When the underprivileged are not political

I often hear the opinion that saying “I’m not political”, or choosing to avoid conversations about politics, is an act of privilege. That only sheltered people have the option of non-involvement. I would agree that if you’re personally effected by an issue, you are far more likely to care about it. I also recognize that people who are poor, or non-white, or immigrants, or women, or not straight, are often judged as “being political” when they’re just relaying their everyday experiences, because their existence itself is deemed political. All of this is true. But there are also ways in which marginalization can prevent political focus. Here are some examples.

A person who is homeless and living on the street is more likely to be focused on the basics of everyday survival than on contemplating political topics. If you’re expending all your time and energy trying to find food and shelter, you’re not going to spend hours reading about politics on the internet. You (most likely) won’t attend marches. You don’t have money to donate to causes, and can’t boycott products because you need to take what you can get.

Back in the fall of 2011, I was involved with the Occupy movement in New Haven. I’m glad to have taken part, as I learned a lot and met some wonderful people. Many of them made efforts to give to the homeless people on the New Haven green, which was good. They gave them food and offered a media platform to those who wanted one. But not every homeless person was enthusiastic. Some of the Occupiers were sleeping in tents on the green, and a homeless woman informed me she didn’t like it because “me and my friends need this space.” There was a notable moment when a fellow Occupier tried to high-five a homeless man in solidarity. He shook his head, clearly not enjoying the gesture. I’m not going to assume that none of the homeless people cared about politics, but many were too focused on their immediate needs to invest themselves in philosophical theories and keep up on current events.

If a person is not homeless but still living in urgent poverty, they may be too busy to pay attention to politics, get involved in community organizations, or similar things. They could be working so many hours that they barely have time to sleep, let alone dedicate large blocks of time to an ideology.

Additionally, mental health can play into this. I know people who disengage from social justice issues and choose not to involve themselves in political conversations—not because they’re apathetic, but because it will throw them into a psychological crisis. Extensive involvement in these things can be very detrimental to some peoples’ mental health, particularly if they struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, or agoraphobia. There are people with these conditions who choose to be involved, and that’s perfectly fine. But I respect the choice to disengage for their own well-being. Sometimes the ones who are most impacted by these topics are the ones who most need to pick and choose their battles, or else they strain themselves to the breaking point.

Some who are impacted by these social issues don’t have access to education that will teach them about it. Some are politically invested, but not liberal. I know people of marginalized identities who have right-wing values. Some don’t have the time, and others care so much that it drains them and they need to maintain distance for the sake of their health.

Many privileged people are involved in politics—and that can be a problem when they’re out of touch with others. It’s true that privilege can also play into non-involvement or apathy, but it can be more complicated than that.

On bashing vs. awareness

There’s a popular post being circulated on social media which says, “You don’t need to bash skinny people to say that bigger people are beautiful. You don’t need to bash men to promote women’s rights. You don’t need to bash white people to promote racial equality. You don’t need to bash a certain genre of music to promote another. You don’t need to bash straight people to promote gay rights. You don’t need to bash anyone to promote your opinion.”

At face value, I agree with this statement. But the topic is a lot more complex than something that can be distilled down to a meme-ified soundbite.

Yes, it’s true that one doesn’t need to “bash” mainstream, privileged groups in order to empower marginalized ones. But at the same time, there are people from all those groups who will interpret any kind of empowerment campaign as a personal attack. There are white people who see pro-black statements as inherently anti-white. There are men who see feminist statements as inherently anti-male. The irony is that they are the ones conflating whiteness with racism and misogyny with maleness. Many of the more defensive members of the aforementioned groups will feel “bashed” when somebody points out that they don’t face many of the same problems as those who are more discriminated against, even though that statement in itself is not an attack. So they may think that any promotion of plus-sized people, women, non-white folks, and the LGBT community is “bashing” those who don’t belong to such categories, but their opinions should not dictate the way we express ourselves.

This isn’t to say “Bash all you want because somebody will be offended no matter what you say.” It’s obviously not wise, productive, or safe to vent about more advantaged groups in every single setting or social situation. Marginalized people are well aware of this. But I do think it can be helpful to have spaces where venting is allowed, which is not always the same as “bashing.” And even if bashing does occur, it doesn’t have the same widespread consequences as a privileged person bashing someone who is oppressed, because it’s not backed up by a long history of systemic discrimination.

