Adventures In Troll Land

Ironically following my post about oppressors who masquerade as victims, some troll-provocateur found his way to this site to comment as "Anonymous" under my entry Where's Andrea Dworkin When We Need Her.  Breaking the rules of my guideline policy, Mr. Anonymous decided to post his misogynist, uninformed, and rather banal thoughts about Andrea Dworkin.   Although I allowed his original comment to remain, though indicating that it was in defiance of the comments policy, I deleted his following comments and placed the page under moderation.

This trolling is especially amusing considering that I recently dealt with the discourse where oppression desires to masquerade as victimhood.  Today's Anonymous has provided me with an excellent real world example to reinforce the claims made in that post.

Let's take a look at his first comment that still remains below the post that talked about Andrea Dworkin:

“This walking maggot of a woman was NEVER relvant to the real world out there. She was always, like radical feminists are, living in her sexist bigoted bubble. I know enough REAL feminists, eauality feminists that snort with contempt at the mention of Andreas name. They know full well that when this walking sewer lid uses the word rape, in her comment "I want a twenty-four hour truce where there is no rape." This KKK, lesbian Feminist, Nazi, (All the same thing) is really refering to all sexual contact between men and women. Good-bye Andrea, say hello to your new partners in hate and bigotry, Hitler, KKK, etc,” (Anonymous, comment on Where’s Andrea Dworkin When We Need Her?)

In my response to this post, other than mentioning that he was in defiance of the comments policy, I also pointed out (somewhat angrily I will confess) that his statement not only demonstrated an ignorance of Dworkin's writing but that his use of language (the misogynist terms applied to Dworkin, his misandry-discourse that refers to radical feminism as bigotry) made it seem doubtful that he knew any "real feminists."  I also called him privileged and a rightwing reactionary.

Obviously Anonymous's comment is rife with fallacies.  First of all he straw-persons Dworkin, restating the myth that she believed "all heterosexual sex is rape" that I already demystified in the same article.  Secondly, it's filled with abusive ad hominems: calling someone a Nazi, making a false analogy between feminism and fascism, and using the word bigot does not an argument make!  Finally, the argument demonstrates the larger socio-historical fallacy that I criticized in my previous post: the discourse where oppression likes to make the victims seem like the oppressors.  Calling someone who fights for equality, for the end of oppression, a "Nazi" is usually a charge made by people whose set-politics are in line with fascism.  Witness the Tea Party's mobilization of the Nazi argument against social programs even though the Tea Party, a populist movement manipulated by billionaires and for the interests of billionaires, is precisely what fascism is.

Then there is the fact, as I would point out in a later comment, that my post was about the real world (yes the "real world" that he mentioned in his first comment) rape of a real person.  He was more interested in calling Dworkin a "bigot" and "Nazi" than dealing with the fact of real world oppression.  One of the previous commenters, for example, possessed a critical attitude towards Dworkin but would have never posted - because of authentic commitments to liberation and equality - what Anonymous posted.

In any case, a comrade and regular poster on this blog also responded to Anonymous - and probably with less vitriole than myself.  This prompted Anonymous to make two more posts - both of which I deleted because I already warned him that he was in defiance of the comments policy.  Here was his next stellar and well argued comment:

“Why is it that I have NEVER and will NEVER see a gorgeous looking but man-hating bigoted lesbian feminist. Gee, sounds like classic wolf and the grapes tale doesn't it?” (ibid.)

Wow: I haven't heard this one before.  I guess you have a point, Anonymous: if these "man-hating" and "bigoted" (again the abusive ad hominem fallacy) feminists were "gorgeous" then I would listen to what they had to say.  Not only is this misogynist argument utterly and pathetically typical, it doesn't say anything.  Although the "all lesbian feminists are ugly" position is a hasty generalization fallacy, the ad hominem notion that an argument only counts because of the appearance of the argument-maker is utterly ludicrous.  Winston Churchill was not a "gorgeous" person but I think he made a pretty good argument in British Parliament about why Britain should fight Nazi Germany.  No one in British Parliament said "he's wrong because he's unattractive - oh, and also everyone who argues against Nazism must be unattractive as well."

Furthermore, every feminist knows (and if Anonymous really did have feminist friends they would have told him this) that the beauty myth has been used, historically, against women in general and feminists in particular.  Since women are supposed to be desirable according to patriarchal logic, then they only possess worth if they fit a specific standard of beauty.  Furthermore, women are supposed to WANT to be beautiful and desired by men: so feminists only exist, this logic claims, because they're just women who can't fulfill their natural function - namely become male property.

In my personal experience I have never met a Mens Rights Activist who is attractive, either.  Does that mean that all Mens Rights Activists are ugly?  More importantly: does that mean I dismiss their arguments on the basis of how they look?  No I deal with the arguments - arguments that Anonymous, I reemphasize, does not make very well.

Finally, Anonymous's last deleted comment (so far) complained that I had no right to refer to him as "privileged" because, little did I know, he is "half-black" and "gay." Let's leave aside, for the moment, that we only have Anonymous's word on this matter.  Fair enough: I assumed certain things about his social position that did not apply to his circumstances.  And yet there is a reason I assumed certain things about his position: he was speaking with a privileged discourse.  Someone can be a racialized person, for example, and still actively support white supremacy: oppression is structural, not the product of individualized psychology, and every great theorization of oppression has begun with this insight.  The majority of people demonstrating for the Tea Party, for example, are not economically privileged - and yet they are speaking with the discourse of oppression and demonstrating actively for the maintenance of their oppression.

I do not know why these rightwing folks want to comment on my site.  They're not going to change my mind and I'm not going to convince them to rationally understand society and history.  There is a reason that Fanon once claimed that a perfectly reasonable argument never convinced the oppressor of anything.

There is also a reason I have a comments policy: something that troll-provocateurs, apparently, do not understand.