Category: men

Lawrence Fox and the outrage farm

By Daviemoo

Social media is meant to invoke outrage. It feeds on it. Remember when social media first started- sure there would be the odd spat. Now, it caters to it.
Sites like twitter, apps like TikTok, they fuel themselves on controversy- because where there is outrage, there is money… and that’s something that people like Lawrence Fox, osmium dense though he may be, have realised.

Lets get this out of the way first: Fox and all his hangers on like Corcoran, like Grimes and Hartley-Brewer, are all stupid.
All of them are nonsense slinging rage monkeys, screeching out into a world to provoke a reaction, hoping to piss off the world 1/100th as much as they are permanently.
I imagine Fox went to bed last night laughing at the fact he annoyed so many people on a social media app.
“Good”, I bet he thought to himself as he curled up alone in his bed, staring at the dent no sane woman has filled in years. This type of bottom level clickbait farming is literally all he has to his name. If we didn’t know the man was a seething cunt, we wouldn’t know who he is- and he prefers the eye rolling frustration to complete indifference. To quote an excellent TV show- what a sad little life, Jane.

Who is Lawrence Fox without this? What does he stand for? “Free speech”- ok, but what does that even mean? I could also sit there calling people I don’t like paedophiles all day and being taken to court over it, where some shadowy overlord of incel behaviour will be my patron. I don’t, because I’m capable of rational discourse- so the question for Fox and… “friends” is, is he incapable of rational discourse, or is he just that much of a wet lettuce in semi-human form that if someone says “oh don’t say the word moist, I hate it” his veins begin popping up in some primal self defence as he screams the words “MOIST” and “SNOWFLAKE” alternately with more and more tears building in the corners of his rheumy little eyes.

But when it comes to his actions and the actions of his fellow verified incels, they behave this way because they have tapped into the pulse of social media in a way the rest of us may know about, but don’t touch on- not because we can’t, not because we’re unaware of it. Because we’re capable of a deeper nuance in conversation than slinging around hate slurs- because we understand that just because you can be a repugnant prick doesn’t mean you should.
Fox et al are all “free speech” enthusiasts, arguing vociferously for the right to say and do ANYTHING! Anything is off the table, nobody should be able to censor you or your speech, you should be free to say whatever you want.
Dedicated scholars (aka actually intelligent people) would calmly point out that some types of speech are heavily monitored as they are a precursor to actual violence: in the last two weeks in America, two separate anti gay preachers have stood proud at televised podiums and called for the mass shooting of gay people. This weekend, just as Roe V Wade was repealed – a maniac entered a gay bar in Oslo and shot several people to death.
Cause, meet effect- I believe you two are heavily acquainted.

But we know that people like these anger pushing rage monkeys don’t care about that. They just want to feed social media.

It’s not even the point that certain types of speech should be criminalised -we’ve all heard the hot takes of people being arrested or given punitive sentences for posting lyrics to songs people find offensive and I’m not here arguing about that. Those stories, those articles- all feed into the clickbait outrage machine these one trick ponies have mastered. No, it’s not about whether these types of speech should be criminalised or even punished- it’s about the fact that as human beings, capable of rational speech, it’s unbecoming to use them…

I could grunt like primal man. I could scream slurs at a nursing home, and I could yell all the epithets I want to in the street until I was led away for fear of being unbalanced. I don’t do those things- not because I cant, I very much can. It’s because I’m not a fucking loser…

If you can’t have rational discourse without using slurs, if you can’t talk to someone and not immediately sink to saying things you know will provoke and piss them off you aren’t a big brave freedom fighter in the guerrilla war against speech. You’re one of two things, or possibly both:
The first option is that you’re too dense to realise that what you’re saying is rude. This is the type of person like the taxi driver who will jeer at an effeminate man then be surprised when you tell him to shut the fuck up, acting like you did the wrong.
The second option is that you are desperately unhappy, as the collection of geese this article is prompted by are, and simply have to propagate that misery in others.

Perhaps if Fox knew how to behave around people he would still be married. Perhaps if he was more interested in raising his children than provoking anger online he wouldn’t be so hated. But he doesn’t care. This will suit him. And social media allows it.

