Josh Hawley: The War On Men (?) Is Driving Them To Porn And Video Games (Things Many Men Like?)
from the lolwut? dept
If ever there were the walking, talking embodiment of hypocrisy in modern American politics, surely Josh Hawley would be a viable avatar for such a creature. There are few better at saying one thing and doing another than he. He's a free speech advocate... who thinks social media sites should be sued for their choices on speech on their platforms. Josh Hawley loves to talk about how much he's been canceled... despite being a sitting US Senator and being given pages in massive newspapers in order to say all of that. Josh Hawley hates discriminating against folks over their politics... except when it's against the folks who's politics he doesn't like. And, finally, Hawley is a "constitutional lawyer" who, by some measure, participated in an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow an election.
So forgive me if I can but laugh at Hawley's recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference about how the "war on men" is driving men to such vile hobbies as video games and pornography.
“Responsibility is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, and men must be held responsible for their actions,” Hawley said. “Still, can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games?”
So, here's the thing: I am a man. Not in the grandiose sense of course. I am only mildly "manly", whatever the hell that means. But I am a "male" in the traditional sense of the word. And before I ever realized that anyone might be critical of such man-ness, I had already played plenty of video games and (sorry Mom) had seen plenty of pornography. Nobody's critique of any of my behavior led me to video games or pornography. The awesomeness of video games did the former and the natural human curiosity that comes with puberty did the latter.
And I'm not particularly a creature of the left and yet I have never felt any of this war on men. Or Christmas. Or the troops. Or any of the other trumped up moral panics that get trotted out far too often just to rile everyone up. Perhaps I'm lucky... but I doubt it. When Hawley says men are being "told they are the problem", the obvious question is "for what?" If the answer is being assholes, well, society is changing and men can't get away with being assholes in the way they far too often used to. That isn't a war on men; it's a war on assholes. And leave video games and porn out of it.
And, frankly, Hawley's "cure" for all of this, um, leaves much to be desired.
Hawley ended his speech with a call to fight the war on men by increasing the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and creating new tax credits for getting married. If successful, a record number of men might put down their dicks and virtual assault rifles to rejoin the patriarchy.
What a silly thing to say! Dear men, have we a deal for you! We have a great factory job making widgets for you and the only cost to you is you have to ignore your own biology!
But that's how you know how performative this all is. Hawley knows there is no serious war on men. He knows that video games and pornography aren't some massive problem to be solved. And, most importantly, he knows that his constituents aren't as smart as he is and so they aren't aware of those premises. So, instead of leading, he plays to that base to build his popularity and get reelected.
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Filed Under: josh hawley, manliness, moral panic, porn, video games
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And as usual, his "solution" just happens to be what his backers want: men to get women to stay home and take care of the kids and the house and stop making such a racket over men's behavior, then go to their nice minimum-wage factory job making products and spending their paychecks buying things like good little consumers.
I see a few... shall we say, minor problems with his "solution".
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"I see a few... shall we say, minor problems with his "solution"."
Like being about 40 years too late?
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No, no, the minor problems are all at home with the wife!
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Who can afford a home on factory pay?
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Because no father and onlyfans for a paycheck is so superior to the traditional family.
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There's no such thing as a traditional family. The entirety of human history has included "alternative" families: Multi-generational, orphaned, adopted, siblings raising siblings, divorce/widowhood, adults friends living together, adult siblings living together, etc.
"Traditional family" is just a dog whistle for patriarchal misogyny and hierarchical bullshit that puts hapless men in charge of everything just because they were born with a penis.
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'All men not on my side that is.'
“Responsibility is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, and men must be held responsible for their actions,”
And if anyone would know about personal responsibility and being held accountable for your own actions...
Coming from insurrectionist Hawley of all people that is downright weapon's-grade hypocrisy and dishonesty right there, all the more so given that he follows it up by whining about how the fictional 'war on men' is somehow forcing those men into porn and gaming.
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Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
I was going to make a comment on this particular point of hypocrisy on Josh Hawley's part, but you stole my thunder. I don't know whether I should be sad or happy.
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Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
When the response to something is so glaringly obvious like in this case it's not so much a question of will someone spot it but who will get there first, I'm sure you and others will beat me to the punch in a similar matter at some other point as has happened on numerous occasions already.
