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Under the subject of "guy power," "teen guy power," yet more teen guy power," and so on, an anonymous poster who goes under the nom de plume of ProudFeminist posted copies of articles from various Canadian newspapers about crimes committed by male juvenile delinquents.
Attempted Murder Rap For Teen, read one headline over an article about a 15-year-old boy. Convicted murderer gets new trial, said another referring to a 23-year-old who, when he was 19 killed two step-siblings and attempted to kill his step-mother. Teen killer says screams were no joke was about a manslaughter committed by a 17-year-old, 'Breathing devil' jailed in death about an 18-year-old killer.
Murder is a sad thing, but it took the pop feminist intelligentsia to turn the crimes committed by boys and young men into an expression of power.
Once upon a time, in pre pop feminist days before it was necessary to explain or apologize for men's sexual interest in women and being called a "father" was still a compliment, such incidents were both rare and cause for contempt. With few exceptions, young women did not reward thugs with sex and affection; those who did were scorned as molls and floozies, or pitied as misguided, and nobody could have made the assertion criminal acts were evidence of male power because everybody knew thugs are losers.
At the dawn of pop feminism, liberals latched onto the fact thugs and thugettes are losers to encourage us to pity and "treat" rather than punish them. Given better circumstances, more education and opportunities, most wayward children would have been fine upstanding types, it's not their fault they're bad, society "owes" them as many chances as it takes.
"I'm sick," the thugs and thugettes claimed, "I need treatment, I need help, compassion and coddling." And they got it: self esteem therapy that, among other things, imposed a social imperative to respect the low lifes. For some reason, the psychological types seemed unable to separate judgmentalism from appropriate disrespect for inappropriate behavior, or maybe it was a backlash against the McCarthyism of the previous decade. Either way, in a process facilitated by the movies, media and myth makers, thuggery was transmuted into rebellion, and rebels, as romanticized by James Dean, became sexy.
Bad as that was, it has gotten worse thanks largely to the hate campaign of the pop feminists.
The evil Patriarchal Empire
During the past 30 years, charlatans such as Robin Morgan, Catharine MacKinnon, Marilyn French, Shere Hite and Gloria Steinem have loudly and repeatedly contended that, far from being the losers of society, thugs are really the enforcement arm of the evil Patriarchal Empire. Hitherto unacknowledged brown coats whose criminal acts sustain the terror that keeps women in their place. (Susan Brownmiller made the same assertion in "Against Our Will," but later repented her position when it became clear her writings were being used to foster rather than prevent terror.)
Why would they say such things? One of the headlines tells the tale: 'Breathing devil' jailed in death. As Eric Hoffer noted in his seminal work, The True Believers, devils are necessary to produce unity: "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil."
Fact is, pop feminists need for men to be devils. Since most men are not devils, they desperately need the thugs and glom onto them at every opportunity. Without them, there would be no pop feminist movement and then the new rage women would have to find another outlet for their hatred.
The bullies' pulpit
At least once every three months or so a black man will try to crowd in line ahead of me. Not some self-entitled street gangsta with a chip on his shoulder, but a well dressed, educated man with a good job. (One was even a professional basketball player. Don't know who - I'm not interested in men who play with their balls for a living.)
No, rudeness and crowding are not black traits by a long shot, and from time to time a man or woman of European or Asian descent will do the same thing, blatantly pushing by trying to cut in front of me or others. But when I say "how very rude," they don't get a "what's that, you mo'fo honky" expression and snap "I'm not rude" the way some black guys do.
Bystanders are generally shocked when I don't back down, and are frequently appalled when I observe (being Cowlitz Indian) that the bigotry of some blacks is well known among American Indians.
Interestingly, this invariably elicits threats of violence from the black guys, who get huffy, call me queer, or talk about the size of their penis and demand we step outside. As the basketball player said, "I hope you touch me so I can beat the shit out of you." A 233lb bodybuilder, I'm not too concerned about threats from paunchy blow hards or professional adolescents, but the better-to-back-down-from-a-bully attitude of the mostly-white bystanders does concern me.
To be sure, few African Americans are bullies, but those who are, are only encouraged to be a greater disgrace to other blacks by whites who would rather back down, turn away, pretend they don't see it than confront a bully.
So?
There are grave and far-reaching consequences to ignoring bullies that are most evident among our children.
In June, 1998, I spent a few days visiting one of my writing partners (she's black) who, at the time, lived in San Francisco. My second day there we drove up the coast to pick up her daughter who was staying with a friend whose mother and uncle run a Rap Music recording company.
