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My latest post from Newsreal:
Quick, name the one thing sure to fill a liberal feminist with rage! (OK, well, besides the idea of women choosing to keep their babies.) If you guessed catcalls, then you’re right.
Today’s extremist feminists absolutely seethe with anger if a man whistles at them, if he catcalls, or even says something nice to them. And God forbid you ask a woman to smile! It will bring on long-winded rants about misogyny and the patriarchy and harassment and how all men do this to keep women down. Jessica Valenti-style feminists only have room for one kind of man, and those are the ultra-feminized, ultra-“progressive,” girly doormat kind of men. Alpha males who ooze masculinity are bad, bad, bad.
I suppose it was only a matter of time, then, before a video game exacting murderous revenge upon the evil misogynist men who dare to whistle at women was created.
Meet “Hey Baby”, the video game for disgruntled, angry women everywhere.
Ever had one of those seemingly endless days?
All you want to do is to get home… You’re the last one out of the office. Its getting dark outside…
You walk down the streets and realize the streetlights are burnt out. There’s no one around. You hear a footstep behind you. The light flickers.
You turn and he says, “I wanna lick you all over…..”
And then you remember, you’re packing a 3′ long .80 caliber machine gun that’s locked and loaded.
Ladies, are you sick and tired of catcalling, hollering, obnoxious one-liners and creepy street encounters? Tired of changing your route home to avoid uncomfortable situations?
IT’S PAYBACK TIME, BOYS…..
But it’s OK. This is allowable because it’s therapeutic.
The rage behind the game might be a little too real for some tastes, but there’s no question many women will find it thrilling, maybe even therapeutic. Personally, I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the “all men as potential attackers” mentality that the game engenders, even if it does make for interesting commentary about the ways street harassment warps women’s views of men. Ultimately, though, considering the existence of first-person sexual assault games like “RapeLay,” it’s about damn time someone introduced a street harasser shoot’em-up game.
Because there are some games that perpetuate violence against women, its OK to perpetuate violence against men? The phrase “two wrongs don’t make a right” comes to mind. The rape game mentioned above indeed is despicable. It was denounced by Salon, Feministing, and Shakesville. The violence against women is disgusting and despicable to them and to all decent human beings. But somehow, all Salon can muster up when the violence is against men is that they don’t like it much, but it sure makes for interesting conversation!
I wonder what the reaction of the radical feminist Left would be if someone said that “RapeLay” was wrong, but makes for interesting conversation.
What we’re basically seeing is that, to these extremist feminists, violence in video games is A-OK as long as it’s violence against men. Samhita at Feministing, for example, had a big problem with Grand Theft Auto. Killing pimps and drug dealers? No big deal. Killing prostitutes? Absolutely misogynistic and offensive! Violence in video games cannot be accepted … unless you’re murdering men who whistle at you, and then it’s empowering and therapeutic.
And of course, the greater message of this game is that men who give a harmless catcall deserve to be murdered. It says a lot about the mentality of the women who have hijacked the feminist movement. If a man says something to a woman she doesn’t like, he needs to be taken out, apparently. It’s not entirely surprising, considering the latent hatred and anger towards men in the leftist feminist movement.
How is this empowering?
First of all, strong women do not hide from their feminine nature. It does not make you a weak victim if you’re attractive, or if—gasp!—men notice that you are attractive.
Which leads me to my next point. Why is it that supposedly strong, empowered women are reduced to sniveling children just because some guy said something to them that they didn’t like? There’s no strength or confidence in that. It certainly doesn’t help women to tell them that they need be offended at every little perceived insult they come across. Strong women—strong people—are confident enough to not let rude comments bother them. When you’re reduced to a seething ball of rage by one comment, then I think the problem is not the rude man calling out to you while you walk down the street.
Case in point: a self-described feminist gamer/blogger who just loves the idea of this game. She apparently gets catcalled all the time, and it fills her with outrage.
Plenty of people do do it “the nice way” — they patiently and politely insist on just talking to me for a minute, or they just want to step into my path to tell me my eyes are nice. And can’t I take a compliment?