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Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
That's true. If Josh Hawley had a milligram of honor and principles he'd resign from the senate and turn himself over to the FBI.
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Why? It's not like he got elected to the senate because of honor and principles. He is representative of what he has been elected for.
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"...he'd resign from the senate and turn himself over to the FBI."
As David has it, why? Hawley is the symptom, not the problem.
The problem is that there are enough deplorable people addicted to hating people of color, gays, trans, women, liberals, anyone not them...that it suffices to provide Hawley with an office.
There are, in the US, between 70 and 90 million people who suffer from grievance addiction and are willing to send any monster into office who provides them a new or present target to denigrate and hate. Hawley is just faithful to the majority opinion of the district he represents.
That's the horrifying truth here.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
It's really our two-party system. We either have a choice between an incompetent, corrupt asshole or a crazy whackadoodle asshole. Very rarely do we get good representation (we do sometimes, but it's rare).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
There's an element of truth to this. In a parliamentary system, you wouldn't have a single party of religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives and constitutional conservatives. Nor would you have a single party of environmentalists, limousine liberals and democratic socialists. They might form temporary or even long-term coalitions, but each would have their own party. The US system doesn't have to be a two-party system, but the current parties have set up the rules to make it incredibly difficult to break up the duopoly.
Side note: For some reason the helicopter parents and surveillance-state nannies seem to be about evenly split between the two.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
In a parliamentary system, you wouldn't have a single party of religious conservatives, fiscal conservatives and constitutional conservatives. Nor would you have a single party of environmentalists, limousine liberals and democratic socialists.
That's more a symptom of first past the post districts than executive branch elections. See the major conservative parties of Britain, Canada, and Australia for unions of fiscal, constitutional and religious conservatives. Canada has somewhat of a democratic socialist split, and England has a minor limousine liberal split, but the major left parties are largely unions of all of the above as well.
It seems more likely based on most of the existing examples that parliamentary systems largely just provide support for regional splits, Australia has a rural party, Britain has Scottish/Irish parties, and Canada has a Quebec party. But they don't really seem to split up the "big tent" approach.
Now, proportional, hybrid proportional, (see Germany or Sweden) and even ranked-choice variant (see France) electoral systems do actually split significantly along ideological lines as you suggest. But that occurs even in Presidential systems, as in Portugual or France.
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Luckily, there's ranked choice in some places in the US, such as NYC during the primaries. So we may be getting there; it's just a steep hill to climb.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
One from each party - Denny Heck (D-WA) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pretty much kept their eyes open and their heads out of their asses. But yeah, calling it like it is instead of how #45 wants it to be, that's a pretty rare talent these days. At least in the hall of Congress.
And it's not so much the fact that we have only two major parties (there are at least 4 others at any one time), it's the fact that we don't have term limits on the rapscallions. That would put an end to the bullshit, mosh-kosh.
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Two major parties.
How?
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Because then they aren't spending 95% of their time campaigning to get reelected, i.e. posing for their constituents, their big-bux donors, the news media, etc. It's a wonder when they actually do find the time to spend on the country's business.
Campaigning is just like pimping - it ain't easy. In fact, you can't tell one from the other without a score card.
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True, but I don't see how that would affect who gets to Congress. It would just ensure nobody there has time to figure out the job before they go home, leading to the lobbyists and staffers actually running the place.
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Aren't they doing that already, leaving the politicians to seek bribes, I mean campaign funds.
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To whatever extent they're doing it now, it would be much worse with short term limits.
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Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
They know they're hypocrites.
They don't care.
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'Of course the rules are different for me, I'm BETTER than them'
I'm sure a number of them are aware of it but given such a realization requires you to face your own dishonesty I suspect that for most denial prevents them from recognizing or admitting(even if only to themselves) how grossly hypocritical they are.
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Re: 'Of course the rules are different for me, I'm BETTER than t
No, they know exactly what they're doing, and they're doing it on purpose, to trigger the libs.
These are the people chanting "my body, my choice" to protest vaccines. You don't think they know what they're doing?
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Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
I don't think Hawley is a hypocrite. IMO he's a white/male supremacist masquerading as a conservative. He's just using the concerns (legitimate or not) of many conservatives to rope them into his agenda.