“You don’t have to bash X to promote Y” could just as easily be expressed in the opposite form, with people saying, “Why can’t we have straight pride?? Pro-straight isn’t anti-gay!” But that is to completely ignore social context. That dismisses the fact that “straight pride” and its neighbors of “white pride”, “cis pride”, etc. have always been about being proud of not being gay, non-white, or transgender. Those types of pride are about reinforcing supremacy, not celebrating survival in the face of adversity.

Also, to promote women’s rights tends to mean criticizing misogyny and to promote racial minorities’ rights is to criticize racism. It doesn’t always necessitate the criticism of individuals, but those who embody that kind of bigotry will take it personally when it is called out. 

On humor

Humor is often looked at in a reductive manner of “Anything somebody claims is a joke needs to be taken at face value as one,” and that analyzing joke structure means you lack a sense of humor. Neither of these assumptions are true.

Analyzing jokes is what a professional comedian does for a living. If everything they say sounds completely natural and off-the-cuff, that’s because they’re so well practiced. Successful stand-up requires a great deal of self awareness. As Robin Tran recently pointed out, there’s even an art to hiding the punchlines. Making it in comedy means playing to your audience.

There’s a well known subset of people, both online and off, who think they’re comedians just because they shout out every racist, sexist, and otherwise bigoted thought that barges into their minds, and they lambaste anyone who says it’s not funny. “It’s just a joke, bruh. Don’t you have a sense of humor?” And then this is the part where they fumble for any gay/black/female/trans person in the vicinity to use as a human shield and say, “They’re not offended.” But as soon as anybody who does belong to one of those groups is unamused, their opinion and identity is cast out with the rest of the perceived trash heap and they’re called “just another sensitive [insert slur here].” Their status as a member of a minority group immediately drops them from a position of value (or, rather, exploitation) to a position of mockery. It's pretty sobering to know just how easy it is to fall into that behavior, ourselves.

That’s not how professional comedians work. They have to make the audience like them. This is never achieved by getting angry at people for not laughing, or for getting offended by their offended reaction. It’s not achieved by laughing at a notably disenfranchised group and demanding that they sit there and take it, telling them, “You have to be able to laugh at yourself.” Laughing at oneself should always be a person’s own choice, and it’s funniest when it is. It just becomes bullying when they’re already screwed over by society and now some atomic stink bomb with a mic is demanding that they find it funny.

Even notoriously racist, homophobic, and otherwise douchey comedians know how to tailor their act to specific listeners. They know that if there’s an audience full of women, it’s wise to avoid jokes about them deserving to be raped. (Not that it’s better to make that joke to male audiences. This is about more than not looking like an asshole; it's about not actually being one.) They know that if they themselves are unattractive, it's hypocritical and clueless to make fun of other peoples’ looks. Again, not that it’s better for the comedian to pick on appearance if they are good-looking. There’s the famous rule about punching up, not down.

This leads into the topic of celebrities. Normally, famous people are fair game. They’re rich and successful, so what a comedian says probably isn’t going to affect their status or rub salt in a wound. This would naturally seem like a form of “punching up.” It is—except when the joke is about the famous person belonging to a group that’s historically and institutionally dumped on. This is where things get a little more complicated.

A bigoted joke about a Hollywood star is still a bigoted joke. It may not affect them personally; they probably won’t even hear it. But it will be heard by others of that same group who aren't rich and successful. A joke making fun of Tess Holliday’s weight or Laverne Cox’s transgenderism still affects plus-size women and trans people. Members of those populations are still seen as public laughing stocks, even if those two celebrities aren’t—and they’re ridiculed for aspects of themselves they never chose. (There are people who will argue that you do choose your body size and can decide to be transgender, but that’s a whole other topic. For now, I’ll just say that while some people may be able to dictate their weight to an extent, not everybody can and there are a lot of genetic factors involved. As for being trans, you can choose to get surgery but you don’t choose gender dysphoria. Also, not all trans people get surgery or experience dysphoria. That’s a subject for another blog post, though. My point is that these groups of people, along with others, are torn apart for traits that don’t harm anyone and are overwhelmingly attacked by society.) If someone is unable to make a joke without being a bigot, then they're not very funny or creative.

This is tough to talk about, because nobody wants to be the humor police. Nobody wants to be seen as the no-funster who crashes through the wall at a party to force feed everyone the PC Kool-Ade. But it’s very telling when a person who doesn’t laugh at a hateful joke, or who says it’s not cool, is the only one who’s judged as a buzzkill. Not the person who makes the hateful joke in the first place.

