Adventures with a Liberal Sexist Dude

By Irene Rice Periera. Source

So I keep getting comments on my blog from a dude.  I won’t approve those comments, because this dude doesn’t deserve the backlinks, but the pith of his dudely comments were too good not to share.

I’ll bet you didn’t know I am singlehandedly responsible for ruining feminism! OH THE HUMANITY.

Dude:

….you are a sexist. Indeed, you’re a bigot. You are absolutely happy to constantly mock and belittle 50% of the population because they happen to have been born with genitalia that you personally feel uncomfortable with.

Dude must be moonlighting as the Mighty Carnac, because he has some awesome mind-reading capabilities.   He’s able to tell what makes me happy, as well as which genitalia I personally feel uncomfortable with!  Also, dude considers me a sexist for finding dude behavior mockworthy!

Dudes must never be laughed at.  This is the Law of Dudes. 

Particularly, no one must ever call dudes names. Anyone who does so is a misandrist and a bigot.  Because the poor dudes are oppressed, dontchaknow.  What chance have dudes ever really had in this world of vicious dude-mocking feminists?

Have you actually ever met a man? Have you spoken to a man? Have you got the faintest idea what it is like to be man? I very much doubt you have any male friends, because as soon as you start with your ranting misandry they will be backing off towards the bushes.

I personally have never met a man in my life.  I live a completely man-free existence.  Also, I have no idea what being a man is like.   I didn’t grow up in a society where everything, from newspapers to novels to geology degrees from Cambridge, is about the dudely experience , told from the dudely point of view.  That’s because I’m from outer space.

Had I grown up anywhere on earth, I’d be saturated with dude culture – so much so that it would take me years to figure out what I felt and I thought and why my experience is different from that of dudes.  And then I’d spend more years trying to figure out why nothing in earthly culture seemed to speak to me or my experience, only that of dudes.   What a massive time waster.  In space we don’t really have these problems, owing to the very low population of dudes.

So men who look at page 3 are ‘eyeball-raping’ the models? So all women dress like they do because men force them to? So a man can’t be a feminist because, by accident of birth, he’s automatically a patriarchal oppressor?

Yes, yes and yes.  You’ve been paying attention after all!

“But wait!” the casual reader might be thinking.  “It’s not like some dude is holding a gun to these models’ heads.  They’re making a free choice to pose, right?”

Here’s the deal.

Cultural, social and economic pressures combine to make a very powerful force.  With that on their side, dudes don’t have to hold guns to women’s heads (usually) to get them to strip for the Male Gaze.  Fear of poverty, and the need for validation through male attention do most of the coercing.

Ain’t that a hoot?  Dudes have set up a social system that constantly evaluates and criticizes women based on how closely they fit the beauty template and how sexually available to men they seem to be.   Deviation is punished with a gamut of methods including, but not limited to, mockery, social exclusion, job discrimination, assault, rape, and murder.  Some women figure out that they can get a few extra crumbs of acceptance and approval by aligning themselves with Dude Nation, and they enforce beauty and sexiness standards on other women.  Dude Nation then gets to sit back, relax, claim that all of these women are freely choosing to get naked for dudely enjoyment,  and bask in unlimited visual access to women’s bodies without feeling the slightest guilt.

Wow, what a setup those dudes have!  No wonder they get so nasty when anyone suggests they should part with it!

I completely agree with the campaign to remove Page 3. I completely agree that men and women should, by law, be treated equally in all aspects of society.

Unless they annoy a dude! Then it’s FLAME ON!

(‘Cause, you know, you totally wouldn’t be writing a letter like this to another dude.)

And that’s why your frothing, man-hating, ridiculously immature hyperbole irritates the hell out of me. Because every time you spout one of your student-rag theories on one of these pages, another fifty people leave the cause of feminism because they associate it with people like you.

OMG THE FEMINISTS ARE TOTALLY RUINING FEMINISM

Can we get a peer-reviewed study to determine exactly how many people are leaving the cause of feminism because of me?  Fifty sounds like a suspiciously round number.  Maybe they’re all marching off in pre-arranged ranks?  Like soldiers?

And don’t call me ‘dude’.

Oh! Silly me! I didn’t realize you had the dudely authori-tay to dictate to me what I should call you!  Let me just drop everything, grab my steno pad and get right on that.

Dude.