Edit 18 Dec 2009: I’ve seen this referred to in quite a few places round the ’sphere as “Antifeminist Troll Bingo”. It’s not called that here, and was never called that here, because that isn’t my sole or primary intention.
Many of these statements are made not by people just stirring crap in the hope of provoking a reaction; they’re made by people who earnestly believe what they’re saying, or by people who are parroting what they’ve been socialised to believe, or by people who are knee-jerk defensive when they come across ideas of cismale privilege. Some of them may never be said in good faith, but some may; part of the point of this card, though not the whole point, is to highlight a few patterns of behaviour. These patterns occur in all sorts of contexts, not purely in trolling contexts.
Calling it “Troll Bingo” completely removes any hope of allies examining their own residual issues. I can’t control you if you do choose to call it that, but I can ask you not to. Thanks.
~~~
Update: Antifeminist Bingo II is here!
I’ve been working on an Antifeminist-Bingo! card. It was actually pretty difficult to narrow it down to 25 cells; there are plenty more I could have added, and you’re invited to add your own in the comments.
If you find yourself getting frustrated in a feminist conversation with someone who seems to just Not Get It, have a peek through the card. Odds are your antagonist will have used 3, 4, 5 or more of these somewhere along the line.
If you’re a man trying not to be an arsehole in feminist conversations, but you seem to find yourself floundering and can’t figure out why, you might like to scrutinise your comments critically to see if some of these messages are inadvertently coming across.
| But I like my women feminine. | Feminists have got it all wrong. I’m an equalist. | Women are just naturally better at that sort of thing. | It’s your job to teach me about feminism. Now do it. | Patriarchy hurts men too. |
| You just don’t like sex, so you want to spoil it for everyone else. | Sexual assault is rare. You’re just paranoid. | She gave it away plenty of times before. | We gave you the vote, now shut up. | If you want to be treated like a lady, you’d better start acting like one. |
| Women just can’t be objective about gender issues. | You’ll never get laid with that attitude. | Can’t you take a joke? | You give feminists a bad name. | I’m just an old-fashioned gentleman. |
| You’re so sexy when you’re angry. | Is it that time of the month? | You’ve just got a victim mentality. | All you feminists need is a good deep-dicking. | You’re being silly and overemotional. |
| Women have all the power over men- you can reduce us to an uncontrollable jelly of lust! | You feminists all hate men! | I’m a nice guy(tm), why don’t I get any? | I’ll tell you what’s wrong with feminism… | But I want to talk about this. Listen to me! |
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License Remix and enjoy, good-faith feminism only please.
What triggered this? I’ve been reading this comments thread at Alas, A Blog, starting around about here.
*Note: The domain on which Alas is hosted was sold to pornographers in mid 2006. There is no porn at the link above, but your hits or may not indirectly support misogynistic, racist, lesbian-exploitation, and teen porn, despite the “nofollow” attribute I’ve added. I’m not sure whether directing you to a google cached page reduces this, but in case it does, here*.
The conversation started around the soi-disant “Nice Guys” label. There are a number of men who argue something along the lines of:
- Women say they prefer nice guys, not arseholes.
- I’m a nice guy, I’m just shy and awkward.
- But I’m not getting sex.
- And I deserve sex, cos I’m nice.
- Therefore, women are lying.
Hilarity ensued, and eventually “Hugh Ristik” came up with this gem about how feminists are getting it wrong:
“While feminism has done some work encouraging women to be more sexually assertive, it has done a lot more work encouraging men to be sexually passive. What outreach have feminists done to encourage female sexual assertiveness that are on the scale, of say”¦ date rape seminars that are institutionalized in many high schools and colleges?”
After you pick up your jaw at the equation of teaching men not to be sexual criminals and teaching women to be sexually available, have a peek at the card. Ristik seems to be an Antifeminist-Bingo! bottom-dweller of the Entitlement Variety.
Working backwards on the card, firstly Ristik steers the conversation to his pet fabricated agenda, the forced sexual “passivity” of teen boys resulting from those emasculating feminists who have taken away “sexual assertiveness” (rape) as a societally accepted option.
Next up, he starts telling us what’s wrong with feminism today. Mostly, we don’t pay anywhere near enough attention to his pet topic, Nice Guys(tm) not getting enough sex. Apparently, we should be all his slut-mommies, and it’s our job to get him and his shy compatriots laid, because that’s their entitlement as men.
