For example, Rophie cites one of the women who invited friends to an Election Night party in 2016:
While I was writing this essay, one of the anonymous emailed me a piece Donegan wrote in The New Inquiry about the devastating night of Trump’s victory. She had hosted an election gathering, and as the results came in, the men were drinking tequila out of a penis-shaped shot glass, and laughing and making jokes as the women cried and clutched one another. Instead of thinking about choosing new friends, she ends with a blanket indictment of men and a blow for the cause:My first reaction to this was incredulity that any men, unless out-and-proud gay men, were drinking anything "out of a penis-shaped shot glass." No way, I thought. But I have no reason to doubt the author, who almost certainly invited people of her own political leanings. These men, 'even those on the left,' must be the sort of people who do things like that.
Here is what the last few days have reminded me: white men, even those on the left, are so safe, so insulated from the policies of a reactionary presidency, that many of them view politics as entertainment, a distraction without consequences, in which they get to indulge their vanity by fantasizing that they are on the side of good. . . . The morning after the election, I found the penis-shaped shot glass in my kitchen and threw it against the wall. I am not proud of this, but it felt good to destroy something a white man loved.
I assume they aren't in fact gay, since she would then think of them as threatened by Trump rather than 'safe.' But they aren't the sort of people who actually voted for Trump: they almost certainly were 'on the left' and voted for Clinton, or she wouldn't have invited them to her party. The point is that they're so far outside of my own culture that I find their behavior unrecognizable.
Another writer produces a piece about an unexpected and unwanted encounter with an actual Trump supporter, a self-described "redneck," for which she is deeply grateful.
"Just ask any redneck like me what you can do with zip ties — well, zip ties and duct tape. You can solve almost any car problem. You’ll get home safe," he said, turning to his teenage son standing nearby. "You can say that again," his son agreed.The second encounter turns out better for everyone. The difference is not in the women, but in the kind of men. That's an important point for those of us who, though we are on the other side of this culturally and in terms of sex, want to ensure better relations between the sexes.
The whole interaction lasted 10 minutes, tops. Katherine and I made it home safely.
Our encounter changed the day for me. While I tried to dive back into my liberal podcast, my mind kept being pulled back to the gas station. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man who called himself a "redneck" who came to our rescue. I sized him up as a Trump voter, just as he likely drew inferences from my Prius and RESIST sticker. But for a moment, we were just two people and the exchange was kindness (his) and gratitude (mine).
As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me....
[M]aybe if we treat one another with the kindness and gratitude that is so absent from our president and his policies, putting our most loving selves forward, this moment can transform into something more bearable? I want to come away from the march with that simple lesson, but it begs this question: How do we hold onto the fire fueling our resistance to the cruelty Trump unleashes, but also embrace the world with love? I wish I knew.
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As I drove home, I felt the full extent to which Trump has actually diminished my own desire to be kind. He is keeping me so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. Trump is not just ruining our nation, he is ruining me....
The old SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO schtick. Sorry lady, you are keeping yourself outraged. It isn't Trump that's doing it. It's you that are keeping yourself outraged. Trump isn't ruining you- you are doing it to yourself.
A long time ago, when the current conventional wisdom that 'feeling your feelings' (as Stuart Schneidermann often quotes from Ask Polly) is the way to organize your life was just building up steam, I remember reading a rebuttal that stated while you can't control your emotions you are certainly responsible for controlling your reaction to them. Donald Trump may be the cause of your outrage but the corrosive effect it's having on your life is all on you. A lot of us disliked Barack Obama but somehow we managed to survive with our mental health intact.
Rophie's piece mostly targets that set of issues, i.e., the questions about whether the response from these women is the right response. I'll leave that set of arguments to her.
My point is that even this rather intense, and intensely upset, liberal feminist responds well to a man who treats her like the 'redneck' does. What I notice is that he behaves in a pretty traditional male way: he knows something about fixing cars, even if it's just to rig something up so she can get home safely. He concerns himself with her and her daughter's safety and protection. He's polite and, without pretending to be something he's not, makes her feel secure in his presence. He also jumps right to work, rather than waiting to be asked or creating a sense that she'll owe him if he helps her.
The other guys are, you know, drinking tequila out of penis-shaped glasses while proclaiming themselves to be good liberal feminists. They're clearly liberated from those old masculine models, aren't they?
Allegedly feminism aims to dismantle those traditional masculine models as outdated and unwanted. Probably if you asked the pair about it in un-threatening circumstances they would say that they oppose traditional models of masculinity as 'toxic' and/or 'problematic.' But look what these women really hate, versus what they really appreciate and are grateful to encounter.
Folks of the Left insist on projecting their own failures onto everyone, insist on assuming that everyone is like them. This is consistent with their lack of trustworthiness that I noted in a comment in the thread just below.
They can't even recognize they're in a hole, much less stop digging it.
Eric Hines
There seem to be a fair number of people who get much pleasure from being part of a rage collective. I suspect that many of the 'feminists' denouncing any woman who dares deviate from their dogmas are those who, had they lived 50 years ago, would have gloried in the humiliation of an unmarried pregnant girl. The substantive issues aren't what matters, what matters is the enforcement of conformity in a cruel manner.
