Sometimes I read things on the internet that make me furious at how clueless and exploitative they are. Other times I read things on the internet that make me laugh myself sick at how unbelievably shallow and idiot they are. It is a rare occasion indeed when I have the opportunity to experience both reactions simultaneously, with a good deal of nausea thrown in the mix:

There were words the upper class used to keep those lower beings in line, and check those who’d forgotten their place. One of these words seemed more effective than the others. Nigger. That was what they were, after all. Niggers weren’t the same as human beings. They were legally and socially less than the privileged class. Niggers could be harmed and the police probably wouldn’t help them. Niggers were subject to vigilante justice. (snip) Misogynists aren’t the same as other human beings. You don’t have to listen to anything a misogynist says. They aren’t allowed the same rights as everyone else. Debate with the superiors? Pfft, what for? They are just a bunch of angry misogynists after all. Don’t talk to me because you hate women…Nigger. Their misogynistic posters got torn down? Serves the niggers right! Debate? No, they are dangerous nig- oops, I mean, misogynists.

I have a big selection of animated .gifs that I could use to characterize my response. There’s “disgusted black woman“. There’s “Ripley tearing into a room of idiots“, there’s even “angry panda“. Ultimately, after a long and arduous selection process, I think my reaction is best expressed by Tracey Morgan:

No. Just no. Not even close. It is 180 degrees from correct and sprinting for its life.

Now there are a million varieties of wrong in this post from “A Voice For Men” (as though we’re facing a shortage of places in which men’s voices can be heard), but I am going to ignore the obvious ones and go for the ones that I think centrally and fatally undermine the thesis that the author, a black woman blogging under the name Nurdy Dancing, is attempting to advance.

Before I delve too deeply into this, I will point out the one place in which I think she and I probably agree: I don’t support the use of the word ‘misogynist’ to identify people. Not because it’s not nice, not because it’s bad tactics, not even because it’s awkward English. We shouldn’t call someone “a misogynist” for the same reason we shouldn’t call someone “a racist” – because it’s inaccurate and places the blame in the wrong place. Ideas, institutions, systems, and behaviours can be misogynist, but to call a person “a misogynist” is too global to be accurate. Insofar as Nurdy is making the point that labeling people as “misogynists” is both dehumanizing and inaccurate, I would agree.

But then there’s all that other stuff she said.

1 – “Nigger” is ludicrously mischaracterized

Race theorists describe racism as a combination of “prejudice + power” – the idea is that racial prejudices are not all created equal, and that the crucial element to identifying racism is the extent to which a person holding such a bias has the ability to enact some sort of consequence. If a black employee hates his white boss and calls her “whitey” behind her back, these theorists would argue that this is not “racism” in the same sense that a Chinese city council member who thinks Latin@s are lazy and untrustworthy and thus diverts funding away from “unsafe” neighbourhoods is “racist”.

While I don’t usually share this definition (I find it a bit simplistic – racism is often caught up in a number of other systems that are so diffuse as to preclude the idea of the personal exercise of power), it is useful in this context because of how the word “nigger” is used compared to how “misogynist” is used. Nigger was the word that a politically powerful and oppressive class used to categorize a group of people based on external characteristics. Those who coined the word held exclusive rights to land ownership, protection under the law, the benefit of the doubt in all disputes, and had created an elaborate mythology that exalted themselves above those so labeled.

While Nurdy and her fellow MRAs would undoubtedly wish to leap to their feet and say “that’s exactly like feminists!”, you’d have to live in a Bizarro version of Earth to think that today’s feminists are in the same position of power that white men in North America have been in… ever. Such a characterization is reminiscent of those who claim that the Occupy folks are “holding Wall st. hostage” or that anti-war protesters are “oppressing the military”. Even if the charges were accurate (and they aren’t – more on that in a second), the balance of power precludes the possibility of any kind of meaningful resemblance.

2 – “Misogynist” is closer to “racist” than it is to “nigger”

Perhaps the most obvious place where Nurdy’s argument fails is that it fails to address, in any way, what the words “nigger” and “misogynist” are describing. “Nigger” is a word used to describe a person based on an inherent belief that black people, by their very nature, are inferior to white people (although it has expanded rapidly since its original coining) and thus deserving of whatever treatment the culture was trying to justify at the time.

“Misogynist”, on the other hand, describes a set of behaviours or beliefs that are consistent with a belief that men are superior to women. Most often when it is used in the context that Nurdy is bemoaning, it refers to approval of a status quo that inherently relegates women to an inferior position – misogyny in the absence of intentional, conscious hatred of women. It is not necessary to be willing to articulate the position that women are bad; it is sufficient to hold and defend positions that share their ideological roots and axioms with overt anti-woman beliefs. To use a mangled Gump-ism, “misogynist” is as “misogyny” does (or believes).

Long-time cromrades should immediately recognize how similar “misogyny” is to “racism” when expressed in that context. They are both descriptions of a behaviour, not a phenotype. There is no set of behaviours that would disqualify a black person from being labeled a “nigger” – all it takes is for a person who notices your blackness to need a club with which to hit you and you become “niggerized”. On the other hand, there are any number of behaviours and attitudes that are non-misogynistic. There are even those that specifically refute the word, even if you eschew describing yourself as “feminist”. Despite MRA’s whining assertions to the contrary, not everyone who disagrees with a feminist is a misogynist, nor are they labeled as such. There is a pretty clear path to being so described – say or do something misogynistic.

Of course it’s easier and faster to write stupid things than it is to refute them, and I could employ myself for a week in the pursuit of a thorough refutation of everything in Nurdy’s post. Most of the egregiously stupid things – the absence of violence associated with the “misogynist” label, the historical revisionism, the assertion that “nigger” no longer carries teeth because it was “overused” – are absurd on their face and trivially easy to skewer. That being said, I didn’t want the fact that the argument is stupid to overshadow the fact that it’s simply fucking wrong.

I will leave the discussion of the eagerness with which MRAs are leaping on this absurdly and obviously-wrong post because a black woman agrees with their own pet persecution complex for another time. We shall see if they extend to me the same benefit of the racial doubt when I tell them that white men aren’t victims of Shroedinger’s Rapist, and ask them not to use my experience to justify their assholery. I wouldn’t advise betting money on their ideological consistency in this case though.

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