A narrowed defition of diversity exported to Europe

So apparently Europe has a diversity problem.
(Apologies for the CNN link; I hate these websites which start ad videos without asking. Deplorable.)

So anyhow, apparently we do.

What do you think it might be? The issue with the roma minority? The status of Hungarians in Romania? (Linked because it is NYT - some things have improved since then, some had not.) Is it the any other problems ethnic minorities face in European countries?

But of course not.

It can only be black people. No other minorities are of importance. In fact, there are no other minorities. This stupid, binary view (black/white) is imported from the US, along with its consequences, as we can see in the riots in the UK about the murder of a man in the US (let's not get into it). And yes, nobody claims black people are not disadvantaged in some countries. But the notion of singling out a population just because it is black, regadless how how few of them are actually living there, while leaving all the other minorities (who might be "only" brown, or god forbid, white - we can't have white minorities, after all) completely out, despite of the fact that by large they have been living in Europe since, well, millennia, and they do face problems of their own is simply preposterous.

In this view, a monolithic white Europe is oppressing blacks because this is what diversity means -and not the multitude of smaller and bigger ethnic groups that make up Europe itself. So when the American police murders a black person, let's smack a bobby in the face, shall we?

Sometimes it feels like the inmates are running the asylum. 

It is simple to explain, though. It is popular, it plays on the white guilt on certain people, and it aligns with the agency of certain people who are in a position to drive the public discourse, and can shout down anyone as a racist or alt-right if they object. In short it makes for a convenient way to deflect discussions about real issues, which would really open a big, freaking can of worm in the perfect European project. After all we can't have people going about tearing up this idea of idillic united Europe by pointing out that certain members may act towards their minorities in a way that is going against the fabled European Values we all heard so much about. So we turn a blind eye to real issues to focus on something that is makes for a good headline and makes the majority (e.g. all white people) into a scapegoat. And this way the proponents of the European Project (which is actually a really good one), and the out-of-control progressives (who worship identity politics) are actually digging the grave for both. The former I do deeply regret; the latter not so much.

The circles of identity politics - or whatever are we going to fight against next?

A relatively old case, but an interesting one which demonstrates how identity politics works. It is a simple one: a woman stabbed her boyfriend, and essentially got away with it with a slap on the wrist.

It is, I have to say, probably enraging a few people -after all, the judgement goes against any sense of justice, because the defendant is a woman. (See: women are wonderful effect -no wonder they get reduced sentences for comparable crimes, right?)

So I was holding my breath when I saw the Guardian headline complaining about injustice with the following headline from two years ago: The Lavinia Woodland case exposes equality before the law as a myth… could it be? The Woke of the Woke, the Flagship of Identity Politics actually stood up against a gross injustice, even if it is about a woman, you know, a person who is suppressed by the systemic forces of a Patriarchy? Maybe now we can have a level-headed discussion about sentencing policies that are so ridiculous it is hard to know where to start to describe them? That maybe the Guardian may point out that women are favoured which leads to miscarriages of justice (not in a legal sense, but in a moral one).

Well, fuck no. Of course not.

The Guardian found a different narrative.

Now it is not heroic, abused women in the yokes of the Patriarchy; after all, a woman is now a beneficiary of this Evil System.
Now it is the minority women against the evil white supremacy which puts them into prison.

There is a kernel of truth in this argument. It is undeniable that money and status played a role in this case. In fact, one can argue, it is the only factor that played any role in the judgement. A poor woman (white or non-white) would not have gotten away so easy. And yes, there is racism in the justice system.

However, deliberately staying blind to the larger injustice - the different sentencing standards for different genders- just because it does not fit into our narrative -well, this is the repugnant part of identity politics. A man would have gotten an even harsher sentence poor or not. And your narrative about the poor, abused women -well, very few criminals are criminals because they chose that life based on a school competency test. Your compassion is only reserved for one part of the population, and you do not see any reason why you should extend it to other human beings who are not in your in-group. If it is about men, your in-group is women, if it is about a white woman, your in-group is minority women. Since everything is relative, you can move the goal posts as much as you like -as long as you keep the victim/oppressor narrative. You are warping reality even when what you say is factually true. Because what you do not say matters, too. You can make fake news without uttering a falsehood, as it is demonstrated so well in this case.

