Fear and Loathing: An Oberlin Feminist on Men, Republicans and Heterosexuality

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“I hope men realize that we (women) actually fear for our safety every time we walk by you on the street.”
— Kaela Elias, Aug. 4

“when i was younger, i thought i was straight because society makes you think that. it’s sad.”
— Kaela Elias, Aug. 9

“. . . luckily i have parents who accept me for whatever i am and i live in berkeley and have plenty of friends who aren’t straight so it’s not that big of a deal. but sexuality is something that changes a lot, so i guess i’ve accepted that it’ll keep changing as i get older and it’ll never stop being confusing.”
— Kaela Elias, Sept. 19

“So many cishet white boys make misogynistic comments around me purposefully because they know I’ll react, but don’t worry everyone!! It’s okay because it’s just a joke 🙂 saying offensive things to a girl that make her uncomfortable is A+ humor, 10/10.”
— Kaela Elias, Nov. 18

“I recently learned that the guy who lives next to me and literally never even makes eye contact with me is a REPUBLICAN. I am scared.”
— Kaela Elias, Dec. 14

Kaela Elias attends Oberlin College (annual tuition $50,586) and describes herself on Tumblr as “a queer introverted feminist” whose “blog is a space for me to unapologetically love myself.” Being from Berkeley, California, where so many of her friends “aren’t straight” and her parents are “accepting” of her “confusing” sexuality, Kaela’s feminism is inspired by her “fear” of males, especially “cishet” males. As incredible as this may seem, some male students at Oberlin College are actually Republican, so she’s “scared.” Feminist Tumblr is full of frightened young women like Kaela Elias, and we must ask whether:

A. Tumblr is an effect, and this easy-to-use blogging platform more or less accidentally became popular with a certain type of feminist;
or
B. Tumblr is a cause, and this hive of LGBT activism actually facilitates the adolescent sexual confusion that so often accompanies the self-described “feminist” identity.

There is a certain type of brainy, socially awkward girl, of which Kaela Elias is an excellent example, whose tendency to overthink everything makes them vulnerable to the kind of “bisexuality” she describes as “confusing.” While I don’t want to play amateur psychoanalyst here, anyone who has read my series of posts about Feminist Tumblr knows how often the same set of factors overlap.

What we might call Feminist Tumblr Syndrome is manifested by a cluster of symptoms that typically include depression and/or anxiety, an inability to form stable romantic relationships, an irrational fear or hostility toward males, and the expression of a non-heterosexual orientation as a basis of personal and/or political identity.

Excessive involvement in online social media, to the detriment of real-life interaction with people, can be seen as both cause and effect of Feminist Tumblr Syndrome. The more she isolates herself alone in her room with her laptop, the more she identifies with the like-minded feminists she encounters online, and the less she is able to relate to ordinary people around her, especially heterosexual males, who are constantly the object of scornful denunciation on Feminist Tumblr.

Kaela Elias uses “bossy-feminist” as her Tumblr URL and calls her blog “Professional Killjoy.” Here is what she wrote in answer to someone who asked her if she “hates” men:

I hate male entitlement; I hate the things men are expected to do and think; I hate how much space men take up and that they don’t even realize it; I hate the way men oppress others and create violence and the fact that it’s often unintentional; I hate that I often don’t feel safe around men but still feel pressure to seek their approval.

So, she doesn’t “hate” men, she just hates everything they do or say. She hates men for being so . . . well, masculine, basically.

Men “oppress others and create violence” — even at an elite liberal arts school like Oberlin College, where Kaela Elias encounters “cishet white boys” who say “offensive things to a girl that make her uncomfortable.”

Kaela Elias is “scared” of the Republican guy who “literally never even makes eye contact with me,” but can you imagine the terror she would experience if he did make eye contact? My hunch is that the Republican guy never makes eye contact with any female student at Oberlin because he knows they’re all paranoid feminists who would accuse him of “objectification” and “harassment” if he ever so much as looked at them. (Smart boys avoid unnecessary interaction with women who exhibit an attitude of hostile suspicion, as crazy feminists usually do.)

