Do male readers and bloggers on The Daily Blog deserve to be kidnapped, beaten, tied to a tree and threatened with castration? Really?
Gordon Campbell, purveyor of violent sexual abuse revenge fantasies
To be honest I wasn’t going to respond to Gordon Campbell’s ridiculous blog claiming…
Bomber’s message is the one that women on the left have been hearing since time eternal ie, that they should keep quiet, remain patient until victory is assured, and – in the meantime – make sure their concerns and modes of expression don’t antagonise the heroes of the proletariat. Besides everything else, this looks like a failure of imagination. Is the Winston Wing of Labour’s support base – those heroic, hand-calloused members of the white working class that Bomber Bradbury and Chris Trotter always bang on about – really so immune to policy arguments pitched any higher than Greg O’Connor’s face on a campaign billboard, or Willie Jackson on the mike?
…because looking at his blog, no one seems to read it and even fewer comment on it. The last blog that drew any comment was the 26th of last month.
But a follow up blog written by Anne Russell today is so disturbing it actually needs to be called out for its hope of violence directed at us.
First let me respond directly to Gordon’s jack up.
What a load of desperate middle-class posturing Gordon. I am not telling women to wait for the revolution, I am saying that Poto Williams, (after promising the Labour Party that she wouldn’t undermine Andrew Little’s leadership on the Friday, but then employed a PR firm on the Saturday to do just that), was a damaging move that undermined Little’s leadership and that some of the Identitarian Activist base seem more focused on purifying Labour than beating National.
For daring to criticise such counter productive and deceitful tactics 7months out from a general election, we are now misogynist women haters?
Gordon’s need to put words in my mouth to damn me is pretty dull and boring and not worth commenting on, but it was this weird second blog by Anne Russell who incorporates a violent sexual abuse revenge fantasy as the solution to the bloggers and male readers on this blog that demands some comment.
Anne suggests male bloggers and readers on The Daily Blog be kidnapped, beaten, tied to a tree and threatened with their penises to be cut off…
Therefore, there is certain value in the rallying cry of Make Misogynists Afraid Again. The sorts of men who read TDB are afraid of exposure of their personal violence against women, of losing readership, of public ridicule. In the past, more unorthodox methods like the Mervyn Thompson controversy had a significant impact on university sexual harassment policies, which were implemented in the wake of the scandal.
…FFS. If Anne’s weird violent sexual abuse revenge fantasy for us is where Intersectional Feminism is headed, we have some serious problems folks.
How is insinuating a violent sexual abuse revenge fantasy against male bloggers and male readers of this site anything other than hate speech?
Is Anne suggesting that she wants to lead a team against us to kidnap us and threaten us with castration?
Do we need to look over our shoulder at night Anne because you wish to harm us?
Gordon calls his blog “A home for longform journalism on politics, art and culture”. I’m not sure wishing violent sex abuse revenge fantasies upon people is any of that.
I may disagree with Anne and Gordon, but I certainly don’t wish them harm or violence.
Well, one question seems to be, is political strategy and the usefulness of certain strategic steps to be traded against certain considered principles? Also one must ask, are apologies made never enough, and will people of whatever personality, creed or background be considered ‘guilty’ for the rest of their lives, for once having said something others deem inappropriate?
That is how I asked myself, after I read the previous posts on Poto Williams and Willie Jackson here over the last week or so.
If we stick to the purity of policy and principles, we may have progressives remain to be a marginalised force for the eternity, as politics is not an easy job, and requires adjusting to time and public demands and sentiment, at least to an acceptable degree. Where that “acceptable” lies is what every one of us must ask her- and himself.
So I understand that so-called “identity politics” may not serve Labour at present, and hence it is smart to not drum the beat of that drum too loudly, as it may actually ensure another defeat this year. That though does not mean that certain principles and ideals are thrown out, they may just need to be balanced a with with what is practical and realiseable under the given circumstance in this society that has been screwed up by a generation of neoliberal conditioning.