Another telling factor is the way you’re accused of being humorless as soon as you reject or even consider the premise of a joke, even if you and that same person had been cracking up about something else only minutes before and they were telling you how funny you were. It's interesting how quickly any previous demonstration of your humor is now forgotten. Or the way that many of the same people who insist that a racist, misogynistic, or classist comment is “just a joke” will then defend it because “it’s so true!” Or that if you question it, you’re assumed to be trying to censor everyone. It is true that there are some who want to censor others; who want to ban them from having any platform or have them arrested for what they say. I’ve known several such people and would say that approach goes way too far. But more often, anybody who objects at all is accused of being censorious. That’s not what most dissenters aim for. People are free to say what they want, however ignorant it may be. And, in turn, others are free to argue with them. Rather than shutting down public discussion, I want to provide more and to see more offered. Let’s see more counter-arguments. Let’s see more jokes that give off their own light instead of reflecting others who have been drained and derived from for as long as anyone can remember.

That would bring more than amusement; it would bring happiness. And that’s something the world is long due.

Mascots and respectability politics

There's a popular criticism of marginalized groups: "If you don't want to be stereotyped, then don't be a stereotype." I used to parrot that mantra when I was younger, but now I hate it. It places the onus of preventing discrimination on the people who are being discriminated against. It assumes the abuse and disenfranchisement they face must be based on their own behavior, whether or not the speaker would go so far as to say they "deserve" it. But people in positions of power, both social and financial, are always looking for excuses to step on the hands of those below them on the ladder, and those underneath them are not there of their own volition. People invested in maintaining privilege—which does not mean preserving the luxuries they have, but aggressively denying those same advantages to others—will stereotype and dehumanize those they see as inferior, regardless of how hard the ones they're targeting try to seem "respectable." If they can't find a reason to stereotype, they will invent one. And even if somebody of that group does match a negative caricature and is rejected on that basis, it's still completely unfair to believe they are at fault for their entire group being attacked and dismissed. To believe that is to make the individual into the mascot of their whole group. Seeing one person as wholly representative is deeply harmful in itself, whether they're regarded as a positive or negative symbol. But if someone is determined to find an unflattering mascot for a group, then it shows they were already committed to stereotyping them harshly, long before they actually found a person to confirm their prejudices.
              A related thought: many privileged people seem to think they're not bigoted as long as the stereotypes they assign to disadvantaged groups are blamed on "cultural problems," rather than biology. But saying that a disempowered group is to blame for their own struggles because of a "cultural problem" (within their own culture, rather than the dominant one) is really no less bigoted than saying they're genetically inferior, because the former explanation entails the belief that all of their problems result from their own choices. It's saying that the populace in question has a collective attitude problem.

"Family values"?

People do not genuinely care about "family values" if they only value one type of family. Media, politicians, and organizations that pride themselves on being "family friendly" are often blatantly unfriendly to those that are nonreligious, non-white, ethnically mixed, living in poverty, or consisting of same sex parents or a single parent (especially a single mom). Also, encouraging procreation is not the same as being pro family. You can support the decision to have children and care about the well being of families, but many people seem concerned with the former and not the latter.

The unlearning process

It's amazing how many racist opinions are expressed by people who claim they're not "allowed" to express them. So many bigoted statements start off with, "Well, I'm not allowed to say this, but..." But they are allowed. They're not being censored if they're finishing the sentence without receiving one. People are abundantly vocal about those opinions at home and in bars and while shouting things from car windows and blogging in all caps, and you don't see them being swarmed by the SWAT team for expressing their ideas. The same crowd will swear up and down that the very bigotry they're expressing "doesn't exist" anymore. They do not understand that it exists in themselves and all the others who bluster about things they supposedly "can't" discuss (but always do).

I know that mentality all too well because I grew up espousing it. Not bullying people of other races or using slurs, but definitely having a huge white persecution complex while ranting about things I was "not allowed" to talk about. I thought I held such a bravely unique opinion, even though there were always other white people who enthusiastically agreed. It's an acerbic pill to swallow when you realize that racism is still alive and well and that it's largely because of the attitudes you cling to (not just you as an individual, but also many others like yourself). But if you have the power to contribute to harm, then you also have the power to help. Sometimes I screw up those efforts, and sometimes catch myself still carrying certain biases that need to be let go. That's all the more reason to never stop trying.

