intermission! white men’s tears and the insecurity of the privileged

The subject refers to the idea of white woman’s tears, which sometimes comes into contention due to its gendered nature. But that’s not what I’m here for today, oh no. I’m here to point out that white men too will cry, and cry and cry, and flood the Internet with their tears. Or their jizz, or both, since I’ve come to suspect that many of them jerk each other off as they write the things I will soon link.

You will have heard of the Bakker brouhaha, if you are here. Let’s have a chronology:

• Requires Only That You Hate – R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny – dated 16 August 2011
• R. Scott Bakker – Sweet Manna - dated 16 August 2011
• R. Scott Bakker - Misanthropology 101 – dated 1 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - Requires Only Haidt – dated 6 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - The Halftime Show – dated 10 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker - That Empty Place – dated 16 February 2012
• Peter Watts – In Vicarious Defense of R. Scott Bakker – dated 16 February 2012
• R. Scott Bakker – Um, does anybody got a mint? – dated 18 February 2012
  

You may be thinking I’ve willfully obscured something. Surely, surely no grown adult man could go on about that one post from August 2011… six months later? Surely not? I must have consistently attacked him! Blogged about him! Many times! Perhaps I may even have personally harassed him! Such is the way of bitchy, angry feminists: we hound offensive men to the end of the earth. So much so that their sales figures suffer and their family goes poor. (For your perusal and pleasure, try this bit of flash fiction by Elodie.)

Alas, no. I made but that one post. Ever after any mention of Bakker on this blog has been peripheral, because I didn’t care about him all that much, and wouldn’t especially want to read his books. But there it is: Bakker stewed over this, apparently, for six entire months. Peter Watts, who is a magical friend of Bakker’s, proceeded to call me “a rabid animal.” Something which even a person who finds me “toxic” recognizes as a loaded term. Not that Peter Watts would admit there’s any problem with him saying that because even if I’d been a fellow nerdy white boy he’d have called me the same, though even after having been told I’m a woman of color it did not stop him from graduating to “foul, rabid animal” which tells you all you need to know. You can go through the rest of that exchange, but I’m more interested in the larger picture of this. Which is: why is it that these people are so deathly afraid of being called sexist, racist, or any such thing… to that froth-at-the-mouth point where they go on to compound the offense by actively being sexist or racist?

TESTERIA, TESTERICAL, TESTRIONIC

Let this not pass unrecorded: an impromptu twitter round-table on testeria! Many thanks for everyone for contributing. Please feel free to link, add suggestions, tweet–whatever can be done to spread the use of testeria, testerical or even testrionic in everyday conversation. Tweets not listed in chronological order, sorry about that.

DISCLAIMER: This round-table cannot be considered sexist to men, because as you can see, many of the participants are men. CHECKMATE.

@requireshate Testeria: when testicles unmoor to grip the brainstem, prompting patient to spout evo-psych claptrap and join men’s rights movements.

@requireshate Testerical: what happens when fauxgressive neckbeards or men’s rights advocates speak. (Sometimes the two are one and the same.)

@Eithin adj. overblown displays of performance bile and/or sadness elicited by mild criticism from women.

@ian_sales testeria: n. frenzied bleating by males over perceived attacks to their gender privilege; v. to protest wildly when criticised on issues of male privilege

@ian_sales Rothfustian: n. something you can read only with a mounting sense of horror and moral outrage

@esedia: Peniscule: an exceedingly narrow worldview defined by unrecognized privilege.

@esedia: Phallacy: an argument based on refusal to admit patriarchy exists.

@Paul_C_Smith Book proposal: The White Man’s Fear – Farmboy of destiny has to brave scary [POC] and opinionated women.

Iono the Fanatics – lesbian harem, lesbian utopia: go!

Iono, lesbian queen of a lesbian utopia, has a problem. Her problem? Why, she likes lots and lots of girls. Delicious black-haired girls. Her present harem, numbering in the thousand, of cute girls doesn’t suffice. The solution is obvious: she must journey to Japan and pick up all the girls!

