I agree – this bothers me as well. It’s so much easier to punch down, and though unattractive men in society have done themselves no favors (GamerGate, etc.) they don’t really hold that much power. And since unattractive people are easy to hate, they make targets that are irresistible to just about anyone (the same is true of unattractive women, before anyone gets upset) including the Left, which really should know better.
But people are afraid of punching up, so they punch down. If you punch up – at the real people with power in society – they can and do punch back. Very hard. Sometimes hard enough to ruin your life forever, so I understand the fear. But there’s no victory to be had, or even any satisfaction, in punching down.
So punch up. This is why.
i really need people to stop talking about mras only in terms of fedoras/being bronys/how unkempt they are, etc. because there are dudes out here looking like hollister models who need to be held just as accountable for their creepy/misogynistic behavior
Some 27-year-old unemployed overweight dude in his mom’s basement yelling racial slurs in Halo v-chat and threatening Anita Sarkeesian on Twitter while certainly an asshole and while also certainly supportive of and contributory to patriarchy has scarcely more power than the people he rails against (which goes together, actually). He’s already been abandoned by society and knows it. That’ s part of the reason he’s so angry.
To end the Halo-screaming dude, you should really be working on dismantling capitalism and the entire system of patriarchy and similar tasks like that, not making fun of some dude who while vile became that way for a reason. And definitely not descending further into the identity politics hellhole, because that’s what the elite wants you to do as it assures them– absolutely fucking guarantees – that nothing useful will ever get accomplished.
I have sympathy I guess for people like the apocryphal basement dweller because I could’ve easily been him, if not for a few lucky breaks and my absolute ridiculous stubbornness.
In the Left, it’s only cool to body-shame, fat-shame and otherwise police using tactics you’d otherwise never countenance as long as it’s directed towards people you hate. I can’t get on board with that. I don’t like being a hypocrite, and that’d make me one.
I don’t punch much these days (metaphorically or literally) but when I do, I always try to punch up.