Is feminism a political movement or a personality disorder? Feminist Tumblr is an environment where it is impossible to draw an clear line between ideology and mental illness. Kaela Elias’ parents in California are rich enough to send her to a private college in Ohio where tuition is $50,586 a year, yet she has a weird fixation with “oppression”:

friendly reminder that it’s not the job of an oppressed person to educate someone who’s privileged. if someone who’s oppressed feels comfortable to inform a privileged person about that system of oppression, the privilege person should be eternally grateful and also not expect the oppressed person to be 100% polite. systems of oppression are literal shit, and if the privileged person did something to perpetuate that system, they shouldn’t expect the oppressed person to calmly sit down with them and explain way they’re offended. It’s not their job, and if they are kind enough to do that, the privileged person should be thankful rather than defensive.

But wait! There’s more:

Privileged people need to stop criticizing the way marginalized people react to their oppression. If you’re an oppressor, it is never your job to criticize the way others react to oppression that you perpetuate.

What inspired these particular bursts of jargon? She doesn’t say. She also doesn’t say what made her choose to attend Oberlin, rather than staying home to attend UC-Berkeley, where in-state tuition is only $13,432 a year. When you’re spending Daddy’s money, the sky’s the limit, so Kaela Elias locks herself away in her dorm at Oberlin, scared of that Republican guy next door, blogging about how “privileged” people should never criticize “marginalized” people about their “oppression.”

Perhaps you have noticed something about Kaela Elias:

people telling me I’m looking for a reason to be angry is ridiculous considering how many things in the world are worth being furious about. If you’re not mad, you’re not thinking critically. anger and productivity go together, and frustration makes me passionate, which motivates me to combat injustice. why is anger negative? anger is necessary. anger is a justified response to oppression.

Men have a problem with Kaela Elias:

I’m done trying to reassure men that the feminist movement benefits them. It absolutely does help men, but if the only reason you support a movement is because it directly affects you, then we have a problem.

Kaela Elias has a problem with men:

I have such low expectations for men, but 90% of them still don’t meet them

Men get defensive with a feminist like Kaela Elias:

if a woman expresses her opinion about the patriarchy, men freak the fuck out and get incredibly defensive, yet women are the ones who supposedly overreact about everything?

Other feminists need political advice from Kaela Elias:

Regardless of how problematic Hillary’s policies are, she’s a CONSIDERABLY better candidate than any republican running. If you think you’re protesting her policies by not voting or by voting for an obscure third party candidate, understand that you’re just making it more likely for us to have a republican president.

Despite her willingness to publish her angry rants on Tumblr for all the world to see, Kaela Elias is shy and awkward:

i want to get to know so many people but i’m too shy to talk to them

Again:

so many people to meet at my school, why must i be so shy?

And again:

i hate being shy. i hate feeling awkward or not knowing what to say because then people think i’m boring, but in reality there’s a lot going on in my head i just choose not to share it. i’m usually quiet around people whose opinions i care about and loud around people whose opinions don’t matter to me. so people who i don’t particularly like tend to like me, while people i like don’t always like me. it’s a constant cycle i wish i could stop.

Tempting as it is to recommend Wild Turkey and cocaine — a miracle cure, according to the famed expert Dr. Hunter S. Thompson — I’m not sure Kaela Elias could handle such strong medicine. Who knows how an introverted queer feminist would react to the gonzo treatment? Case studies indicate the effects can be unpredictable.

As I recall, back in the ’70s, a college girl with a steady supply of Daddy’s money could get herself into all kinds of trouble while trying to overcome her shyness. That was before the Internet, however, and now all the shy girls are on Tumblr ranting about “oppression” instead of partying with rock-and-roll outlaws. But I digress . . .

