Step One: Determine whether you want a husband or a beard.

Suzanne Venker, Rupert Murdoch’s Flesh-Eating Taint… News:
Men — the new second class citizens

I was recently on vacation (to the place where I was raped… no, no, it was way awesomer than you’re imagining and WAY less triggering that I had been bracing myself for*) and so was unable to deliver the swift ballkicking this post so richly deserves in any timely fashion. But that hardly means I should let such an easy target pass by without retroactively applying some ballkickification (totally a real world).

Why? Well…

Verbatim (Yes, these words were typed without anyone spontaneously bursting into flames):

• From boyhood through adulthood, the White American Male must fight his way through a litany of taunts, assumptions and grievances about his very existence. His oppression is unlike anything American women have faced.

Yes, a paean to how White American Men are the most oppressed Amateur Mode whiners on the face of the planet!

Published June 12th.

Otherwise known as 2 days before… perspective. Which, yes, that statement would be considered ludicrous on any day of the week with even the barest of brushes against the asschecks of reality. But when placed that close to an event where a boy was deemed legal to murder largely based on him being deemed a black man hunted by what was deemed a white man with the thin veneer of justification largely being credited to the fact that his best friend was deemed both black and female… well, it just creates that special burnt glaze of unpalatable bullshit that proves truly impossible to choke down without comment.

So let us proceed gayly forth to the nonstop coughing fit and desperate miming for water!

In November of last year, I wrote an article for Fox News called The War on Men

How the Hell did I let a softball like that whiz by?!? Welp, might as well make up for lost time.

Retroactive Shorter, Daddio:

• I can’t get a husband… I mean, women can’t get a husband and thus every woman everywhere needs to return to the rusty barb-wire encrusted cages they are slowly starting to escape from and pretend to enjoy the brutal oppression and complete lack of freedom like the good little set pieces they were SUPPOSED to be. This will totally help me, I mean women snag that dream guy who reacts in utter fear and anger at the very notion of a woman politely objecting to cartoonish levels of personal violence. AM I A GOOD DOGGIE NOW? DO I GET TO BE AN HONORARY MAN YET?!?

Which far be it for me to interfere with her quest to get in good with men so abusive and insecure that they view any woman anywhere having dignity as a personal affront. I mean, every one of those taken out of the dating pool for good can only be a good thing for straight single women everywhere.

(which I subsequently expanded to an eBook).

An eBook? Well, take me you publishing stallion, you!

To keep it pithy,

Senator, I served with pithy. I knew pithy. Pithy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’ll NEVER be pithy.

in the piece I focused on one effect of this war: the lack of marriageable men.

Really? I hardly noticed the monomaniacal and suspiciously personal focus. Must have been too pithy for me.

But there’s so much more to it. The truth is, men have become second-class citizens.

It’s bizarre, I’ve been over that line a hundred times on about 5 different browsers, but no matter how many times I look at it, the words “black” or “gay” or “trans” or “latino” appear completely invisible. Strange, right? Fox News should probably fix that in the next site update.

The most obvious proof is male bashing in the media.

A suite of possible reactions unfolds before me. Which shall I choose? Will it be…

A)Male bashing?!? Well, now that is… oh… sorry you meant rhetorical “bashing” from like the media being like “grr, we hate those cis white male assholes” just for petty shit like using their global economic and social power to prevent equality for everyone else. Well if that’s the most obvious proof you can think of. Not something related to physical violence, threats of rape, increased discrimination, or grave miscarriages of justice, but… that, then clearly I do not see how anyone could doubt their pain.

Or

B)Yeah, it’s really rough how nearly every single movie, television show, and book revolves around the stories, lives, perspectives, and desired societal depiction of cis straight white men. Speaking as a marginal outsider flipping between begging for the first non-offensive depiction and the first depiction, period, for my various marginalized identities, I can’t help but shed a single shiny tear for them.

But what about…

C)Oh yes, the media just can’t stop bashing on teh poor White Menz. Whether it’s covering a modern day lynching as if it was the glorious white male revenge for OJ’s mistrial by sheer LAPD incompetence, decrying how two men’s lives were “ruined” because they have to serve a laughably tiny sentence for committing a rape so obvious that a trial actually ruled guilty for once, or just freaking out at the notion of anyone other than white people mattering in this “great” country of ours, our bought and sold media have done nothing but defame and smear the good name of our proud White Male Overlords. Luckily their sheer godlike perfection (by virtue of their uniquely blessed and superior inherent characteristics) have managed to rocket them to the disproportionate power they deserve despite such backbiting and vile tactics!

