This is what I mean about nerd-sharming. (Though I only agree with about 50% of the piece.)
I live in a world where feminists throwing weaponized shame at nerds is an obvious and inescapable part of daily life. Whether we’re “mouth-breathers”, “pimpled”, “scrawny”, “blubbery”, “sperglord”, “neckbeard”, “virgins”, “living in our parents’ basements”, “man-children” or whatever the insult du jour is, it’s always, always, ALWAYS a self-identified feminist saying it. Sometimes they say it obliquely, referring to a subgroup like “bronies” or “atheists” or “fedoras” while making sure everyone else in nerddom knows it’s about them too.
Amanda Marcotte is one of the worst, also, for this. She really hates nerdy men. It’s a lot easier and less risky to punch down, I guess.
But since when did it become ok to shit on the downtrodden?
And the idea that there is more harassment committed by nerds — as some feminists now believe — is fucking absurd. Being a member of a frat is associated with something like a 300% increased chance of that person having raped someone. Nope, I ain’t fucking making that statistic up. And I’ve actually seen male lawyers commit sexual harassment right in front of me. Never have seen a nerd — who is usually too shy to talk to a woman anyway — do that (though I believe it happens, just not as often).
Indeed, harassment is very real and common, but re-defining harassment to include, “Someone I didn’t like because he doesn’t fit my idea of man and was in my general vicinity and might have even looked at me” doesn’t help feminism, doesn’t help women and it ends up hurting a lot of other people.
Do you know of whiskey? He’s an occasional blogger and frequent commenter on sites that you mostly would really disapprove of (I sometimes disapprove but probably a lot less than you).
Anyways, part of his shtick is that the average woman (as exemplified by Marcotte an average mind in a very pure form) hate, hate, hate low status men (the hate, hate, hate was a frequent stylistic quirk of his) and hate the idea that low status men might ever think they have a chance with them. They’re okay with low status men being around in the background and making people’s lives better but are infuriated at their very rare attempts to make some kind of emotional connection.
“Harassment” by a relatively high status man doesn’t bother them as it reinforces their self image as “awesome”.
There are obviously lots of women that this doesn’t apply to, but it does seem pretty accurate for a large swathe of women who aren’t as smart as they think they are (also see Watson, Rebecca and elevator gate).
I’ve not seen whiskey’s comments, but I think that is right about low-status men.
Frequently, the only difference even among feminist women between the exact same behaviors being harassment (even on first contact) is if the “harasser” is a high-status, attractive male or a low-status, unattractive male.
I was lucky enough to pull myself out of the low-status nadir mostly, but remember what it was like really well. From 3rd to 8th grade or so, no one at school was averse to telling me how worthless and horrible I was.
Girls, too — I remember one time a girl (in front of her friends) asked if she could check if I had a penis at all because I showed no interest in women. But why would I show interest in women who already obviously found me utterly repellent?
To be fair, this didn’t really traumatize me or bother me as it would some people. I am fucking unrelentingly stubborn and knew I was awesome no matter what anyone said. But for a more normal person, this would have been unbearably humiliating I think.
Anyway, people like Marcotte are pretty abhorrent to me because they talk a good game about equality. But for them, equality means equality for the “educated” and/or high status and that’s about it.
(One of the main ways I pulled myself out of the low-status rut was publishing with some friends a very satirical and vulgar newsletter in 9th grade making fun of teachers, school and society in general. It almost got me kicked out school, but apparently it had even circulated samizdat to the physically separate 10th-12th grade regular high school. So that made me a legend of sorts and when I moved on to 10th grade, I had a coolness and rebel factor going for me and my life and romantic prospects improved ridiculously much, so much so that by the time I was a senior I somehow lucked into dating probably the prettiest and one of the most intelligent girls in the school, though that I managed to do that appalled many even still.)
[…] cliff arroyo on Shaming […]
Marcotte seems to enjoy publicly shaming people for the absolute worst possible reading of their words/actions. I agree she really doesn’t add anything to the conversation. She and a large part of the feminist and SJW communities behave in ways that seem least likely to build understanding and improve the situation. Reaching a point where one can articulate how they’ve been harmed, how they didn’t deserve to be treated that way is incredibly valuable and shouldn’t be shamed no matter what other privileges or faults a person has. It seems many stop there though (hi tumblr). People are not necessarily wrong who fail to be generous and polite, but there’s a lot of indignation about what seems to be the obvious outcome of casting your net wide for enemies. Some of Aaronson’s comment did come across poorly to me, especially from someone who claims to be versed in feminist thought, but it’s a comment reporting personal experience, and he’s added some clarifications after the fact that help a lot. It’s very hard for people to discuss overlapping injuries without stepping on toes and appearing to discount the pain of others.
I must admit that men complaining about women only liking the Neanderthals does come across as blaming women as an unknowable monolith for failing to submit to the wishes of an individual man who was unlucky in genes and/or upbringing. People can both be cruel and you can be not helping yourself out any to stop being low-status. It seems like a lot of the phrasing comes out as blaming other people for the latter instead of calling them out on the former. The hurt is real, but a woman yelling at individual men for not dismantling the patriarchy is as useless as a man blaming women for not falling in love with him.
I want to understand what other people’s experiences are like, that’s really my draw to feminism (at its best), to have a space to discuss experiences and their meaning without being discounted as emotional or irrelevant. Men should have this space too and I definitely want people to speak out against cruelty and harm dealt by girls/women and what men are faced with disproportionally to women. Distrust, from all sides, is understandable. I wish we could make more progress and have fewer outrage storms. I think Aaronson’s comment is more helpful in this than Alexander’s bent on one-dimentional oppression.