By David Futrelle
Janice Fiamengo, an English professor at the University of Ottawa, is one of Canada’s most famous, or perhaps infamous, Men’s Rights Activists, getting her (terrible) message out in innumerable YouTube videos, speeches on college campuses and at conferences organized by A Voice for Men, and at one point as a guest on a white nationalist podcast called Radio 3Fourteen, on which she suggested that white men are “living under … a feminist version of sharia law.”
She also likes to tweet. And some of her tweets are pretty strange, even by Twitter standards. Lately she’s been getting positively horny on main over … male inventions:
Damn. I would tell her to take a cold shower, except she’d just start getting horny over indoor plumbing.
Fiamengo also wants the men of today to know how very grateful she is that that other men in the past built a lot of things.
She rarely misses an opportunity to bring up how totally unappreciated she thinks (cis) men really are. Even when her argument makes no damn sense at all.
She’s especially exercised over the allegedly unfair treatment of white men in particular, including the dead ones:
Ironically, given her desire to paint men as pure-hearted angels, the specific men she chooses to champion are often quite shit. She is, for example, a big fan of the violence-loving western supremacist street gang called the Proud Boys, whom she inexplicably believes are non-violent.
She has also declared herself quite “proud” of Tommy Robinson, the darling of Britain’s racist far-right.
As a man who thinks Tommy Robinson and the Proud Boys are a huge embarrassment to my gender, and who feels a bit weird about accepting “thank yous” for inventions I didn’t invent and train tracks I didn’t lay, all I can say is that I’m glad men don’t have many “defenders” quite like Janice Fiamengo.
H/T — @TakedownMRAs, who you should all follow on Twitter
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I don’t want to be “that guy”, but this woman strikes me as someone desperate for male attention
I can’t imagine the willful ignorance required to think the way she does. She basically ignores so many facts about history, anthropology, and archaeology, it’s embarrassing that she even has a job on at college campus at all, let alone a position as a professor.
I like men too Janice but this is borderline creepy .
No wait it’s freaking creepy
Just no Janice
*sigh* all this talk about make accomplishments reminds me of an old Russian folk tale:
A farmer had geese, and he wanted to cook ’em for dinner. “Don’t kill us” – said the geese – “don’t you know our ancestors saved the Rome once?”. “Ok, fine” – answered farmer – “but what you did for yourself, then?”. “Well… nothing, really” – said geese
“Then shut up, and off to the pot you go”
And that’s what I see every time some MRAs try too claim achievements of the great men in history
@ David
Just as an aside, we like to always put “Tommy Robinson” in quotes.
It’s just a fake name he adopted for his ‘man of the people’ schtick.
His real name is the rather less proletarian Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
(Normally I don’t give a toss about what people call themselves; but apparently pointing that out annoys him.)
@Ed- It’s not just you. Honestly, it seems to me the majority of female MRA’s have very little dignity and seem like they would walk through broken glass for that approval and eat dogshit hot off the sidewalk if they could be convinced them it made them a special, cool girl who isn’t like all the others. They believe feminists are jealous of all the attention they’re getting, but it’s just cringy and sad.
Ok, that’s just creepy. I mean… seriously? This woman is the embodiment of Fremdschämen.
And if her revising of history and fetishization of stuff she makes up wasn’t bad enough, she also endorses terrorists and serial criminals. I think we found that mystical woman that the Incels keep yammering on about, that one who always goes for the bad-boys and scoundrels.
I threw up a little in my mouth. 🙁
Maam this is a Tim Horton’s, also didn’t Gavin brandish a godamn sword and try and murder someone?
Also I fucking love that photo of those most likely poor lower class men working on a rail road in the middle of the desert for what would most likely be pennies and somehow that proves that men are great and have done nothing wrong
Technology is only inherently masculine if you arbitrarily redefine a hell of a lot of technology as something else. The bulk of the most essential technology used and developed throughout human history falls into the sphere of women’s work: food preservation and processing, textiles, agriculture (especially in its earliest stages), sanitation, etc.
Does this silly fucker get weak-kneed when she puts some soy sauce on a steaming bowl of rice? Does she gurgle with gratitude when she pulls on a sweater or washes behind her ears with soap? I doubt she has a clue about the level of development behind any of those things or their importance to human survival throughout history.