Hmmm. I think I’m going to go with:

D) All of the above. Also, if the single “worst” thing you have to suffer by virtue of your born identity is some people saying mean things about you on TV on occasion, then frankly your life is so completely and utterly devoid of hardships that your life’s navy might as well be those sponge animals that grow in the bath. And when your life is that much absent consequence for your born characteristics, trying to borrow the moral outrage of actual oppression by claiming to be “truly the most hard done” will always elicit nothing but sneering mockery by those unlucky bastards among us who actually know something of… shall we say “consequence” for… shall we further euphemistically say, the way we is.

Just sayin’.

It is rampant and irrefutable.

Checkmate, liberals! In YO FACE!

From sit-coms and commercials that portray dad as an idiot

*GASP*!

My people may be depicted as sexual predators, deluded punchlines, and corpses when we’re not (as is more common) depicted as deranged murderers so bloodthirsty and maniacal that preemptive murder is one’s only possible hope for survival. And even I am mortified by what your people have to go through in media depiction.

If only I had paid attention. Comedy show stars being allowed to play the character with the most comic potential, ability to connect with audiences, delivery of the best lines, and be shown as dating impossibly hot women despite looking like something a cat vomited?!? No one should ever have to suffer that!

to biased news reports about the state of American men,

I’m confused. Is she citing her own article as an example of “male-bashing”? Because that’s a few levels of meta beyond anything I ever expected a wingnut to produce.

males are pounced on left and right. And that’s just the beginning.

But Mother Superior, I know doubt is the enemy of the Lord High White Penis and your holy words regarding how irrefutable your obvious proof is are by their nature tautological impossible to argue against, but…

Really?

That’s your drum roll, take that actual history of oppressions, this will totally put those uppity liberals in their place, Trayvon Martin, Trayvon Martin who, knock down Word of God proof?

That sometimes TV dads are stupid?

Really? Worse than legal lynchings? Rape culture? Job and housing discrimination? Entire histories ignored, erased, or suppressed? Legal oppression? Literally being designated legal property? Genocide?

I mean, yeah, it’s not like you have to try particularly hard to suck off the insecure penises of Fox News land and get the mouth-breathing brigade to rationalize how ungodly amounts of unearned deference and relative social power are really signs that you’re the most oppressed EVAH and thus deserve even more of the cake to shove up your distended butthole, but there is something to be said for at least bothering to fake giving a damn about your transparent bullshit.

I mean, is it truly too much to ask for at least a half-hearted conspiracy or two after a build-up like that?

The war on men actually begins in grade school,

Mop-hair and dusty face. The boy was 8 going on 80. No one knew when this damn war started. Fewer still knew when it would end. If you were to stare into his eyes, you’d see eternity staring back, cold and grey and lifeless, youth long retreated behind barb-wire lines and gunfire.

Far too young to survive this battle intact. Did the feminists not understand the cruelty they were unleashing when they declared this bloody war? Did anyone?

where boys are at a distinct disadvantage.

It is totally not at all a sign that our society is sexist in the boring old real way that the second that girls started disproving all the “women are inherently dumber and less capable than their male counterparts as seen in these test score differences” bullshit by doing slightly better than boys on average, every single story and argument instantly switched to “clearly our misandrist schools are artificially hamstringing the clearly superior boys”.

Sigh, I suppose we should strap in for the usual uninspired and hackneyed rigmarole of-

Not only are curriculums centered on girls’, rather than boys,’ interests,

… Who knew that science, math, history, and “classic” literature were now entirely “girls'” interests. Also, given the conservative stance on anything deemed a “girls’ interest”, I would like to tip my hat to the rare honesty regarding your attitudes to literally any form of education ever.

Also, consider my pique raised. Please do go on.

the emphasis in these grades is on sitting still at a desk.

Real manly man education would involve teaching children fractions while they decapitate a lion with their BARE HANDS! This ain’t Lil’ Suzie’s math class anymore, pipsqueak!

Plus, many schools have eliminated recess. Such an environment is unhealthy for boys, for they are active by nature and need to run around.

Clearly that is what is… yeah. Because the heatsinks on Boy Model 3.6 are motion-activated. And because girls, being inherently animated pieces of ice, have little use for endorphins, physical exercise, or a chance to refresh themselves and have moments to themselves in the midst of general education.