Women are the best leaders

So now the internet is buzzing with the news: women make the best leaders! The few countries which are led by women are really great at COVID-19 response! It is official! There can be no other explanation, right?

Except…
By this measure, this
guy

is an even greater leader… after all, Eastern and Central European countries responded very resolutely to the pandemic, and these steps largely worked.

So now, when we say that a few countries prove that women leaders are the best, do we also say that Orban is a woman? Or do we say suppressing democracy also works? How about countries, which are led by women and responded poorly to COVID-19?

It is quite astonishing, really, that an idea takes root somewhere, some news outlets pick it up, then it becomes real, since so many news outlets are reporting about it, it must be true. The idea becomes reality.

Apart from the stupidity of identity politics, which looks at everything through gender or race (I wonder why during the 2015 refugee crisis they did not say women leaders were crap, based on how Merkel handled the situation, or when Germany essentially took down the economies of Greece and Spain, that women leaders are horribly aggressive. It is also a stroke of luck for these people that May is not in power in the UK, because, well… the UK response has been less than stellar, and May was not exactly the efficient leader women are supposed to be.

And there are other factors to consider, too, unsurprisingly. First of all, you really want to make sweeping generalizations based on a few statistical outliers? How many countries are there, and how many heads of state are women? Even if you are willing to do that (opening up the way to other, more dangerous generalizations based on outliers -how many deaths did muslim terrorists cause in the last decade, for example?), are you sure you are not ignoring everything else that may cause the difference?
Perhaps it is not the female leaders per se we should be discussing; after all they are not absolute monarchs who make decisions on their own. (I think. At least I thought in a democracy they don't.) Perhaps countries where women can and do get into power tend to be technologically, socially on the more advanced side (I am starting to hate the word "progressive"), with relatively low population density - in short, in countries where we could expect an efficient response to the pandemic, we have a higher chance to see women leaders. (Except if the country is in Central or Eastern Europe, because then it seems like efficient response can be expected from male members of society as well.)

And then there are the inconvenient facts nobody mentions about Germany… But that's another issue altogether.

The reason Fidesz won in 2018 -again

There was a lot about why Fidesz won with an overwhelming majority again in both the international and the Hungarian media.

One narrative is the age-old trope about the primitive, easy-to-manipulate people living in the countryside, who just cannot deal with democracy; if only they listened to the smart people in the Capital. (This very popular opinion is quite wide-spread among certain demographics, and of course, it is very prominent in the media. This is obviously a sure way to win people over from those small villages and towns you'd need to win elections.)

Another narrative abroad and at home is that they won because they were pushing a ceaseless xenophobic campaign, playing on the worst fears of the electorate (and thus ~subtly~ implying how horribly racist everyone is in Hungary). I've wrote about this a lot; the campaign was idiotic and disgusting, but this was not something that could not have been pre-empted with some common sense by the Hungarian "elite", which jumped onto the pro-migrant bandwagon with elane in 2015, or the barrage of international condemnation which was frankly stupid and served only as an opportunity for virtue signalling. This was handed to Orban on a cushion; he did not even have to work for this; after all, he was the only one who got this whole mess right in Europe. Which, as a side-note, is freaking scary to think about.

The third narrative is about the free press. Apparently freedom of the media is no longer a thing; Fidesz was able to monopolize every single channel, hence successfully brain-washed the stupid, uneducated masses who had no other source of information but Victor wishpering in their ears day and night about the evils of Soros and the migrants who will rape them and their daughters. (Again: the government propaganda was stomatch-churning, no question about that.)

But the numbers say otherwise. The media is very far from the pro-government propaganda-machine people make it out to be; in fact, Orban is only wishing for the corporate media that was helping Bush getting the US into an illegal war or two, torture, and mass surveillance. Even if this picture was true, there's a problem: people even in villages have access to the internet. In fact, the access is higher than in most of the rest of the world. Sure, you can argue that most of it is probably facebook cats and porn, but you can't really make the case that access to any othe source of information is only financial news and political analysis.

And there's the whole "POPULISM IS ON THE RISE! THE NAZIS ARE COMING". (A "small" issue with these articles: Fidesz is right wing. NOT far right. If Fidesz is far right so are the Republican Party and the Tories.)