I think a lot of racist beliefs, particularly the myth that whites are being oppressed en masse by minorities, stem from a sense of powerlessness. It can be imagined, or it can be based on other factors (such as poverty, disability, etc. Those are genuine causes of disenfranchisement, but none of them are due to being white). While that is a horrible feeling, the prospect of accepting that you do have a certain amount of power can be terrifying. It means you're accountable for your actions and have a responsibility to use that power to improve things. Taking responsibility for the part one played in racism is not "white guilt." If anything, excessive guilt puts us on the defensive and keeps us from moving forward. The objective is to learn from it, share that knowledge with other white people who are unaware (either willfully so or just sheltered), and always be willing to learn from those of different ethnicities who face actual racism. Not to demand that they educate us, but to believe their experiences and give them priority in those discussions.

Almost nobody likes to think they're scapegoating an oppressed group, so they have to view the world through a mirror image. It allows them to primarily gaze at their own reflection without actually doing any reflecting. It causes them to see things backwards—they’re really the persecuted underdog while the other is the oppressor. And it appears full and tactile but is actually just a flat surface, two dimensional. Luckily, it can also eventually be shattered and allow them to see past themselves.
             I went through this six years ago when I was twenty-two, shortly after leaving home. I'm sure I still get a lot of things wrong, but this is one area in which the view is now far less obscured than before, and it's no credit to me. It's because of teachers and friends and books. It's because of the internet. It's because the scenery has changed. If you've experienced this, you know that sometimes the vision becomes sharp and stings your eyes, but it's worth it. You can't walk around with them closed after you've seen behind the glass.

Marginalized groups don't create bigotry

Various forms of bigotry are very often excused by saying that a person only became a bigot after having a bad experience with (insert marginalized group here). But bad experiences are not responsible for such beliefs, because the person in question has most likely also had negative run-ins with those of dominant or privileged groups and did not hold those groups responsible.

This judgment is often made when a member of a persecuted population does something that matches a stereotype. A white person who has been assaulted by a racial minority could use that as justification to hate that ethnicity and say the stereotypes are true, but odds are that they've also been attacked by other white people, or known someone who has, and didn't decide that whites are violent. I've known straight people who were sexually assaulted by gay people and concluded that the gay community is mostly composed of rapists, but they don't look at all the hetero folks who commit rape and decide that straight people are sexual predators. I've known people who were cheated out of money by Jewish individuals and used that as justification for anti-Semitism, but they've also been swindled by plenty of non-Jewish peers and they don't associate financial scams with non-Jews.

This is not at all to say that a person from an oppressed group is justified in doing abusive or otherwise unethical things, or that they shouldn't face social/legal consequences for it. I'm saying that these behaviors are not due to their minority status. (Certain behaviors may be connected to oppression, such as a poor person who robs others out of desperation, but that's a topic for a whole other discussion.) To develop bigotry toward a disadvantaged populace because someone of that group has wronged you, you must have already believed stereotypes about them in order to make that connection and generalization. A person who does this while not holding dominant groups responsible for those same actions, and not assigning overall blame to dominant groups, does so because they see such people as the default—yet another example of their preexisting unawareness of privilege.

Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn't Looked in a Mirror

          The other day I came across an article that must be seen to be believed. It’s called “Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn't Been Punched in the Face,” written by a man named Scott Locklin. It's been receiving a great deal of attention and praise. I clicked on the article because the title intrigued me. What followed was a tangent so riddled with misogyny, gender stereotypes, racism, homophobia, and outrageous misinformation that my husband theorized that it may actually be from another world, transported to ours via the Tardis.

          I briefly wondered if it was satire, but as I continued to read, I realized the truth. Locklin wholeheartedly believes his own bunk. He’s expressed the same views in other articles he’s written, most of which are featured on Takimag.com. (Taki’s Magazine is a publication which pretentiously describes itself as “mental caviar.” The “About Us” page claims that they’re politically and ideologically neutral, but they mainly publish material that is sexist, racist, or homophobic in nature. Only two of their columnists are women, both of whom are virulently anti-feminist. Another regular columnist is Pat Buchanan, who wrote a piece bemoaning the “anti-Christian” assault on Christmas. Despite the fact that 77 percent of American adults identify as Christian, America is clearly an anti-Christian country and Christmas is in grave danger of going the way of the dinosaurs and Paris Hilton’s career.)

