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J is for Joke
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
Well, jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, I nearly lost my head there for a mo’. I had started writing my K-post, and then luckily realized early enough that I wasn’t yet finished writing my jeremiad – my J-post.
Anyhow, I blame it on the very recent, record-breaking heat wave we’ve had here in BC. I was living in a tiny, windowless room with debateable ‘ventilation’ from a pipe that supposedly brought in air from outdoors during a week of 40+°C (104°F for Imperial types) – it was a fucking oven, and my brain cooked. I hate Canada and the capitalism that operates under ‘socialism’ here. Money-grubbing and liveable conditions don’t go together. Anyhow (to nip a new jeremiad in the bud), welcome to the Alphabet Series, and today, J is for Joke.
Before I jump in, I did consider a few other J-words before settling on Joke. J is for justice (briefly considered in part of the last post I is for Innocence, where we find out by and for whom exactly the justice system is designed – and it ain’t women); joy (wait for my upcoming book, The Joy of Man-Hating!), judgement (or judgment if you’re American, although no matter how you spell it, all girls and women know this word and the whole ‘screwed no matter which of the equally shitty options I choose’ situation very well! If I feminize, I’m judged; if I don’t feminize, I’m judged. Ad infinitum.) J is also for… jism or jizz, which I wish I knew nothing about – one of those slang words of unknown origin, but which originally meant ‘energy’ back in 1842. Sadly, there is a Bollywood movie called ‘Jism’, which is apparently an erotic thriller, and I have no intention of seeing it, as much as I find the elaborate dancing scenes of Bollywood film to be entertaining and oddly come-join-innable.
I am not going to delve into the content of male humour too much in this post. Rather, I want to get into the ‘just a joke’ mechanism that men use as a get-out-of-jail-free card when they deliberately offend, intimidate, and/or threaten women, especially in public or the workplace. Don’t be fooled by the feigned ignorance and innocence that they pull following your negative reaction to their words or behaviour. All males know exactly what they are doing when they target women for abuse. If a woman dares to call out a male for some misogynistic comment or gesture, or blatant hate speech, he’ll just whip out the whole ‘Jeez, why are you so sensitive? Can’t you take a joke?’ stance. The woman always ends up looking stupid or crazy or troublesome, and can even be blacklisted in workplaces because she is being antagonistic or unstable or unprofessional. Most women will, as per their lifelong training, laugh along with the rape and cheap ho’ jokes, and the feminazi will find herself alone and ostracized.
This ‘just a joke’ mechanism works similarly to alcohol, and to a lesser extent, drug intoxication, where you see men-under-the-influence avoid responsibility for rapes and other sexual assaults they commit. You see, there is a whole series of safeguards built into our patriarchal social and workplace cultures that allow males to push boundaries and shift responsibility for their aggression, persecution and outright crimes onto their victims if they are caught. It’s psychological warfare, and it is effective in dividing and destroying women.
Having said that, what I really want to get at today is another aspect of male jokery. I want to use an example to demonstrate that even when males and females face, what on the surface, looks to be a similar issue, it is usually a much more serious problem for the females. And males, comparatively unthreatened, although possibly a little bothered or inconvenienced, will treat the issue as a joke. They’ll even go so far as to criticize women for taking the issue too seriously, and to turn women’s reactions to the problem themselves as an additional joke.
There are a million and one examples to choose from, but I’ll focus on one that comes from an article published earlier this year (in 2021) by The Right Scoop, an established conservative political and media news blog based in my own country, and that skates just below the edge of general acceptability for reliability and bias according to the Media Bias Chart put out by Ad Fontes Media. As a sidenote, I read all sorts of stuff, liberal, conservative, weird, wonderful, and truly fucked. You have to get out of your comfort zone if you have any hope of having something to write about. I’m not male, you see, so I don’t enjoy circle jerks 😉
I have a copy of the article and some of the comments you can access here on my site. If you want to see all the comments, google the magazine name and “gay campground” and that should get you where you need to go. I try not to link to sites like that directly for obvious reasons.