The actual reason why Fidesz won is much simpler and prosaic.

The opposition is shit. As this, and several other similar cases clearly demonstrate, they have no desire to cooperate, to have a coherent program, they are absoltely incompetent, and they refuse to do the hard, grassroots work. After it lost the elections in 2002, Fidesz did just that. Despite of having an overly hostile media, it went out, and talked to people, organized groups in the countryside, making people feel like they are valued (but still not offering any solution to their problems). And it worked. It's as simple as that.

So now we have a winning strategy to win an election, and there is the opportunistic career politician. Guess which one will get a 2/3 majority in the next election.

Gender pay gap and the case of who gets to the top

The narrative about gender pay gap has changed subtly over the last year or so; finally the flimsy argument not supported by actual facts, that "because of Patriarchy women get paid less for the same amount of work" has seem to be dropped; it's nice because literally nothing supports it. (But if you did not know: we have pocket money pay gap, too - again the evils of men suppressing women from an early age.)

The ONR's figures show that between the ages of 22 and 29 women earn 1.1% more than men of the same age, and between 30 and 39 women earn 0.2% more than men in the same age group. (Of course this is not a problem worth correcting.) This pay gap reduces and then reverses around the average age of having children. Yes, overall men earn more but that is because the pay gap flips before the higher earning years. Employers, however, are being gender blind on this issue, and simply basing decisions on productivity and output. Feminists can describe this as unarguably unfair and hence slander men as sexist or even misogynist but it is a grey area depending on your perspective on fairness. For instance is it fair to discriminate against someone who has more experience and fewer career breaks simply because they are a man?

When you compare apples to apples -same experience, same qualifications, IT companies (which supposed to be the epitomes of "Da Patriarchy", with all those spotty little nerds who break out in sweat whenever they see a woman) show no gender pay gap.

So finally the narrative is shifting; now even The Guardian admits (in contrast to previous articles) that the situation is not as clear-cut as women getting paid less for the same work. (It took about two decades, but finally data and facts overtake ideology. There is hope still. Next you're telling me that Climate Change is real...) The sneering condescension is actually ramped up, but there you go. It's somewhat ironic that finally they are getting closer to the "other" narrative, and admitting that the situation is more complex than the identity politics' response of "women are downtrodden", and yet being more hateful and confrontative. I think it's understandable (and even necessary) since they cannot possibly admit that "the other side" might have been right about something all along.

So what does it leave us with? Our feminist now scornfully explains (you can see this as "womansplaining") that the solutions should include societal changes - the very things that "the others" have said, since this is what the data suggested. Just to make it clear: she is explaining something that was constantly brought up to feminists as an alternative explanation to the disparity of pay between genders... in a tone that suggests that everyone else but her was stupid. I really do think it's a great example of the hitherto unidentified, but not unobserved womansplaining.

Yes we know. We kept telling you the very same thing while you called us misogynists. 

So there are a couple of issues here. Career choices - a difficult proposition. A woman who has no family has the same pay as a man. But can you negatively discriminate others so that you promote women who do have children? It is something that does need to be discussed; but the angry, straight-out hostile tone is not helpful -or even warranted. Interestingly these authors are looking at women in isolation when it comes to career choices and pay, instead of looking at them as part of a family unit. By taking a career break, they do impact their own earning potential; however the other member of this family unit can actually make up for the shortfall. Unless you gimp them as well, because "they're men, and they should also earn less even though they have more experience and did not take career breaks". In this case the whole family suffers the loss of earning, you know. Unintended consequence which can be actually foreseen. 

The author of this Guardian article also argues for gender neutral recruitment; which is a very good thing, but it can certainly backfire spectacularly. She also calls for encouraging women to enter different fields; but how exactly are you going to force them to do so? Are you going to set up quotas for mining engineers, for example? Sorry, Rosie, I know you want to be a teacher, but you will need to enrol in astrophysics to fill out the quota? Like it or not, genders do differ, and men and women in general might be inclined to gravitate towards different fields. It does not mean that a particular woman cannot be a fighter pilot or a coal miner, but in general women tend to do other types of jobs. A lot of which is underpaid, I might add. This is not a gender issue we're talking about; it's a societal issue. Our society in general seems to reward other things that most of us see important; lawyers, economists, pop stars are making dis-proportionally more than people who wash the bottom of your grandmother in the hospital. We should definitely make sure that our carers and teachers are paid better; but the identity politics really poisons this conversation.