         I couldn’t resist adding my own input. Locklin’s article follows below, and my own commentary is the bold print after each of his paragraphs.

****

“Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline.”

        At first I was perplexed as to why he’d mention Andrea Dworkin at all, let alone mark her as the first target of his diatribe. She’s hardly relevant to this topic or to modern public discourse. Later on in his screed, I realized why. You’ll see.

“The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago: ‘History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.’”

      "Hard manliness." I see what he did there.

“Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality.”

           …And this article was penned by a Berkley-dwelling number cruncher who self-admittedly has “limited experience with violence.” Also, referring to wife-swapping as an act of “devolution” contradicts his own argument, since that practice would almost certainly lend itself to a population increase. He makes it sound like a mainstream lifestyle within our society, rather than something marginal. Now who’s the one “removed from meaningful contact with reality”?

         A side note: Why the bitterness about vegetarians? This resentment is pervasive in his other articles as well. Did this guy have a traumatic experience with a soy burger or something? And how presumptuous—and inaccurate—to assume that vegetarians don’t get into fights. There are wrestlers, MMA fighters, and other athletes who eat vegetarian and vegan diets. You don’t need to eat meat to kick ass.

        I may be overanalyzing a bit, but it seems that Locklin equates "meat eater" with "tough guy" because to him, meat isn't just a part of one's diet. He appears to think that eating an animal is an act of conquer. It's one of many examples of his overcompensation. (Not that every non-vegetarian eats meat because they want to "conquer" an animal, but those who regard vegetarians as weak and wimpy seem to hold that attitude. It's a form of posturing that's near-painful to listen to.)

“The over-civilized will try to portray their decadence as something “highly evolved” and worthy of emulation because it can only exist in the hothouse of highly civilized urban centers, much like influenza epidemics.”

         Actually, non-urban people can certainly be vegetarians or wife-swappers. And influenza epidemics are hardly limited to “highly civilized urban centers.”

        Yes, it is flawed reasoning to deduce that a behavior which can only exist in a highly advanced society must, in itself, be an evolved and highly productive behavior. But as we've established, vegetarianism and non-traditional marriages don't fall into this catagory. Another fact to consider is that a society resting on fistfights, gang violence, and abuse is not highly evolved, and certainly not one to strive toward. Technology doesn't separate us from that way of life, either. On the contrary, technology often enables us to develop more far-reaching forms of warfare.

“Somehow these twittering blockheads missed out on what the word “evolution” means. Evolution involves brutal and often violent natural selection, and these people have not been exposed to brutal evolutionary forces any more than a typical urban poodle.”

        In other words, people never face violence in cities?

“Through human history, vigorous civilizations had various ways of dealing with the unfortunate human tendency toward being a weak ninny. The South Koreans (for my money, the hardest men in Asia today) have brutally tough military training as a rite of passage. I’ve been told that the Soviet system had students picking potatoes during national holidays. The ancient Greeks used competitive sports and constant warfare. The Anglo-American working classes, the last large virtuous group of people left in these countries, use bullying, violent sports, fisticuffs, and hard living.”

           There is so much wrong with this paragraph that I barely know where to begin. You’re either a violent bully or a “weak ninny”? Wow, someone’s dichotomous thinking is showing. He uses the ancient Greeks as an example of a group that thrived because they were stoic and aggressive. They were tough, but also every bit as “decadent” as the contemporary urban masses he sneers at. Not only that; he’s trying to condone brutality by using ancient Greece and the Soviet Union as examples to emulate, though both of those governments fell. (Whether their downfalls were due to warfare or in spite of it is beside the point.) In regard to the Soviet Union, he criticizes their form of government later on in his essay. This article has the consistency of a bowl of Jell-O.

           He lauds bullying as some sort of strength of character, when by its very definition, it is anything but. Bullying is the act of targeting someone vulnerable; someone who won’t pose a challenge to oneself. In that sense, a bully is a coward.

          Also, the Anglo-Americans are “the last virtuous group of people left in these countries”? Mad props on the xenophobia and white supremacist overtones, bro.

“I think there is a certain worldview that comes from violent experience. It’s something like…manhood. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest badass to be a man, but you have to be willing to throw down when the time is right.”

         Or, in the author’s case, you have to imagine you would hypothetically be willing to beat up those nefarious wife-swapping vegetarians if one of them kidnaps you in his Prius, force-feeds you his homegrown soy products, and tries to rope you into his polyamorous marriage. In reality, any one of those folks could probably kick him to the curb with their faux-leather Birkenstocks.

