Go back to Mars
I don’t know if you all remember this — I know I’ve written about it several times — but about five years ago, when we published that article about Maine Facebook Nazis [“Hatebook,” Dec. 2019], some mofos mailed disinformation packets smearing this magazine to all of its advertisers. I was labeled a man-hating lesbian, and not for the first time. Clearly it’s stuck in my mind. But I think it is worth revisiting after the election.
I’m ready to admit something: I do dislike most men. In the same way I dislike people who refuse to pick up after themselves. In the same way I can’t understand how mothers, even my own mother, do not live in constant resentment of their children.
Here, I think, is the crux of the issue, and I also think it’s the most important one facing America today: women must care; men must not.
Men must conquer. The status quo is men decidedly on top, and to be anywhere but at the apex is humiliating. So if they lack power, that’s because power has been stolen from them by migrants and bitches.
Men must not care, but they do, because they are human. Women must care, about themselves and others, because they are, from an incredibly young age, mothers. They are self-soothers and self-silencers, literally biting their tongues to death. It’s like that Emma Stone movie, Poor Things — we are all our own mothers. All women are mothers and all men are Oedipal sons.
Young women are being taught to be independent, to fight for better, to accept less bullshit. But men of all ages are often holding tight to a bygone image of masculinity, as seen in Trump’s election. And who wouldn’t be? To go from kings to domestic partners? It’s exhausting to maintain a household, even a household of one or two people. I can hardly blame men for wanting to shirk that responsibility.
Still, I don’t give much of a fuck about men. I generally find them to be deeply selfish, unthoughtful and rude individuals with whom I struggle to find common ground. I blame that on a societal failing, and here I’ll be gender non-partisan.
I don’t think either sex has been taught to socialize with the other — perhaps a leftover from gender segregation as a means of abstinence? But the societal failings that harm men harm women too, and I do care about women. Those failings make men bad bosses, predators, absent or abusive partners and fathers. They make them scary people. There are plenty of really awful women out there, but at least they’re much less violent.
Courtney Barnett has a song called “Nameless, Faceless” that sums it up well: “Men are scared that women will laugh at them … Women are scared that men will kill them.”
Men are still taught they are entitled to women. Women are taught empowerment, independence. These are conflicting lessons. We’re getting separate sex ed here, folks. So men feel cheated, and women feel (and are) threatened.
Trump won the election, in large part, through his portrayal of masculinity as utterly and completely dominant, as the end-all-be-all. His obvious incompetence and abject failures mean nothing in light of his brilliant performance of cartoonish manhood. Here’s what Guardian columnist Moira Donegan wrote about this: “The Trump campaign positioned itself as a champion of a hierarchical gender order, aiming to restore men to a place of wrongfully deprived supremacy over women. Many of his voters cast their lot in with Trump hoping that he would do just that.”
Of course, the Democrats didn’t help themselves either. Both parties are parties of the ruling class. While the Democrats’ policies are better for the working class, it’s not clear whether the party actually cares about them. The Republicans decidedly do not, but do a better job pretending they do while gorging themselves on the remnants of worker protections.
Ten years ago, writing for New York magazine’s TheCut, Alexa Tsoulis Reay interviewed a 42-year-old Canadian man with zoophilia, sexual attraction to animals. The piece is titled, “What It’s Like to Date a Horse,” and honestly, it nearly convinced me bestiality is OK. (Serious emphasis on the nearly, and read the interview before you judge me.) Point being: words are incredibly powerful. Messaging and emotions are incredibly powerful, especially when so many Americans are illiterate.
I’m just saying that if this Canadian can sway my opinion on bestiality, the Democratic Party should be able to adopt some fucking rhetoric that wins elections.