As a biologist and a teacher I can clearly say that is how… all of that works. Yup. A+ and the shiny gold star!

And when they can’t sit still teachers and administrators often wrongly attribute their restlessness to ADD or ADHD.

Okay, I’ve seen this pretty much every single time a wingnut even glances in the direction of education and it never fails to baffle me.

What exactly fuels their hard-on against believing in the reality of ADD and ADHD? Is it just an extension of their overall anti-science/anti-reality kick? Is it the way those conditions interfere with learning and the hope that if they can delay treatments they can somehow create wingnuts under the age of 106? Did Bill Clinton or Barack Obama once talk about how important treating the condition was once?

I honestly would love to know.

The message is clear: boys are just unruly girls.

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys?

Things are no better in college. There, young men face the perils of Title IX, the 1972 law designed to ban sex discrimination in all educational programs.

My GOD! NCAA Women’s Badminton Teams!

Does the vile Gynocracy and its cruel oppression of white men know no bounds?!?

Under Title IX, the ratio of female athletes is supposed to match the ratio of female students. So if not enough women sign up for, say, wrestling and ice hockey, well then: no more wrestling and ice hockey.

Or rather, in boring old reality, it turns out that Title IX means that if you torture the perky teat of federal funds, you can’t discriminate against women and be like “but girls don’t like sports what with their delicate lady constitutions, so that’s why we don’t let them form any teams or bother to even pretend to fund them”.

And despite over 50 years of right-wing fear-mongering over one of the few laws in the last half-decade to actually do some good for people, it has turned out that women being allowed to have three pennies and a broken stick for their athletics programs in accordance to the bare minimum of the law hasn’t done fuck all to negatively affect male participation in college sports or the commercial success of the NBA and NFL’s education-money-leaching uncompensated farm teams.

Not that has ever once stopped the right-wing from decrying “death to all male sports” every time a less popular male team goes under because all the “athletics” money went to building a pedophile coach a new bronze statue.

What was once viewed equal opportunity for women has become something else altogether: a demand for equal outcomes. Those are not the same thing at all.

We are perfectly happy to give women an “equal” opportunity as long as they were unbelievably hamstrung in order to prop up a false and discriminatory belief in the inherent inferiority of women. But now the uppity bitches have the temerity to succeed anyways.

And this SHALL NOT STAND!

…Uh, I mean, sitcom dads, focus on the unbelievable hear-wrenching oppression that are sitcom dads.

Title IX is also abused when it comes to sex. In 1977, a group of women at Yale used Title IX to claim sexual harassment and violence constitute discrimination against women.

Whereas right-thinking conservatives know sexual harassment and violence to be delicious chocolate cake.

Genuine harassment and violence should be punishable offenses, obviously.

Yeah, no fucking bet on whether “genuine” has the same exact meaning in your dictionary as Todd Akin has for “legitimate”.

But the college campus is a breeding ground for sexual activity, which makes determining wrongdoing (and using Title IX to prove it) extremely difficult.

You know, if those invested in selling the delusion that white men are the most oppressed people on the planet are so tired of being called out as rape defenders by society at large, maybe they can try actually learning what consent is and stop reflexively defending the rape culture every two fucking seconds.

Might just help. You never know.

Sexual misconduct does not necessarily constitute harassment—and women have as much of a role to play as men do.

I mean, sure, you might think that when you tried to be a physics major and were chased out by rape threats, constant insinuations that you were fundamentally incapable of math because of the sex you were assigned at birth, and veiled and overt threats of violence that the fault lay with the discriminatory assholes who drove you out.

But we all know you had as much of a role if not more to play… because… um… it’s always women’s faults. So there! Checkmate, liberals!

Here again men are in an impossible situation, for there’s an unspoken commandment when it comes to sex in America: thou shalt never blame the woman.

I think I prefer the rape culture on your planet to the rape culture on ours. Much fewer incidents of perpetuating violence against rape survivors in order to terrorize women as a whole out of fully agitating for their deserved equal rights, I feel.

If you’re a man who’s sexually involved with a woman and something goes wrong, it’s your fault. Simple as that.

Dear hypothetical man,

Have you considered not raping the women you’re “sexually” involved with? It might go a long way to prevent those “dastardly accusations” you’re so balls-clenchingly terrified of.

