This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

Don’t worry I’m not like other girls
I’m a cooler better version than what you have heard
About what women enjoy and what they like to commit to
I’m not like other girls because you treat them like shit
And I’m not about that..

From the song ‘Not Like Other Girls’ by Melbourne-based Bares (fronted by Ella Sterland) – released on their self-titled album in 2017.

Once in a while, I go back and read old posts. I like to see if and how my thinking has changed over the years and also whether I can include links to past articles in my new ones. I vaguely remembered as I was preparing the current article that I had written something about Other before, and lo and behold, in my first month of writing back in 2015, I posted something called Otherfucker, a sort of tongue-in-cheek proposition to rebrand, but with an alteration, one of our best-loved female slurs (popularized in my generation by good old Samuel L. Jackson in the movie, Pulp Fiction). Note that I’ve never tried out this new word, probably because, believe it or not, I very seldom use cuss words in the meat world, unless I’m swearing under my breath in reaction to something really bad or someone has actually assaulted me and I decide to let loose on them.

Anyhow, today in O is for Other, I plan to talk about the following:

1. Women Defending Men – aka Not All Men^TM or Not My Nigel^TM or some variation on Unicorns are Real!
2. Men Defending Themselves – the scourge we know as ‘male feminists’
3. Women Pandering to Men – or what online misogynists have labelled ‘pick-me girls’
4. Men Manipulating Women – à la ‘you’re not like all the other girls’
5. People Silencing Women – e.g., ‘at least you’re not a Muslim woman’ or ‘other people have it worse, so shut up’
6. Men Depersonalizing Women – or creating an ‘other’ for the purpose of punishment
7. Men Dehumanizing Women – the basis of patriarchy, capitalism and porn culture

One thing you’re going to notice about all of these categories is that every one of the people who fall within seems to have an aversion to dealing with reality. Men don’t like reality because it would require them to take responsibility for their crimes and other shitty behaviour. Women don’t like reality because they know they would look very stupid because of their decisions and they’d realize how much of their energy and lives they’d wasted on males who approach relationships very differently than women do. Just a note to the women, it is very good to self-analyze. It is okay to realize you’ve made a mistake (or mistakes!). The important thing is to admit them and learn from them. Then you can get better and go on to help other women do and be better.

So, let’s start with a definition.

In and of itself, ‘other’ is a neutral word. It just means different or distinct. But it can take on a negative connotation in its adjective form, but especially when it’s used as a verb. To ‘other’ someone means to view or treat a person or group of people as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself. Othering can serve to demonize certain people and groups as well as sanitize. One hard, fast rule, though, is that in this game, women always lose and men always win.

1. Women Defending Men. 99% of women are desperate to believe that men are redeemable. They birth males, they let males fuck their bodies, and by and large, women have marginally better relationships with fathers and father figures than they do with mothers. As a result, they are deeply invested in looking for Good Men^TM. These men are not like other men – the convicted rapists, the sexist bosses, the gropers on buses and trains. The bar is very low when defining ‘good’. All a dude has to do is not get caught raping a woman to pass as a stellar example of manhood. I’d bet that the average wife or girlfriend would be shocked (and then would rebound with denial and fierce defence of Nigel) to find out what her owner actually thinks and does without her knowledge. In reality, Good Men are unicorns – they don’t exist. There is no ‘other’. There is just a spectrum of shit. The awfulness of the smell is therefore relative.