Feminist Tumblr is narcissism masquerading as political activism. Ranting inside an echo chamber about “cishet white boys” doesn’t persuade anyone or accomplish anything in terms of ending the “oppression” under which Kaela Elias imagines she is suffering. Rather than admit that she is the problem — she is privileged, not oppressed, and her shyness and insecurities are the real source of her own unhappiness — instead she uses politics as a rationalization, a defense mechanism that protects her damaged ego by externalizing blame. Her unhappiness is not her fault. She blames “society” for making her think she was heterosexual when she was younger and blames men for the irrational fear she feels toward them, even while she feels “pressure to seek their approval.”

Because she can never accept responsibility for her own problems, Kaela Elias needs a scapegoat and feminist ideology offers her “the patriarchy,” a “system of oppression” of which she may imagine herself a victim. Never mind all those poor people who can’t afford $50,586 a year to attend Oberlin — none of them are oppressed the way Kaela Elias is. They are “not thinking critically” like her. They are not full of the “frustration” that makes Kaela Elias “passionate . . . to combat injustice.”

And as for men, she has “low expectations” for them that 90% are unable to meet. Who could blame Kaela Elias for hating men, considering how they “oppress others and create violence”? In fact, she may considers it violent oppression for me to quote her blog. I just hope she doesn’t “freak the fuck out and get incredibly defensive.”

Merry Christmas, Kaela Elias.




 

217 comments

  1. Privileged people need to stop criticizing the way marginalized people react to their oppression. If you’re an oppressor, it is never your job to criticize the way others react to oppression that you perpetuate.

    So… can I apply this logic to my state of being a white, straight, Christian playwright? Can I complain this way at all the left-wing, gay atheists whose plays get performed while mine get shoved aside?

  2. “Is feminism a political movement or a personality disorder?”

    Check the third box that says “all of the above.”

  3. My hat’s off to you, RSM. The fact that you wade through this infantile gibberish so we don’t have to is courage of the highest order. If I found out this is what my daughter was soaking up for my fifty large, I’d toss the first Diversity Administrator I saw off a tall building. (Cause that’s the way we cishet white Republican boys roll when we want to visit some oppressor violence on some SJW snowflakes.)

  4. Third box? There’s also the question of whether it’s a shit test writ large, a lesbian recruitment training program, a crypto-Marxist KGB plot running on autopilot, a Ms. alternative to a Mrs. degree for women that don’t want to work in the business world, an all-purpose excuse for failure, a sign of “boys have cooties” arrested development, etc.

  5. What sort of responsible parent would underwrite their child being taught any form of women’s studies?
    I think the key to ending this system of self reinforcing garbage is to do an Alinsly on it.
    Stacey is doing the first part, isolating and freezing the targets in place, the second part is “making them live up to their own rhetoric’.
    This is by its very nature a terrible thing to do to people, but I think Stacey is making a start with pointing out the fees these idiots are paying while playing the oppression Olympics. Next is “then drop out and hand your course money over to a otherkin trans-racial dolphin with a speech impediment”.
    Make the stupid bastards justify their own bloody privilege and show them for the vapid narcissistic hypocrites they are.
    Take away the scarecrow of “rape” and fenminism is nothing more than special pleading because ‘magical vagina”.

  6. “a crypto-Marxist KGB plot running on autopilot”

    That is precisely the thesis of Eric Raymond’s classic essay “Gramscian Damage” — everyone should read it, bookmark it, and pass it along:
    http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=260

    All this stuff is the leftovers from Stalin-era memetic warfare, like radioactive waste from an ancient war that is still poisoning people half a century later.

    Raymond: “Liberating … it is to realize that the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.”

  8. Typical bigotry: “I don’t hate Jews, I just hate the things Jews do, like their commie ways, and controlling the world’s finances and media. Otherwise they’re just fine.”

    Target demographic based on their biology. Transform that into an ideology. “Critique” ideology. Jews are Marxists; let’s get rid of Marxists. Men are misogynists. Let’s eliminate misogyny. Whites are racists; let’s diminish the footprint of racism. Cis scum are transphobes; I oppose transphobia, not cis scum.