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Re: Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
And if he preaches those concerns while acting in opposition to them (e.g. "men must be held responsible for their actions" while not holding Trump responsible for his actions), then he's a hypocrite.
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Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
Hawley's view of responsibility is the same as his views on everything else.
When it applies to him its unfair, but he demands everyone else meet the level he couldn't reach riding into space on Bezos rocket dick.
He says pretty words and riles up the base, but how those who claim to be 'conservative' can still worship a man who participated in trying to overthrow the government to appease a madman's claims an election was stolen (despite not having a single fucking shred of evidence of this huge crime) makes me question if they are conservative or just terrified old white men who fear not being the top of the food chain anymore.
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Re: Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
Uh, where is the difference? The whole political system of the U.S. with its electoral college and the per-state Senate has been designed to keep the people in control of land and money (traditionally old white men) also in control of the political system. That is conservative. That the electoral college is constituted from popular vote is a radical change compared to the original design and only got through because nobody imagined it would change a lot.
So it is quite conservative for Republicans to ask for state legislatures to be able to throw out the popular vote and instead appoint an electoral college voting for the Republican candidate. Nobody expected this to be necessary to maintain white men's absolute hold on power, but one needs to deal with reality, and the reality is that democracy is no longer worth the payback in good image in return for a no longer theoretical risk of losing the hold on power.
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Re: 'All men not on my side that is.'
"...all the more so given that he follows it up by whining about how the fictional 'war on men' is somehow forcing those men into porn and gaming."
Well, to be fair the argument "Look at what you made me do!" is a fairly powerful dog whistle towards Hawley's base. Who are, of course, not misogynistic in the least - they just want women to know their place. It's not hypocritical at all once you realize that neither Hawley nor most of his base subscribe to the idea that every human has equal worth.
Thus Hawley flat out asserting that when women don't know their place men are forced to become douchebags, by which he naturally implies any form of entertainment more sophisticated than, say, baseball and NASCAR. It gets him the votes.
In the same manner Hawley asserts the protesters on jan 6 were forced to do as they did - including shitting on the floor of the rotunda and beating a cop to death - because an honest election was evicting Dear Leader.
When normal people see that famous image of the boot stamping on a human face they think it's revolting. Hawley and his base just ask the question "As long as we're the ones wearing the boot that's pretty great".
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I could say that he "doth protest too much" and all what that would imply, but this is Josh Hawley we are talking about. With all the energy he's spending on producing bullshit, if he just spent a tenth of that on porn and video games the world would be a better place.
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If successful, a record number of men might put down their dicks and virtual assault rifles to rejoin the patriarchy.
Only someone who is, let me say "lacking" as a man would think this. Someone might want to check and see if Josh Hawley is really a woman in disguise. Because shit like what he said is grounds to surrender your man card.
Put down our dicks? Where? The fucking thing (pun intended) is attached.
And there's nothing more 'Murican than assault rifles (virtual or otherwise).
The fuck is wrong with him? Period, maybe?
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Perhaps Josh is the inspiration for the song, "Detachable Penis".
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"Someone might want to check and see if Josh Hawley is really a woman in disguise. Because shit like what he said is grounds to surrender your man card."
That's...pretty last century reasoning. I'm pretty sure there's no woman alive who'd take being compared to a spineless asshat like Hawley sitting down. And I'd take most women - even radical feminist TERFs - over a dipshit like Hawley, any day.
Hawley hasn't surrendered his man card. He's surrendered his Homo Sapiens card when he started catering to cavemen, neanderthals, and outright apes.
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Fair enough. That was a tongue in cheek comment - I would rather speak with damn near anyone, let alone that person being a woman, than talking with that twatwaffle.
The condition I was trying to portray was more of a eunuch scenario. No fucking balls (and that's the 'guts' kind of 'balls' rather than actual testicles :) ).
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"The condition I was trying to portray was more of a eunuch scenario. No fucking balls (and that's the 'guts' kind of 'balls' rather than actual testicles :) )."
Yeah, that's fair. Although both Hawley and his base are big on talking about how they'll be the first in line to defend the glories of whatever they think the constitution and america is all about, I'm also real sure any sign of actual risk will have both of them competing to throw one another under the bus and scurry off in hiding, whimpering and bleating.