Sincerely,
The Evil Feminist Harpies who have secretly instituted a secret world order where any female date who doesn’t feel their flowers are fresh enough or their orgasm was intense enough can throw any man they see into eternal hellfire prisons where everyone they see is a stereotypical TV sitcom dad

Also, not to um… harp on anything. But given raw wordcount, it seems of all the “obvious” oppressions that white men suffer, the only one Suzanne Venker can even bother to pretend to give half a fuck about is the worry that once in a blue moon, some men aren’t allowed to get away with rape.

I’m going to let that just sit and marinate for a second before I continue.

Judith E. Grossman shed light on this phenomenon in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.A former feminist, Grossman concedes that in the past she would have expressed “unqualified support” for policies such as Title IX.

You know, for an ideology that likes to bloviate so much about how those uppity little upstart minority-rights movements are small-time outrage-inventors unworthy of attention or regard, they sure are addicted to inventing fake apostates with bullshit “conversion” stories, aren’t they.

It’s almost like IT’S ALWAYS A form of luminescence or something like that.

But that was before her son was charged with “nonconsensual sex” by a former girlfriend.

I, too, supported the VRA until my adoptive goldfish shot an unarmed black teen. Now I too agree that blacks should be returned to the chattel status from whence they came.

Maybe in the future, totally once a feminist lady, you can try raising a son who isn’t a rapist.

“Title IX has obliterated the presumption of innocence that is so foundational to our traditions of justice. On today’s college campuses, neither “beyond a reasonable doubt,” nor even the lesser “by clear and convincing evidence” standard of proof, is required to establish guilt of sexual misconduct,” she writes.

Which is why it’s currently slightly less difficult to shit a gold brick than to prosecute a rape case these days and why most rape survivors don’t even bother to file a report, much less suffer through the abusive hell required to even get a court case.

But hey, rape culture? What rape culture**, right?

When men become husbands and fathers, things get really bad. In family courts throughout America, men are routinely stripped of their rights and due process. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is easily used against them since its definition of violence is so broad that virtually any conflict between partners can be considered abuse.

So… Men’s Rights Activists (i.e. ignorant assholes like this who spend all day trying to rationalize how having less patriarchal power than before means that women are the real sexists) have often been described as the “Abuser’s Lobby”.

But for the life of me, right now, I just can’t imagine why.

“If a woman gets angry for any reason, she can simply accuse a man and men are just assumed guilty in our society,” notes Dr. Helen Smith, author of the new book, “Men on Strike.” This is particularly heinous since, as Smith adds, violence in domestic relations “is almost 50% from men and 50% from women.”

Please believe me, HelenBot whirred through the tinny speaker of her dented iron carcass, it’s the only way to stop the perpetual beatings for having lady parts.

Shocked?

That’s a common response to clearly bullshit statistics designed to try and perpetuate systems of violence against an already oppressed minority class.

If so, that’s in part because the media don’t believe men can be victims of domestic violence—so they don’t report it. They would rather feed off stories that paint women as victims. And in so doing, they’ve convinced America there’s a war on women.

Male domestic violence victims, one more group that wingnuts can’t even be bothered to pretend to give a fuck about in the quest to return women, blacks, and sexual minorities back to the crowded boxes of yore.

Yet it is males who suffer in our society. From boyhood through adulthood, the White American Male must fight his way through a litany of taunts, assumptions and grievances about his very existence. His oppression is unlike anything American women have faced.

And here we round back to the verbatim that kicked us off. And a firm, shiny reminder that despite the use of the word “male”, only a VERY specific subset are being considered. You know, in case you maintained some small delusion through this pile of slop that they might actually address real oppressions experienced by actual men.

Unlike women, however, men don’t organize and form groups when they’ve been persecuted. They just bow out of the game.

Um… why?

Every single other oppressed minority on the face of the planet has organized and fought, scrambled, kicked, and bled often for the vague hope that one day they could advance one more category of hatred and maybe just maybe be treated only slightly less terribly than before.

Even when the very act of organization was treated as a crime worthy of violence. Even when said activists were threatened with violence, jail, murder, rape, or worse for daring to speak out for their people. Even when the act of standing up makes one a target for all the asshole fuckheads out there needing to replenish their one-inch steel erections by stomping on someone without power or social support. Even when the endless cycle of throwing oneself at the brick wall of bigotry just seemed to leave oneself concussed and bloody. Even when speaking out was a one-way ticket to a life so miserable and immeasurably worse that one becomes fearful of ever being able to eat.