On the way home, she told us about the time she spent with her friends (including a 17-year old boy we later found out was her lover). They went to a rap concert, talked about black power and how they were going to overthrow the racist white regime (I wonder if San Francisco mayor Willie Brown knows he's a racist white), and this 14-year-old girl informed us that, according to the "men" at the concert what we define as domestic violence or spouse abuse is a "white racist" concept, that slapping and hitting a significant other is "ethnic," particularly if it involves a man striking a woman, or an adult beating a child.
Ordinarily, I'm rather soft spoken. Most folks tend to be intimidated by my size, demeanor and intense focus, so years ago I learned to speak softly and deferentially to neutralize the intimidation factor. But when she said that, well, let's just say both she and her mother were dumbfounded by the volume of my response. Being bi-racial, I take no crap about race, and in my deepest no-nonsense baritone voice I snapped out how domestic violence is not a part of the American Indian culture.
"But American Indians don't have any power; as Blacks reclaim their ethnicity, they'll get power over whites," she squeaked. (Almost lost my edge when she did that; she's cute when she squeaks.)
"Most blacks are not violent," I said, slowly, succinctly, rumbling loudly in the car, "and as Americans they and all of us will tolerate a certain degree of rebellion, but there is a line and when that line is crossed, the majority respond with overwhelming force to arrest and incarcerate those who believe violence is a way of life."
Power, I told her, real power is a civilization that balances the rights of the individual with the needs of the community through a framework of individual liberty and social responsibility. If black boys (and I mean boys, as in male children) preach violence, then those who follow them have a home called prison with a cell waiting.
She countered with the model of the modern American corporation which typically uses deep pockets and high priced lawyers to transcend both the rights of the individual and the needs of the community in the name of maintaining and increasing the price of their stock; hence, my support of Unions.
But I had no good answer for that because, just as whites tend to ignore black bullies, all Americans tend to ignore corporate bullies. As long as it's not too uncomfortable, doesn't interfere with Oprah, sex, the tabloids or football, most Americans would rather be bullied than fight.
So we watch Chuck Norris movies or take it out on Yugoslavia. Pretend we do stand up to bullies by bombing bigots in other countries. That's no way to live.
Where has America's backbone gone?
Feedback
One reader from New York city accused me of prejudice against ghetto youth. That I consider them "subhuman" and would think differently about youthful offenders from middle-class suburbia.
Where I live, in the shadow of Microsoft, there are no ghettos. The street gangs here are largely comprised of middle-class children, mostly latchkey kids, who turn to bullies to teach them how to interpret and implement the lessons about self entitlement they learn in school and on TV. Moreover, my specific examples were a well dressed, educated man with a good job and a professional basketball player.
He also took offense at how little I criticized corporate bullies in this article:
The point is that you believe that however we get our money, it's still the people with the money who are morally superior. Corporate bullies are "irresponsible." Lower income bullies are "losers" - a complete ostracization.
Money is by no means a gauge of moral superiority and any suggestion I have implied otherwise is knee-jerk at best. Moreover, many thugs have a lot of money.
Nor did he like my references to racism:
According to your other anecdote of the black men in the waiting lines you don't seem to be one to lose it when the issue of race comes up - in fact, you bring it up.
When the attitude is racist, somebody should call it what it is, so I do.
As The Backlash! evolves, we will have an entire section devoted to addressing racism. (Unless she changes her mind, the designated editor of that section is a black woman who will have primary discretion over the content.) Until then, I can only speak from what I know and experience.
Finally, he was very upset that I used only male examples of bullies:
And, though you ascribed it to it's racist content, diversion is very common tactic in denying chivalrous sentiments toward women....
Also there were the references to young women vs. thugs which kind of suggested chivalrous images of young ladies vs. highwaymen sort of thing....
"Thugettes" refers to females, but I did focus primarily on male bullies. Of itself, that is not indicative of a chivalrous attitude, but there's nothing wrong with having a chivalrous attitude toward the opposite sex. Indeed, my company's name is New Chivalry Press, and I have posited new chivalry as a high ideal for both sexes: "New Chivalry is for women, too."
You start off by complaining about a feminist who portrays murder as a teenage boy thing, and then rebut it from a gender blind approach that still manages to mostly focuses on males.
I used personal experience to develop the point. Never had a situation in which a woman who behaved rudely threatened to beat me up when I called her on it. However, there have been instances when such women have turned to other men to do their bullying for them, and I have already published articles about that sort of behavior.
- rod
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