“A man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t. Fisticuffs, wrestling matches, knife fights, violent sport, duels with baseball bats, facing down guns, or getting crushed in the football field—men who have had these experiences are different from men who have not. Men who have trained for or experienced such encounters know about bravery and mental fortitude from firsthand experience. Men who have been tested physically know that inequality is a physical fact. Men who know how to deal out violence know that radical feminism’s tenets—that women and men are equal—are a lie. We know that women are not the same as men: not physically, mentally, or in terms of moral character.”

           Welcome in, sexism! I was wondering when you’d arrive. For those of us less fluent in Misogynese, his dig at women roughly translates to: “I’ve been blocked too many times on OKCupid.” BTW, way to knock feminism without the slightest inkling about what it is. By asserting that men and women are equal, feminists do not claim that both genders are “the same.” As far as that’s concerned, men are vastly different from other men and women vary greatly from other women.

          From the get-go of this essay, he’d set the bar pretty high in terms of gender clichés, and this paragraph does not disappoint. The statement that “a man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t” is meaningless. You could say that a man who’s attended college or traveled to foreign countries is different than a man who has not. That generalization could apply to anything.

“Men who have fought know how difficult it is to stand against the crowd and that civilization is fragile and important. A man who has experienced violence knows that, at its core, civilization is an agreement between men to behave well. That agreement can be broken at any moment; it’s part of manhood to be ready when it is. Men who have been in fights know about something that is rarely spoken of without snickering these days: honor. Men who have been in fights know that, on some level, words are just words: At some point, words must be backed up by deeds.”

           “Civilization is an agreement between men to behave well.” He completely excludes women from his definition of civilization, even though we make up over half the population and we certainly fight, too. As far as words being backed up by deeds, who’s to say that those deeds always have to be violent in nature? There are numerous ways to change society, stand up for oneself, and gain power without employing violence. Civil disobedience, boycotts, changing laws, suing one’s oppressors, and gaining media attention are just a few of those methods. History has shown time and again that there are myriad factors which contribute to people gaining power. You don’t need to be a bloodthirsty brute. People climb to positions of influence by way of intelligence, talent, useful information, money, manipulation, social connections, and more. Not all of those are positive or honest means of ascent, but they’re not necessarily violent.

“Above all, men who have been in fights know that there is nothing good or noble about being a victim. This is a concept the modern “conservative movement,” mostly run by wimps, has lost, probably irrevocably. They’re forever tugging at my heartstrings, from No Child Left Behind to Israel’s plight to MLK's wonders to whining that the media doesn’t play fair to the overwrought emotional appeals they use to justify dropping bombs on Muslims. The Republicans even took seriously a pure victim-candidate: Michelle Bachman. As far as can be told, she’s a middle-American Barack Obama with boobs and a slightly loopier world view.”

            Ah, yes. You can’t write a racist, sexist, xenophobic piece without a good old fashioned dose of victim-blaming. No, a victim is not always a brave or noble person (it would depend on the individual), and it’s true that victimhood is not a badge of honor in itself. At the same time, it is neither a sign of weakness nor a fair cause for derision. Many people who have been victimized have chosen to turn their experiences into triumphs by learning from them and using their unique insight to help others avoid their own plights.

           Besides, what kind of alternate universe does he live in? Is there really a parallel world in which the modern GOP is overly sympathetic to marginalized victims? Or another planet in which Republican media frequently invokes the rhetoric of MLK? No Child Left Behind was in no way a sentimental initiative. Sure, it used a double-speak name in a shallow attempt to sound more humane, but it focused on punishing schools for their underperforming students. It assessed a student’s entire aptitude by their grade on a standardized test.

          As far as the comparison of Obama to Michelle Bachman, I have no words. Just an incredulous blink.

“Modern “civilized” males don’t get in fistfights. They don’t play violent sports. They play video games and, at best, watch TV sports. Modern males are physical and emotional weaklings. The ideal male isn’t John Wayne or James Bond or Jimmy Stewart anymore. It’s some crying tit that goes to a therapist, a sort of agreeable lesbian with a dick who calls the police (whom he hates in theory) when there is trouble. The ideal modern male is the British shrimp who handed his pants over to the looter in south London.”

1.) A great many civilized males and females play violent sports. What makes them civilized is the fact that they don’t allow that violence to leak into other areas of their lives.