2. Men Defending Themselves. Lots of men, even gynocidal psychopaths, believe they are special and innocent. They are not like other men. Some of the most dishonest and repulsive these days are what we know as Male Feminists. These are leftie, human-rightsy males who are the strongest proponents of female sexual power. You know, the power to inspire boners! They organize slut marches. They march at the front of Take Back the Night rallies. They attend and dominate the discussions at feminist events and in online discussions. They are super great at leading women and telling women how to do feminism, and more importantly, what they’re doing wrong. And not that they explicitly demand it, but if women want to show their gratitude by sucking their dicks, they fully support them because they believe that women have the agency to do so. See? They’re amazing! Very un-self-serving and humble and feminist. But. Yes, there is a but (if you actually need one). If you are a real feminist and astutely question or challenge this male feminist, you are in for a treat. You will discover a viciousness and misogyny under the surface to rival any MRA or trannie. He will let you know that he is not like other men, and you are unfairly victimizing him by acting like a man-hating, angry, hairy, crazy lesbian. He might express sad-feelz at your total stupidity and/or the obvious trauma you’ve experienced and haven’t yet gotten over. Bottom line is: Support withdrawn, bitch!

3. Women Pandering to Men. Pick-me girls. This is a real phenomenon, but of course, the labelling and awareness of the phenomenon has been influenced by American television and social media. Women have, throughout history, pandered to men out of necessity. When half of the population has the power of life or death, comfort or poverty, safety or vulnerability over the other half, then pandering and many more degrading behaviours result on the part of the oppressed group. You can’t blame the panderers for starting the whole thing, but pick-me girls/women do deliberately sell out their sex for the approval of males, and are thus accountable for their behaviour, especially in a day and age when it isn’t necessary at all for survival. They make a public show of not adopting standard gendered behaviour (such as applying make-up, dressing in a feminine way, or acting like a sexy child, etc) while appearing to adopt the stereotypical, gendered behaviour of males (such as liking sports, being unemotional, and over-eating without concern for gaining weight), and thus are not like the ‘other’ girls. And they publicly point out this otherness to males to show how they are better. Ironically, they are just as woman-hating and dick-sucking as the women they denigrate. All women who pander to males or the male gaze exhibit internalized misogyny. It is possibly even more pathetic than when a female thinks she is doing something ’empowering’, such as wearing make-up, but is actually perpetuating misogyny. But in the end, they are two sides of the same coin that ends up in men’s pockets. There is so much self-hatred and psychological trauma fuelling this behaviour. And despite their sabotage of women, they just end up used and abused like any other ‘heterosexual’ female. One day, these women lose their special ‘other’ status because no woman can be better than all the others forever. It’s not the woman, but the man that decides when she has finally joined the masses.

4. Men Manipulating Women. This is the male counterpart of the ‘pick-me’ female duo. Men have a lot of weapons in their arsenal for use in manipulating, using and abusing women (see my post: That’s Some Arsenal You’ve Got There, Gentlemen). The relevant one here is that of bestowing the backhanded compliment of ‘otherness’ on a target. You’ve likely had a dude try this on you before. He’ll say something like, “You’re cool. You’re not a bitch like other girls.” So he pays you a compliment, but he is also insulting you at the same time. You don’t have to be young, naive or inexperienced to fall for this hardcore manipulation technique. Most people want to be appreciated and loved for some special quality. The problem is that the specialness that so many men point out in women is that they don’t act like women, but rather, more like men. (Geez, just go get a boyfriend already, you closeted omnisexuals…). So males will praise females for being accepting of porn use, being open to trying anal sex, or for being thin while also eating as much as a man. It is hyper-misogynistic, but the love-starved female will eat up these pseudo-love-bombs. Her internalized misogyny will be reinforced, and she’ll doubly commit herself to not stepping out of line (i.e., acting human, rather than… god forbid, female). What she doesn’t realize is that one day she will fail. She may question her sub-human status or make a demand on the relationship that doesn’t suit her owner. Or she may not actually do anything different at all. All that needs to happen is that the man gets tired of her. All he needs to do is manufacture a fault or just notice that she is human, rather than an object catering to his every wish. And she becomes just like all the other girls. Again, such a waste of a human life.