In fact, that appears to be exactly what the representatives are doing to their 'friends and allies' among the 6th of jan insurrection right now.
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SMFH
Just when I think Hawley can't be as stupid as he looks, he opens his mouth again.
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I heard conservatism drives men to functional lobotomies. No wait...I've seen it, not heard it.
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A chicken-egg problem.
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Fixed it for him...
“Responsibility is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, and OTHER men must be held responsible for their actions,”
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Amazing that I manage to have a job, a wife, videogames and porn
Maybe I'm not being attacked or something? But I'm a man, why don't I feel attacked? Where is this mystery attack coming from?
Is it really this easy to grift the average conservative voter? I should switch careers, seems like easy money.
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Re: Amazing that I manage to have a job, a wife, videogames and
A presidency was founded on those principles and managed to run the nation (into the ground) for four years. It really is that easy, it seems.
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Re: Amazing that I manage to have a job, a wife, videogames and
"...why don't I feel attacked?"
Perhaps, and this is just a guess of mine, but just maybe you aren't a hopeless and entitled loser in life desperately looking for a scapegoat on which to blame all your failings?
The base Hawley addresses, otoh, would go to their deaths defending their privilege of looking down unto the other - including women - and blame said others for the actions they felt they were forced to undertake.
What Hawley is saying is, essentially; *"Look how women refuse to know their place. You can't be blamed for being a godless fucknut resorting to porn and faux violence when the damn ladies refuse to spread their legs and serve you a sandwich and everyone refuses to honor your courage and bravery in dancing around that burning cross with your face covered! It's all their fault! Not yours!".
And his base is eating that shit right up. Without salt.
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Why, what ever do you mean, sir! Same sex marriage has been legal for a few years now! Some guy named Obergefell had a duel with some other guy named Hodges. Legal briefs at 10 paces or something slow and painful like that.
Now, the good Senator Hawley might not feel that such marriages fit his idea of the American Dream, but by gosh, a Real Man knows when to stand up for What Is Right.
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Men aren’t the problem, Josh. Men being assholes by abusing their societal privilege—by acting as if they own the world and are thus entitled to do things like control women’s bodies without consequence—is the problem. Toxic masculinity, of the kind best associated with incels and MRAs and other such pissants¹, is the problem.
¹ — I’d say Republicans belong on that list, but doesn’t it go without saying~?
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I'm reminded of those who's first response to criticism of police corruption is to accuse the other person/side of being anti-police, it's just such a telling response when someone points out the negative and optional aspect of something and the other person's gut reaction is to act as though that's an attack on a core and necessary part of it.
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Don't Josh me
It pretty good speech-a-fyin if you ask me, fill a lot of balloons with that hot air. Can't think of a place in history where politicians were actually held to a standard of truth in their speeches, always been to roil the pot. The author summed it up pretty well, an asshole by another name, eh?
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Know what gets my goat?
This assumes that he is some kind of smart in the first place. I'll take Bad Assumptions for $400, please. You don't have to be smart to con people, only charismatic (to some degree).
Question: Which Senator is more charismatic than he is smart?
Answer: Josh Hawley.
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Uh…all of them, I think.
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Did you just insult Ron Wyden? Am I gonna have to ask you to step outside?
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There are some exceptions. Besides Ron Wyden as mentioned, there's Mitch McConnell, for example.
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40 per cent of gamers are women, due to tax breaks etc theres not many factory's left in America most factory's have no unions, factory work is mostly dangerous and low paid . Republicans brought in laws to make it hard for unions to exist or to recruit members in workplaces. Most of the big adult porn company's are American its one of the few industry's American company's lead in eg with onlyfans, Vr porn etc
He s talking rubbish but he, s looking for maybe the religious voters who think all porn is bad or maybe looking for publicity even if he sounds like an idiot to most people
The fact is most products except cars are made in china due to low wages plus 9 6 culture
Chinese work 9 hours 6 days a week how can American company's compete with that
Yes some men are under attack men who abuse workers or act in a sexist way to discriminate against women and minoritys
And that's a good thing
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"The fact is most products except cars are made in china due to low wages plus 9 6 culture Chinese work 9 hours 6 days a week how can American company's compete with that..."