2.) I understand using examples of John Wayne or James Bond, but when was Jimmy Stewart ever regarded as a masculine ideal? He was admired, but never seen as especially macho. Additionally, James Bond is highly educated and cultured—two qualities that Locklin often thumbs his nose at.

3.) This can be paraphrased as “real men don’t cry or go to therapists.” I just rolled by eyes so far that I’m surprised they didn’t lock into place.

4.) Aside from the glaring sexism and homophobia inherent in using “lesbian” as an insult for men, it’s not even consistent with his other thoughts. He hates men who he sees as “effete” and “wimpy” (his definition of feminine). In the beginning of this article he took a swipe at Andrea Dworkin for her feminist outlook, but her perspective was far from pacifistic. She was frequently criticized for being forceful and endorsing violence toward male supremacists. She doesn’t represent the face of feminism at all; there’s great variation within the movement. However, the author seems to use her as an example of the quintessential feminist. He only criticizes aggression when women use it. This tells me that it's not really passivity he objects to; it's people who don't conform to gender stereotypes.

5.) He is in no position to express contempt for those who would call the police instead of taking vigilante action. Unless he’s prepared to take down a burglar with his own brass knuckles (or tin knuckles, more likely), it’s just plain ridiculous for him to judge. Anyway, police are trained to maintain order and use violence if necessary, so you’d think he would appreciate their societal role.

“How did we get here? Estrogens in the food supply? Cultural Marxism’s corrosive influence? Small families? Some of the greatest badasses I’ve known had many brothers to fight with growing up. When good men who will fight are all extinct, there is no more civilization. No lantern-jawed viragos are going to save you from the barbarian hordes. No mincing Nancy boys with Harvard diplomas will stand up for the common decencies: They’re a social construct, dontcha know. The conservative movement won’t save you: They’re chicken-hearted careerists petrified of offending a victim group.”

           Sounds like someone’s a subscriber to WorldNetDaily.

           Plenty of scrappy adults grew up without brothers to fight with, and plenty of pacifists have siblings.

          Why does he have a problem with barbarian hordes? They’re far from the “mincing Nancy boys” he disdains. It sounds more like he wishes he were a member of a barbarian horde instead of a metropolitan office worker.

          His anti-intellectualism makes little sense, since he seems to be desperately grasping for the tone of a Harvard graduate. He believes that “common decencies” are not a social construct, but blindly insists that bullying, sexism, rigid gender roles, homophobia, and overcompensating machismo are healthy and innate aspects of our nature. Doesn't common decency require us to not hold those attitudes?

         And once again, he asserts that American conservatism somehow panders to victim groups. I don’t know which bodily orifice he pulled that concept from, but it certainly was not from his head.

“Teddy Roosevelt, my ideal President, kept a lion and a bear as pets in the White House and took his daily exercise doing jiu-jitsu and boxing. He even lost vision in an eye in a friendly boxing match while he was president. Our last three glorious leaders are men who kept fluffy dogs and went jogging. I don’t trust squirrelly girly-men in any context. When confronted with difficult decisions, they don’t do what’s right or tell the truth—they’ll do what’s easy or politically expedient. Unlike the last three, Teddy Roosevelt never sent men to die in pointless wars, though he was more than happy to go himself or risk his neck wrestling with bears.”

         So he believes that an ideal president treats himself as expendable by choosing to go out and wrestle with bears while the country is in his hands?

        And “real” men don’t own fluffy pets? I wonder if he’s aware that his favorite president had guinea pigs.

“I’m no great shakes: I’m a shrimpy egghead in a suit who thinks about math all day. I don’t train for fighting anymore, and my experiences with violence are fairly limited. Nonetheless, I judge people on these sorts of things. When I first meet a man, I don’t care what kind of sheepskins or awards he has on his walls. I don’t care if he is liberal or conservative. I want to know if they have my back in a fight. That’s really the only thing that matters.”

        He recognizes this about himself, yet believes he’s still in a position to judge. Not only that, but he claims not to judge people by their political views while assuming that a liberal would be unwilling or unable to defend another person in a fight.

       Then again, what do I know about logic or consistency? I’m just an “effete urban twit,” and worst of all, female. I should just spend my days picking flowers and baking cupcakes for a bored internet-surfing financier who wishes he were a Skyrim character. He’s the real expert on what life is all about.

You can read the original article here: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/never-trust-anyone-who-hasnt-been-punched-in-the-face/