I love this thing. It’s cute and light-hearted, fluffy, though I do feel sadly let down that the author is a man–the idea that something so positive and sweet and lovely is by a woman (or better yet, a queer woman) has infinitely greater appeal. But, well, I will take what I can get. And what’s to be gotten here is excellent and happy-making.

Robin Hobb’s CITY OF DRAGONS

Once, dragons ruled the Rain Wilds, tended by privileged human servants known as Elderlings. But a series of cataclysmic eruptions nearly drove these magnificent creatures to extinction. Born weak and deformed, the last of their kind had one hope for survival: to return to their ancient city of Kelsingra. 

Venturing across the swift-running river in tiny boats, the dragon scholar Alise and a handful of keepers discover a world far different from anything they have ever known or imagined. Immense, ornate structures of black stone veined with silver and lifelike stone statues line the silent, eerily empty streets. Yet what are the whispers they hear, the shadows of voices and bursts of light that flutter and are gone? And why do they feel as if eyes are watching them?

The dragons must plumb the depths of their ancestral memories to help them take flight and unlock the secrets buried in Kelsingra. But enemies driven by greed and dark desires are approaching. Time is running out, not only for the dragons but for their human keepers as well.

It’s telling that the Amazon product description of this thing is so long–and that’s after I trimmed chunks out of it. This is an epic doorstopper fantasy novel in the most traditional sense and, like the overwhelming majority of epic doorstopper fantasy novels starting from Tolkien, this is a book bloated with padding, a book that goes on for too damn long, and a book of middling to mediocre prose. As you can probably guess, I don’t bother with epic fantasy anymore; in short, if I hadn’t read the previous books in this series, the chances of me picking up this one would have been in the region of “absolute subzero.” But having said that, it’s still a far more interesting book and better read than the majority of epic fantasy out there: far preferable, certainly, than R. Scott Bakker’s “I Express My Feminism With Rape” series or Martin’s “Ye Olde Mighty Whitey” and the like.

SHITSURAKUEN – paradise lost, indeed

I’m rarely this disappointed with a manga.

So, Shitsurakuen is essentially Utena with some elements of shounen action thrown in. There’s an Utena, an Anthy, an Akio; there’s a student council; there’s the duels and the pulling of weapons from girls’ chests; there’s even a fairytale motif. It’s not very subtle in what it does, and yet there are moments of striking understanding that are nuanced and mature in its delivery of internalized oppression, the way girls can be strong in different but equally valid ways, the way girls can help other girls in a setting so viciously misogynistic.

And then it all falls apart.

Angela Carter’s THE BLOODY CHAMBER

From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires, werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

I first read this book a long time ago, but couldn’t fully appreciate it then; rereading it now older and with a more grown-up perspective, the book has only gained in resonance. And more than ever before I now understand just how thoroughly wonderful and excellent Angela Carter’s language is.

links and data of interest

First, let’s compare what happens when I tear apart women for racism/misogyny/homophobia:

meet Charlaine Harris: misogynist, racist, talentless - 6 comments, no wank

ann bishop misogynistic homophobic turd - 5 comments and 31 comments respectively, no wank (except some whiny shits on RPG.net crying about anti-white racism, but that’s not related to Anne Bishop specifically)

To what happens when I do the same to men:

R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny – 82 comments, tons of wank, author has personally linked it twice (the second time months after the fact!) and plops down the raging butthurt every time without fail; slavering neckbeard fanboys attended to circlejerk author and show up here to mansplain and tone argument the shit out of everything. Author believes “accusations of misogyny” (which he even acknowledges happen regularly, and in a more self-aware person that might have given one pause…) has damaged his sales. Score!