They rose up and fought and still fight and still try and build what they can so the next generation can assume a bit more, be a bit safer, buy a little more equality with their bloodied broken bodies.

So if poor widdle white men, the MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!!!!! can’t even be arsed to switch off their Spike TV marathon and even meet up with like-minded people on their behalf, much less face ANY of that shit, then excuse me if I can’t fake the empathy to give a shit.

You want to play pretend? Put on a cute little oppression dress, dance around the shit pile and fake like you know what it feels like to stand up for equal rights when society at large hates and fears you? Be that X-man hero that people remember into the future, instead of just another bitter bigot that everyone will pretend was someone else in 20 years time?

Then, you can damn well put in the fucking work and not expect that us real minorities will carry your ass while you add insult to the injuries you gave us by denying us the life YOU take for granted.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, grow some fucking ovaries already!

America needs to wake up.

Well, then maybe America needs to drink its morning coffee then instead of bitching about how we have the wrong creamer in the fridge (otherwise known as Canada).

We have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction

Has said every single oppressive force in history. Funny story about that. Turns out that every single one of them has turned out to be wrong about those statements.

I know, right?

—from a man’s world to a woman’s world.

I’m pretty sure I saw that sci-fi B movie.

That’s not equality. That’s revenge.

Well, if you insist, I’m sure we could oblige.

Suzanne Venker has written extensively about politics, parenting, and the influence of feminism on American society. Her latest book, How to Choose a Husband and Make Peace with Marriage

Now, that is just adorable! Good luck, honey, you’ll snag yourself a man you can live on opposite coasts to while you work a full time career ranting about how women shouldn’t have careers if you just keep fighting for it. They’ll see through the unmistakable scent of crazy or the fact that you eat the heads off of kittens for your daily nutrition needs if you just keep plugging away at it! Ganbatte!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. If only we had accused George Zimmerman of domestic abuse then Trayvon Martin could have been- What was that? He actually did commit domestic abuse? And the cops completely failed to do anything about that before he escalated into stalking and murdering children? Ah… Perhaps Suzanne Venker’s depiction of reality may contain one or two small inaccuracies. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

*No, really, I had a bunch of fun and when I was in the place that was most likely to be triggering, I had a friend sitting next to me to be there for me and extricate me if I needed it. Luckily I didn’t need it and was able to just enjoy something fun I loved. So WOOT!

**Of the rapes committed against me, my partner, my girlfriend, and my partner’s girlfriend, only one of the 5 actually made it to the stage of reporting it to the police. The police spent most of the “report” basically trying to hard-sell her into not reporting and how there was no hope anything was going to be done and was she sure she didn’t decide to let a homeless man feel her up for shits and giggles, even though the perpetrator involved was about as far from a socially privileged individual as you could get. FOUR of these attacks occurred in a rather public location because the perpetrator felt so utterly protected by society that they didn’t even bother to fear witnesses. With regards to my rape, despite the fact that I’ve not even dented the life of the person who victimized me, I’ve had at least two people angrily argue that I must be a delusional bitch and obviously it never happened. But clearly, this totally not uncommon list of events is just a feminist smokescreen to distract you from the literal hordes of totally not rapist men sent to Floating Space Prison because of nothing more than a vague gesture.

***And since we have touched briefly on the (I hope to hell to stop talking about this bullshit soon) topic of the right’s most recent love affair with a child murderer and/or terrorist, here’s a BONUS Shorter:

Robert Weissberg, American Rationalization:
Where is the Rule of Law?

Shorter:

• Sure black people, having recognized the modern day legal lynching we’ve been celebrating all week as if it wasn’t the brutal murder of a child by someone so unhinged from reality and violent that is simply a matter of when he next kills not if, might see the Zimmerman verdict as a clear as day sign of both bad laws and bad social attitudes. But that’s only because their underdeveloped monkey brains are unable to see the clear as day fact that if you recognize and celebrate that good laws (passed by vile commie traitors) protect minorities from violence, discrimination, and dying in the gutters (…some of the time), then, clearly, you must also celebrate and never ever criticize bad laws that legalize the brutal murder of your children and enforce your oppression.

  And if you are dumb enough to fall for that… well, it’d make it a hell of a lot easier to pretend that our ignorant asses are inherently intellectual superior.

Because frankly, I hate all of you and want you all to suffer as much as I do. XOXOX, Cerberus