Oh, and we hate men. We got that. “Don’t rape women” isn’t softened and qualified nearly enough; it results in men feeling “paralysed”, their masculinity whipped out from under them, and along with it, their agency. Ristik elaborates:
“It’s different because this attitude, of obsessive and paralyzing worry about “pressuring” women is a product of feminism. If feminists don’t intend their messages to men to have this impact, then that’s comforting, but it doesn’t change the fact that feminist messages do have this impact, and feminists don’t qualify their messages in a way to not paralyze men (not all, or even most men, but especially shy men). Feminists cannot wash their hands of this by claiming ignorance of this paralyzing impact on some men, because men have been telling feminists this for decades and feminists haven’t been listening. At best, this is gross negligence.”
Once again, we’re doing feminism all wrong, we need men to tell us how to fix it, and don’t we realise we have all the power now? If men can’t rape, they’re trapped. Enfeebled.
Later in the thread:
“Date rape seminars, while necessary, also have the side-effect of encouraging men to be more passive. I’m saying that if men are going to become more passive, then we need women to become more proactive to pick up the slack, otherwise everyone will become too passive!”
Awooga! Awooga! No rape = no-one’s getting any sex! Emergency! Emergency!
It’s like a master-class in male sexual entitlement.
Addendum: several people at Pandagon have complained that “Patriarchy hurts men, too” shouldn’t be on the card, because it’s a true statement. Mickle and tigtog have addressed the subject succintly, so I’ll quote from them.
“Please remember that this is BINGO people!
The point is to get 5 in a row, not just 1.
There are several boxes that, in certain situations and without any other additions from our lovely board, would not immediately indicate an anti-feminist is present. Interestingly enough, many of them, unlike the oh, so controversial inclusion of “patriarchy hurts men too!”, have nothing to do with men.”
and tigtog:
“As for this card: remember that the whole anti-feminist bingo idea is in response to trolls being arseholes, and trotting out “But Patriarchy Hurts Men Too” as a trump card which is so Much More Important than whatever the feminists were previously talking about.
Pandagon and quite a few other feminist blogs have a pretty good record of putting up posts which discuss the way that Patriarchy screws up men too. That concept is a central idea in feminist theory, and is referenced often.
So surely, anyone who raises “but it hurts men too” on posts discussing specific women’s experiences is being off-topic and disrupting the discourse. Unless they’re also displaying some of the other telltales on the bingo card they may not be anti-feminist trolls, but it’s one box well worth ticking.”
Edited again to add : I just spotted this “White Liberal Bingo” card at “i_dreamed_i_was”’s LJ. Featuring entries such as “White people have ethnicities, too! *pout*”, “POC can’t exactly claim cultural appropriation while using the “white man’s computer”, and “Talking about racism is so divisive”, it’s worth a look.
And don’t miss “Sexual Assault Bingo” by Midnight Louise, as reference on Feministe. Includes: “It was just stupid groping! It’s not like he was actually…”, “Is this really worth ruining a man’s future?” and “Am I supposed to believe you went into his room and shut the door behind you and you didn’t expect – ”
Similar Posts:
- AntiFeminist Bingo 2 by Lauredhel
- Faves: Feminism by Lauredhel
- Piggy in the middle by Lauredhel
- Feminism Friday: “You’ll catch more flies with honey” by Lauredhel
- Antibreastfeeding Bingo by Lauredhel
{ 48 trackbacks }
{ 65 comments }
← Previous Comments
fucking [...] priceless. women [...] marginalised. deep admiring respect for [...] you people [...] and [...] Greer.
[mod note: Heavily edited to remove abuse and general brainless misogynistic drivel. Thanks for dropping by! ...lauredhel.]
“You’ll never get laid with that attitude”
That’s my favourite one! I bet is one of the biggest reasons why women escape from feminism as if from the plague.
the fat hate bingo had it so you could buy it as a shirt!
I want an antifeminist bingo shirt
thewell: it’s Creative Commonsed, Attribution/Non-commercial. You’re welcome to print yourself a copy, so long as you’re not selling it and you do attribute it (“Antifeminist Bingo by Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town” is fine).
Cheers.
Lauredhel’s last blog post..Kiwiland convulses
That familiarity leads me to second-guess myself on sexism more than racism when it comes to pointing fingers, so that in some circumstances I’m more willing to call racist shit out than call sexist shit out (a fairly typical white privilege stance, as we all saw with the Don Imus fallout).