I keep having to correct this; It's not that americans can't compete - because european workers are all in unions, all have way better working conditions than US ones...and we do just fine over here.
No, the real issue with China owning manufacturing isn't that it's cheap - because those days are long gone. China is not a cheap manufacturing market.
It's that over the last forty or fifty years US industry offloaded all manufacturing, resulting in the US no longer owning that skill pool at scale. As Tim Cook from Apple said it, you couldn't fill a conference room with skilled US tool-and-die engineers but in China you can snap your fingers and fill a lot of football stadiums with them.
Those skills aren't even taught in US colleges or vocational schools either any longer.
The above is half of the reason the US can't manufacture at scale, at home. The other half of the reason being that it's very convenient not to hold legal responsibility for owning a factory on US soil. Every modern western company strives to become nothing more than upper management, marketing and a finance department. Meanwhile the chinese all insist on owning land and assets. Guess which, in the long term, is more viable for anything other than providing short-term profit.
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Factory jobs....
I seem to remember a president, 43, that had the labor department re-classify fast food as a manufacturing job so he could crow about how he "Brought back factories!".
Having eaten as some popular outlets, I can see where the confusion might have crept in.
As to howly, well, dog whistle. And all the little doggies heads cock when he blows it.
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"You think he's compensating for something?" -Shrek
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I wouldn't call it a "war" (that word is misused enough as it is), but there is a lot of public misandry to go around these days and it's generally downplayed and excused in a way that similar hate against women never would. Just like this article does.
Pretending the double standard doesn't exist, or perpetuating it by blaming men for the hate they get, is playing straight into the hands of bullshit-mongers like Hawley.
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Except that “similar hate” has been downplayed and excused for literally centuries before the here and now. If some men can’t deal with their toxic brand of masculinity finally being called out for what it is—misogyny, sexism, and maybe even a little homophobia mixed in for good measure—that’s their problem.
Also: You’re not doing yourself any favors if a woman says “all men are jerks” and your first instinct is to say “not all men”…
…because, as I’ve said before, toxic masculinity is the problem. Any man who is truly secure about his masculinity can hear a woman say “all men are jerks” and not be reflexively defensive about it.
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"...but there is a lot of public misandry to go around these days and it's generally downplayed and excused in a way that similar hate against women never would..."
Hmm. No, I think that if women had a few millennia's worth of oppressing the other gender and in modern times enough of them got away with it to keep up that practice then they too would have to start providing evidence they weren't like all the rest of them.
We men have rested on a massive privilege for centuries and our successes can be traced at least in some part to being brought up with advantages. The proper response when some of that bullshit is brought to light is not to deny that fact.
It's a bit similar to how it's pretty hard for white people to free themselves of the stigma of racism when centuries worth of generational wealth and privilege are still today providing a playing field far easier for a white person to navigate than it would be for a poc.
"Pretending the double standard doesn't exist..."
But first we need to pretend both sides started out equal and on a level playing field, amirite? Some weapons-grade bullshit along with the gaslighting there, bro.
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I believe a person's reaction to this issue hinges on their idea of how to address injustice.
You may think that because men have had the upper hand and "male privilege" for centuries that it's now a measure of justice to treat men with less respect than women. In your mind, it might be well-deserved payback -- just as the the justice system punishes wrongdoers.
Alternatively, you might think that instead of adopting the "two wrongs making a right" approach, the proper avenue is to try to battle against sexism in all forms. Instead of trying to compensate for these past injustices by discriminating against men, just try not discriminating against either gender.
I subscribe to the latter, in particular because I just have a hard time feeling that certain people should be punished for the sins of their ancestors. Also, it's far easier to administer, as you don't need to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a certain bias is appropriate.
There is no doubt that rampant misogyny still exists, and there is similarly no doubt that rampant misandry exists. For anyone who questions the latter, all you have to do is reverse the genders as you read gender-related opinion pieces, or notice the number of snide comments in the media about "old white men," simultaneously agist, racist, and sexist.
While I would not hazard a guess as to why society is so accepting of misandry (to the point of making it essentially invisible to some), the results of this study do show that we are more accepting of stories that favor females.