The other issue constantly brought up about gender inequality is the relative low representation of women in the top management positions (and in politics). Certain people like to look at it as the Patriarchy oppressing women; as if Joe the Septic Tank Cleaner might benefit anything from an Oxbridge educated white guy getting a CEO position at a hedge fund. (I guess they all know each other from the weekly secret penis-meetings where they discuss everything they need to oppress women). 

It is certainly a possibility, although I never got an invite, so I'm feeling a bit left out. However there are some minor issues with this. For example a LOT of high management positions are being filled out with women in the civil service, academia, etc - and there are more and more female politicians, too. So it seems like the trend is changing already. Perhaps people should just wait until this naturally equalises in reaction to the affirmative actions taken over the last two decades. (After all, women already are represented in higher numbers in universities... and yet no cries can be heard about gender imbalances.) 

Another intriguing possibility presents itself by simply taking a look at these positions and what it takes to get there. We do know that people in high positions often express psychopathic traits. And by "often" I mean one CEO in five does. Which is way more than in the general population. This is really not surprising; to get to the top you have to be absolutely driven and be absolutely without any scruples. You don't get these promotions by being passively promoted, as these authors in The Guardian seem to think; according to their wisdom you are promoted to a high management position on the basis of the possession of a penis. The truth is somewhat different. You have to be a one hundred percent dedicated individual who is willing to put in an insane amount of work, and walk over anyone if necessary -in other word, well, you have to be a psychopath. (Or something close to it.) Even if you reached a moderate success, and possess enough money to invest and live off comfortably with your family without having to work another day, these people still put in sixteen hours a day to get even higher up.

You don't get these positions by playing nice, and doing your work, climbing up the ladder one step at a time; you have to elbow yourself in, and destroy all your rivals (professionally only usually, but personally, too, should it become necessary). 

But perhaps women are underrepresented in the higher management positions partially because fewer women are willing to engage in these struggles; fewer women want or can put in fourteen hour workdays, and put up with the merciless contest leading to the top. Very few people are willing to do that - regardless of what their genitals look like. What I think is that there are a little bit more men than women who are competitive and ruthless enough to succeed; that's all. We are talking about the very edge of the outliers on the bell curve here. What feminists and other mostly arts and humanities majors tend to forget that we are biological beings; results of millions of years of evolution. This includes our gender roles as well; a hundred years of societal conditioning will not erase millions of years of savage struggle for survival. Men ARE evolved to be more aggressive; its foolish to think this can all be forgotten because you played with gender neutral toys as a toddler. 

There is also a different aspect of the higher management positions: there are really not a lot of these around, so statistics will not be very useful. For every one of these high-earners you get thousands of underlings, so a very small imbalance can absolutely skew the statistics. Ironically the feminists are right that these people make way too much; but it's not a gender issue.

I'm not sure what the solution can be to address these issues. Sudden society engineering moves will not be very successful. You cannot mandate gender quotas only in certain positions (unless you're willing to do that for others as well- coal miners and construction workers come to mind), and you certainly cannot discriminate against men  without a serious backlash. You can't mandate more women in leading positions, either; vagina-quotas will not fly well with corporations, and ironically you will entrench the position of women as the "lesser sex", since obviously they need help to climb up. You can only encourage more women to enter the fight for those position. But how exactly are you going to do that? How fair would it be to handicap males or help females to get to higher management? First of all you really, really need to answer the question: are there fewer females in these positions because it's a boy's club, or is it something else, some other factor at play? (Such as the potential explanations above.) 

#metoo has gone #too far

When you read about the #metoo movement in The Guardian and other papers, or hear people talking about it, you find that the speaker/author regularly confuses and conflates several different things.

1.       Sexual coercion in several areas of professional life (It started from the movie industry, but now it is concerned about all areas, rightly so.)

