Help! Help! I’m Being Oppressed!

In my last post I expounded upon why I take feminist claims that they feel eternally oppressed by “rape culture” with a grain of salt.  To apply what Glenn Reynolds often says regarding “global warming” to gender issues, I’ll start taking “rape culture” seriously when they start taking rape culture seriously.  You’re never going to convince me that the terror of prospective rape paralyzes you when you’re dressed in lingerie for a slutwalk, and women who feel oppressed don’t get off on a book about being manhandled with hardware.

Nonetheless, not unlike the Global Warming Alarmists who don’t take “global warming” seriously enough to change their own carbon footprint, they sure as hell take it seriously enough to insist you reduce yours.  The only behavioral change required of a feminist to fight back against “rape culture” is to “raise awareness” through bitching about it all the damn time.  To ask her to do anything else (like perhaps not grinning while being raped receiving oral sex on the street) would only oppress her even more.  Like the proverb says:  Change comes from without.

However, were I to say that this emphasis on Rape Culture had no connection to some genuine emotion, I’d be wrong.  Behind all their screeching there’s a hefty amount of genuine anguish; these chicks aren’t happy.  At all.  The pain is real.  What they blame for that pain is not.

In the early days of my blog, I distinguished between the three main classes of lefties:  the Anointed, Entitled, and Benighted.  In short, the Anointed are those who believe that they deserve to be in charge of the rest of us because they’re so much more enlightened, the Entitled believe that the world owes them something, and the Benighted weren’t necessarily oppressed, but they understand the plight of the Entitled enough to surrender their sovereignty to the Anointed.  The Benighted don’t necessarily have anything tangible to gain from being lefties, they simply believe it’s the right way to be.

Of the three groups, the Benighted are the most unstable and therefore likely to change.  Their sense of Self is unnaturally diminished, and this creates an internal vacuum.  No matter how Selfless you may be, something inside of you will never be comfortable living for the sake of guilt.  Thus, the Benighted are the least reliable members of the lefty coalition.

This is why I recommend focusing on the Benighted for conversion away from leftism.  Nevertheless, all too often (because conservatives and libertarians are so awful at presenting their views) they never fully digest the immoral nature of leftism.  They can’t become evil by leaving leftism, but they can’t stay Benighted either.  Entitlement thus becomes their escape.

But if you’re so “privileged” that 99% percent of women who’ve ever lived and about 90% percent of women alive today would trade their material circumstances for yours in a heartbeat, how can you possibly get away with claiming that you’re Entitled to anything?

You emphasize every negative aspect of your existence, every slight you’ve ever received, and every uncomfortable emotion you’ve ever felt, that’s how.

For example, Julie S. Lalonde, so recently excoriated by Sunshine Mary.  Julie was inappropriately “assaulted by a 9 year old and his 5-year-old brother.”

I’m not saying that what the kids did was okay, nor do I believe that Julie was entirely out of bounds for feeling “shaken” by what they did.  Nevertheless, if it takes you “a decade or so of experience supporting survivors of violence” to “call what happened to [you] sexual assault”, it probably wasn’t that big a deal in the first place.  Unless you’re striving to find reasons to define yourself as a victim.

Julie also says that “[m]ost survivors take days, months and even years to define their experience as violent” without realizing that it may actually just “take days, months and even years to” learn that the definition of “violence” has expanded beyond “the use of force or threat of force”, and now incorporates guilt (Definition 2).

Some of us might think that Julie would be better off to just get over it, but as a genuine victim of sexual assault, think of how this raises her status.  Her articles are more legitimate, she can feel much more justified to get in the face of men waiting to see Warren Farrell (I was a VICTIM of sexual assault!), whatever rage she might feel at anybody who opposes her is transformed into righteous indignation.  If she simply forgot about it, she’s just another middle-class white chick.

This quest for victimhood, the predominance of Victim Culture, has two decidedly negative side-effects.

First, if more oppression brings you more prestige, you’re more likely to act in such a way as to increase the likelihood that you’ll be oppressed.  A racial example might be a black guy being as aggressive and obnoxious as possible so that every person who crosses the street to get away from him can be further proof of how racist they are.  If you’re rude as hell to the checkout girl and she gets pissed at you, it turns her into your oppressor.  You now have even more right to get indignant when somebody tells you that you have no excuse to be such a failure.  I call such folks Victim Predators.

But regarding gender, it might actually increase the likelihood of sexual assault.  Dress like a whore, and when some guy “assaults” you with his eyes you have even more evidence of society’s rampant sexism.  Get wasted at a frat party and either you’ll get some good sex with an Alpha, or you’ll have dozens of sympathetic ears listening to how awful he was in bed it is to now belong in the ranks of the sexually assaulted.

And if any of you think my assertions are absolutely outrageous, then why the hell does it happen so damn often?  If the University of Arkansas has more cases of sexual assault than downtown Newark, then what the fuck are you doing prancing around like a little harlot after downing eleven lemon drops?

Yet the second effect is far more insidious.  The Quest for Victimhood is the desire to dwell on the wrongs that have been done to you.  It transforms the grumpy clerk at the hardware into a racist or sexist who’s out to get you.  It requires you to amplify your anger and never let a slight merely drift away.

They’re all out to get you.

Nearly every religion emphasizes the need to forgive those who wrong us and to be grateful for the things that go our way.  When we let go of how we’ve been wronged and focus instead on what’s gone right, we empower ourselves to take advantage of the good things that come our way.

But Victim Culture is neither forgiveness nor gratitude; it’s their opposite.

I understand how difficult it can be to let things go, especially when we’re right to believe we’ve been wronged.  I have my own issues in this area, but I’m genuinely trying to view this stuff the way Christ wants me to.  I adhere to no philosophy that encourages me to remain as bitter as humanly possible.  Feminists and most other breeds of lefty do.

Is there anger in the Manosphere?  Yes.  However, with a few exceptions, we encourage each other to change course, to grow into healthy men, to get over it.  Anger is perfectly understandable if you’ve been wronged, but if you feed on it instead of work through it, it only eats you up inside.

For Julie and those like her, viewing their own emotional traumas with the same callous indifference they view those of omega males would serve them far better.

Otherwise, they’ll just end up like this.