We don’t know the whole story, obviously, but the line we’re given doesn’t seem to indicate that it was a sudden outburst or loss of temper. It’s literally in your first post:
The article isn’t about “how to maintain purity of thought or you’re the enemy forever”. It’s about how creeps put on the persona of feminists, yet still do creepy things. Like the feminist who slapped his girlfriend so hard, she reeled backward. Or the feminist who intimidated and talked down to his female employees. Or, you know… that guy who went out of his way to call someone ugly.
I don’t know what “going out of your way” means to you, but to me, it’s above and beyond an immediately regretted outburst, said in wrath in the heat of the moment. If you drop an anvil on your foot, all kinds of regrettable statements might be made. But if you go out of your way to make the same regrettable statements without the foot-crushing anvil, it seems like you’re writing an article, sending out leaflets, reading from a prepared script.
My fave that made me really see this stuff was when I worked for a bookstore, privately owned by a sleazy creeper. He hired me because I was an attractive young woman. (Clearly way before transitioning into a roughly unattractive hairy man) This dudes came over to drop my paycheck off when I had pneumonia, and then sat on my bed while asking me about what kind of porn I liked. Apparently snot dripping feverish young women were his thing? That was the capstone of a long line of inappropriate behavior. I was just too young to read the signs early.
He was big in the early 90s pagan scene, and read feminist books like crazy. He was well versed in all of it. I was an uneducated street rat, so I was having a hard time understanding that this self professed feminist was actually a predator.
Now I notice when feminist dudes say crap, like women in politics are ugly. I don’t count them out right away, but my ears perk up. It’s a red flag.
It’s a good thing these are all behaviors only men mostly do. Can you imagine if there were any significant number of women who interrupted or hit people or behaved patronizingly??!
It depends on the context–at march or demonstration this wouldn’t be unusual–but a guy who goes out of his way to proclaim he’s a feminist raises my suspicions. I always feel there’s a “but…” lurking under the hat.
I’d take this a lot more seriously if the next post on BB wasn’t about women’s underwear printed with animal heads and a photo of a woman in her underwear from knees to breasts with her belly exposed.
Supporting feminism doesn’t mean everyone has to be asexual. It means understanding the proper context for when it is appropriate to discuss a persons’ sexual attractiveness.
“That sexy underwear model looks pretty great modeling that sexy underwear” = OK
"That female politician is not sexually attractive enough for my tastes" = Not OK
I’m just curious how one “goes out of one’s way” to call someone ugly. For that matter, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s too old to be in high school that aesthetic ugliness doesn’t have anything to do with competence, worth, or rightness. I’ve had many a negative opinion of various personages of any gender, and I don’t believe I ever felt the need to express any of them in terms of pulchritude. There’s a lot of things I don’t love about Hillary Clinton, but how she looks? If I and they were all in the dating market, I might opine that Michelle Obama is subjectively prettier, but so what? That factor doesn’t enter into why I think of them.
I have no love at all for Ann Coulter, but the things I find ugly about her aren’t external (if nothing else, she’s certainly better-looking than I am, FWIW), but I’m not convinced that that prevents me from noting that her face does lend itself to unflattering caricature. Same can be said about that drawling tortoise Senate Majority Leader, the rotund and sweaty-faced late “bumblefuck” mayor of Toronto, and a certain orange-skinned short-fingered vulgarian. None of these characterizations are particularly relevant or high-minded, though they’re kinda fun in a middle-school kinda way. But I get that looks-based judgments are typically far more damaging to women than they are to men, and therefore I’m not gonna claim that “ugly” epithets are an equal-opportunity weapon.
That said, it’s another one of those privilege-based imbalances that aren’t immediately obvious to the privileged. Call me ugly all day long, no skin off my dick. It doesn’t hurt me because I’ve never considered myself attractive, and therefore I’ve built my self-esteem on a foundation of personality, wit, intelligence, and kindness. One might as well criticize a tangerine for not being purple enough.
But I can get away with that. Male actors get romantic lead roles into their sixties and beyond. Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones probably never had trouble getting laid. But this privilege means people like me don’t automatically consider this imbalance. Does this myopia automatically make calling any woman ugly a sexist act, as opposed to just a mean-spirited and juvenile one?
The phenomenon is real, my dude. Ask any woman who’s had to deal with them.
And you’re going to need a better source than a site that employed a man who sends death threat to Jews. You can try asking the woman who coined the term, who oddly enough, is in no way related to the DNC or the HRC campaign.
Huh. That’s not much of a defense for any common recent shorthand epithet for McConnell and Trump beyond “dishonest” or “corrupt” or any permutation of “insane.” Still looks much more like puerilism than sexism to me.