For people who feel that perhaps men deserve some mistreatment, that's fine, but please recognize that you're basically endorsing explicit gender discrimination (as long as it's applied against males) and ingraining it in some generations of youths. You should ask yourself when this anti-male bias will no longer be appropriate, when justice will have been done. For example, the ratio of female:male college students is approaching 3:2 -- how far does this need to get out-of-balance, and for how long, before action is taken? And have you worked out all of the implications of this inequity as the effects ripple through society over time?
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"...that it's now a measure of justice to treat men with less respect than women."
I don't. It IS, however, unsurprising that benefit of doubt is not extended to those of us who keep demonstrating that we really don't give a shit because life is very much more convenient for us that way.
"...or notice the number of snide comments in the media about "old white men," simultaneously agist, racist, and sexist."
While ignoring the fact that statistics show that "old white man" along with "racist and sexist" correlates to a frightening degree. Yes, we can certainly see a few very vocal women exposing misandrist sentiment...but compared to the vast mass of white middle-aged men either casually accepting a highly unfair status quo or actively contributing to upholding it those women are about as rare as black people with KKK sympathies.
To put both sides on the same scale is just plain gaslighting when you've got a hundred on one side and maybe one, screaming very loudly, on the other.
"For people who feel that perhaps men deserve some mistreatment, that's fine..."
Ah, the old "Think of the poor plantation owners. Why must you drag the fine old south down with the few bad apples" argument?
No. There is no publicly accepted misandry around. More gaslighting and strawman analogies, I see.
Please point to the glass ceiling we men suffer?
Wage gap?
When was the last time you had a bunch of middle-aged politicians from the other gender making decisions about what surgical procedures you were or were not able to take?
Are 25% of men, statistically undergoing some form of sexual abuse before the age of 20?
The odd feminist extremist may be screaming imprecations loudly but her, I can easily ignore. Perhaps because I'm not an entitled shitwit who sees fit to ignore that in daily conversation any man will get to hear the same implications aimed at women, coming from men in reasoned tones, in conversations considered normal.
"You should ask yourself when this anti-male bias will no longer be appropriate, when justice will have been done."
Well, we could start by calling your red pill troll rhetoric out for the bullshit it is. I mean, this "anti-male bias" seems to be a solid fail when you look at how the world still works. I'm sure that in whatever echo chamber you picked up the idea that the dominant sex is persecuted it sounded great. Empirical observation, however, begs to differ with you on that score.
"For example, the ratio of female:male college students is approaching 3:2 -- how far does this need to get out-of-balance..."
So your only example is...one which has no bearing what so ever, given that college admissions tend to not be gender biased? Or, well, at least not here in Europe. In the US, I'm sure, there's more pressure the "man in the house" needs to hit the ground working come age 18 - which isn't exactly debunking the gender role bullshit so prevalent in that place.
I suggest - cordially - that you take your flawed assumptions, false analogies, straw men and red herrings elsewhere. Around here people tend to be a bit more critical when it comes to not accepting a bullshit sandwich wrapped in wordwall.
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Which isn't at all what he alluded to. It's very simple and it's something we see every time an "oppressed" group of people demands equality and respect, those on top will view the calls for equality and respect as an attack on them, that they are the oppressed or put more succinctly: When you are used to being privileged, equality will feel like oppression.
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For example, the ratio of female:male college students is approaching 3:2 -- how far does this need to get out-of-balance, and for how long, before action is taken? And have you worked out all of the implications of this inequity as the effects ripple through society over time?
The effects eventually will. The Y chromosome will disintegrate over time as it has already done for some species of salamander. At which point humanity will adapt to other forms of reproduction, if humanity even wants to reproduce. Or they can engineer a futanari master race. Men are little more than walking bags of privilege, cash, sperm and violence. Once the first three have been excised and women rightfully take their place, evolution will take its proper course.
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Not justice, but revenge—and well-deserved, at that.
The justice system punishes anyone found guilty within that system. As numerous wrongful convictions being overturned have shown us, not everyone deserved the punishment they received.
That would be the ideal method, yes. But we live in a far-from-ideal world; get used to it.
Who here is asking for all men currently living to be punished for the sins of all the misogynistic dickbags who died before them? It ain’t any of us around here, not that I can see. It ain’t a hell of a lot of people, men or women, for that matter.