Oh yes, he shared the imagery of a progress pride swastika yesterday and now his account, as twitter openly professes, is “temporarily locked”. He’s already posted his distain, crying about how “you can call the Union Jack a symbol of fascism but you can’t criticise the holy flags”. Ah yes, free speech until it’s speech you don’t like then, as always.

And in the background of this little sonata of stupidity, social media feeds. More clicks, more shares, more discussion of the man who will sink to the most flagrantly slackjawed commentary just to get acknowledged- and why? Because more clicks are more engagement. More engagement is more money. More money is good, always good right? Does twitter take this outrage money and donate it to LGBT+ charities who are sorely in need of funding and suffer at the hands of the unmitigated bollocks that people like Fox wank onto the internet? Do they even invest it into making their platform better, using algorithms to detect and censor swastika or tweets that could provoke violence against marginalised communities? Well, no but you can be damn sure that any of the upper management have nice cars and big houses.

Social media has fastened its lips around the collective flaccid peni of wasters like Fox etc and is happily slurping up the givings as they sit back in immunity knowing that they’re almost impossible to dislodge because sites like twitter or Tiktok or Facebook or whatever other tepid social media we use are absolutely delighted when a new cunt-in-chief pops up to start tweeting the usual transparent bollocks like “LGBT+ people are bad and this is my freedom of speech”.
LGBT+ people don’t care about your personal opinion- we care that this is step one on the very short ladder to “LGBT+ people should be exterminated with prejudice” and people like you are happy to bend down on all fours to let more extreme people capitalise on your incel upsets to gain ground.
As for freedom of speech- you’re free to walk around calling people like me fags and shirt-lifters, back scratchers and queers. But two things to always bear in mind. If you use language that identifies you as a threat you’ll be treated as one and you shouldn’t be surprised if you call the wrong guy the F slur one day and end up wearing your teeth in a purse around your neck.
But the most important point of all is- you can say those things. But if, in a world as big, broad and varied as this, you sink to the most gormless commentary you can muster just because you should be able to you’re lacking in the very most basic parts of human development when it comes to interaction. And that is why people like Lawrence Fox sleep in a large bed, alone, tweeting at strangers all night.

We need to talk about the men who say “not all men”

By Daviemoo

We know. We know it isn’t all men. But after yet another woman speaks out about her experience of discomfort when receiving unsolicited, perverted DMs and the conversation is immediately co-opted by the “yeah but, it’s not all men is it” crowd one must begin to ask whether those who are more interested in being delineated as not creepy are more interested in protecting their egos, or hiding their deeds than the very real pain, discomfort and fear of women.

A small note- I will be talking about MEN in this article. If the lack of the word some bothers you- you’re the target audience.

Rosie Holt, the comedienne and political satirist posted a very disturbing DM on twitter today, which reads as follows:

Said offending DM

I found myself amazed that a man could type this, thinking “yes, yes this is a polite and funny message where I proposition a woman about her body, it will definitely go down a treat”. So many people seem not to understand that politely harassing someone is still harassing someone- something I discovered a while back when I shared an anonymised grindr message of someone asking me to let them, and I quote, “smell your bum through your trousers”. My comments lit up with people disgraced that somebody could absolutely disregard someone’s boundaries and, without so much as a hello, send such a creepy message- but between those spots of consensus were the odd “erm, why are you sharing his private message?” “He said please, what more do you want”, “it’s a hookup app- what do you expect?” (is a hello too much, really?)

So it was with much trepidation that on Rosie’s post, I headed to the comments, hopeful of some light hearted discourse to cheer Rosie up (which was there)-and yet…

The hated phrase

There it is. As always.

It’s not all men, its SOME men, it’s a FEW men, its just some random, unknowable, unquantifiable men who do these things. No DECENT men do these things and we simply must CLEARLY STATE THIS, lest the conversation about women’s safety and comfort online devolve into discourse around how distressed women receiving DMs that range from mildly disturbing to pornographically obscene to horrifically violent, must cater to men’s feelings around discussing the topic. Every single time the word “men” is used without the demanded prefix of SOME men, in flood the people determined to prove that it’s not them, they’re not predatory and creepy and how dare you lump them in with the baddies?! They’re feminist, they have wives and sisters and daughters and they’d NEVER do such things! And of course, we all know you can take the words of strangers on the internet to heart because nobody has ever lied on there… right?