  9. When I was researching my firstborn’s college I happened upon an interesting statistic: Oberlin is apparently one of the few colleges in the nation where graduates earn less than people with high school diplomas.

    Reading this, I begin to doubt it’s because all the wymyn are getting married and taking time off to have kids…..

  11. I’m not buying it. Kate Millet, Robin Morgan and Andrea Dworkin, etc. didn’t hate men out of a sense of an adherence to generic Marxist dogma but because they were paranoid bigoted supremacists.

    Supremacists always turn their biological targets into an ideology to mask their hatred. I am not allowing these weirdoes to mask their hatred with an ideology either.

    Claiming heterosexuality is “compulsory” because Conan invaded the Garden of Eden seems like a pretty thin excuse to me, not a comprehensive ideology of anti-oppression based on history and science.

  13. Why does she have “Respect gender pronouns” and then have a bottle of semen labeled “Boy Tears”? Usually they say “I wash my face in male tears.” She must still be on formula and unacquainted with porno slang. Somehow I don’t think she respects my gender pronouns. I prefer [redacted] and [redacted].

  14. If the lovely Miss Elias fears for her safety every time an unknown male walks past her on the street, there are really only two possible conclusions:

    1 – Miss Elias has been raped or otherwise assaulted so frequently that this is a reasonable fear; or
    B – Miss Elias has either never been raped or otherwise assaulted, or such has happened to her so infrequently that a general fear of men simply passing her on the street is unreasonable.

    If it is the latter, if she is possessed by an unreasonable fear, a phobia as it were, is she not, by definition, mentally unbalanced?

  16. If you fear men and Republicans every time you walk down the street, you need the kind of help I am neither trained nor licensed in the state of Illinois to provide.

  17. Our esteemed host wrote:

    My hunch is that the Republican guy never makes eye contact with any female student at Oberlin because he knows they’re all paranoid feminists who would accuse him of “objectification” and “harassment” if he ever so much as looked at them.

    If he’s a Republican — and, if she’s had no interaction with him, how does she know? — then we know he’s a normal male; we cannot attribute his failure to make eye contact with Miss Elias to homosexuality.

    And, if the pictures she has posted to her tumblr account really are of her, then while she’s no great beauty, she’s at least cute, wears typical college-girl clothes, including some nice leggings which show her off, and has a decent figure. A normal Republican male would have noticed her, and made eye contact, and, despite our host’s warnings, normal men are far less concerned with accusations of objectification or harassment than they are of scoring with cute chicks.

    The real reason said Republican male does not make eye contact with her is more that she has already communicated that she isn’t someone in whom a normal man would be interested, either explicitly through some hostile message t-shirts or less directly through a fearful, sour and off-putting look on her face. Said Republican male is uninterested in her because she has made herself uninteresting to normal men. She has communicated her disinterest in men, and he has responded by being disinterested.

    If she actually reads this — and some of your tumblrinas actually do — I’d suggest an experiment on her part: the next time she sees him, just smile and say, “Hi,” in passing, and keep on going. Then, the next time he sees her, he will probably make eye contact and smile. It would just be an experiment, but it would demonstrate something. And who knows? She might, if she actually interacted with him, find out that he’s a polite — after all, he is (supposedly) a Republican, so we know he has good manners — and considerate man, something which she can learn without having to drop her pants for him.

    I’d even suggest that, since Republicans are more polite and considerate, she might find Republican men less threatening and more pleasant to be around than the lefties she has previously met.

  18. All of these Femblrinas are fungible. Sure, you can alter the DSM codes a bit and the sexual proclivities resume a tad, but they’re all interchangeable: Blah, blah, blah, upper middle class, blah, blah blah, moderately selective, expensive, liberal arts college, blah, blah, blah, oppression, patriarchy, etc. to be defeated by strange hair color and pierced genitals.

