Gender issues- argument from victimhood

 The scenario:

Step 1. Make a generalization about a group that is ideally less than kind.

Step 2. Get eviscerated by the internet

Step 3. Change your name and hide your head in shame.

If you make any negative generalization about women, blacks, gays, Muslims, whatever, normally this is what happens. People, who have images on their profiles with texts like "be kind to others" and whatnot will descend on you like a pack of furies to point out that you cannot and should not generalize in such a way. Which is fair. You really should not. First, because it is morally wrong (you know, it is "-ist", depending on if it is based on race or sex or whatever: racist, sexist, etc.), and it is also stupid because normally real-life evidence does not support it. 

Unless... unless you make remarks about men, especially white men.

Then the scenario will change considerably.

Step 1. Make an insulting generalization about men, depicting women as poor, suffering victims.

Step 2. When someone tries to argue about this, attack their person ("you are the reason we choose the bear" is the newest one, but the good, old "incel" always works)

Step 3. Watch as everyone descends on those people who dare to contradict your bigoted generalization to tear them to shreds. (And they are lucky if it does not impact their employment status...)

This interesting change in outcomes can be seen everywhere. You are absolutely not allowed to make generalizations about, say, Muslims (do try to bring up integration in European culture), while the very same people who label you an Islamophobe will absolutely murder you if you dare to challenge their open misandry. 

The responses normally can be sorted out into these categories:

1. open ad hominem attacks (the above mentioned "you are the reason we choose the bears")

2. how dare you question our experiences? All women are suffering (myself included), and you have no right to question us. Don't dare to mansplain. Especially go away with your statistical evidence. 

3. how dare you give context? (For example, pointing out that domestic violence is not a simplistic "man beats woman" issue.) "Whataboutism", "fragile ego", 'you must be the problem because you are defending abusers', OR, my favorite, "this is a safe space for women's issues, don't bring men's issues into it". But when you do it in a "safe space for men", first of all, you are an incel and a red piller, and then women's issues are immediately brought into the conversation just to show how much worse they have it. Just try it somewhere. Anywhere.

4. Yes, but. Male issues pale in comparison. It is simply not worth talking about them. And Patriarchy hurts men, too. And if you solve women's issues, you solve men's, too.

So yeah. You cannot win, because in the current zeitgeist, women are absolutely oppressed (even though the facts don't actually support this), hence they have the upper hand in the conversation- after all, if you have certified victimhood, you win by default. 

Now this is where I should bring up a sure-fire strategy to win in these conversations, but the fact is you cannot. 

The main problem is that these (mostly) women take an immense amount of glee of bullying people they disagree with into submission, all the while displaying their victimhood status - kind of like the concept of virgin prostitute. Because make no mistake: these people are some of the worst bullies you can find. Ironically, the very same tactic is used against feminists when it comes to trans issues - and they suddenly learn what it means to be bullied in this way, and do not like it very much. And in the case of Kathleen Stock, they demand that men stand by them. Ironic, I guess. 

Especially if it is online, it is best not to engage, because as the saying goes about wrestling with pigs - you both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it (and you cannot win - this is not done on an intellectual level). So however infuriating/sad/worrying it is to read bigoted comments, sometimes open hatred, you cannot do anything. Reporting these comments will do nothing, since, as we already established, these "truths" are universally accepted today. It is just another example of how polarized (and stupid) our society became, where one half of the population is seen as a threat, as something unnecessary, or even as an enemy, essentially by women who probably do not apply the same views to their own male relatives and friends. Nevertheless the "I hate blacks, but you are OK, because I know you" was never a good excuse for racism. Neither is it a good excuse for sexism. Yes, they probably will grow up eventually and realize that men and women mutually need each other, but in the meanwhile these views do an immense amount of damage to young men, to society at large, not to mention these views are propagated to the next batch of young, privileged women enjoying the feeling of victimhood. Or worse, middle aged women blaming all their failures on men. 

Star Wars and the hierarchy of victimhood

 Well, identity politics is an insane ideology. On face value, if you do not think about it much, it may make a tiny bit of sense for "oppressed" groups, but if you really, really, really think about it it really quickly becomes clear how stupid and how dangerous the whole thing really is. And I do mean dangerous. Just because you are not an Aryan German in the '30s defining yourself and those dastardly Jews based on their group identity and not as individuals, it does not mean it is not the same idea. Only you approach it from the "victims' " side, not the perpetrators' - and you are free to define who the victim is. As long as you keep in mind who is not a victim: white males. Perhaps just white people in general, and sometimes it could be just males in general, even though that would include males who happen to belong to a victim group otherwise.