They are right of course- it’s absolutely not all men- but does that need stating in discourse where frustrated, angry and frightened women are talking about inappropriate behaviour? Why must men appear and center themselves over the women? Why are some men’s feelings more important than a group of women’s shared experiences of harassment and the urgent need to discuss and forestall it?

It isn’t all men: but how do you know which men it is?

“I never thought he would kill her,” Loney said. “I never thought that would happen in a million years.”

https://nypost.com/2015/07/26/man-arrested-in-slaughterhouse-style-killing-spree/

The first defence is always “I never knew he was like that”.

“I never knew he hit his wife”

“He seemed like such a lovely man”

“I never knew he was abusive”

Here is something I bet you didn’t know: Stanford Rapist, Brock Turner’s parents are now campaigning for the sex offenders register to be scrapped to protect their rapist son. So knowledge, we learn, is not power and even if it is, it still doesn’t lend itself to the protection of victims. Turner’s mother is actively involved in the Facebook group for scrapping the sex offenders register- so sometimes knowledge, intimate knowledge isn’t as important as the strange urge to protect a disgusting degenerate just because you birthed them.

John Wayne Gacey was a clown as part of his career: he also stacked the corpses of his victims under his house in a crawlspace. He was active in the church and by all accounts a polite and convivial neighbour. He’s also one of America’s most prolific serial killers: gay he was, but the threat still stands.

I am, of course, reaching for two extreme examples there- so how about a home grown one: during lockdown one I was walking to work one morning and stopped to scream abuse at a man who was taking unsolicited pictures of a woman in her gym gear whilst they were waiting for a bus. The man first called me a queer- it’s gay, thanks- then ran away when the rest of the bus stop ganged up on him.

What would he have done with those pictures- hell, he didn’t delete them, he sprinted off with phone in hand. He was also dressed in a fairly nice suit, tie and was carrying a little bag that clearly held a laptop. This wasn’t some “oh they’re just like that” stereotype of a brickie or some other parodyish manlet- this was a businessman. So how does one know which men to reference, and why is the addition of SOME so necessary?

It’s funny because women have often said they feel safe around me because I’m a gay man – I can understand feeling safer as a woman, but my experiences of being a man who likes men and being around men has given me a pretty in depth look into the world of men who say “not all”- but are part of the some.

As a gay man I’ve experienced a shocking amount of unsolicited rude pictures and messages and whilst I’m no shrinking violet (I have cheerfully referred to myself as a man whore at least twice this week), the worrying thread that runs between womens experiences and my own is that men assume. They assume I want pictures of their flaccid willies before they ask, assume I want them to tell me what they’d do to me if I was in a room with them alone, and prioritise the pleasure they get from sending those messages over my comfort in receiving them. It’s at best selfish and at its worst deeply indicative of people who don’t care about the root of the word consent.

Back to the topic at hand, Rosie’s sharing of the DM is a snapshot into an extensive world that heterosexual men in particular don’t seem to understand. I genuinely believe a lot of heterosexual men wish their DMs were flooded with women telling them what they’d do to them if they could and sending myriad photos of themselves, and the reason I think this is that straight men who arent homophobic have genuinely expressed jealousy when I explain how transactional you can be on apps like grindr.

The most disturbing conversation that came around consent and comfort happened when I shared my experience of being sexually assaulted; a disturbing amount of men (sexuality irrespective) responded with “I’d love to be woken up with sex”… It seems there is an innate disconnect between the way men think about sexual pleasure and the involvement of the other. I get no pleasure from sending nudes I haven’t been asked for, but apparently some men do. I get no pleasure from being, as I described to the man who assaulted me “used like a fucking fleshlight”, but some men do- and they are more than happy to center their feelings over the other, just as men in this discussion do.

Men will take a discussion around women feeling violated and unsafe on the internet and center themselves in it as readily as some men will center themselves above someone else’s consent to a sexual act: and its this correlation that makes women right to be afraid of men.