The basic points of the article – and it is basically a re-quoting of a Queerty article sandwiched by two tiny, original paragraphs – are a) to point out a ‘problem’ – that a small group of trans men (aka women who pretend they are men) got pissy for being banned from a gay-male-only campground, b) to criticize liberals and liberal politicking, and c) to make fun of the constantly devolving LGBXYZ community.
The comments following the article are, as often is the case, just as illustrative as the article, but perhaps from another angle. My link provides enough of the comments to get the point across, but if you love comments sections, google and head on over to the original article to get ’em all.
What you’ll notice from the Queerty article is that the gay male perspective on the trannie issue, while on the surface or without consideration might seem to be a general homosexual problem, isn’t. Gay men are not women and the issues they face with ‘trans men’ (again, aka women) are not the same as what lesbians face with ‘trans women’ (aka men). Gay males generally don’t take trans males seriously – I mean, they are women, and gay males don’t take any women seriously. We are jokes or usable objects, as it is. And women don’t pose a threat to men, on the whole. What the gay dudes see as the main problem is that a gay campground is going to be sex-oriented (big surprise, eh?) and they only want to see dick – REAL DICK – flopping about here and there. They don’t want to see pussy and they definitely don’t want some frankensteinesque frank and beans in their faces. Seriously, man! Come on! Men have problems! And this one is big and hard (or not…?)
The comments, mostly, but not only, by conservative men, turn the whole thing into a joke, even bringing in hilarious comments about lesbians and males in women’s spaces. Complete ignorance about what trans means to women, especially lesbians. There is the requisite reference to feminazis, and a few more rational comments about the gay community not being what it once was, sadly. But the general air is that this is a laughable issue.
Now, for women, trans identified males are a different matter. Lesbians and gay men do share one thing – forcing them to uphold ‘inclusivity’ is an infringement of their rights and freedoms as minorities. I don’t have a problem with closed groups, minority or not. This isn’t the same thing as preventing women from being in the workforce or paying women less than men (wait, that STILL is an issue – and we’re quibbling over the hurt feelings of trans banned from social groups!!!??? Jezus christ.) But that is where the similarities between gay and lesbian problems end. Women, lesbians in particular, have to deal with males who are trans-identified, and we don’t need reminding that no matter what a dude is wearing, he still has the inbuilt, violent, woman-hating, rapey, impulsivity and dominance problem. Tranny males are still super aggressive and scary fuckers. They also go tranny for different reasons than women do, and a lot of it for the males is sexually-motivated entitlement and perversion and mental illness and wanting to dominate. Their approach to penetrating women’s groups has been through aggression, threats, and outright violence. Trans men have not been beating up gay men or raining terror down on them. Trans women have been hurting and threatening and erasing women, however. We know from data, that their rates of violence mirror that of non-tranny men, despite any hormones they take or brain differences that they say they have.
So bottom line here is that like every shared problem that males and females may have, for women, there is always an extra threat of violence and danger, physically and sexually. And that is simply because males, regardless of whatever disadvantages they may have are all still members of the master class, the predator class, the weaponized class, the rapist class. And females are ALL members of the oppressed class, the colonized class, the prey class, the raped class – a dynamic that has existed since human time began. And you can apply this to anything – women are always more at risk than men. Homelessness – more of a threat to women. Death of a spouse in a traditional het relationship – more of a threat to women. Travelling alone. Surviving a natural disaster. Living in a warzone. Speaking out in public. All of these situations are much more threatening for females because of lack of social, political, economic and legal resources. And because of rape and the threat of rape. Yet, despite the fact that on some level, every person knows this is true, when women face problems, they are often joked about. Even acknowledged dangers and risks and possible outcomes become jokes. Rape is a joke. Even when not specifically talking about a political or social issue, rape and sexual violence against women are a source of yuks and bonding for men.