I’m guessing that your real problem is that you think of misogyny/“misandry” in the same way a lot of racist white people think of racism: In calling out misogyny/racism and trying to prevent it, those who do that are “keeping it alive” and making things worse, so we’d all be better off if we pretended those societal evils “died” at some arbitrary point.
The thing is, the people who benefit from the privileges of patriarchy and white supremacy—even if only passively—are the ones who stand to regain that privilege if we ignore those evils. If no one calls those evils out for fear of being labeled a “misandrist”/“reverse racist” (or worse), they will continue to propagate. Social and legal consequences for heinous behavior are the only way to reinforce the idea that said behavior isn’t welcome in society. That isn’t “unjust” and it isn’t “discriminatory”—it’s levelling a playing field that has been uneven for centuries, if not millennia.
Have you ever heard of the concept of “punching up”?
Men don’t deserve “mistreatment” only for being men. But if you think the mockery of entitled men, the push to nullify male privilege in society, and anything else you feel is “misandry” is some grand great evil that needs to be combatted as much as misogyny, you should first come to grips with a documented historical fact: Since the dawn of civilization, men have never been oppressed by women. Then again, when you’re used to privilege, equality can sure as hell feel like oppression.
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Oppressors have this delusional fear that their victims will treat them like they were treated.
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There’s a good story about that uniquely conservative way of thinking. (I give a tip of the hat to The Weekly Sift for this one.)
Cato the Elder, speaking in 195 BCE in favor of an anti-luxury law the women of Rome wanted to see repealed (because it specifically targeted women’s jewelry), warned against allowing women to have a voice in government:
We still hear that point today from every overprivileged class, directed at every underprivileged class. Whether the subject is women, people of color, non-Christians, gays and lesbians, non-English speakers, transfolk, or what have you, the message is the same: There is no such thing as equality. If the overprivileged class stops being the masters, they’ll become the slaves.
Despite Cato’s efforts, the law was repealed. Rome never became a matriarchy, though. In more than two millennia of testing, the “they’ll take over” theory has never been proven.
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If that's after whom the Cato institute is named, it's certainly fitting.
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Can we get a fire extinguisher for the flaming stawman and framing?
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Stop it. Misandry is not actually a thing. If you actually bothered to look into the reality of it you would find that it's mostly a tongue in cheek way of demonstrating how ridiculous the premise of misandry actually is. Like an ultra feminine woman giving giving a misandry style make-up tutorial, or cross-stitching "I hate men" in the most delicate fashion on lacy handkerchiefs. It is a deliberate demonstration of how nonthreatening feminist actually are. There is no violence or sexual assault, fantasy or otherwise, unlike the rampant misogyny that exists worldwide. Crying misandry is just a pathetic attempt to undercut feminism, not unlike claims of reverse racism, or that gays want "extra" rights. Pathetic!
Feminism is good for men because it means destroying the patriarchy, which hurts men too. Feminist don't hate or want to end masculinity, we want to destroy the patriarchy, which is the source of toxic masculinity. The source of harmful definitions and expectations of manhood, things that drive men to suicide and violence against the vulnerable that they are supposed to protect.
Oh 'where does it end?' you lament. Equality is that scary? Pathetic.
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"Stop it. Misandry is not actually a thing."
Except in individual cases - usually prompted by unfortunate and tragic circumstances in the past. There are minor groups associated with misandry and those tend to be both very vocal and highly attractive to media and news for quotes - but the idea that men are a "lesser species" or "animals" is not common enough to claim it's in any way a common ideology.
"Equality is that scary? Pathetic."
Yes. Yes, it is. Stephen T. Stone quoting Cato shows just how deep the roots go. and I'll top it off with an LBJ quote;
The same holds true, and far more commonly, when it comes to men vs women. Misogyny is that one reliable go-to any uneducated or temporarily disadvantaged man can use by ample historical precedence, to salve their ego.
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Has anyone confirmed he is actually a man?
Not just 3 weasels & a pigeon in a trenchcoat?
He doesn't seem to have a spine, just coo's out random phrases, runs behind others trying to pick up their crumbs...
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That’s an insult to weasels and pigeons. At least they’re an important part of their ecosystems.
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Weasels are adorable. And there's Cher Ami.