If you are more interested in being pandered to in a conversation around appropriate behaviours than around listening to those who are being made to feel vulnerable then that, however minor it may seem to you, is the top of the tipping point to being more bothered about your own feelings than the feelings of those who are trying desperately to have a discussion. It is also wildly disturbing to see men who are so desperate to be marked as “one of the good ones” when most rapes are committed by someone known to the victim and therefore likely to be someone the victim feels safe around- and that is an underreported statistic.

As a man, of course I understand that sometimes you may frown because you know you’re not one of the horrendous perpetrators of these crimes: but if you know that the statement doesn’t apply to you, it’s probably important that you ask yourself then, why it offends you so? It’s not being directed at you but is a blanket statement and does not apply to you- your perception of you isn’t changed by the statement so why be offended by it? Ultimately, if you know you haven’t exhibited any of this problematic behaviour you should be completely unphased by statements around those who have done so: because it’s not about you.

Women who experience abuse, harassment, threats and disgusting imagery should-MUST- be listened to, and ultimately if being listened to is at the expense of some male ego… well, we have more than enough of that: were it an energy source the UK would be lit up like a firework. Your feelings are important and valid- but not as important nor as valid as women who fear opening their messages in the event that they are being dehumanised by men- whether they know said man or not. Next time someone comments something about men, rather than leaping in to make ABSOLUTELY SURE they know it’s not you, I advise you to sit down, shut up, and ask yourself why your discomfort at a label is weightier than the bodies of women who have been objectified their whole lives.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Strongmen? Putin? Trump? Johnson? Don’t make me laugh.

By Daviemoo

Many people, not just Clare Foges, refer to people like Trump, like Putin- and even like Boris Johnson as strongmen. And though they can ostensibly shield themselves behind that perception, even a quick look at their actions sets the match of truth to the tinder paper of their lies. The idea that it takes a strong man to bring order and authoritarian tropes is foolish, because only authoritarian leaders are so afraid of dissent that they forfeit the freedoms of discourse, repeating empty lines about G7 recoveries and vaccine rollouts or EU membership instead of facing, head on, the scrutiny of a tired and angry country.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written an extensive book bringing light into the dark and murky perception of the strongman and revealing the departure from any rectitude it takes to be, or be perceived as, a classic strongman. She also spoke at length on “Enemies of the People“, a podcast about extremism to discuss the perception of the strongman and why those who are seen as such by the media are anything but, and looking at today’s examples of this archetype it’s easy to see why. Take Putin.

Vladimir Putin is a coward. A terrified coward who hides himself behind the facade of a ruthless strongman. Throughout history, strongmen have appeared in various guises and often the biggest examples of “strongmen” are in fact- not.

Putin’s regime is handled with an iron fist, something which seems, at a glance, to be a trope of a strong and powerful man. Nobody is denying Putin’s power, but strong? It’s the mark of a coward to prevent any scrutiny. It’s why any attempt to place Johnson as an opposite of someone like Putin is, frankly, funny. Johnson is cut from the scraggly end of the same cloth as Putin.

Looking at his government’s flagrant attempts to seize the reins of whatever passes for democracy in the UK, it’s quite plain to see that Johnson desperately wants to push the message of someone with a plan, with a big brain- someone who knows what’s right, what’s best for the people: we’ll take protest away because it might bother you (even though it’s a fundamental right), we’ll tear ourselves out of the single market and the customs union (it means cheaper goods and a much freer market for you to sell into and buy from but so what, freedom!), who needs covid restrictions (hospitals are crawling slowly towards almost 100% capacity nationwide, the cancer treatments we were told would be freed up by dropping restrictions are cancelled left right and centre- but we’re the first country ‘through’ the pandemic eh)

This attempt to make Johnson out as a weak leader is right- but not for the reasons that writers like Foges think: all strongmen leaders are cowardly. Johnson is a member of this club along with those she lauds as “doers”; after all, their favourite defence of Johnson is that he “got brexit done” – heedless of the profound cost of course. To a man, every leader who fits this trope is weak, more interested in consolidating power in a shield around them than doing the job. We’ve seen the perfect examples of this over and over- Let’s look at another example foges mentioned: Donald Trump.