For what its worth, there’s a hair salon in downtown LA whos name was Oh My Nappy Hair. They specialize in black hair. A week after the Imus scandal broke, they changed their name to Nappy Headed Hos. So yeah, the community was really pissed about the Imus thing. Right. Reality: The enterprising women running the salon are laughing all the way to the bank.
Ryan, I suggest reading about linguistic reclamation.
Exactly ;D So yeah, the community was really pissed about the Imus thing. <– That was sarcasm ^_~
I don’t suppose we have any German speakers here who could translate that latest trackback? Thanks.
Just found this. Want to say ‘thank you.’
Helpful in advising me to keep my damn mouth shut and investigate rather than becoming an asshat. And it also helps in pointing out what exactly is wrong with something when I’m too blind/privileged to see it at the moment.
Hi Juan, thanks for commenting. Glad it was useful to you.
Lauredhel’s last blog post..Racist artwork from Marcotte?s Seal Press book ?It?s a Jungle Out There?
Sexism does hurt men too. It’s not anti-feminist to say so (unless you’re only talking about the ‘feminism is the only important kind of discrimination’ subset of feminists).
Patriarchy does not allow men to feel sad or scared.
If they do feel sad or scared, they are not able to get support for it.
Patriarchy doesn’t allow men to have genuine relationships with their children, especially infants.
They are trained to be inept at childcare and uncertain around babies.
Patriarchy equates almost all male expressions of physical affection with sex.
Men are not allowed to be physically affectionate to other men, because that’s seen to indicate homosexuality. Even boys well before puberty get this.
If men feel any kind of affection towards a non-relative woman, they are assumed to be sexually attracted to her. It’s not considered possible for men to simply be friends with women.
Patriarchy trains men to equate sex, love and power. This results in some men, especially those who are already vulnerable to those attitudes, to become abusers.
Abusive men are treated as ‘true men’, which harms the men who are not abusive.
Women are also trained by the higher percentage of male abusers and the societal attitudes that create them to fear men, and assume that men, especially angry men, are potentially dangerous.
Patriarchy trains men to do the initiating of sex, and women to respond.
This harms men, and adolescent boys, who are too shy or anxious to initiate.
This trains bolder men to be invasive, expecting that if they keep pressuring, the woman will agree to sex. It also leaves men likely to overlook or disregard signs that the woman is not consenting. Because women are often expected to put up ‘token’ resistence, real resistence may be mistaken for token resistence. Men are left uncertain or guilty about being too pushy.
Patriarchy divides many activities into ‘male’ and ‘female’. This harms boys and men who would enjoy female activities, and/or do not enjoy male activities. For example, nurturing boys, unathletic boys, men who like children and men who are not very competitive are harmed by these divisions.
Boys are expected to be, like girls, strongly bonded to their mother in early childhood, but unlike girls, a boy who is still strongly bonded to his mother in mid-late childhood is ridiculed.
Male victims of abuse are treated as either complicit in the abuse (eg adolescent boy sexually abused by adult woman) or inferior and weak, to a much greater degree than female victims.
These are many ways that traditional patriarchy hurts men and boys. To claim that patriarchy only hurts women and girls is a disservice to male victims of patriarchy and helps to rob women of allies in the fight against patriarchy.
Everything you say about patriarchy above is true. Just remember that it’s bingo, Ettina. One square on its own doesn’t get anyone an anti-feminist prize. Quite a few of the squares on the board are capable of being argued from a good-faith position as well as from a point of pure antagonism (e.g. there’s nothing at all wrong with arguing for equalism except where the arguer assumes that feminists aren’t also equalists).
It’s that square in conjunction with four more in a row that means one can be pretty sure that one has a real, live, antifeminist on one’s hands. The sort who just wants feminists to stop talking about something that hurts women and only talk about the things that hurt men.
@ Grace: Nothing is wrong with calling yourself an equalist, but if you say it like on the bingo card, it implies that feminism isn’t about equality of the sexes (you know, that annoying old chauvinist myth about how feminism is about women taking control of men or whatever). :)
Wait how is “Patriarchy hurts men too” anti-feminist? If anything, it’s yet another reason I call myself a feminist, and more of a reason for men to be feminists!
[Asked and answered, Kripa - read the comments thread. ~L]
I really need to add “but he has a heart of gold!” to this one.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed. If you wish to re-open this discussion, please leave a comment on the latest Open Thread.