5. People Silencing Women. This one, I’ve written about before. These days, it manifests as racist misogyny, it is a form of othering for the purpose of scapegoating, censoring and cancelling, and it is predominantly done to white women. It is a standard reaction to the perception of a group of women getting too much attention. There is always backlash when women get too powerful in the eyes of men and their supporters. In reality, the actual power achieved has been negligible. White women have never had and still don’t have power, have never been equal, and have never been over-represented or even proportionately represented in any line of work, despite what people need to believe. And like all women, they have only had a voice when orbiting the privilege of a male through marriage or male family members or speaking about issues that concern anyone and everyone but themselves. Anyhow, like mentioned in previous posts, calling up a handy acceptable victim group, usually brown or black women, is the fastest way to shame and silence white feminists, even if they are poor or in desperate need of help for rape or violence victimization.

6. Men Depersonalizing Women. As a woman, have you ever noticed that we have limited choices for our ‘identities’ simply because they tend to be discrete boxes or categories that don’t seem quite natural? You often feel like you don’t fit what’s available, and the choices available, as it is, seem equally challenging or unappealing. And if you are a WGTOW – woman going your own way, eschewing categorization – you face serious hardship, unlike men who are worshipped for forging their own path when they do the exact same thing. Men put us in boxes for a reason. Power and control. To create ‘us’ and ‘them’ or ‘other’. And in addition, it is easier to other and dismiss and move on to dehumanization when you can lump a bunch of things/people together. A group has no identity, no face. Without a face, you don’t need to see them as like you. They are undeserving of sympathy or empathy. So it is easy to apply stereotypes and use them as weapons. Men can demarcate the rules and limits for each group. They can judge and punish when a member oversteps or errs. They can designate certain groups as scapegoats and blame them for the very things they themselves perpetrate. Men have done this to the class of women known as prostitutes since the ‘oldest profession’ was forced into being by men. No other class of women has been so used and abused as convenient blame targets for problems that men have created. And many heterosexual, married women have piled on over the centuries, blaming prostitutes for men’s abuses, despite their actual roles as women not being much different.

7. Men Dehumanizing Women. This is the basis of patriarchy in general, and capitalism and porn culture, specifically. Dehumanization is the removal of human status or qualities from an individual or group. Men are human. Women are ‘other’. Sub-human. Non-human. Object. No oppressed group has ever been more dehumanized than females. We see this in language with the sheer number of slurs heaped on women, which include reducing women to body parts, objects and animals. No oppressed group has ever experienced the range and amount of dehumanizing language that females have. And females are still the most slurred and dehumanized group on the planet today even though we focus on every group BUT women. It is so pervasive and normalized that no one even notices it, and women are shamed if they call attention to it. Women and girls even adopt the language of their own dehumanization, which reinforces continued male use. “If women accept it and use it, then it is a-okay! Carry on, boys!” We also see the dehumanization of females in the use of ‘she’ to describe tools and machines. Cars, boats, and aircraft are among the many inanimate objects that are called ‘she’. Men also, throughout time, have referred to the manipulating and using a woman’s body as if they are playing of a musical instrument.

It is only when women are ‘other’, completely dehumanized, that we can be commodified. Women’s bodies are for sale and for rent, and it is the foundation of capitalism. Without the dehumanization and commodification of women’s bodies, capitalism cannot exist. What is even worse, however, is that not only do males consider it ethical to buy or rent a woman’s body, but because she is a thing, they also don’t acknowledge her suffering. Objects don’t suffer; they exist to be used. When a man adopts that attitude, he can justify anything he does to the object as it is his for the period he has paid for.

And I’ll leave you all with this final thought. Otherness is perfectly fine and natural in a world where human complexity allows for individual and group differences. Strict, unthinking conformity is seldom a good thing. Problems only arise, when otherness is forced upon others for the purpose of cruelty or blame, or when you adopt it yourself in order to claim a special or uber-victim status and to manipulate or silence others. It’s all likely easier to navigate if we try to understand where our own personal human rights begin and end, and when they start to trample others’.

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