In Goethe's Faust, Gretchen, after finding that she is pregnant by Faust, is talking with her awful friend Lieschen, who (still unaware of Gretchen’s situation) is licking her chops about the prospect of humiliating another girl (Barbara) who has also become pregnant outside of marriage. Here’s Gretchen, reflecting on her own past complicity in such viciousness:
How readily I used to blame
Some poor young soul that came to shame!
Never found sharp enough words like pins
To stick into other people’s sins
Black as it seemed, I tarred it to boot
And never black enough to suit
Would cross myself, exclaim and preen–
Now I myself am bared to sin!
There’s a lot of this…”sharp enough words like pins to stick in other people’s sins”, combined with the pleasure of preening…in the amateur censors of our day.
Glenn Reynolds has a tag line he likes to use on stories like the one out of Florida - "Chivalry was a system that imposed expectations on women as well as men." If women like the chivalrous aspects of masculinity and want men to keep accepting those responsibilities then they are going to have to return to accepting the reciprocal expectations that conduct lays on them. Or they are going to get more pajama boys taking shots out of dick shaped glasses, and fewer men willing, and able, to help them out of a jam.
Hey, I was drinking shots out of penis-shaped glasses on Election Night! OK, not really.
That poor article author. Trump's not ruining her. She's ruining herself, but she can't figure out how to take responsibility for her own self-damage. As long as she thinks the problem is external, she's going to be trying the wrong solutions.
I have no problem with "feeling your feelings." I think we'd be a lot better off without the pretense that we don't feel them. It's just that there's a big difference between that and doing whatever your feelings urge you to do. How about some emotional honesty AND some self-control? I'll never get how those came to be assumed to be mutually exclusive.
I had similar thoughts to what has already been said. Let's see if I can provide any added value.
That she perceives the liberal men as not threatened by a Trump victory, while the women are more vulnerable, can only mean two things: abortion, and a belief that sexual assault will be normalised and increase. She can't be talking about jobs, taxes, the environment, foreign policy, etc which affect the sexes equally. The latter was apparently not a worry under President Clinton, and somehow, wouldn't have been under his wife. As for abortion, it is again being used as a scary-music equivalence symbol for the subjugation of all women. I'm just tired of the lies surrounding that.
In defense of those laughing liberal men, it is indeed infuriating when you are feeling bad and someone else is laughing about anything. I remember feeling that way in junior high a lot. But their laughter may have signified courage and willingness to face whatever comes, with camaraderie and good will. Even the penis shot glass might have been ironic, not oppressive. Liberal women's responses are not the only valid ones, princess.
I have long said that feminine rage comes from the rule changes upon leaving childhood. The rules of school, family, and local society greatly favor girls. They succeed at these things far more often than boys do, and expect adulthood to be the same. The rules are different in adulthood and they feel robbed. Some of them never get over it. Hillary Clinton comes to mind. Most women adjust, sometimes with residual resentment (and who wouldn't), but change their course 10-45 degrees and get a life. The 30% of the boys who were beaten down in that system are less likely to recover.
The self-described "redneck" who helped her...does she have any evidence he was a Trump voter beyond her breathtaking prejudice?
AVI, interesting point about feminine rage coming from rules favoring girls in childhood, but not in adulthood. Doing what you are told versus exercising initiative comes to mind. The classroom favors those who do what they are told to do. The workplace favors those who take initiative.
The self-described "redneck" who helped her...does she have any evidence he was a Trump voter beyond her breathtaking prejudice?
She was just doing the demographics. The incident occurred in North Carolina. 2016 North Carolina exit polls indicated that white males in North Carolina went 68% to 27% for Trump versus Hillary. Odds are that a white male in North Carolina went for Trump. (Granted, he might have been black, but I have yet to meet a black who self-describes as redneck. But then there is Thomas Sowell's book on Black Rednecks and White Liberals.)
Anecdotal evidence here only, but my experience was the opposite. When I was a kid, male-female relationships were somewhat egalitarian. At puberty, of course, the guys shot up in height and strength, and started experimenting a bit in the dominance that offered them. I dabbled a bit in martial arts as an experiment in how to deal with that, and got messages like "girls don't do that."
Then there was the cultural background suggesting that guys could take initiative, but girls who tried it were weird in some way.
All that changed when I got to university, where success was primarily merit-based, especially in the math and science areas. It changed even more when I entered a profession and could support myself. After that, I never was troubled by a feeling that the rules favored guys. I had indisputable evidence that I could compete on an even playing field and win. Nor did the guys I was working with seem to have a problem with it; they mostly just wanted to see the work get done properly, since we were on a team.
Maybe that's why I've stayed an equal-opportunity feminist all these decades, without much of the stereotypical impotent rage I read about so constantly. I'm not always hard on failure, but I can be awfully hard on whiny excuses, and on failure used to manipulate one's social circle. I'm equally hard on men aggrieved by the matriarchy as on women aggrieved by the patriarchy. If competence and success elude me in one area, I seek them in another that's better suited to my talents. That's why you won't see me trying out for a football team, or worrying about why they won't let me in.