Joe Abercrombie’s THE LAST ARGUMENT OF KINGS and the rape of lesbians – 38 comments, no wank directly on this blog, but plenty to be found on Westeros.org. Synopsis. In this case, the author actually admitted he didn’t think it through/that writing a shrill man-hating lesbian who only exists to be raped is really pretty fucking offensive. No fear, the fanboys told him he was wrong!

Jim Butcher: chauvinist AND talentless–stunning combo! – 65 comments, tons of wank;  slavering neckbeard fanboys attended to circlejerk author and show up here to mansplain and tone argument the shit out of everything

LIVING NEXT DOOR TO THE GOD OF LOVE and how my skin crawled off my bones thanks to Justina Robson

Where do you run when a world is out to get you? AIs, Forged beings, superheroes, angels, and worlds that change in the blink of an eyehere is a richly imagined tale of ordinary redemption in an extraordinary world from one of the most provocative writers working today…. Francine is a young runaway looking to find a definition of love she can trust. In Sankhara, she finds a palace where rooms are made of bone, flowers, and the hearts of heroes. She finds a scientist mapping the territory of the human mind. She finds a boyfriend. And she finds Eros itself incarnated in the androgynously irresistible form of Jalaeka. But not everyone is in love with the god of love. Unity, for one, wants to assimilate Jalaeka along with every other soul in the universe. And contrary to what everyone always believes, love alone can’t save the day. It will take something both more and less powerful than the human heart to save the worlds upon worlds at risk when gods collide. 

This book was bad for me.

On one hand, the premise–as outlined above–absolutely sucked me in. Rooms made of bone, flowers, and the hearts of heroes! Androgynes! Multiverses! Wait, what the fuck is Unity?

And what the fuck is this really lengthy rape scene doing here?

Wait a minute. Why are there two lengthy rape scenes?

shitstains of a color ooze together – more on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist

Pat of Fantasy Hotlist has, naturally, responded to my post in a completely mature oh wait lol. I don’t really care that much, but I wanted to highlight a little something:

Keeping in mind that he wants a “friendly, more casual approach”? Keeping in mind that he said he’d “monitor” the comments? This is what he let through:

(Trigger warning: rape.)

the Tolkien fanboy fallacies – yes, Tolkien was a racist, sexist bore: deal with it

PADDLES OUT, FRIENDS; IT IS TIME TO BEAT THE ROTTEN CARCASS OF A DEAD WHITE MAN

Back in June last year I wrote Deconstructing Pointy-Eared White Supremacists. It was one of the most linked things I’ve ever written, even though I didn’t think it addressed anything new or broke new ground. I thought I was, frankly, belaboring the obvious.

I was wrong, of course. There was a number of interesting discussions off the site (some of which I joined). But mostly what happened was a flurry of assorted man-child types who came in, absolutely hysterical, to defend Tolkien from charges of… well, anything actually. It’s that thing again with rabid fanboys thinking that their favorite thing being called -ist or -phobic means it’s a personal assault on their sterling characters–which compels them to not only get particularly shrieky, but also to defend their neckbeard icon in such a way as to make it obvious that they are racist, sexist, and homophobic.

In any case, I’m not interested in further debating why/how Tolkien was a racist, sexist bore: they are evident things, and if you have to ask chances are good you are of the “BUT HE COULD NOT POSSIBLY BEEEEEE” camp. I’m more interested in the wonky mental gymnastics people perform in order to make him out to be the most progressive man of his time (lolno), and the cliches people bust out to further said wonky mental gymnastics. Some of them are conveniently listed here. Please imagine the following parts in bold are spoken by a manchild in a high-pitched, obnoxious voice to best capture the experience of engaging with one of them.

He wasn’t racist! LOOK AT THIS ONE SCENE WHERE SAM FEELS SORRY FOR AN EASTERLING MAN, god!

This is the passage in question:

It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.

Now please consider that this is the one single solitary passage in the entire trilogy. They comprise of seventy-seven (77) words. What is the total word count for Lord of the Rings as a whole? In the region of 473,000 words, if the google search I did is any indication.

That’s 0.01628% of the text.