Men Ain't Call Me Shit

My enthusiasm for blogging has been on the wane for some time, but nothing has been quite as boner-killing as the recent outpouring of feminist bloggers' litanies of death and rape threats they have received from readers.  This mirrors a lot of my experiences with the feminist blogosphere, in that it's an awareness-raising campaign about an apparently universal female experience (rape threats when you express a feminist opinion online) that has never happened to me.¹

I have two main reactions when my whole sphere suddenly lights up with solidarity over how men are always treating you as primarily sexual objects.  First, there's the reaction of horror at the malice these women experience, which makes me genuinely fearful about blogging and being in public.  Later, as I read more and more and learn how widespread such campaigns of internet terror seem to be, I begin to wonder what on earth is so wrong with me that apparently no one wants to choke me with cocks for my opinions.

It's a real headfuck.  The consciousness-raising, solidarity-promoting campaign to reveal the extent of the abuse other women have suffered in silence makes me feel pressured to either self-censor my own lack of abuse or attempt to compete with other feminists in the victimhood stakes.  While I often feel alone in my (patently dickish) reactions, I know I'm not alone when I feel pressure to conform to feminist narratives of victimization, because shit like this crops up from time to time.  I have a great horror of becoming an editor of my own experiences to match the narrative of a group I ache to belong to. 

I'll try and work on my failures of empathy. In the meantime, I think I can advance an explanation of the origin of rape threats themselves, which many feminists seem to be crying out for.  In brief:
1) Everyone feels massively threatened by the current climate of fear and despair, even male sexists.
2) Powerless male sexists feel that the feminist narrative has totally won out and they are disenfranchised, making attempts at civil disagreement futile.  Feminists, despite feeling themselves embattled and fearful, are perceived to present male empowerment and female disempowerment as universal rather than situational and relative. 
3) Powerless male sexists cast around for ways to silence feminist arguments they feel are so wholly baseless (due to their own experiences as embittered social rejects) that they cannot engage with them intellectually. 
4) Because women have a sex, sexists settle on the notion of attacking their ideological opponents at this point of weakness.  Historical styles of disciplining misbehaving women are employed, which mostly hinge on women's desirability as sexual objects.  Men who advance opinions which are similarly objectionable to reactionaries receive a different style of threat--threats of violence toward themselves or their loved ones, accusations of homosexuality, or threats towards their jobs.  Men perceive the problem of threats as a lamentable characteristic of public life, while women perceive it as a problem of their gender. 
5) Real patriarchs continue to live blissful lives unfettered by consequence while the rabble tear each other to pieces. 

1. "Ah, privilege!" cry the feminist bloggers.  "Your existence has been so privileged that you may even regard our identification of your privilege," they add, "as simply a way of dismissing any experiences which contradict our narratives."