But it gets confusing really fast because it leads to a weird hierarchy of victimhood where you need to weight different victim groups against each other to determine who the victim is in any particular case where there are no white males to blame, which is made even more confusing considering the issue that a person can belong to several different victim groups at the same time. After all, how do you judge the group of black males against white females, for example? Does having black skin outweight having a vagina in this victimhood olympics? How about black bisexual males vs black transgender females? How about a disabled gay white male vs a lesbian Asian female? Do you count Jews as white or as a minority? What about Caribbean blacks and African blacks in the UK?

See: the sequel trilogies of Star Wars.

It has become clear very early that Disney approached the whole trilogy not from the side of telling a good Star Wars story, but from the perspective of social justice, more importantly, feminist social justice.

From the ridiculously Mary Sue female lead(s), the "The Force is female" stupidity, the disregard of extended lore, the emasculation and killing off important and beloved characters, the weak writing, to the vilification of the fanbase, it was very clear from the start that they were not interested in telling a good story or build the universe. They were interested in pushing an agenda even if it meant the destruction of the franchise. The agenda being some sort of warped version of feminism (4th wave now I believe).

So they pushed and pushed the unrelatable female characters -starting from Rey to that weird purple-haired admiral-, and forced everyone else to the background.

Which ranked some actors who were poised to play a much bigger role based on the first movie that came out. And who also had their victimhood agenda -in case not centered on their gonads, but on their skin color. Enter: John Boyega. 

The poor chap is really, really into how much he is suppressed, and how much he is fighting the good fight. The fact is that he is not the victim of racism. He simply lost the victimhood olympics. Apparently in this case his skin color was not enough to elevate him into a victim status - he merely became "just another male" in the trilogy, pushed aside to give way to the female heroes. And no, it is not because Disney is racist (they might be, who knows), it is because they were doing the feminist thing in identity politics, and kinda forgot about the race stuff. Sorry buddy, having a vagina trumps your skin color. Try again next time, will you?

But this is the issue with this whole exercise... you can't include all victim groups. You can never achieve inclusivity, and it means you will by definition exclude certain groups, meaning you are going to be the very evil you fight against if you believe in this nonsense. It is literally impossible to cram every single downtrodden identity groups into a 2 hour movie (it might be possible to do in a TV series, though -they are trying their utmost with Star Trek Discovery and Picard), and even if you try, it will be like trying to shovel sand in the desert: as you get more and more groups, they will fragment into further groups, and you will never be able to include them all. You included females? Great- now include black females you racist. Black females are included? How about Asian? South-East Asian? Non-able? Inuit? Aboriginal? Lesbian? Bisexual? Pansexual? And the list goes on. You can't include all female groups to begin with, let alone all groups you take to be victims. Which will make the members of those groups really angry at you, and you will be probably scratching your head like Katherine Kennedy is probably currently doing about what you did wrong. She made one mistake: she thought the only victim group is the female one, and forgot about the others. If you play this game you can only lose -even if you try your best to be the most socially justicest (I know it is not a word) warrior. Which makes it a delicious irony to see all the accusations they levelled at the "toxic fandom" come back at them.

When negative stereotypes are OK

 This has really been bothering me for a while. You keep reading how stereotypes are bad (even good ones), now D&D has done the right thing (depending on your point of view) and removed negative race ability score modifiers  (whatever they might be -but what is important to be more inclusive and not to hurt our Orc and  goblin player's feelings)…

But every time you read an article about abuse -physical or mental- it is almost guaranteed the photos will show a female victim and a male abuser.

Just do a search:

This article has links to further articles which all show female victims, and if shown, male perpetrators. IKEA? But of course!

The Guardian is  obviously following this trend -how could they not? Psychology Today?  Of course Always… 

Foundations? Obviously

There was one exception I found in this non-representative search. One.

This article does not even try… it flat out uses the male pronoun.

Why is this a problem? Well, apart from the usual "stereotyping hurts, it is bad, you should not do it" any time it comes up with anyone who is not white and male (but any time you complain when it is about white males, you get the "you are such a snowflake" comments), it does help pushing a false narrative of male perpetrators and female victims. (Even when it is about male victims, it is somehow the Patriarchy's fault...) This has real-world consequences on how society relates to male victims (or men accused of being perpetrators) - as it was  many times discussed even on these pages. 

But apparently this does not really ring the alarm bells the same way as stereotyping Orcs or Sand People does.