Posts About Things.: Shit Idiot White Cis Straight Men Say #1

Last night, my girlfriend's ex demonstrated his extreme mastery of Facebook misogyny. After a crap ton of super fabulous women kicked his ass with the sweet power of words, I realized that there had been quite a bit of Facebook idiocy happening lately. I also realized that the group of people perpetuating this idiocy had some things in common. Namely, they were white, they were cis, they were straight, and they were men. So, I've decided to start a series of posts not only to honor (read: shame) them, but also to hopefully spark discussion about why this keeps happening.

Now, I've taken some precautions to preserve the identity of these guys and anybody else involved in the discussion. I've done this out of the benevolent goodness of my heart. Actually, I'd just really rather not have to deal with more crap from them if I can help it.

I'm going to start off this series with the event that inspired its conception. Here's the original status that started the shitstorm.

One of my girlfriend's Facebook friends posted this status. It's your typical female empowerment Facebook status, slightly problematic, but with an overall good message. And about fifty people liked it, which is awesome. More power to the empowering Facebook statuses. But then this happened. For clarification, black is the original poster, while brown is Mr. White, Cis, and Straight.

Now, this doesn't seem malicious at first. It's clearly not intended to be malicious, either. I am in no way claiming that men do not face societal pressure, because they do. They do not, however, "experience body envy as much as women". Do men have pressure to fit the masculine ideals in the media? Yes, but they don't have the threat of objectification hanging over their heads. The feminine ideal that women are expected to meet is an object of masculine desire. The masculine ideal that men are expected to meet is powerful and has control over his own domain. The idea of objectification is much more dangerous. Also, apparently a girl's mother is supposed to teach her what men go through? What?

Now, a lovely debate between this guy and my girlfriend erupted, but I'm not going to subject you to those screencaps because 1) they contain big long paragraphs that aren't necessary to get the gist of this story, and 2) I'm lazy. All you need to know is that Mr. WCS ended it passive aggressively and that was that. Or so it seemed to the outside eye.

I searched "The Plot Thickens" in Google Images and this was the best I could do. I'm sorry.

Mr. WCS sent my girlfriend a private message. It really speaks for itself, so here it is.

No. Not okay. This kind of gendered insult demonstrates the misogyny that the original status was crusading against. Also, the protective girlfriend in me wants to rip off his balls and feed them to wolves, but that's neither here nor there.

So, my girlfriend in a move of spectacular brilliance, screencapped this glorious ignorance and posted it on Facebook for all to see. The backlash was fun.

The fun was taken to the next level when his mom joined in.

I would make my own commentary about why that's a bunch of bull, but look! A lovely Facebook commenter already did it for me!

The comment thread that follows is longer than the Nile, but I'm sure you get the gist at this point. I think what really got to me about this was the fact that he was getting support for his misogyny from other WOMEN. I almost understand the mom, since it's probably hard to see the flaws in your own child, but this guy had support from a few other women not related to him as well. Misogyny in our society is so internalized that when someone stands up against it, they're the ones who get reamed. You know what, people who perpetuate misogyny as the norm in our society?