Yet again, TJ Kincaid, my favorite YouTuber, has brought something to my attention that correlates with something that I have been noticing in the system of this country for a very long time. It is that there is a HUGE disparity for what is acceptable for men to say and what is acceptable for women to say. There is also a huge disparity in the legal system favoring one gender over the other, but you wanna know something – it isn’t men. The system and the media disparity favors women WAY more than it favors men, and as for me, I think that not only is it bullshit, but it is part of the reason that I have such a huge problem with modern feminism.
So, for those of you who don’t know, there is a show on CBS called “The Talk.” It is their version (in really every conceivable way) of The View. Really, there is no huge difference. It is a bunch of women sitting around a table and talking about pop culture (something I loathe with my entire being), celebrity news, their problems, whatever. I like how Family Guy depicted The View, because I depict The Talk the exact same way.
In any case, on this show they talked about a story that was in the news. A man asked his wife for a divorce. Instead of talking about it rationally, she decided to chop his dick off and sticks it in the garbage disposal. You would think that the response this horrible crime would have been revulsion, right? Wrong! Sharron Osbourne, one of the women who talks on that show, thought it was so funny! Here is the clip that I am refering to. Watch it and be prepared to be sick. Her comment about this was -
I mean, I don’t know the circumstances, I don’t know why he filed for divorce, I don’t know between them, however, I do think it’s quite fabulous. I mean, can you just imagine that thing wizzing around the disposal, it’s like…”
And the reaction from the audience – laughter. They laughed to their heart’s content. They laughed until their sides split. It was a gesture that says something really awful to me, and should say the same thing to all of you – that it is perfectly acceptable to laugh at something like this. Let me put this plainly – this woman is a criminal! She committed a crime! She deserves to have the book thrown at her and to rot in jail! And I hope she does. I hope she suffers in the American penal system because of what she has done. No man deserves to have this done to him. But really, it isn’t that she did this that gets on my nerves so much.
What bothers me the most is that it is acceptable to laugh at this. And if a man protests, he is called sexist. What’s more, if the situation were reversed, and it was a man (and a woman on The Talk brought up this very point and I am so grateful that at least one of these cackling harpies had the decency to do it) who was laughing over a woman getting her genitals cut off after she told her husband she wanted a divorce, the media uproar would be incredible. The attacks would be endless. It would be a storm of media hellfire! And when this thought was posed on The Talk, do you know what Osbourne’s response was -
It’s different, though. One’s floppy and wide and sometimes stick up like that (makes a hand gesture), it’s easy to do that!”
This harpy, this sociopathic harpy actually has the nerve to make this joke? Really?! This is bullshit, and the fact that it is accepted and even looked positively upon by the female culture in this country is even worse. But what really is worse is that it goes beyond the media. The legal system has it too.
There was a case where a woman got a shotgun, went into her husband’s room late at night, (This was on Forensic Files, on Tru TV) put the shotgun to his temple, and blew his brains out all over the bed. She killed her husband in cold blood. All of the evidence points to her doing this in cold blood. She was arrested for the crime and it went to trial. On the stand she says that he deserved it because he beat her and abused her mentally. This man deserved to go to jail for spousal abuse, he deserved a lot of things, but never, in any possible conceivable way did he deserve to get killed in his sleep. This wasn’t self-defense. She wasn’t in any danger. She walked into the room and blew his fucking brains out while he was sleeping. And what was the verdict? Not guilty. She was acquited of this crime because the jury believed that he did deserve it.
WHAT?! Are you fucking kidding me?! He deserved to get murdered in cold blood?! Is this a statement we want in this country? I love a quote by TJ -
That’s American justice, that’s how we perceive these gender issues in America.”
And what’s more, it goes beyond stuff like this. In divorce cases, it has been (it is changing now, but this is a VERY recent development and the numbers are still very one-sided) tradition that the men pay alimony because the belief has been that women are incapable and need to be given more. In divorce cases, it is routinely believed that the mother is the better parent than the father. In sexual harassment cases, it is pretty routine to believe the man was the one who did the wrong. Michael Chrichton wrote a great book about the concept of sexual harassment and how it is perceived in the workplace called Disclosure. I recommend it because there is a quote from it that was great.
In this quote, the husband is talking to his wife. They are both very upper-class citizens and the wife (who is a wealthy lawyer at a successful law firm) is talking about how women are oppressed in this country. Here was the husband, Tom Sanders, response -
How are you oppressed? You never wash a load of clothes. You never cook a meal. You never sweep a floor. Somebody does all that for you. You have somebody do everything for you. You have somebody take your kids to school and somebody pick them up. You’re a partner at a law firm, for Christ’s sake. You’re about as oppressed as Leona Helmsley.”