    What’s interesting is that this whole feminist milieu is a form of virtual reality. It’s not the “put on a headset and immerse yourself in fighting zombies” video experience, but in the final analysis, it’s the same damn thing. Just substitute “men” for “zombies,” and jargon learned in “Womyn’s Studies 101” for laser blasters and you’re good to go.

  19. She fears a caricature, not an actual threat, much less an actual person. She undoubtedly has been reared to be “open minded,” (see, e.g. her discussion regarding her parents’ ostensible acceptance of her sexual proclivities) but she fails to see the irony in dismissing a person as “evil incarnate” before she’s had an opportunity to engage him as a human being. Of course, such exploration/investigation requires effort, interpersonal skills, and willingness to set aside personal prejudices in favor of pursuing truth. It’s a helluva lot easier to remain safely in one’s cocoon.

  20. That she’s at a liberal arts college 3/4 of the way across the country is evidence of parental indulgence unless they are in the class of people for whom coming by about $400 K does not require liquidating home equity, other real property, or retirement savings (i.e. they have more assets than 96% of the public). It’s also a reasonable wager that her mother and father did not make a habit of reflecting reality back at her or did so in time-consuming and largely ineffectual ways which failed to instill a saving guilt or feelings of shame. Part of your job as a father is to look daggers at your children at the dinner table and tell them they’re full of it and you’re sick of hearing about it.

    (What is this issue you have with cats and women who like cats?)

  21. Given what she says about her mother and father, I’m going to wager she wasn’t raised in a domestic situation that was toxic in any straightforward sense. What’s bizarre is that she cannot appreciate the world around her and no one has pointed out to her (or pointed out to her so she can hear it) all of its congenial features. (She’s actually quite easy on the eyes; shouldn’t have trouble coming by agreeable male company. http://d.gr-assets.com/users/1316147778p3/6296469.jpg).

  23. I’m going to wager she wasn’t raised in a domestic situation that was toxic in any straightforward sense.

    It’s obvious that a lot of the nonsense our host exposes among the Tumblrinas has its origins in upper middle class, white, liberal guilt. She knows that she is a part of the privileged class. She knows she has faced zero hardship in her young life. Yet, she cannot be thankful. Rather, the Progressive/Leftist indoctrination has convinced her that because all human interaction is zero-sum, her “privilege” necessitates someone else’s misery. Instead of examining the underlying assumption, she retreats into guilt. To avoid the guilt, she manufactures a personal narrative of “oppression,” steeped in Progressive jargon. She has no more an idea of what she’s writing that if she were copying Latin passages from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

  24. “I hope men realize that we (women) actually fear for our safety every time we walk by you on the street.”

    I hope women realize that the very street they walk on would not be there if it weren’t for men. Neither would the college where they learn this tripe, nor the technology on which they spread it.

  27. Or perhaps, just perhaps, she’s pissed because that evil white cisheteronormative Republican guy is ignoring her, but he’s still making her loins quiver and her fantasies run wild.

  31. The now thankfully defunct Ada Initiative once listed being ignored as sexual harassment in the case of a tech convention where a feminist named Selena Deckelmam claimed people who stopped at the table didn’t ask her questions about information but only the guy.

  33. Yep. ESR has been ahead of the game on a lot of this kind of thing; he saw straight through global warming well more than a decade ago before we had the evidence we do now that it’s a con game.

    Some of the memetic weapons he lists will be very familiar to us all:

    – There is no truth, only competing agendas.

    – There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

    – The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are
    virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

    – When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

    Sound familiar?

  34. It’s a stereotype for lonely women to have large numbers of cats. My wife got a cat right before she met me as she was unhappy with her other dates.

    However, she’s more a crazy pet lady, as once we get a place with a real yard, it’s Lab time.

  35. That and it wouldnt surprise me if they are meeting school assignments in their womyn’s studies classes with their “on line journaling”

  36. Cat people vs dog people is click bait heaven – almost like cat & dog fights.
    As MT notes, it is a stereotype that men like dogs and women like cats (& older women with many cats). I am a male with three cats, 7, 15, 20 yrs old btw
    Not good at posting a pic here, but if you search ‘crazy cat lady starter kit’ you will get an image of a litter of kittens.