Gordon Campbell is one I usually respect and listen to, but he is himself in between a rock and a hard place, I fear, as he strives for the ideal sets of principles of progressives to be maintained, in an environment that will not offer much time and appreciation for it by the majority of the population, who will be asked to cast a vote.
This is a difficult time for some progressives, for sure.
Again, what is acceptable for steps to take, what is not, that is the essence of all this discussion.
you should just take the criticism and stop being pathetic
So we should accept a violent sex assault revenge fantasy as fair criticism should we?
Martyn.
Maybe we males should be locked in the stocks in the village square where the bucket f Tomato’s are left for angry women can vent their anger on us eh?
I am a 72 yr. old male who have always treated women with respect but I am noticing now women who gain power become as aggressive as our worst men or even worse.
I hope I am wrong, – and hope to remain “a gentle-man.”
One feminist who acknowledges that power can corrupt women in the same way it corrupts men is peace activist and nuclear politics researcher Scilla Ellworthy. I highly recommend her book ‘Sex and Power’, which discusses how both women and men can work towards replacing “domination power” with “inner power”.
Ah, the old “Shut up and take it like a man.” The tried and true indicator of the good old Kiwi bloke. Jesus, how f***ing predictable and trite and intellectually void. But no problem, I’m sure you’ll take the criticism just fine, right?
Maybe Anne Russell should re read Nicky Hagers “Dirty Politics –
How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment”,
with a broader mindset….
Calling critics of Williams’ action “misogynist” is about as fair as calling her supporters “racist” for being critical of Jackson. Using these words as weapons in petty displays of sabre-rattling only robs them of their power, and trivializes the serious issues they refer to. The left needs to agree to disagree about Jackson’s candidacy and Williams’ reaction, and move on. Otherwise we are simply handing our opponents a media stick to beat us with.
Thanks Bomber for drawing attention to Russell’s reference to Mervyn Thompson. I didn’t know the history and didn’t bother clicking the link. I’m glad Russell made this reference. It reminds us that feminists aren’t always right just because they’re feminists, and that they’re as capable as any other group of being psychos. As with any other set of allies, we need to keep our deeper principles and critical thinking faculties turned out when deciding when and how to support women’s liberation groups.
Russel included a couple of things in her hyperbolic piece that are worth looking at. The piece by R. Derek Black totally undermines the Attack! Attack! Attack! tone of Russell’s piece, and shows that patient dialogue can win over our opponents in ways that threatening them never will. There is also the weareplanc.org article that, in Russell’s words, “argues that the Left, at least internally, has to be kind to its members, offering a haven from the angry and overstimulating world of neo-liberalism-cum-fascism”. I look forward to seeing her do this, instead of just linking to it.
I note that Scoop would never have hosted these kinds of attack pieces on Alistair’s watch. Given all Bomber’s jabs at Alistair on TDB, maybe there are some chickens coming home to roost here? Just a shower thought…
5 hours ago on Keith Quins twitter this: Unfair Stuff headline; ‘Southland rugby player jailed for rape.’ CraigWells was a 29y.o Aussie in NZ for 1 season ’99. Was ex-NSW&Brumbies.
My comment: Please engage brain before mouth because you parrot fake news and youre shit at economics and stratagy and you have attitude.
Next time you open waha, find 3 independant sources that confirms your theory, congrats sport, you just found something to say
I should appologies. I keep getting you mixed up with Adam.
Think i just got over that time you called me a Rob Gilchrist, Strypey. I was pretty pissed about that, 2-3 years latter and i think i need to move on abit from that.
Thats all
toxic misandry is rampant
I don’t actually agree that misandry is the problem. Militanti like Russell have no problem with men who obediently parrot their talking points, as Gordon Cambell and so many others have done . It is for daring to *think critically* about how to work towards gender equality that Russell attacks the men on TDB.
