Are you white, male and – even worse – working at a technology company? You are part of the problem. Don't think you are? Well, you're wrong. And you're a rapist. You just don't know it. Your behavior is quite irrelevant to whether you are guilty. It isn't your character that determines your worth in the digital age; it is the color of your skin and the content of your boxers.
So it is with news coverage of Tinder. The company markets a popular dating app. Two of its co-founders dated (a detail conveniently left out of many news stories), and the affair ended badly. The female half of the couple, one Whitney Wolfe, now claims fellow co-founder Justin Mateen sexually harassed her through private messages and called her a "whore" in front of Tinder's CEO.
Now, a reasonable, well-adjusted person who isn't brimming with hate for anyone with a Y-chromosome might think of this ugly break-up as the sort of thing that happens when you "get your sugar where you get your bread and butter." But is this somehow symptomatic of rampant sexism in the technology sector? CNET's Ian Sherr thinks so.
Advertisement - story continues below
"[Wolfe's sexual harassment lawsuit] is the latest example of the struggles the tech industry has faced over women's issues," sniffs Sherr. "… Further underscoring the struggles were recently released employee statistics from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and LinkedIn, which indicated those companies' workforces were majority white and male, by wide margins. Twitter, for its part, didn't have a woman on its board until recently."
Why, imagine that: Technology is still largely the purview of the skilled white males who invented so much of it – you know, the people at the heart of "nerd culture," the people women in general and feminists in particular have always been so quick to sneer at when such would-be suitors come calling. One reason for this might be that women, according to Annie-Rose Strasser abandon so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) jobs within months of starting their careers. Most often this is to – gasp – have and care for children, you know, voluntarily. Women make up nearly half those graduating with technology and engineering degrees, but Strasser insists on seeing some kind of persistent discrimination at the heart of women's subsequent under-representation in the technology field.
TRENDING: 'Slap in the face': Pro-life Americans urged to boycott this major retailer
Claire Cain Miller calls this "Technology's Man Problem." (Can you imagine if a prominent male author wrote of the "woman problem" plaguing a given field? He would lose his job before his blog finished loading.) Men in technology, according to Miller, are all guffawing lechers with no sense of propriety. Women are therefore being driven out of technology fields because their feelings are hurt. And what is an empowered, capable "grrl" – excuse me, "womyn" – warrior if not … living entirely at the whim and under the mercurial direction of her injured feelings? It must have something to do with all the men everywhere, who are somehow responsible for "rape culture" (definable on the Web as any woman feeling badly for any reason) simply because they are male.
The Internet is the primary means of transmitting this virulent plague of, uh, patriarchal chauvinist rape-culturing, I guess we'll call it. Sites like CNET, BuzzFeed and the DailyDot, all popular Internet gossip sheets, trumpet daily warnings about this pervasive illness.
Advertisement - story continues below
It is on the Internet that you get your news. It is on the Internet that you debate your political views with your friends and family. And it is on the Internet that radical feminist activists and the scions of political correctness – those ardent left-wing fascists so eager to forbid and contraindicate every word and thought with which they disagree – find the most fertile ground for their poisonous mental crops.
It is amongst these venomous Internet vistas that the left has sown its latest lies: the lies of "micro-misogyny," "microaggressions" and a host of other "micro" crimes. What are these micro-aggressions, these micro-misogynies? They are any small, benign behavior that a leftist, a white-hating racist, or a feminist doesn't like or which makes her/him/it feel uncomfortable. Take a look at the "microaggressions" Tumblr account sometime, or read this laughable list of "micro-misogynies." Take up too much space with your legs on the subway? That's sexist, patriarchal hatred. Think your ex-girlfriend is nuts? That's hate, buddy (even if she DID key your car). Tell your date she's overreacting when she overreacts? You monster. And that's to say nothing of all those psychics who just KNOW that the people around them are "privileged" and thinking racist things, no matter what those monsters actually say and do.
The goal of enshrining these "micro" crimes is to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. It is to redefine the most harmless of thoughts as crimes in an effort to marginalize white males, using the "victims'" feelings as leverage. The accusers are emotional terrorists whose most powerful weapon is political correctness.
This, in its own way, is the real "cyber-bullying." This is thought-policing. This is the intellectually dishonest and socially criminal misrepresentation and mischaracterization of the only group it's safe to hate in the United United states: the white, "cisgendered" male. The fact that the eye-chart-acronym Gender Identity crowd had to promulgate a special term in parallel to "transgender," simply to identify the heterosexuals they hate and fear so much, should tell you what this is really about: redefinition of those who don't comply with the politically correct agendas of leftists.
Such heretics, such "hatemongers," are relegated to persona non grata status on the Internet. The second one of them is identified, he is designated for harassment, defamation and denigration online, hounded until he is unemployable and lied about until he is unlikable. Just ask, say, the CEO of software company Mozilla, whose years-old private donation in support of traditional marriage was used to pressure him to resign from the post he had earned. His only crime? He once held an opinion that politically correct fascists thought was wrong. Think you're safe? Wait a while.
Advertisement - story continues below
They'll get to you soon enough.
Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].
|