  37. I remember a day when people kept their journal under the mattress HIDDEN from everyone, their best friend, their boyfriend, their siblings, & their parents.
    Now, they hide them in plain view for everyone to see

  38. “I hope men realize that we (women) actually fear for our safety every time we walk by you on the street.”

    If anyone said that about black people… Well, do I need to go on?

  39. She should take up mixed martial arts. Kicking tree trunks, squirrels off walls and cats on the way to class in the morning will restore her confidence. I hear Holly Holm can kick a cat through a goal post from 50 yds. away.

  41. In the larger scope of things, the life stories of most feminists don’t even constitute good reading. From St. Augustine’s Confessions to Mary Karr’s memoirs I’ve always enjoyed the ones that have “the three R’s” namely
    Rebellion
    Ruin
    Redemption
    The academic Feminist Industrial Complex increases the odds of staying immersed in the first two. All of the ipse dixit pronouncements of feminists on Tumblr or in academe glorify the self destruction of its acolytes. No matter if it be alcoholism, substance abuse, riding the carousel, venereal disease, abortion or general sowing of discord, if it’s done in the name of feminism it’s good.

  42. And not only that, they can communicate instantly with the CEOs of companies and celebrities. If the mental ones get focused on you it can be trouble. Twitter has probably gotten more people fired for doing pretty much nothing than any platform in history. That makes it the most effective modern tool for witchhunts and shaming.

  44. I would’ve sent her to the U. of Dar es Salaam. Far away and no gender studies. People there can’t afford to study profitless stupidity.

  45. . . .I’ve always enjoyed the ones that have “the three R’s” namely: Rebellion
    Ruin
    Redemption

    Quite so. If you look at all classic Western literature, you find a retelling of biblical truth over and over. Everything involves the tale of paradise, evil, sin, judgment, Grace, repentance and redemption/salvation in one form or another. Not all stories have all of those from beginning to end, but all fall somewhere within that rubric. There is a reason for that, a reason why such stories are universal: they speak to the individual subconscious acknowledgment of what the human condition really is.

  46. I don’t fear for my safety even when climbing erupting volcanoes. In fact I’m disappointed if they’re not. She’s as much my equal as an ant is.

  47. As our host noted in Feminism’s ‘Rape Culture’ Insanity

    A woman diagnosed with herpes at the age of 20 has written an emotional essay about living with the common condition to fight the stigma surrounding it.

    Ella Dawson, now 22, said she had never had unprotected sex and thought she “wasn’t the sort of person STDs happened to” when the symptoms first appeared during her time at university in the US.

    She found the diagnosis days later devastating, feeling a “tidal wave of shame” hit her in the student health centre. . . .

    Six months after being diagnosed, she decided to start telling more people she had herpes to help herself get over the mental block.

    Ms Dawson says she never had a negative reaction dropping the “herpes bomb” at parties and in class discussions at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

    She had two options, repentance or rationalization, and seems to have chosen the latter.

    As Dostoyevsky said:

    “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

  48. So the guys avert their eyes … and even that is a sign of disrespect and oppression. Men can’t win, no matter what. So don’t even try.

    Kaela is a meaningless waste of space, and she knows it. So she fills the void, the deep meaningless abyss, with incoherent internally and externally inconsistent, words posing as a manifesto. Being meaningful, having a point, requires giving a shit about someone other than yourself and that takes work, or at least some thought, which this lady doesn’t have any to spare. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

  49. You can apply that same logic, my oppressed, marginalized, straight, Christian, male, conservative, harpist friend! Power to the people! Social justice is yours for the taking on Tumblr: all you need is a long litany of pretend, self-diagnosed mental conditions, a laptop and wifi and you are good to go!

  50. You oppressive pervs frighten me. I need a safe place. Someplace where they sell chocolate cake, for instance.

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