What the fake lesbian blogger incidents tell us about misandry in the modern
western left
By Peter
Recently, the plight of people resisting the crackdown of brutal Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad has been in the news. It’s not a surprise then that any dissenting bloggers from within the country would be under increased scrutiny and attention. Especially ones belonging to favoured grievance groups. As I’m sure a few of you have heard by now, a blog called “A Gay Girl in Damascus” turned out to have been written entirely by a 40 year old straight American male in Scotland. The blog had been active for over three years.
The deception came to a head when a post claiming to have been by a cousin of the Gay Girl reported she’d been arrested. Alarmed by the news, the blog was traced by one of the administrators of a popular lesbian blog, “Lez Get Real”, Paula Brooks, who had given the Gay Girl in Damascus an early platform. The blog was traced, to Scotland, and Paula helped out the fake Syrian Lesbian. In a very ironic development, Paula herself was then outed as a straight male 58 year old retired Air Force veteran and construction worker.
First, let’s set aside any easy schadenfreude and just say that such deception is wrong. What personal secrets did these men have confided to them under the guise of their lesbian personas? Who may have put themselves at risk investigating the arrest of the Gay Girl in Damascus? We all place a degree of trust in each other on the internet: imagine if W.F. Price turned out to be a radfem sockpuppet snaking us all? Who then emailed your employers with your names and linked them to all your posts? Creepy to think about, since politically incorrect opinions by straight men are intolerable in society.
But are politically correct opinions by straight men tolerated by the left? Indeed, this is what may have compelled these two leftist men to create these sock puppet personas. The man who pretended as “Paula Brooks” was quoted as saying “I didn’t start this with my name because … I thought people wouldn’t take it seriously, me being a straight man,” he said. Originally, he wanted to start this blog because he noticed some injustice gay friends were facing. The question is, could he have blogged about gay issues openly as a straight man? The answer is no.
As many of you may know, modern leftism is concerned with something they call social justice. Whatever they name it, it’s basically a system where people are assigned to castes based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and level of disability. The less white, male, straight, Christian and able-bodied you are, the less “privilege” you have, and perversely, the more your opinions matter. In the world of academia, and its close cousin, the leftist blogosphere, identity politics are the most important factor in whether or not your arguments are accepted. Thus, if you’re a straight able bodied white male, you are barred from commenting on issues related to gays, disabled people, and women, since you have straight privilege, ableist privilege and male privilege. Moreover, you’re not allowed to criticize any opinions by any gays, disabled people, and women on the left, no matter what the subject. Because you have so much privilege, you see.
It gets worse than that, though. Take, for example, David Futrelle, creator of the Manboobz site dedicated to quoting MRA comments out of context and mocking them. So far, Futrelle is playing by the rules – he’s a straight male and he’s criticizing other straight males. So he decided to write an article for feminist megasite Feministe criticizing Scott Adams. Even better: straight white male attacking rich straight white male.
But then something strange happened. Even though Futrelle had most definitely paid his feminist dues, even though he’d set up and run his own site and criticized only other straight males, thus making sure he wasn’t abusing his privilege, he was still run out of town by the Feministe crowd. Why? Because he used the word “crazy” when describing some opinion Adams had. Obviously this showed what a cruel ableist he was, because “crazy” refers to people with mental disabilities. Check it out, the frenzy the feminists work themselves into in the comment section is worth a read. For the lulz.
Here’s my take on what happened. The crowd at Feministe doesn’t just hate male privilege. It simply hates men, period. This explains why they disqualified a guy who played by all their rules on a technicality. And that goes for the rest of the leftist blogosphere too. Within this world, and academia, straight white males, because of their imagined privileges, are the lowest of the low. They’re the unclean class.
This brings me back to these straight men pretending to be gay women. Why did they do it? Because, in the leftist world, it was the only way for their voices to be heard. Even if they’d been complete flagellants, constantly ritually purifying themselves by “examining their own privilege”, they’d still be unclean. And the messed up thing is, as gay bloggers they were effective! “ Paula Brooks” and “her” site was among the most popular, which just goes to show you that when men are allowed to compete on even terms, they win. That’s why Futrelle wasn’t allowed to contribute to Feministe anymore. Because within a week of posting, it was clear that this man, misguided douchebag that he is, was the best writer on the damn site, period.
All of this reminds me of Robert Connell, male feminist professor and head honcho of the feminist approved “Men’s studies” academic association. Or should I say, now the trans-gendered Raewyn Connell. And it made me think – obviously this guy had some transgendered tendencies to begin with, caused by estrogen hitting his brain in utero or whatever – but something had to happen to push him into transitioning at age 60. And maybe, given the man-hating environment of the modern left, it wasn’t that he was tired of being a man. Maybe he was tired of being a leper.
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