To use a Star Trek analogy, this woman sounds one dilithium crystal short of a warp drive, if you get my drift.
Performative horniness: she’s not really turned on by a light switch, but all her talking about getting turned on eventually turns her on.
Otherwise you’d see a lot of flickering lights in her apartment and no tweets from her phone.
Her subjective options are not rare or off base. Not only do men’s inventions tend to turn women on, THAT IS (probably) WHY MEN INVENTED THOSE THINGS TO BEGIN WITH.
So, congrats (white?) men for your resounding positive impact on vaginas worldwide, but that doesn’t mean you should harass us/interrupt us/invade our space (for rude men), or just ignore when some other guy does (for men who think they’re “nice”… a.k.a, blameless).
Nevertheless, what the fuck is her point? What is she trying to prove?
That white men are capable of greatness?
That isn’t news to anyone, in fact, it’s constantly summarized throughout our entire formal education.
Perhaps she is saying that white men, being so capable of greatness, are above all reproach?
That’s kinda not true for literally any other group, though.
I really do not get her point, and I wish she would make it already. If she bothered to define it out loud, I’m sure she would realize how obtuse it is.
Ok, I’m not sure. But, I hope.
Perhaps she is doing the alt-right version of gratitude journaling via social media. Maybe manospherians believe that if only we focused exclusively on white men’s positives, we’d feel more grateful. And in feeling so grateful…..what????
What? What would change? What do they want aside from complete submission by those they deem inferior?
I feel grateful for individual men in my life, but why should I give credit to all white men for the contributions made by a small percentage of them?
They don’t all want to take credit for the horrific tyranny and suffering perpetrated by a few white guys, so why do they feel entitled to take credit for anything done by anyone else?
There is so much so wrong about how they think.
…Who gave Vivian James a professorial position?
(Is it just me, or does Flamengo come across sounding like a phone sex operator specifically catering to the Big Bang Theory gang? “Unngh…talk geeky to me! BLIND ME WITH SCIENCE!”)
The light switch thing is unparodyable. It’s already indistinguishable from parody, so any parody you could write would be too feasible.
As an aside, we have no way to accurately gauge women’s contributions to infrastructure and innovation (especially) in the past, because it is a well-known common practice for a white guy (since he has the capital) to steal and implement her ideas while TAKING ALL THE CREDIT.
Not only true for women, of course, but for all historically oppressed groups of people.
Just because your name is on it, doesn’t make it yours. Context.
As long as we’re on the topic of female cheerleaders for Men Behaving Badly, Ann Coulter has had this to say–repeatedly–about Timothy Mc Veigh: http://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ann-coulter-timothy-mcveigh-quote/
When does this woman find time to teach English?
Horny for penicillin? That’s a new one.
Personally, I’d rather get horny for beer. That’s a women’s invention.
Oh, Christ, there’s a female Jordan Peterson.
Re: her thing about trans men.
Uh, i’m married to a trans man. When we got together he was (as far as we knew at the time) a straight woman and I was at the time, an in the closet bi man.
The reason trans men don’t get as much hate is because “of course a woman would want to become a man, men are best!” Whereas a man becoming a woman is the worst thing imaginable because being a woman is a terrible thing to be because women are subhuman objects.
The reason cis-het men assault trans women like me is because we dare to express “weakness” (femininity is synonymous with weakness) and we must be beaten down for daring to have emotions other than rage.
If she wants to talk about universities, the oldest university in the world, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, Morocco, was founded by a woman. Space exploration? Much of the maths for actually getting into space was done by women – they were even called computers. NASA’s first chief astronomer was a woman.
All of that aside, though, whether men did lots of inventing and building in the past doesn’t mean shit about anyone else. No man now can claim superiority because of some building from the 16th century, or a medicine from the 1920s, or anything else you care to name.
Looks like it’s another Canadian professor trying to hop on the Peterson gravy train and milk the alt-right for all they’ve got. I hope she fucks right off. My country’s got a ton of awful, problematic shit to try to deal with, I don’t need these morally corrupt shitweasels further encouraging the worst of us.