2.       Sexual assault and the nature of consent (and that we’re living in a rape culture)

3.       Domestic violence

4.       Patriarchy

Interestingly in any of these situations the narrative is always the “men are perpetrators, women are victims”. Neither of the loud proponents seems to be concerning themselves with victims other than women and perpetrators other than men, and they are more than happy to ignore the grey areas so that they can present a beautiful black-and-white picture that supports their crusade against the Patriarchy. A lot of people –women included- are saying that the #metoo movement transformed into a sort of “warlock-hunt”; these articles are worth reading.

Sexual coercion

Powerful individuals pushing themselves onto vulnerable people, taking advantage of them is wrong. Forcing others to perform sexual  acts to get advantages is wrong. Weinstein is a scumbag. (So are Spacey and Takei, by the way.) However. The idea that in a relationship the one holding the power is automatically the guilty party (especially if he is a man) is just plain stupid. The first lab I attempted my PhD was in a lab where the PI had a wife who acted as a lab manager. I learned later that she used to be his MSc student, and my PI divorced his fat and ugly wife to marry his blonde and thin student. In this case you may argue that my PI took advantage of his situation, but it’s not what happened. What really happened was that the lab manager took advantage of her situation, and simply seduced her supervisor. There are cases when you clearly have a scumbag abusing his power (see Weinstein), but a lot of these cases we like to forget that we all are humans with our insecurities, worries and, yes, libidos. Just because in a professional setting the guy was a superstar of peptide chemistry, does not mean he was not an insecure chubby man who could be easily manipulated by a self-assured, striking young woman. And I have not even mentioned people who abuse their sexuality to get ahead in line. Sexuality is power too, you know. In fact it is the ultimate power in this world. What I’m saying here is yes, scumbags, like Weinstein should not be allowed to do what they do best; however every case should be treated with care. (The problem here is what the problem is in most of these cases involving genders: the people setting the tone are not concerned about collateral damage, since it does not happen to the members of the group they belong to. Even if the perpetrator does happen to be a member of their group they normally get off easy in both legal proceedings and in the social media outrage-machine.)

Rape culture and sexual consent

This has some tangential connections to the issues triggering the #metoo movement, but only in a very specific way: can someone give consent if the other party is much more powerful than they are. This has, since then, spun out to be a general outcry about consent, and the whole, very unrealistic “yes means yes” attitude. Apparently women are not capable vocalizing their wishes if they don’t want something, so to protect these fragile creatures a constant verbal confirmation is needed during sexual acts. Interesting concept, but it does beg the question if these people have ever had sex before. It also means, of course, that if two drunk people bang each other, the man essentially raped the woman since she has taken something that made her incapable of consent. (This is true even if she only had a glass of wine, by the way.) The fact that the guy was drunk too, does not come into play. It’s not two adults doing things that they may regret later –it’s one adult doing things to another for which he will be criminally liable for the rest of his life. Responsibility is something only one party has to think about. (I wonder why infantilization of women is OK with these people, but whatever.)

Weinstein did give a very good opportunity for these people to push their agenda; after all we all know men are always more powerful than women, right? After all, Patriarchy.

To be honest it is not necessarily wrong to re-evaluate social norms, and create new ones; the problem is when it’s a retroactive, one-sided process. The retroactivity is pretty easy to see: people get burned for relatively minor things (like touching of knees or pretending to grab boobs for stupid photos) they did in the ‘80s. Well, guess what. Those were different times, and it’s not necessarily conductive to judge those times based on your present social norms. The one-sidedness is also quite evident; it’s enough just to talk to a bouncer or a bartender if you want to hear about inappropriate behaviour by women – behaviour they do not get pilloried for; but behaviour a man could easily find himself arrested for.

