When I began this blog six years ago, the Men’s Rights Movement was little more than a curiosity. I’ve watched, with both amusement and alarm, as this small movement has inspired, and ultimately has been eclipsed by, a broader anti-feminist, anti-woman backlash, online and off, driven largely by the same white male rage.
Each new iteration of this backlash has been more toxic — and, sadly, more influential — than the last, ultimately culminating in the rise of the alt-right. Which is to say, the newest incarnation of fascism.
Now the openly racist, openly misogynistic idol of the alt-right has been elected president. Obviously, not everyone who voted for Trump was white or male. But his candidacy was powered in large part by the same kind of white male rage I have been writing about virtually every day for the last six years.
While Trump’s election is, without question, a catastrophe — in ways I will be chronicling in detail over the next few months and years — Trumpism isn’t built to last. Trump’s victory was a narrow one — indeed, he actually lost the popular vote — and the demographic group that served as the backbone of his movement (white men) is shrinking relative to those groups Trump has railed against.
In many ways, Trumpism seems to be a classic example of an “extinction burst,” a term used by behavior psychologists to describe a weird and seemingly paradoxical pattern of behavior. As Popsugar summed it up in a post earlier this week:
[W]hen a certain type of behavior or action isn’t really getting its desired results any longer — say, a child’s tantrums failing to get Mom or Dad’s attention — there’s often a period when a subject struggles even harder, makes more noise, and generally throws an extremely loud fit. In other words, extinction burst is that last-ditch ramping up before an inevitable flame-out.
Trumpism, like all backlashes, is doomed to fail. Unfortunately, it is likely to do a tremendous amount of damage before it goes, not so gently, into that good night. In the meantime, I will do my best to make sense of the toxic stew of racism and misogyny at the heart of Trumpism, and to provide support for those fighting against it or just trying to get by). And so I’ve changed the tagline of this blog from “the new misogyny, tracked and mocked” to “surviving the Trumpocalypse” to reflect this broader focus.
Don’t worry: I will still be writing about MGTOWs and MRAs and the other strange misogynistic creatures that I’ve been writing about from the beginning. While I recognize they are but a sideshow in the era of Trump, I just can’t quit them, and I suspect that a lot of you can’t either.
@Joekster, that’s so true. When everyone’s got the stoic midwestern mask on you have no idea what’s behind it. Which is why I find a number of my friends have been rooting for Trump the whole time.
sigh.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
Sorry, but I didn’t hear you over TINY LIZARD.
http://67.media.tumblr.com/feb1434d603fc6f902093317758309b7/tumblr_nq2j1kDof51uu8359o1_540.png
IT’S SO TINY.
@Scildfreja: Yep. Also, TINY LIZARD!!!!
I seem to have missed a discussion on ADD/ADHD. I’ll have to go back and read through this thread sometime. When I have time.
Or I could just use it as an excuse to share my own story…
No. I’ll read through the thread first.
@joekster
Lol, thanks. I don’t know why that’s the nym I’ve stuck with, but I guess I find all the associations interesting. Poison. Terrible ways women break themselves on the altar of beauty. And a lot of diverse medical uses.
By the way, Iowa by Dar Williams is a song. If you don’t hate singer/songwriter/folkish music, I’d say give it a listen, but I think the lyrics are amazing, anyway. 🙂
And now I’m all sad about Leonard Cohen again.
@Belladonna: It’s also an awesome example of the old adage: ‘If it works, it has side effects’. It is quite literally used as both a poison, and for an array of medical uses.
Edit to add: question: did the Egyptians ingest atropine, or did they create an otic preparation? Not remembering ATM.
That should have been ‘optic’, not ‘otic’. I know words, really I do 🙂
@joekster
And “the dose makes the poison” adage, as well? Maybe I stick with the nym because I think I’m usually nontoxic in small doses. 😉
Egyptians? I guess I need to look up that part of the history of nightshade! I know it got the name Belladonna from Italian women using drops of it to dilate their eyes to make them more beautiful.
It looks like the practice did extend all the way back to the Egyptians! It’s just that the Italian name stuck. Thanks for the information.
@Kat
I think Dali and Jack have this well covered, but I’m going to add my two cents. I can’t speak for any other trans-women but myself, if I lost my access to HRT…game over, time to move into an urn. I suspect though, that I wouldn’t be alone in that. Yes, hormones are that important. The wait to get my HRT almost killed me (9-10 month wait to get in to see the endocrinologist), I lasted two or three months before I had to find a faster way, and I can categorically state that I would not have lived another month otherwise. Losing it, especially since I’m still mid-transition, would quite literally make life completely pointless.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
Oh wow, that looks like the right sort of spirit to uplift my mood.
@ Handsome Jack and Axecalibur and Scildfreja and joekster et al
Thank you so much for reading and wishing me well. That post went to a much more personal space than I originally intended, but I suppose just writing those things and putting them out there where people will read them helps, as I feel much better now. I really do.
I don’t even live in the US, but I think Trump’s victory got to me harder than I imagined because it’s a crucial culmination point of the western world forgetting all the lessons of less than a hundred years of history. Nationalism and the extreme right have been on the rise for the last decade, at a pace that has been scary. Nobody cares about some things that are said and done in the name of national security or whatever crap that a decade ago would have been seen as unthinkable.
I’d like to think it’s like David said, that this is like the last, desperate, furious temper tantrum of an ideological system doomed to fade into extinction. I really do.