We don’t know who invented architecture, steel, carpentry, logging or ships, and the space program was a collaborative effort by tons of people, many of whom were women.
also, I’d like to point out that the Shakespeare lexicon wasn’t invented by “men”, it was invented by Shakespeare. I don’t get to pretend I’m a playwright just because I also happen to have a penis.
She forgot nuclear bombs in that list of male inventions. Watching millions of people die in a single flash of light must make her wetter than the amazon. Also, apparently Janice wants to thank men for slave labor, which is how the railroads were built. On behalf of men, your welcome Janice! For slavery! And also WW2. And WW1, and the Civil War, and Viet…you know what? Let’s just say, all the wars. Your welcome, Janice, for all the wars, JANICE.
I remain unconvinced of this. Earliest surviving written record of a piece of vernacular =!= invented it.
In masculine utopia, light switch turns YOU on!
Especially her love of white men illustrated by a railroad gang There was a saying in Western Canada and America (racist terminology in original): “Every sleeper (railroad tie) is a dead Chinaman”
She seems like a great professor though.
There does seem to be an air of ‘NOTICE ME SENPAI’ about the whole thing.
@vaiyt
What? No!
If Dorothy Parker could be Marie, the queen of Romania, then I can be Dorothy Parker.
@Chris Oakley
No.
@Alan Robertshaw
There’s a “Yanny/Laurel” joke in there somewhere.
Janice, I understand. Truly I do. Been there, done that. I’ve drooled on Shakespeare books at my local bookstore, fondled the bottles of penicillin my pharmacist dispensed to me, and visited the airport many, many times just to watch the pilots and the planes take off . . . oh my. Whew. I get lightheaded and all . . . melty . . . inside just thinking of the men who invented so many things!!!
Here’s the thing. The world is not ready for phallogosexual women. I’ve been thrown out of more bookstores, drugstores, and airports than I care to remember. Something about my perfectly reasonable behavior being creepy, strange, scary. Girlfriend, trust me on this one: Keep this shit on the down low.
@Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
If Dorothy Parker could be Marie, the queen of Romania, then I can be Dorothy Parker.
I feel like this could be blasphemy because Dorthy Parker is god.
She was the second coming, and we all missed it. We left her ashes in a cabinet for 20 years, and people just forgot.
@vaiyt:
Penis: The ultimate “participation trophy”.
@Cat Mara
I like your comment muchly. I laughed.
Of course I assumed your meaning to be: that having a vagina is like winning first prize + a new (self-replicating) TV, compared to a stupid “thanks for coming out” penis.
Then I realized, the manospherians would likely take a “participation trophy” a little too seriously….and they probably already consider vaginas to be “participation trophy holders”…
@jone (social justice cleric)
Could be blasphemy. But I can’t let that stop me. I can’t allow the alt-right to be the only ones who define alt-reality.
@jone (social justice cleric):
Given that “vagina” is Latin for “little sheath”… yeah, it kind of does already. The Romans really were the OG manospherians IMO. I mean, the Ancient Greeks were pretty misogynist, but the idea that men had to be stoic, emotionless machines or be considered “unmanly”? Romans started that. Mediterranean “macho” culture that despises women and gay men? Romans started that too. Even their language betrays what a fucked-up culture they had: Latin is the only language I know of that has two verbs for describing oral sex with men: “fellare”, and “irrumare” which basically means “mouth rape” ☹️.
Pretty sure it’s been shared here before, but for anyone wondering what “Tommy Robinson” was on trial for, here’s an excellent explanation.
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2018/08/01/the-tommy-robinson-judgment-what-does-it-all-mean/
@Cat Mara
Eh, “vagina” simply meant “scabbard” in Classical times. It’s application to anatomy was much later.
Irrumare apparently comes from ruma, “teat”. Language, and etymology, are strange beasts.
Considering that it was considered normal to threaten irrumatio to shut someone up, Ancient Rome sounds like a sausage fest.
On the other hand, English has “to blow” and “to facefuck”.
@Weatherwax
My first reaction on reading that is, it’s the kind of verdict where depending on the perspective, one either grumbles that he got off on a technicality, or one crows that justice had triumphed.