But this is not where one-sidedness ends. OK, let’s pretend women do not behave obnoxiously, or there are no double standards on behaviour. The present discussion places every single iota of responsibility on the man. There are no clear “new norms”. We still live in the past (apparently) where it was a man’s duty and job to court women; they are (and were) the proactive party most of the cases. Like it or not, this is something that has been going on for as long as sexuality existed in the animal kingdom (OK, not as long, but nearly). The males court the female, the female chooses her mate. Just because it has always been like that does mean it’s set in stone: after all, social norms can and do change. In fact, many men would prefer if women were more proactive. However. This places men into a very precarious situation presently, since there are no accepted new norms yet. Most women expect men to pursue them; most women expect men to be proactive and “manly”. It’s not the “toxic masculinity” certain feminists like to talk about; it’s simply the fact that genders do have different roles. You don’t have to abide them, but the differences are there. You smile at someone, you bring them flowers, ask them out, kiss them; we all know the drill. Right now what is being argued for is that anything that a woman does not welcome is sexual harassment or abuse. There are no clear lines, no clear definitions. She can change her mind later, too –like in the case of Aziz (and countless others). So what these people are arguing for is that women have no responsibility in changing their behaviour, only men do. But we are not giving them new rules; the rules are that if we don’t like you, we don’t like what you do, or we regret something we did later, we can absolutely and totally fuck you up. (Like Mattress Girl, and the others who destroyed the lives of men they accused of rape.) Funnily enough this can happen to a woman, too, if she poses as a man. But, as we know, women do not lie about rape or sexual harassment. Ever.

And this is not on. This is not “sexual liberation” of women; this is an absolute empowerment of women at the expense of men.

Since we discuss rape. Does rape happen? Absolutely. It’s not Mattress Girl’s figment of imagination at all. A friend of mine was raped when she was a child by their neighbour and her parents dismissed her claims. It’s absolutely outrageous and something that needs to be punished severely. But the discussion is incredibly one-sided.

It is incredibly disingenuous that rape –in the eye of the law in most countries- can only be done by men to women. It is also incredibly disingenuous that people disregard every single piece of evidence and statistics that do not confirm with the “men are rapists women are victims” narrative; and that narrative drives policies. The simplest examples are the female teachers sleeping with their students; most people just shrug, or even feel a bit of “that’s the way to do it, my son” attitude. (Myself included if I want to be honest.) However, these cases should not be treated differently from male teachers sleeping with their underage students –yet they are. Both in the public eye, and in the eye of the law.

But it does not stop here. Female on male rape does happen. In fact, a study looking at sexual violence found that females and males had carried out sexual violence at nearly equal levels by the age of 18. You can read other studies and statistics, too.  Most US studies conclude that federal surveys detect a high prevalence of sexual victimization among men—in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women. The factors perpetuating misperceptions about men’s sexual victimization are reliance on traditional gender stereotypes, outdated and inconsistent definitions, and methodological sampling biases that exclude inmates. And yet nothing happens; these people are not included in the list of people deserving help; they do not conform the “men are the perpetrators, women are the victim” narrative. The typical response from a feminist (and I use this word with reluctance because I guess “third wave feminist” would be more fitting), is that “Patriarchy hurts everyone”. This is bullshit, of course. “Patriarchy” used as a convenient trump card in these discussions even though it makes absolutely no sense. Patriarchy is supposed to disadvantage women so that men can exert their power over them –after all, it is in the name. If this system disadvantages both genders in different way, it is not a patriarchy. As we discussed, names are important. The real issue is here –as with all the other “Red Pill” issues- is that certain feminists think it’s a zero sum game: if we talk about men’s problems we will ignore women (or, if I’m less charitable, they hate men). So it’s a struggle from here on between sexes for them; a struggle they are actually winning.

It does not have to be like that. As a feminist scholar said about male victims: “Compassion is not a finite resource.”

Domestic violence also comes up a lot when it comesto #metoo. This, just like rape and sexual assault, is a very grey area- not as black-and-white as they would like it to be seen. In fact, people who dare to claim it is a reciprocal thing, tend to get death threats. And lose the right to enter the shelter they themselves founded. Figure that.

Let’s see the statistics again. There are also studies on the matter; freely available for everyone. Yet nobody bothers; or even worse, they ridicule the victim.  It seems like men are also quite often victims of domestic violence; yet they are never on the agenda when it comes to help. The fact is, a man who is a victim of domestic violence, has nowhere to go. (Or rather, he can go to prison if he calls the cops.) This is not to say that all things are equal; it is very true that a lot more women die or get seriously injured as a result of domestic violence. What I am doing here is pointing at the discrepancies of narratives and realities. The usual “men –bad, women- good” narratives are just not true; and a lot of victims go without support because of that. What is worse, even the victims these movements love to pretend they want to protect go unprotected, since all policies aimed at protecting women in domestic violence are built on a false narrative, and not on the actual evidence. They will make you feel great about yourself, but they do jackall to actually protecting women.

