, casual feminists that give the rationally progressive ones a bad name are the problem. Dissent from an argument must always be considered, dissected and either taken on board or dismissed, not simply crushed without a second thought. I worry that many badly-read casual feminists simply take it an excuse to assume that men are out to get them at every turn, on every day, and that thinking of themselves as eternal victims is a desirable stance, rather than a fallacy that stifles debate. Also, many of these lazy thinkers assume they’re somehow on a par with genuinely disadvantaged, exploited and abused women, when their own woes of being passed over for a promotion on automatically assumed grounds of sexism are little but boneheaded narcissism.

A meritocratic situation is the most desirable scenario, of course, and in personal terms, I’ve never had a problem taking direction from anyone who knows their field, regardless of gender. Equality is the only route, and may these (admittedly faltering) steps towards it continue.

A parting shot. A lot of truth, I grant you: http://xkcd.com/385/

Lucy says:

March 4, 2011 at 9:33 am

@Ghandi’s Toenail:
“Good for you from straying from ad hominem screeds while online, but you haven’t done much good here with your post-encounter appraisal.”
There’s a good deal of difference in arguing a case with particular individuals and having a letting-off-steam rant, which is what this piece clearly is. It is all about the need for rage. I wanted to shout and fume because I AM FURIOUS at the fact that utterly vile manifestations of sexism are not only tolerated but flourish in this society. It feels like an entirely appropriate response to an intolerable situation. Sod the idea that only measured and polite arguments should be made by feminists, that expressions of fury undermine their position: witnessing ferocious women being immoderately angry about the shit that the world throws at them has certainly done me good in the past.

As for “casual feminists that give the rationally progressive ones a bad name are the problem”: no, they are not. Patriarchy is the problem. The continued deep-rooted and detrimental existence of sexism in every sphere of life, be it economic, social, cultural or sexual, is the problem. Obviously. But even the lesser problem of feminism’s current bad press is not the fault of “bad” feminists, the people who apparently don’t make brilliant arguments or aren’t thinking clearly or haven’t read every last book on the reading list: the culprit is still patriarchy.

Your dividing women into the deserving and the undeserving victims of sexism smacks of the suggestion that there are some things women should just put up with, in return for the REAL abuse getting some decent outrage directed at it (don’t push it, girls). Those “lazy thinkers”, as you call them, being women themselves, may well have been passed over for promotion on other grounds as well as (or apparently regardless of) their gender, but being women in a sexist society they will also have experienced sexism in a thousand different ways throughout their lives; untangling the rights and wrongs of a single employment experience from a lifetime of inequality is an impossible task. Do you really think that women have to be “genuinely” disadvantaged, exploited and abused in order to qualify for sympathy or to be allowed to fulminate wildly against the system? ALL women are genuinely (objectively, measurably) disadvantaged in this society, ALL of them, just by being the “wrong” gender, even if the degree to which they experience it varies from the mundane to the life-shattering.

(None of this means, of course, that men do not also suffer under patriarchy and are not also at times disadvantaged, abused and exploited.)

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