I will hopefully have a better reaction later. Sorry for going a bit OT here, but I’ve had a bad couple weeks, and most recently realized I’ve lost my best friend to his sub. So not only am I missing part of my support system, but I don’t feel like I can object or fight back because my best friend only recently came out as a Dom and says it’s been the best thing that happened to him. Being a good ally says I should be happy for him. I try to be. But he’s already blown up at me once because I’ve been a bit reluctant to befriend his sub.
(I should add, he’s far from the only BDSM-person I’ve known. I’ve had friends in that community for longer than I’ve been married to Mr. Parasol.)
I’ve had only superficial interactions with his sub. She seems nice, and I do believe she makes him happy. But he keeps insisting that she wants to be friendly and that therefore there is no awkwardness.
I feel as if our history as friends is no longer important, and it’s coming at a time when other things are stressing me out. I don’t have the spoons to cope with this the way I’d like to, and my instinct is to withdraw and center on myself for a bit … but I’m worried that will lead to me losing a friendship that’s been important to me since 2004.
@ Victorious Parasol
Sorry to hear you’re having a difficult time. Best wishes & internet hugs as necessary.
@Weatherwax
Thank you. I could use extra helpings of both.
@Mayu Kitsune
If it’s the Canadian Pacific Railway, it was built largely by Chinese immigrants who were paid pennies, immediately treated with hostility, and looked at as a necessary evil by white Canadians who limited Chinese immigration the moment their usefulness as labourers expired. Janice is probably all for it, judging by the men she’s idolizing.
https://www.mhso.ca/tiesthatbind/index.php
@Crip Dyke
This is better than my theory that she’s getting a bunch of static shocks and should probably invest in a humidifier for winters.
@jone (social justice cleric)
Um, really? I think I’m going to need to hear a bit more about this, because this sounds straight from an MRA-adjacent evopsych opinion-haver.
I’ll give her some credit for being the ultimate in low effort girlfriends.
Edit: VP – hugs if you want em. Spare spoons in the drawer, too.
Thank you, Shadowplay. Right now I’m trying to collect all the hugs and spoons I can get from people who care about me, because I surely need them.
I’m going to fumble through a few things here.
On one level, it’s just about how he has less time to talk with me about the things we used to enjoy talking about – favorite movies, TV shows, books, politics, etc. I miss that.
On another level, it’s become clear that she’s the priority, and I wonder where that leaves me: the person who cried with him when his beloved cat was dying of cancer, and he had to decide when to have her put down; the person who defended him against some internet bullies; the person who’s e-mailed him practically every day for years, a habit that started when he was feeling suicidal and continued because we were able to start talking for reasons other than checking in. For the crafters on here, this is someone for whom I’ve knitted 2 sweaters, not to mention presents for his mum and gran. Y’all know what that means.
And what happened to the friend who cried with me on the phone when I was in the ICU and could barely speak and wasn’t sure if the stroke was done with me? What happened to the friend who listened to me when my dad died, or when my mom was being ugly?
So I’m grieving all that, in part because this is also a time where I’m worried about my cat (who as of last week is officially at risk for diabetes, fatty liver disease, and cancer), I’m dealing with Mean Girls at work, and now I’m trying to cope with losing part of my support system.
Their collaring ceremony was yesterday. I was invited. I couldn’t bring myself to attend, because everybody has been celebrating them and talking about how happy they are, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for me and my messy feelings in a space like that.
David, I’m sorry to be so messy here.
@VP
May I say one thing?
You didn’t mention that you also feel guilty for grieving (the implication is there though).
Please, don’t do that. Change hurts – seems to hurt worse sometimes when its a good change for our friends. A bit of grief for what was is fine. It is no more selfish than missing the kids when they leave home.
Hope that helps some.
VP, it’s okay to be a mess every so often.
If it helps, I have also been a mess since last Tuesday. Basically, bad stuff happened to folks I knew, and there was nothing I could do to fix it or even help because I’m over 500 miles away and it sucked.
Maybe your friendship will get back on track or maybe it won’t. In the meantime, have an internet hug / shoulder-bump.