Some women may write off the joking in the same way that they write off men’s ogling and wandering eyes. They ‘need it’ or ‘they can’t help it’ or ‘they are oppressed’ or ‘they are visual people’ or ‘they cover up emotion and insecurity with jocularity’, or whatever fuckery they come up with to justify maintaining their cosy trauma bonds with oppressors. But it is because of this enabling coupled with what I would say is the predator’s natural inability to empathize, that women’s ‘issues’ will never be taken seriously, will remain a source of joke material and will continue to invalidate a class of people. I mean really, what could be funnier than watching a woman’s overreaction when you jump out at her and scare the shit out of her? When you don’t live with a physical and sexual threat hanging over you 24/7, like all females do, how could you not see their crazy reactions as laugh-worthy? If it doesn’t affect you, then it is funny. If it doesn’t affect you in a way that will hurt you physically, sexually, legally, or financially, then it is downright hilarious.
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Gay Men Hate You Too
Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.
Germaine Greer
I generally dislike using quotes and those who quote frequently/constantly either in speaking or writing. I teach my writing students that, unless their essays are specifically about discussing the ideas inherent in a particular quote, to try to avoid using quotes altogether because it breeds a dependency on them and a lack of originality in thinking. My problems with quotes are multi-fold. First, most things have been said before in different ways by many people. Second, men frequently get credit for things that were most likely said by women first (often their mothers or female spouses, but also friends and colleagues). Third, nasty and/or dumb people live on in history for some chance statement that they have stolen and said loudly enough to be heard, and are then remembered as clever or noble. And finally, heavy reliance upon quotes can be problematic as it prevents you from trying to use your own words, and I find that most of us misunderstand the original meaning of quotes or get the attribution wrong. Quotes can be handy for starting discussions or to start an essay, but addiction is easy.
I do take a bit of exception to feminist quotes because for one, women, their existence, their ideas, and their words are typically erased from history by men. When a feminist says something important that is remembered, I try to preserve it. As well, feminists tell us very important truths about reality, and we’d all do well to remember them. Women tend not to remember or even acknowledge their realities. So I have a choice slideshow of feminist quotes in my sidebar, and today, I’ve pulled one of my favourites, one of the simplest and easiest to remember, and of course, one of the messages that pretty much all women forget.
It would be easy and convenient if it were only rich, white, Christian, straight dudes who were the thorn in Woman’s side. They could easily be targeted and dealt with. They certainly are not the majority in the world. But alas, it is not true. The truth is that all men hate all women. It might be seething violent hate manifesting openly in criminal behaviour against women. But it can also be as hidden as an undersized testicle, no one finding out about it until the right set of circumstances put you into direct contact with it. But it is there, in all men. On a continuum from violently open to extremely well-hidden. And one thing women don’t want to believe is that even men who are clear or visible members of Oppressed Groups™ hate them too. One of the worst mistakes a woman can make is to assume that a man can bond with her over being silenced or erased.
No, you see, men are men and all that comes with it (this is the differential interaction effect of nature and nurture on females and males). Key among their group qualities is a real and significant inability to empathize. And this means that men in groups that are hurt by society are unable to feel anything for other marginalized groups and are often quite easily able to abuse those people without any kind of self-reflection. And by ‘those people’, I mean women, primarily. Oppressed men can frequently feel some kind of kinship with men from other marginalized groups, but not with women, in general, or women in said groups. So in this way, a poor man can show support for a gay man, but is open about his rape fantasies of lesbians or watches ‘lesbian’ porn. Likewise, men of any and all groups will take the PTSD of male soldiers seriously, but will have a laugh about or just dismiss the rape of female soldiers by these same male soldiers. (Oh, and by the way, soldiers are not ‘oppressed’ – quite the opposite, in fact, as they are state-sanctioned murderers, and the males are state-sanctioned rapists, as well. I’m referring to PTSD, a mental health condition, which is marginalizing.)