Josh Hawley is neither adorable or a war hero/veteran.
Also, both weasels and pigeons have more spine by simply being themselves. Josh Hawley is an insult to any creature without a skeleton, endo or otherwise.
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I wonder what kind of depravity he's into that he thinks a public anti-porn stance is necessary to divert attention/overcompensate.
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He's just taking a page out of Matt Gaetz's playbook. You know, be the only one to vote against an otherwise 100% slam-dunk law, then get caught doing exactly what you voted against. Diversion (aka what-about-ism) is the only play in the Republican playbook that works time after time. Name-calling comes in just behind that one.
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Well what do you expect?
Who would you expect to put up a passionate show for full-blooded masculinity other than a milk-faced sop like Hawley? It's the old "watch my words, not my chin" trick. And you can hardly blame him for wanting him to have his right to use the men's room not depend on him looking like a man.
Apologies for picking up that rotten fruit, but it was sooooo low-hanging.
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He'll have a complete meltdown when he discovers porn video games are a thing.
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...or when he finds out women make up some 35% of the online porn market - as consumers - these days.
Or he'll stay true to form, make an instant 180, and come out braying about the moral decay in society misleading 'the fine women of the american heartland', yadda yadda.
But as I keep saying, we shouldn't be surprised at Hawley, Marjorie Taylor-Greene or Lindsey Graham. They perfectly well represent the base which elected them. That base - the 66% of US republicans thinking it's time to secede from the union - is the issue here.
And in my humble opinion the saner part of the US would do better to just let them go. Have the northern and western border of North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana become the boundaries of this new Flustercuck Confederacy. Give everyone who wants to move there a solid wad of cash and transportation, then close and seal those borders.
I mean, sure, with all the liberals on the other side of that border they'll turn on each other to find new groups to sate their grievance addiction with. It'll collapse into a congregation of warring cannibal tribes within ten years when only the dumbest and most willfully ignorant and the religious fanatics get to govern - but that's the way they want it.
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It doesn't matter if there's a war on men because we Americans don't know how to win wars.
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"It doesn't matter if there's a war on men because we Americans don't know how to win wars."
Not quite right. The US tends to win wars just fine. Or at least battles. You guys truly suck at winning the peace though, which is why every time you hit a nation with a history of guerilla resistance it ends with you leaving with egg on your faces.
Part of it no doubt has to do with the way where you install a puppet government whose army then gets trained to depend on US resources completely, making it dependent on the US remaining and utterly ineffective at actually safeguarding itself. As in Afghanistan.
At least the british, in their time, encouraged their protectorates to learn how to fend for themselves, making their withdrawal much less of a shit-show. Even if it meant risking their protectorates and colonies telling the british crown to sod off.
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Ya know....
What if all the women were fired from their jobs, and put back in "their place", i.e. the home? How many job openings do you think this would create? Do you suppose that "real men" would be willing to fill those positions? If so, then Hawley could crow "I solved the jobless problem!!"
But I would predict that our economy would come crashing to a halt in a hot hurry, with "real men" blubbering "but that's beneath my manliness!"
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Hawley is Projecting
Even if his assertion was valid, there are a lot of things to do and learn in this world besides porn and videogames, but maybe not for grandstanding, assholes like Hawley.
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Josh Hawley Slams Video Games As Threat To American Masculinity After Bullshit Sniper Ends His ‘Battlefield’ Killstreak
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Ah, the Onion, never factual but always truthful.
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Well, there where some old articles that kind of suddenly veered off into factual territory during 45's garbagement.
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Queue (cue?) the music: "It's draining men! ..."
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Your parentheses was right; it is "cue" and not "queue" (which means "line" in American English).
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At least he didn't write "que", which a disturbing number of people seem to think is an English word.
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I blame Manuel for that...
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Well, if his party hadn't been busy destroying the single-income home (and retirement) while promoting the "nuclear family" (what did Reagan have against grandparents and in-laws?), and continued this same destructive behavior all the way through today, maybe there would be more women in kitchens. Not that i think that is any sort of reasonable, valid, proper, or good goal, but if that's what they have wanted, they have been engaged in one lengthy shooting-oneself-in-the-foot exercise. How do they even have any feet left?
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