I am involved myself in a lot of community work and action – constructive action – over the years. The greatest obstacle in my experience was groups of self-described leftists (usually with a student politics background) who seemed to believe that anyone who was not associated with their faction had no business in involving themselves in progressive work. I can’t count the number of times I encountered so-called leftists or “activists” who simply could not understand how and why I was involving myself in community work without being tied to any group or political party. They were politically ambitious I suppose, and suffered from the same blinkered view that you encounter with people on the right: you must be working for some group or network of mutual benefit; you must have some agenda or other…. a telling suspicion in those who express it.
I witnessed over the past decade or so a great hardening of hearts also, and increased cynicism towards anything especially male white people did or got involved with regardless of merit. It became rediculous: a middle class woman drinking vino in a bar and loudly proclaiming her solidarity with transgender people (often as a way to let everyone that she was bisexual and up for it that night actually – sorry but can’t resist a litttle baiting), by the time she reached her conclusion or had rinsed out her affirmations to her satisfaction, took on the mien of someone who had just singlehandely cleaned up 90 mile beach of refuse or housed a homeless person. She’d positively glow with a kind of saintly superiority which was nothing of the sort but rather an ugly pig-headed smugness for simply holding an opinion.
Because this woman was a woman, and because some woman was oppressed, she was also oppressed through some collective mechanism as metaphorical as the invisible hand or much more so; and because other woman wee in fact oppressed, she could therefore take on – this is very odd stuff isn’t it? – the suffering of a black guy beaten at the furgeson riots, for example…. merely expressing her distaste for white men in a vague way was somehow to support all disparate groups of actually oppressed people… and take on the sort of pride personally that only a real Rosa Parks is really entitled to.
It would be laughable, dismiss as completely nutty and delusional if it was not so prevailent. So prevailing as to be regarded as self evident and brace by so many these days. As well as being a bizarre and irrational mechanism, this false equivalence that is going on routinely, it is profoundly self-regarding and narcissistic.
It is also extremely hateful. The merit of individuals is totally disregarded. Instead we are expected to put (for example) a young woman of Indian extraction brought up in a middle class household who studied law and earns 100k a year on a pedestal simply because of her “minority” status, regardless of merit. Whereas a bloke who works in the community is going to be treated first with suspicion, and perhaps will even find his community work questioned as inappropriate because he is taking up valuable activist space that could be filled by the voice of someone who has decided to switch genders or some such nonsense.
The consequence of all of this is that, with people being reduced to tribal designations – typically on racial grounds these days – or will be that people will be less inclined to contribute to society because their work will not be appreciated and in the worst case scenario for men hanging around progressive circles may actually be socially dangerous for them as we all know that in leftist groups there are plenty of women and men too who seem hellbent on making examples out of people and especially white men out of some bizarre desire to readdress a social balance, or something…. like sacrificial lambs are required periodically. All very bizarre culturally and it does not bode well for civil society which requires there to be some sense of social cohesion in the air that is General and not based on race or other characteristics.
All in all I think increasingly men especially will just throw up thwir hands and say “fuck it”.
Seeing as my previous post on this issue was cauterized, presumably for being too critical or misogynistic or whatever, can I at least be allowed to point out that we (men, dinosaurs or whatever) are entirely allowed to be critical of people with whom we disagree.
This is IRRESPECTIVE of their religion, wealth, race/colour or GENDER.
Anyone can be a fuckwit despite their religion, wealth, race/colour or gender.
A lot of us men (dinosaurs or whatever) on the left feel that we’re not allowed to criticize any aspect of feminism and still call ourselves left. The great misandrous tsunami that is generated in response to criticism of any aspect of ‘wimmin’ and what they say and do, is extremely anti free thinking and should form no part of a left ideology.
Violence against men is not a rational response to violence against women.
Women need to demonstrate the same control they (and rational men) expect of men. It is always a two way street…
A dumb idea is a dumb idea not because of who says it but because it IS dumb.