So riled he was that his authority was challenged over his appalling handling of the Coronavirus pandemic he incited an insurrection during a pandemic, uncaring as to whether his followers may sicken or die defending him. He could have spent his time in office making the American people’s lives better, could have brought in legislation to redistribute tax, fix healthcare, reform police or the army, change budgeting. Instead he clung to his podium speaking about invisible, inexorable enemies of democracy as he worked to besmirch it with his own grubby hands. Strong men sit back and let their minions, usually other men, do their bidding. They enthrall others with promises of power and station, and use them. They snatch fear from the hearts of other men and use this fear to line up human shields before them. Only true strong men face the scrutiny of the opposition, the true criticisms of their adversaries and do it without an army of others surrounding them: it’s the equivalent of the person who bullies you when his friends are around but ignores you when he’s alone. And for some reason we have all collectively allowed this archetypal throwback to mediocrity to continually take the podium of power.

Now looking back at Johnson we can see that he fits in well with this crowd of peers that he’s occasionally placed in opposition to. Lets’ then look at other supposed strongmen like the leaders of true authoritarian regimes- Brazil’s Bolsonaro, a man who spent the pandemic talking about his penis and selling off the rainforest or letting it burn. Strong men are seen as bull headed, as if it’s a positive that you can’t change the mind of a man who has decided that he should let the life preserving trees on his continent turn to ash even when presented with science. Johnson too said we would be on course to “irreversibly open the economy” only to close it again months later as coronavirus rocked the nation again. So is a strong man a man who can admit to his wrongdoings, or a man who obfuscates them? At this point, I’m not sure it matters: strong men are the ones who rush in and make the wrong decisions in the first place.

Lately Johnson has taken to referring to President Zelenskyy as “my friend”, a transparent attempt to capture that machismo, bravery and effortless charisma that Zelenskyy has displayed as his country faces horrors beyond our pale imaginations in the UK. This is, of course, another trope that strongmen use- desperately trying to capture the accolades of actual leaders: we both know if war broke out in the UK Johnson would hide so deeply underground he would cook his morning toast on the outside of the earth’s molten core.

Ultimately one has to question why the world is so captivated by these wasteful men, men so afraid of scrutiny they refuse to recall parliament to face questions about their probity, and why people like Foges try so desperately to separate Johnson from the pack. Everybody knows that men like Johnson, Bolsonaro, Trump, Putin are all of apiece and their continued efforts to inherit a power they are too weak to lift aloft is to the detriment of all those being crushed beneath.

What motivates men to send unsolicited nudes?

By Daviemoo

As a man- and a gay man at that- some behaviour that other men display mystifies me. I need to clarify before I get into this piece that sending nudes is fine, if consensual. Things that imply consent like trading alts or sexting and discussing it change the paradigm of sending naked pictures- but there are some things people do which utterly confuse me, and I’ve read myriad articles about these behaviours trying to see if other people understand it better than me- it’s led to more confusion than anything.

Having read several articles and spoken extensively to friends, both male and female, straight and gay, about this topic it often elicits weird and varied responses.

As a whole, my female friends (either trans or cis) do not like, want, or appreciate unsolicited nudes. The responses are usually that it’s strange, alarming, coercive… I’ve never actually had a female friend tell me they want to receive nudes unless it’s someone they already like and have discussed explicitly (ironic phrasing) with the person beforehand. My male friends however… gay or straight they seem to enjoy the idea of unprompted nudes. I’ve asked why, and the responses ranged from “dunno, I just think it’s fit” to “it shows they like you”. It seems to be a fundamental difference in how people think, and I’m not sure if its sociological or biological- but it’s interesting and disturbing in equal measure.

For my own personal experiences using apps like grindr etc, you’re told it’s “part of it” which I honestly can’t help but see as a sad indictment of the mindset of a lot of men who are sexually attracted to men. If people do find trading nudes enjoyable that’s fine – I do too- but sending unprompted explicit pictures as a hello is deeply wrong in my eyes. Even if you’re on grindr for sex, who says that you want to see everyone naked? Or receive explicit voice clips etc?
The men who defend these practices seem not to realise how very predatory their behaviour can seem. Would you approach a stranger you found attractive in a bar and immediately show them your naked body without their consent? Why do you think it’s appropriate to do because it’s on an app instead of in person?