The fact is that the oppresion of women is something we just don’t have in this country. In Iran, it is a huge issue. In China it is a huge issue. In Russia it is a huge issue. The fact is that in this country women have so much more opportunities and the fact is that women are now becoming more and more the breadwinners of a house. There was a report on ABC where women were complaining about the fact that they have to pay alimony, and how it is becoming a reverse of what the complaint used to be.
But to put this point home, there was a story about something that happened in Russia (now, there is some serious contention as to whether or not this is true, but the reaction is what we are going to talk about) where a guy tried to rob a woman’s store, and she beat the shit out of him, tied him up in the back, and raped him for several days. The reaction to this was appalling. She has a fan-page now on Facebook, people comment about how great this is, how he deserved to be fed Viagra and be kept as a sex slave of this woman for three days.
This is the reason that feminism in the modern age is such a joke to me – because it doesn’t address these kinds of disparities. If the situation were reversed with the woman in the store, what would be the reaction? Women were saying about how this empowers women! That is bullshit! This is sick, but in countries like this where women have a multitude of opportunities and where they are more and more becoming the more enabled class, the feminists don’t address this. Instead, we have bullshit feminism like Rebecca Watson talking about how a guy should talk to a girl, or Eve Bit First talking about why a man is a rape-supporter. They talk about how porn is evil. They talk about absolute bullshit, but do they touch this, does the bulk of the community goes after this? Not a fucking chance. It is the biggest double-standard that I have EVER seen.
Here is the reason it is a joke to me, and the last I am going to talk about it because I have kind of gilded the lilly already, and it is time to move on.
Until next time, a quote,
“This is why I can’t fucking take feminism seriously. I just can’t. I can’t take it seriously. Because they don’t address things like this. They want to talk about the disparities between genders but they never want to talk about this shit.” -TJ Kincaid, It’s Only Sexist When Men Do It
Peace out,
Maverick
Feminism isn’t about one gender being better than the other, it’s about both genders being treated equally. I’ve heard a term for what you’re describing: female chauvinist. I think it’s a better description for that kind of behavior and expectation than feminism. There are still quite a few feminists out there who don’t abuse whatever upper hand they have.
My problem is that this isn’t addressed by the feminist community. I’m with you, it is about the genders being treated equally. But when they don’t address issues like this, what does that say? It says that they are comfortable letting this issue slid and not talking about it. This is a huge equality disparity to me, and also a huge double-standard. That is what I don’t take it seriously – because these kinds of things go unanswered.
I think that part of the problem is that there isn’t really a “feminist community.” There are women, and many of them have very different ideas of what feminism means, which is why I think you have so many women acting like horrible people under the umbrella of feminism. The feminist blogs I check back with regularly (jezebel and zelda lily) don’t push that ridiculous kind of rhetoric. People who watch the View and decide that shouting over each other and pissing on the male half of the species may very well be feminists, but they’re also bitches.
Indeed. See, I have lost my respect (and I have had quite a bit of it) for this ideal because of what is has become. It began with such a great idea – getting women the right to vote back in the 1920′s. It has come back in some ways in this country and done a lot of good, but now, it is just a rallying cry for those who either don’t understand or hate my gender and want an excuse for it to be okay. When issues like this are not addressed, what I see as a huge equality issue based on how it would be treated if it was the other way around, I don’t see feminism anymore. I see bigotry, and sexism. And the women who began the revolution in the 1920′s, they are spitting in their graves right now. I will mourn the loss of what it was, and watch what it becomes with a very sad eye.
Outstanding article Maverick!
There truly is a double standard that most feminist supporters claim the movement originally sought to remove. All they’ve really done is switch things around which for many is perfectly acceptable as so many these days seem fine with punishing those they deem deserving of punishment.
The feminists are some of the biggest hypocrites out there as evidenced by their abandoning principal over politics in regard to ANY accomplished, successful conservative woman.
Women who had they had a “D” on their voter registration cards would have been held up as poster children for the feminist movement due to their accomplishments in this “male dominated world” are attacked in many cases with the same vile, sexist tactics their movement once fought to end.
Thank for the compliment.
People will attack me and call me a sexist for attacking feminists, but I am not attacking who they were. I am attacking who they are now. I have a cousin who believes that feminism is about the stuff like Rebecca Watson was talking about, about how a man should talk to a woman. But it is about equality for the genders. This is not equal treatment. This is one sides being allowed to behave in inappropriate ways and be free of scorn by the public at large, while if the situation was reversed, it would be a hellstorm. I hate hypocrisy. I hate it. This movement used to mean something. I had so much respect for it. But now, now it is just a rallying cry of stupid topics and hopeless bigotry.
I really liked the article, and the very cool blog