Let’s play a game, you and me. Call it, “Yours and Mine.”
You are in Australia (yours) and I am in America (mine).
You are female (yours) and I am male (mine).
You are a “progressive” (yours) and I am conservative (mine).
It would be a simple gambit, as an opening move in Yours and Mine, for me to say that Australia’s progressive women are all idiots, sluts, dykes, fat, ugly, etc. In response, your move would be to say that American conservative men are all racist, sexist, homophobic theocrats, etc. Let’s skip that, eh? I stipulate, arguendo, that you can out-hate me, and that you excel in accusing anyone who disagrees with you of mala fides. Never has anyone directly criticized Clementine Ford who was not presumed guilty of “misogyny” or some other such Thought Crime.
This mode of discourse — whereby feminists seek to discredit and thus effectively silence all opposition by encouraging the belief that anyone who opposes feminist ideology is not merely wrong, but also evil — is rhetorically dishonest. It is a propaganda tactic, a method of sophistry, and if schools still taught basic logic and rhetoric, I daresay you would be the target of much more effective and devastating criticism than having Michale Nolan call you a “slut”:
A SYDNEY man as been fired from his job as a hotel manager after calling popular feminist writer and commentator Clementine Ford a ‘sl**’ on Facebook.
On Friday, Ms Ford shared a screenshot of her interaction with Michael Nolan with her 80,000 Facebook followers and tagged Mr Nolan’s employer Meriton Apartments in the post.
“I wonder if the folks over at Meriton Apartments are aware that a man listing himself as a supervisor for their business likes to leave comments on women’s Facebook pages calling them sl**s. I wonder if they are also aware that he is a racist,” she wrote. Mr Nolan has posted several racist jokes and memes on his personal Facebook page.
In a statement to Ms Ford, Meriton Apartments said they do not condone Mr Nolan’s behaviour and he has since been let go from his job.
“Michael Nolan was removed from the Meriton site on Saturday 28th November pending an investigation, and as of 2:30pm today 30th November 2015, he no longer works for the Meriton Group,” the statement read. . . .
Ms Ford says she hopes speaking out against online misogyny will reduce the chance of other women receiving abuse online.
“These men don’t get to just go around leaving these kinds of comments and attempting to degrade women just for the hell of it,” she wrote on Facbook last week.
“Why should they get away with it? Why should there be no consequences at all for them? Why should I put up with that?
“There are basically no consequences for men who behave like this, so we have to start making consequences for them.” . . .
Well, you have now defended yourself at some length, but can you answer this: How is the identity-politics mentality of feminism not merely a species of special pleading? Many years ago, to amuse myself, I had fun with idiots on Usenet groups who supposed that a Civil War history forum was a suitable place to impugn the Sacred Honor of Our Fallen Heroes. To choose one side of an argument, and then to unload upon one’s antagonist all the rhetorical ammunition at hand, is a fine sport. Pompously serious fellows like Mark Pitcavage, Ph.D., did not enjoy the way I played the game, but it is not my purpose here to refight those arguments, Ms. Ford. Rather, I recount that ancient Usenet quarrel to explain to you that special pleading in the War of Ideas — arguing vociferously on behalf of one’s own particular tribe — is a phenomenon quite familiar to me. And the problem of our age is this: Certain special pleaders have succeeded in convincing the intelligentsia that their special pleading is synonymous with social justice.
There in Australia, for example, I suppose that Aboriginal Rights is considered by your intelligentsia to be a Holy Crusade. Considering that I have never visited Australia and know next to nothing about your aborigines, I’m sure I could not be fairly accused of hating them. Maybe the aborigines are all fine upstanding citizens, and maybe progressives like yourself are correct to suspect prejudice lurks in the hearts of those ordinary working-class people in Australia who roll their eyes when the media Down Under begin lecturing them (as I imagine the media is prone to do) about the Tragic Plight of the Oppressed Aborigines. Or perhaps, on other occasions, the eye-rolling of ordinary Australians is in reaction to the latest iteration of another theme, the Aboriginal Success Story: “Look here at this fine fellow who, having overcome poverty and prejudice, now has achieved some wonderful thing.”