Often those who question these things are the ones who are castigated or shouted down: it’s expected that some men can, and will, behave in this way and with impunity for it. “It’s not serious, it’s not a big deal, it’s for a laugh, you can just ignore it”. It’s always the person receiving the unwanted messages who needs to calm down or moderate their behaviour- not the sender.

Some have stated that they feel these behaviours have worsened because of, or during, the lockdowns during the pandemic.

Men have spent a lot of time away from women, and have almost lost any semblance of respect for women that they had in the face of endlessly talking to other men on the internet about female mythologies- plus the #NotAllMen backlash from the horrific murder (at the hands of a police man) of Sarah Everard seemed to push misogyny to the surface, a piffling defence that not every man commits heinous crimes- but exposing, simultaneously, that any critique of men which personalised towards the every day man, enraged any men who felt personally attacked- which coincidentally covered a lot of men, who suddenly felt exposed and aggrieved for being called out on negative behaviour. The explosion of outright hostility from men all over the internet who felt like they shouldn’t be questioned and should be given carte blanche seemed to cover the fine point that many of the men who do these terrible things, from harassing women over the internet to brutal sexual crimes, were given carte blanche- and now that card was no longer blanche -French for white- it was now the rusty brown of the blood of women murdered for saying no, for walking away, for the crime of being desirable or just being there at the wrong moment.

In my own humble opinion, this behaviour’s continual fostering and tolerance in society is indicative of why we see and experience so much sexual impropriety- from being touched without consent in bars to full, gritty and horrific cases of sexual assault, to men declaring women their property. At no point are men – regardless of sexuality – taught to value the feelings of those they’re speaking to as equal to their own: to pause and consider how unprompted sexually explicit imagery may make people feel, regardless of their own views on receiving them.

I’ve tried to put myself into the mindset of those who send unprompted explicit photos and it’s a strange mindset to be in- is it that sending photos is the sexual thrill, regardless of the reaction? Is the potential of a negative reaction arousing? Do they genuinely expect a positive reaction? Is it a brag? Is it a power move? All these things occcur to me and yet I’m never sure if I’m close to the answer or wildly off base. I can’t help but feel that different people do it for different reasons because it’s so widespread.

I’ve also discussed this with a close group of friends, and one of them said he’d asked a friend who does it “why do you send them unprompted”- the person he asked apparently was shocked that it might offend or upset people- he was convinced it was a nice way to tell a woman he thought they were attractive.

The issue I think that society misses is that every enabled transgression against other people’s sensibilities can potentially be a building block to embolden more damaging behaviour- and society fails to address men’s propensity for thinking of these things as non-serious, indeed, emboldens it and, as such fosters worse behaviour to occur. After all, if men can and do joke about everything from sending unwanted nudes to sexual assault, it lessens the severity- it’s the reason that minorities do not appreciate jokes at our expense- because making someone or something serious an abstract joke emboldens people’s flippancy towards it.

Many men read writing like this and immediately become defensive and it’s this oversensitivity to critique that must be stopped. If these things apply to you – if you send unwanted pictures, just don’t. If you make off colour jokes about sexual harassment – stop. Nobody is asking for you to cut off a toe, it’s a simple reframing of your own comforts to match those around you- and it’s past time that men feel that their entitlement outweighs other people’s comfort and safety.

I urge you to realise that if this applies to you it’s not to say you’re a horrific person: I do feel that a lot of men are victims of a society that fails to impress on them moral decency, and that gives them- us, I should say, a skewed concept of our importance to others. If you grow up believing showing someone a picture of your penis is a reward or a compliment, clearly you have a misplaced sense of right and wrong. Society is failing women every day by not looking urgently at how to address these issues- but it’s also failing men by allowing deep, dangerous holes in moral fabric to percolate and worsen. Of course it’s down to individual choice as to whether you act on these urges which are wrong and in some cases verge on harassment. But I do feel that society needs to take ownership of it’s endorsement of these behaviours, stop, and urgently push men to reflect on how they behave.

Regardless of sexuality- until society admits that a false economy of men’s behaviour being tolerable when it isn’t, and until as a society we commit to doing better, men will continue to be viewed with well earned suspicion.