I Blame The Patriarchy

Some dudes read heartwarming nature crap blogs. I have no idea why, but read them they do. Sometimes one of these dudes will send an email thanking me for educating him in the mysterious ways of heartwarming nature crappists. And I’ll be all like, dude. Shucks. Gosh. That’s really heartwarming. Let me bear your children.

By the way, because I am King of the World and command vast armies, I am changing the name of our ism from “feminism” to “heartwarming nature crapism,” effective immediately. Remember when I invented that great non-gendered word for “human”: tacqueau? I don’t need to tell you how successful that gambit was in the grand struggle for women’s liberation from male oppression.

But I digress.

Anyway, sometimes a dude will skip the whole “Through your infinite wisdom you have single-auntedly saved my relationship with my previously inscrutable feminist girlfriend, and here’s a detailed description of our great new sex life” thing. Sometimes he’ll just link straight to the set of instructions he wrote on how a dude should present himself when commenting on a feminist heartwarming nature crap blog. This is what Comrade PhysioProf did while guest-blogging at Isis the Scientist.

“You have just visited a feminist blog, have read a post and/or some other comments, and your d00dly opining d00d brain lobe is pulsating like a motherfucker with all sorts of extremely important d00dly things to share with the laydeez. Will you get your sorry d00d ass handed to you on a fucking platter? Or will you be a tolerated visitor? Comrade PhysioProf is here to share his tips with you on avoiding d00d ass platter handitude!”

It really clogs the Twisty lobes to consider that there are maybe six guys on the whole internet who don’t need need to be told, among about 894 other obvious things, that

a) the entirety of feminism is not invalidated by the fact of that they personally love their mom, and
b) freely expressing their fancy-free male privilege on heartwarming nature crap blogs is experienced by the heartwarming nature crappists as aggression.

While it is always hi-larious to read what expert dudely readers of heartwarming nature crap blogs have to tell their less-enlightened brethren, it’s also maddening and, if you like, ironical, since such a post can only be written from the patronizing position of male privilege. It’s a kind of double-privilege, too: “Unlike you, Grasshoppah, the feminists have accepted me, for I have been to their savage death island and live to tell the tale.”

These guys are veteran ethnographers doing a field study, warning the new grad students: “The natives have curious, unpredictable ways. Approach them with caution or they will prong you sure as shit with curare-dipped spears. Oh, and we’re meeting for beers later at Chip’s tent.”

Hardy har, because implicit in these man-to-man, how-to-walk-on-eggshells-around-a-feminist tracts is an ingrained sense of the inconsequential status of women in the feminist heartwarming nature crappism blog community. It’s comical somehow, that feminist women — women who are widely considered to be the hairy minority, the kill-joy joke-butts of the internet whose blogs are often described by dudes as “lame” or “parodies” — are so aggressively protective of their trivial little sectarian colonies on the web that men need special training and travel visas to avoid blogular deportation.

But on the other hand, it’s pretty danged heartwarming when a dude finally concedes that male privilege exists. Whenever this happens, an asshole gets his wings. Take this guy, from the comments on PhysioProf’s post:

I’m well aware of the privilege inherent in [being a middle class white male], not that it seems to have done me personally much good I do realize that it exists and I benefit from it in non-trivial ways.

Wow. He grasps that he benefits from male privilege yet simultaneously expresses his belief that he personally — rather than, say, persons oppressed by his privilege — should be benefiting from his realization. Now that’s privilege!

Not to be outdone is this heartwarming guy, who sums up the problem of dudes and Internet feminism nicely:

[PhysioProf's] post is pretty much why I stopped giving a damn about the whole feminism issue. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, or don’t wish to help — it’s just not worth the trouble.

He can’t be bothered with this particular humanitarian crisis; those damned spear-chucking natives just get so upset about every little thing. I mean, he’d like to help, but, like, he was supposed to be at Chip’s tent an hour ago.

Nevertheless, I accept that some dudes who end up here may wish to deport themselves according to basic human standards with which they may have been heretofore unacquainted, so I’ve added PhysioProf’s primer to the half-assed Dear God! What about the men! page; it is written in their mother tongue.