Then again, seeing people on Facebook will also affect things. Yes, liberals will turn against each other and blame each other for “not being nice to the bigots” (which is basically “not catering to their whims”), but I have seen even previously undecided and politically apathetic people start becoming political and seeing that something is seriously wrong if disgusting shit like Trump’s speeches will land him – or at least not stand in his way of becoming – POTUS.
And, of course, seeing you people here. Desperation was strong the first few days in many of us, but now, it’s not looking so hopeless anymore. People are mobilizing (not saying they weren’t before, but now that a desperate need for it has reared its ugly head, it has been like a call to action). Some people have said that maybe Trump will bring good things with him. While that is undoubtedly looking less and less likely, if anyone ever believed that in the first place, Trump’s policies and supporters have certainly showed us that there is something wrong with the world – namely them being allowed to do what they want. And something needs to be done about that.
Sorry for being incoherent. I did what I said I would – a shower, some ice cream while watching a fucking terrible Batman/Superman direct-to-video cartoon (seriously? Supergirl complains about breaking a nail and that’s supposed to be funny because she’s a teenage girl and she likes shopping without never having been culturally subjected to the commercialism that permeates our culture because teenage girls are just biologically predisposed to liking shopping even though Kryptonians aren’t human but that shit is apparently universal because that’s supposed to be funny and aaaarrrrggh), and then I popped a sleeping pill. I got some good sleep in, but now I’m all groggy and just writing without editing because what am I, a person who does editing stuff? An edit… person, if you will?
@Dalillama
Noted.
http://globalnews.ca/news/3067000/alberta-mp-calls-racist-emails-about-his-immigration-policies-hate-crime/
At some point I just might have to cut myself off from (at the very least) the news media, especially the comments. I’m getting really tired of seeing so much hateful garbage. I find it rather painful too, like a knife in my heart.
@Jesalin, want to feel better? Go to his twitter account.
https://twitter.com/deepakobhrai
Nothing but support. These guys – the people fighting for the heart of the political parties in Canada – are going to be our firewall. They need to know that we support them.
@Scildfreja
That does make me feel a little better. I’m just really getting tired (to put it very mildly) of all the hate. And to see comments by these same haters disingenuously calling non-haters intolerant and hateful for calling bigots bigots and racists racist etc. both baffles me and deeply disturbs me.
I just saw someone post a reference to the Mayor of San José. Now I want to cross the pond just to throw flowers or something and say how great this is; this is what it looks like when someone deserves public office. Sounds like a Mayor worth voting for.
(I copypasta’d the link; hope it’s right)
https://medium.com/@SamLiccardo/weve-got-your-back-4c2fdcb0b915#.3xtllhfga
@Opposablethumbs: Good on the mayor of San Jose. Any chance we could talk him into running for president in 2020?
@Belladonna: I’d actually only heard of the Egyptians using it as a cosmetic. I guess we both learned something. Best type of exchange. 🙂
@Anarchonist
I’m glad you’re feeling a bit better. Sometimes we just need to take a break from stuff that’s overwhelming us, even for a bit. And no need to worry about the stream of consciousness typing.
That’s my modus operandi.
I think this is in an interesting and revealing move on your part.
For years you have “tracked and mocked” the alt-right’s misogyny wing, and we have laughed. But there was always something very wrong with your approach to misogynist hate.
Laughing at organized hate is no way to fight it. Pretending that organized misogyny is not a real thing does not help extinguish it. Trivializing the profound impact #redpill has had on American society is counterrevolutionary and, as we have seen, destructive and misguided.
I’m glad to see that you now understand that it is not enough to mock and laugh, that activism is not taken seriously when it is not serious.
I hope that you maintain the focus on resisting now that the #redpillers have literally taken over your country. I notice you don’t often cover the overlaps between white supremacy and organized misogyny, for example. I would love to see you write about that more.
Lastly, it is worth stating that the only way to fight this hate is by being organized. We have to fight back on Twitter and elsewhere where hate is festering. We have to get angry. We have to be serious.
This isn’t a joke anymore. In reality, it never really was.
@Sara Parker-Toulson,
This has always been a serious site. Humour can convey serious topics very well – look at the Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, Samantha Bee. Important drivers of progressive change, confronting the most horrible aspects of society with equal measures of intelligence and wit.
David’s approach, lending levity to horrible things, is vital. It’s never been a joke, but it’s always been worthy of ridicule. That’s the difference.
Sara is a visitor from a parallel dimension, apparently.
@Sara
Is you new? Cos we cross that particular intersection on the regular. Who has been covered here that fits into only 1 of those categories? I can’t think of anyone. I’m sure there’s maybe a few, but they’re very far between
Sara,
This blog has always taken misogyny seriously. The fact that I and the commenters here make jokes sometimes doesn’t mean I or any of us are trivializing misogyny or Trump or the alt-right or any of the things ths blog covers. And if you look back through the archives you will find that a good portion of the posts here have zero mockery in them.
This post is less an announcement of a change than an explicit recognition that the blog has already changed in its focus, if not in its general approach, which as always will mix mockery and more serious analysis. With Trump, it’s almost impossible not to mock. Yes, the threat that Trump poses to this country and the world is very serious, as I’ve said many times. But the man is also a world-class buffoon.
We mock these people’s ideology because it’s ridiculous. We also take it seriously because it quite literally rules America now.
@everyone
Still recovering from the election. Don’t even live on the same continent but this shit have disturbed me to the roots of my being.
I will keep lurking here. Keep being awesome and take care of each other.
Have finally started to find yoy in coding again for the first time since my depression.
Add me to the club of gifted and terrified of failure.