And within groups themselves, women have discovered that fighting the good fight alongside their male counterparts hasn’t been all it’s cracked up to be. Lesbians don’t get support from gay men. Poor women don’t get support from poor men. Atheist women don’t get support from atheist men. Black women don’t get support from black men. Rather, they are expected to do all the grunt work, act as cannon fodder on the front lines including getting arrested, take charge of feeding and watering the male members, look after children if there are any, and (except in the case of LGB groups – although that is changing since adding the T and Q) provide sex. When there are movements for change, what women forget is that men aren’t interested in equality. They are interested in moving up the ladder of power, the rungs of which are women’s backs, and we see this time and again in revolutionary movements. The underclass fights the oppressors, and then replaces them and keeps the same male hierarchy in place. Nothing changes. Women are still on the bottom and left wondering what the fight was for.
So let’s get to gay men – that is, after all, the topic of this post.
I recently wrote a post about another marginalized group – atheists. And as atheist men hate you, so do gay men.
I just spent three weeks travelling through California, which means I was surrounded by tons of out-and-proud gay men loudly spewing woman-hate, and not caring if women were around to hear them. I sat in restaurants PAYING for service that didn’t just include food, but also large sides of misogyny. PAYING to sit there listening to the gay men across the room – including gay staff members – talk about bitches and cunts and say some of the most misogynist things I heard on my trip, even surpassing the bullshit said by straight men I encountered. If I were a gay man having to listen to homophobia in a restaurant, I could probably sue. But as a woman, I have no rights to feel safe in a public place. I would have been laughed out of the joint.
You don’t have to look far to find nice little object lessons. And yet another was presented to me the other day online. The latest horrific piece of news in Trans-World is that some smug little MtT is looking to take leadership within the UK’s National Union of Students as the Women’s Officer. It is distressing. And women are blogging in protest. I headed over to the reblog of an article on this by a woman I read only to find some dude was already jizzing all over the comments. He had provided an insulting reference to a female public figure commenting on how the trans looked like her (he didn’t, actually – I couldn’t see the similarity). He also couldn’t figure out from the title of the original blogged article what the issue was with a trannie heading up the arm of a major women’s organization. He went on a mansplaining, dick-wagging, woman-shaming blah-blah-blah about clothing and how lesbians dress or don’t dress. It actually didn’t make any sense and had nothing to do with why the article was reblogged. If the mainsplaining didn’t give him away as a misogynist, it was the inability to understand the problem with the article that did.
I normally try to resist interacting with clueless men, but he asked a question: what is the issue here? He thought it was clothing. I had no idea he was gay or actually known to and a friend of the female blogger. All I knew was that he was pro-trans and thus anti-feminist. I mean seriously, he has nothing to lose from a man taking over a woman’s movement or women’s spaces. So, of course, he will promote it. Only women are hurt by this. So I let him know that the information about what was being disapproved of was clear in the title (directly naming ‘male pretendbian’, which we all know means ‘MtT pretending to be a lesbian’) of the post. I mean come on, my Chinese students have better reading comprehension, I said. The misogynist responded with a flurry of woman-hate, calling me both a genius AND an imbecile, which was hilarious, and for some bizarre reason, telling me that the article was a reblog, which I and everyone else knew. And then, when I addressed the blogger on the woman-hate in the comment section, Dood attacked me again by announcing his gayness and positing that the only way he could possibly hurt women is by throwing a glitter bomb on us. Clueless, but given that he supports men in dresses, and by definition, of the pro-trans right of men (in dresses) to demand sex from lesbians, this is not a big surprise. Men think they are harmless. Even when they are in the middle of being harmful.
Gay men may not actually rape us, but they play an important role in normalizing violent and denigrating thinking about women and about normalizing the idea of women as objects (e.g., negating women in the LGB movement) and filthy, hateful things (e.g., the ‘ick factor’) or as walking pornified sexual stereotypes (e.g., gender reinforcement through drag queening). And they are often more vocal in their misogyny than straight men. And they are just as excellent at mansplaining as straight dudes. And because they are marginalized, they get away with it.
The lesson here is that you should never forget that no matter how marginalized a man may say he is or that society says he is, he is always more powerful than all women. As I appear to continually say (because it’s true, goddammit), penis trumps vagina. Always. Always. Always. Don’t be fooled. Gay men hate you too. And it’s more than just glitter bombs and cat fights they threaten you with.
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