The whole issue has been hijacked by a very radical form of feminism worldwide; even mentioning the discrepancies in sentencing, the homelessness rates, the suicide rates, education, and so on evokes a mixture of hatred and ridicule. There are no sane voices in this debate; and this is what the #metoo movement morphed into –another weaponized outrage-factory in this gender war where everything is about the evils of Patriarchy, and not correcting the problems in our society we both built. (Or if I want to be cheeky, men built.)

Let's do some mansplaining about manspreading

This really annoys the crap out of me. The Guardian and other "newspapers" keep picking up how women suffer of manspreading. As if this was a thing. Well, they did make it out to be; it is in now the public consciousness. It is not, however, on the Tube. At least in my four years of commuting I've experienced it exactly once. (As a man, I have to say I was a bit taken aback; I thought it was supposed to happen to oppress women, but what do I know?) In fact it was not even manspreading: a dude was playing tug-of-war with me, and tried to push his arm over to my side of the seat. I do not mean the handrest; he had that already; he tried to push his elbow into my side. I pushed back for a while, moving his hand back and did something that immediately took care of the situation -more on that later. (Perhaps the title should be in the recent style of idiotic internet articles: "A guy pushed his elbow over the handhold in the Tube - you would not believe what happened after". "Tube commuters hate this single mom for this ONE simple trick.")

I did see a lot of people taking up a lot of space with their backpack on; women crossing their legs and sticking their shoes out to the space between the seats (I guess free shoe polish as you try to negotiate the walkway, right?), and people being dicks in general to each other for no particular reason. I was even thanked once by a lady when I took off my backpack before entering the train... thanked for not being a dick. So I have seen enough assholery, but it was not gender specific. It was just people being assholes.

Anyhow. Manspreading. It does not exist. It is used to ridicule and shame one half of the population, but it is a non-existing problem. Don't even try to argue that it only tarnishes the inconsiderate assholes who manspread; you have the word "man" in the expression, for Pete's sake! Same goes with the term mansplaining... there assholes who mansplain usually do it to people regardless of gender; and there are assholes who mansplain and have a vagina. (Interestingly the above linked study shows exactly that: men "mansplain" to each other just as much as to women -which is the exact definition of equal treatment.) It's a term about assholes who think they know everything best, regardless of what dangles between their legs. If you think that it does not tarnish all men, try to use the term "Jewccupation" for the Occupied Territories, and see how people will take your explanation that you only mean the State of Israel and the settlers, but not the entirety of the Jewish people. (By the way, I have dibs on that term; I just came up with it.) The reason certain women attribute a gender aspect is to "mansplaining"or "manspreading" is that they can't imagine this could happen to them for any other reason than their gender.* Which says a lot about them, to be honest. It's also really interesting to watch that on one hand this feminist movement wants to "ungender" language (spokeperson, using "they" instead of he/she), but on the other it keeps pumping out divisive, gendered words.

This is an excellent tactics if you are in identity politics; by stating manspreading is a fact as a fact, you establish it as one. From then on people start arguing about why it is justified or not justified, instead of asking you to justify your original assertion to begin with. So you will see furious arguments on the Guardian's comment section between men and women about how your balls need or does not need more space, instead of stopping to ask if it is a problem at all? (To pitch in: my balls are regular sized as far as I can determine; I never had issues sitting with my legs closed.)

So. What did I do in my only instance of a guy (or a gal) overspreading his/her (or their?) boundaries, you ask? Did I write a furious opinion piece in The Guardian about the Patriarchy, the Gender Pay Gap, and The Oppression of Women by All Men? Did I launch an anti-elbow campaign? #killallwhiteelbows?

No.

I told him to move his hand back.

He got red as a beetroot, and moved his fucking hand back. Case closed.

So the moral of the story: if you have someone manspreading next to you (by which I mean sticking his/her backpack into your face, not letting you exit, not moving inside the carriage to let you on), you can do two things: either you generate a fake social movement for gender equality, shaming and ridiculing one half of the human race, or, you know, you can fucking ask them to move. I wonder which is the most constructive solution.

*Are there genuinely sexist men who think women are stupid? Undoubtedly. But how many? And how many women harbour similar thoughts about men? Have you had a woman explain to you how to do the freaking washup or change nappies?