New Feminists Want Your Balls Censored: Shaming Men Into Silence On The Internet
The dressmaker’s dummy, the kitchen apron, the shopping bag and the clothes line all figured in this “banner” carried by Stephanie Gilbert, (L) and Judy Gilbert-Scott as militant women rallied at speaker’s corner, Hyde Park.
Date: 06/03/1971
THE web hates men because of new feminism. Well, so they say…
Sigh. A new current has developed in the polluted ocean of online videos. If you’re a Facebook user, you’ll have noticed it: it involves women, and men, and the former being incessantly harassed by the latter.
I’m talking about those hidden-camera clips in which a female actor records the appalling level of harassment that she was subjected to by men in the street.
The best known was made by Shoshana Roberts, who was filmed walking the streets of New York amid catcalls and sexual comments. Thus far, it has attracted a staggering 36 million views, and has been hailed as a much-needed exposure of the plight of a woman in 21st Century society…
Depictions of decent men have now become strikingly absent online. The overall suggestion is that men are guilty until proven innocent; this only reinforces gender stereotyping.
Indeed, we have reached a stage where feminist sites like Jezebel run stories like “How to kick men in the balls: an illustrated guide”, confirming the impression that the internet hates men. Misogynist trolling by horrid little men is a huge concern, but the answer is not to alienate the rest of us.
Shoshana Roberts’ walk was no spontaneous move:
In August 2014, Rob Bliss of Rob Bliss Creative reached out to Hollaback! to partner on a PSA highlighting the impact of street harassment. He was inspired by his girlfriend — who gets street harassed all the time — and Shoshana B. Roberts volunteered to be the subject of his PSA. For 10 hours, Rob walked in front of Shoshana with a camera in his backpack, while Shoshana walked silently with two mics in her hands.
Megan Garber adds:
This is an ad (for the Hollaback campaign). It is produced by a “viral advertising” agency. It is not science. It is unclear whether it is even pseudo-science. Could the whole thing have been staged? Yes. Could it have been selectively edited? Certainly.
Still. There’s a reason that the video is currently going viral on YouTube—the way similar videos have gone viral on YouTube—which is that, sourcing questions aside, the experience it records will resonate with pretty much any woman who has ever walked down a street. (Or, for that matter, who has been online.) What is it like to be a woman? Sometimes, sadly, it’s uncannily like this.
Lizzie Crocker looked at the law:
According to Hollaback’s mission statement, the group is interested in modifying the law to punish offenders (and raising significant First Amendment concerns). Because comments such as those documented in their latest video, they explain, are the “most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against.” The group hopes to “inspire legislators, the police, and other authorities to take this issue seriously—to approach it with sensitivity, and to create policies that make everyone feel safe” because catcalling is a “gateway crime” that ultimately “makes gender-based violence OK.”
Hollaback is right to shine a light on these creepy comments from creepy strangers. We should be offended. Such behavior should be considered socially unacceptable. But let’s not get the law involved. Because while calling a passerby “sexy” may be uncouth, it shouldn’t be illegal.
It’s not about freedom. It’s about suppression. It looks a lot like punishing men for being men.
I’m beginning to think that most lefty movements are just about broken people trying to manipulate the rest of us so they can feel good about their broken selves.
The Sultan Knish looked at the targets:
In Nigeria and Iraq, Muslim armies are selling women as slaves. Iran hanged a woman for fighting off a rapist. ISIS was more direct about it and beheaded a woman who resisted one of its fighters.
But we don’t have to travel to the Middle East to see real horrors. The sex grooming scandal in the UK involved the rape of thousands of girls. The rapists were Muslim men so instead of talking about it, the UK’s feminists bought $75 shirts reading, “This is what a feminist looks like” which were actually being made by Third World women living sixteen to a room. This was what a feminist looked like and it wasn’t a pretty picture.
The same willful unseriousness saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a survivor of genital mutilation and an informed critic of Muslim misogyny, booted from Brandeis by self-proclaimed feminists. Meanwhile the major feminist cause at the moment is Gamergate, a controversy over video games which can be traced back to a female game developer who slept with a video game reviewer. Professional feminists have spent more time and energy denouncing video games than the sale and rape of girls in Nigeria and Iraq.
That is what feminism looks like and there is something seriously wrong with that. . . .
Professional feminists respond to the negative feedback by claiming that feminism is simply equality. But if feminism were equality, women, and for that matter men, wouldn’t dislike it so much.
A feminist looks like a professional activist wearing a $75 t-shirt made by slave labor while proclaiming that she is a feminist. It isn’t fighting for the rights of women that makes her a feminist. It’s the pricey fashion statement of someone who toots their own horn while exploiting less fortunate women.
The professional feminist is not there to help women, but to promote the agenda of the institutional left.
We’d add the name Ched Evans, the depraved former Sheffield United footballer impriosned for rape, to the debate. The argument over whether or not Untied should re-employ him pivots on the idea that football fans will chant his namerand deduce that rape is ok. Men really are that stupid. Ched is a “role model”. All male football fans look to Ched and become Cheds-in-disguise.
Here in Australia, a mob of intolerant feminists chased the silly pick-up artist Julien Blanc out of the country and got Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to revoke his visa. Morrison said Blanc, who advises sad men on how to cosy up to the opposite sex, said things that were “derogatory to women” and had “values (that are) abhorred in this country”.
Now you, like me, may think Blanc is a tosser, but think about the dangerous precedent being set here: the state has been empowered to say what kind of values it’s acceptable to hold in Australia. The state has been turned into the arbiter of what people may think and say, to such an extent that it potentially will now stop at the borders those who think and say the “wrong” things…
In Britain, feminists are campaigning for Blanc to be banned from entering the country later this month. At the time of writing 70,000 people have signed a petition demanding he be stopped at the border. So feminists want officialdom to erect a moral force field around Britain, to keep out not just criminals or terrorists but people whose views we find offensive. Like super-censors they want Britain kept morally pure, unpolluted by those who say shocking things. Such feminism is just authoritarianism in drag.
Last week in Britain, a furious feminist mob denounced a laddish comedian called Dapper Laughs, demanding he be denied the oxygen of publicity. They were successful: his television show was pulled, his national tour was cancelled and he was banned from university campuses, all on the basis that his sexist banter is offensive and dangerous…
At the end of October, at universities across the US, feminist students came out in solidarity with a Columbia student who wanted a male student who she claimed raped her expelled from university — even though a disciplinary hearing found him not guilty and the police said there was no case.
In a creepy echo of Stalin’s favoured method of dealing with deviants, feminists want him thrown out of university on the basis of one woman’s accusations. This is genuinely shocking.
We’ve come a long way, baby…
Posted: 14th, November 2014 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