Such media exercises are not truly journalism, but rather evangelism. This kind of “reporting” is didactic and tendentious and, despite the supposed ignorance of the ordinary Australian at whom such journalistic sermons are preached, the truck driver in Brisbane who sees these Morality Tales of Aboriginal Oppression recognizes he is being lectured, guilt-tripped by well-educated media types who think they are better than him. These moralistic media preachers, in Australia as everywhere else, presume themselves fit to tell the rest of us what to think.
Whatever the Controversial Issue may be this week — immigration or education, poverty or disease, climate change or sexual harassment — it’s always the same thing. Our Moral Superiors™ feel a constant duty to instruct us in the Correct Attitude, as if we are unruly schoolchildren who need to be told for the umpteenth time How to Play Well With Others.
Damn you. Damn you all, and damn your smug sense of superiority.
This, I think, is what Michael Nolan was attempting to express when he went on Facebook to call you a “slut,” Ms. Ford.
What are the everyday problems of Michael Nolan’s life? I don’t know, any more than I know anything about the plight of the Australian aborigines. At a distance of 10,000 miles from Sydney, I cannot hope to inquire among Mr. Nolan’s family, friends and acquaintances to ascertain his general character and reputation, nor to learn what sort of difficulties and hardships he might be dealing with.
What I do know is this: No one amongst Australia’s intellectual class — a class to which you, Clementine Ford, quite prominently belong — gives a damn about Mr. Nolan or anyone like him. The ordinary Australian, who works all day to pay his or her bills, rates so low in the estimation of elitists like yourself that you cannot even be bothered to notice that such people exist, except in those cases where your sadistic impulses compel you to publicly shame and humiliate some fellow like Mr. Nolan whose existence offends you: “Who is this despicable slob who thinks he can say rude things to us and get away with it?” Feminism is always a lecture and never a dialogue. So it is with any other issue that attracts the enthusiasm of the intellectual elite. Our Moral Superiors™ will tell us what to think, and we are expected to praise them for this.
Damn you, and damn your expectations. Damn you all to Hell.
So, Ms. Ford, this is how we play the game of Yours and Mine. Here on my blog, I accuse you of arrogance and sophistry, and you are free to answer this accusation however and wherever you wish.
But you won’t, will you? No, it is beneath the dignity of Clementine Ford to address such an accusation as this from a lowly peon like me. You will pretend that there is no one on the planet who has seen through your transparent charade of superiority. For to acknowledge me — someone who has spotted your intellectual hustle as the shabby trick it is — would call attention to the general question of your own authority as an Arbiter of Correct Thinking. Who are you, ma’am, to tell us what we are allowed to think? What makes you so much better than the rest of us? Where is the proof of your extraordinary virtue, that qualifies you to stand in the pulpit, to condemn everyone else as sinners, and demand that we accept the Gospel of Progressive Salvation?
Damn you, Clementine Ford, and damn your claim to “journalism.” You are selfish and dishonest and, more importantly, you are a vengeful sadist who craves power to punish and humiliate others.
You are a very bad person — you are wicked, evil, corrupt, consumed by your own depravity — and anyone who admires you is a deluded fool. But though I publish this accusation in hope that the whole world will read it, so that they may condemn you as a cruel bully and a cunning liar, I do not expect any answer from you, because that is not how people like you play the game. No, what you seek to do is to dictate the rules of the game, and to decide who is allowed to play, so that You always win and They always lose, and then you and your buddies gather around to congratulate yourselves on how fabulously clever you are.
Damn you, Clementine Ford, and damn all your friends, too.
Game over. Thanks for playing Yours and Mine.
— Robert Stacy McCain
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This is part of my continuing Sex Trouble series on radical feminism, a project funded by readers in response to the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!
Whatever you give — $5, $10, $20 — is most sincerely appreciated.
So our family is making a road trip and, given the current state of national alert, readers can understand why considerations of operational security limit me from saying much more about the timing and destination of our journey, but we’re gonna see him get that tab. We prayed very hard for our son to make it through this grueling ordeal, and our prayers have been answered. So I’m rattling tip jar for the Shoe Leather Fund to put me on the road again. Thanks in advance.