In my current campaign for County Commissioner, people often ask me if I'm finding the social and political heat or good-old-boy system troubling. It makes me laugh. These guys are pussycats in comparison with the ruthless, vindictive, and often brilliant men I had to do with in my law partnership. A lot of feminists would do well to toughen up.
I heartily endorse everything Tex wrote.
My point is that even this rather intense, and intensely upset, liberal feminist responds well to a man who treats her like the 'redneck' does. What I notice is that he behaves in a pretty traditional male way ...
Allegedly feminism aims to dismantle those traditional masculine models as outdated and unwanted. Probably if you asked the pair about it in un-threatening circumstances they would say that they oppose traditional models of masculinity as 'toxic' and/or 'problematic.' But look what these women really hate, versus what they really appreciate and are grateful to encounter.
I'm not sure where you're going with this, Grim, if anywhere. Are these stories hope that liberal feminists may come to realize that there is value in the traditional masculine models?
This poor confused woman. She doesn't actually appear to have anything against Redneck Man's instinctive rescue of a strange woman with simple car trouble she has no idea how to fix. She's probably even gracious in her acceptance of his help, and it seems that he is completely gracious in offering it. He's not sneering at her for being a hypocritical liberal now forced to accept help from a big strong man who is her political opponent. He's not doing a single thing that the most confused antifa feminist has anything to object to, or indeed anything that a reasonably competent woman might equally have done to help her.
So all in the world that's making her uncomfortable is the knowledge that someone in flyover country who describes himself as a redneck is probably a Trump voter. Now what does she do? She should hold onto her rage, which must fuel a continuing righteous opposition to Trump, which surely means she should gin up some rage for this nice, helpful young fellow. Fortunately, she's just a bit too honest and generous to do that. She even realizes that her oh-so-important political convictions are trying to lead her astray into needless hatred. But she wants to believe she's on the side of love! What to do?
One of the commenters suggested, wisely, that since this young man was behaving well and she was not, maybe she could learn something from his political principles. Maybe he has good reasons for his political choices. Maybe she's the one missing the point. Maybe her belief that rage-fueled resistance is the be-all and end-all is the primitive, hateful approach, which can only be justified if she continues to tell herself that Trump is the source of all primitive hatred. But then . . . where does hers come from?
I'm not sure where you're going with this, Grim, if anywhere. Are these stories hope that liberal feminists may come to realize that there is value in the traditional masculine models?
Not so much that. A question of very little importance to me is, "When will liberal feminists come to value traditional masculine models?" A question of very great interest to me, both personally and as a father and uncle, is: "What is the best kind of man to be?"
I read these criticisms of masculinity with interest; they are criticisms of something I care about deeply and am involved in to the fullest possible degree. As I think I've mentioned, too, I have a number of friends who are working feminist philosophers. We came up together through the process of study, and though we took very different tacks I respect them and listen to their thoughts.
Ultimately, though, this is one thing I notice over and over. Feminists tell me they want something that, when I meet men who exemplify it, they actually hate and find infuriating. They seem to like me very much, though I exemplify the old models they claim are toxic in masculinity.
In pursuing the question, "What is the best kind of man to be?" I don't mean to exclude women's opinions. It's important to women, too, that we have good men. I am interested in what women think. But I have decided, based on experience, that feminist theory has come apart from what really lives in the hearts of women. That happens sometimes, especially to philosophers. Sometimes it means you need to reform what you want, if you are able, to better line up with your rationally-derived principles. But sometimes it means you should revisit your process of reasoning, because it's led you to somewhere that isn't really where you want to be.
Ultimately of course it is up to no one but me what kind of man I am, or what kind of man I teach younger males to become. All the same, it is going to be important to the men, too, that they be able to make women in their lives happy and welcoming to them. It's as important to them as it is to the women that they be able to form good relationships and respect each other. So, in shaping my advice, I pay attention to these things.
Thanks for the explanation, Grim. It was very helpful.
But I have decided, based on experience, that feminist theory has come apart from what really lives in the hearts of women.
As an old-time, hard-line second wave feminist who is puzzled and aggravated by the manifestations of current feminism, I have no argument with that.
Feminism has moved away from where second wave feminism started - the lived experience of all women - and into elaborate but very narrow ways of defining truth. Current (liberal, Institutional) feminists have circled back on women, taking us back to a view of the world in which women must - perhaps even do - think/feel/behave in only one way; have little or no agency (instead of smashing the shot glass, try telling those oafs that in your house their behavior is unacceptable); and are utterly at the mercy of their own emotions.
They mirror that by believing all men think/feel/behave in only one way; have all the agency in the world; and are responsible for the emotions they "cause" in women. Neither men nor women are seen as individuals, sharing certain life experiences and possibilities with their own sex, yes, but infinitely variable. Reality has gotten lost in the noise.
(Steps down, puts away soapbox.)
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