To that, I say, why don’t I have the right to go to my corner store and home again without feeling obligated to be friendly to strangers on the sidewalk just because the strangers are physically attracted to me? Do I owe them something? Yes, it’s rather nice that the workers in my bodega all want to shake my hand and ask me all about how I’m doing and what I’m up to every time I go in in the morning, it’s so good that they’re friendly, but maybe I just want to buy a damn pack of cigarettes without having to explain what I’m all dressed up for.
You can’t even be friendly to her without getting her angry.
It’s latent misogyny that happens in big cities; it takes my power away. It makes me an object in front of people I don’t even know, and that’s not okay whether they’re nice about it or not. It is nothing less than a slow-burning chronic trauma.
My favorite catcall in the ‘Hey Baby Game’? “Smile for me, baby.” It fills me with rage that a stranger on the street feels at liberty to demand that I smile. I smile when I feel like it, and I sure as shit don’t want to do it for you, buddy.
So someone’s made a game that’s an outlet for that rage, that wants us to discuss that rage.
Takes her power away? Please. I would think that anyone with an iota of real strength and confidence and power would not be reduced to a whiny powerless child simply by a few rude comments.
And yes, I understand and agree that women should be able to walk down the street without getting hit on constantly. I also think that men should be able to speak to women without being accused of misogyny. I think that men should be able to get married without worrying that their wives will take them to the cleaners after a divorce. But guess what? Life’s not fair. How you handle that reality says much more about you than it does about the world at large.
It’s a perfect example of how modern extremist feminism does not, in fact, empower women. It encourages women to be forever offended and to always think of themselves as victims. And of course, this game is just one more example of the hypocrisy of the feminist Left. A game that makes women the targets of violence is bad, but a game that makes men the targets of violence is fine. It’s just a conversation-starter.
What comes to my mind is just how many women there are out there that would love to hear any compliment from anybody, and just to be acknowledged that they exist as a person in this world. Too many women are told from day one that they are worthless, ugly, fat, or stupid. They live tragic lives full of lonelyness and often end up a victim in some form or fashion.
I realise I’m a man and can never understand, but there are so many worst things it would seem to me than concern over being found attractive. I get the feeling that there must be a deeper unhappiness in the lives of people that react negitively to compliments. Certainly men can carry it too far, but I’ve seem many a strong woman easily handle those situations.
I wonder, too, how many “Mr. Right’s” have been shot down, turned away, and not given a chance by a woman unwilling to accept that a man found her attractive?
Confession: it drives me absolutely crazy when someone (and it’s usually a man) tells me to “smile”. That’s because I’m usually fairly smiley, and, if I’m not, it’s because something really horrible has happened in my life (or, sometimes, because I have literally slept about four hours in the past two days).
Nevertheless, I don’t think that telling a stranger to “Smile!” is sexist so much as idiotic and tacky. I mean, I don’t walk up to random strangers and comment on their wrinkled clothes, messy hair, or smudged make-up, especially if they look pissed-off, because they are, um, pissed-off strangers.
Sadly, these “feminists” are so filled with anger that they have to take their cues from the worst of juvenile male behaviour, rather from Miss Manners. They do this with sex and romance, so I’m not surprised that they extended it to other interactions with humans.
Big Al: It’s about what is said and how it is said. I remember when a total stranger complimented me on my legs, which normally would be rather offensive. This gentleman, however, came up to me quietly, said he hoped I wouldn’t mind him saying so, but that I had lovely legs. I felt like a human being with nice legs, not a piece of meat.
Many a man has said that he feels like he’s treated like a wallet or an ATM, not a human who wants love and affection. I’ve never been treated that way, let alone treated that way with the majority of people I’ve met and dated, so I haven’t walked in those shoes, but I do acknowledge that men feel this way and try to do my best to be (rightly) impressed with their accomplishments and ambition without treating them like a meal ticket.
Same thing goes for acknowledging that a woman is attractive: piece of meat = bad, woman of dignity who happens to be beautiful = good.
Smithwick says: I wonder how they’d respond to a game with the theme of a man getting revenge on cheating ex-girlfriends, or on an ex-wife who took him for every penny.
Somehow I think empowering or insightful would not be used to describe it.
mj says: A female skating instructor once told me I had nice legs, a weirdly unusual, but mostly appreciated compliment for a guy. I can also think of three fundamentally icky situations of being hit on by women (including one which led to a complaint at work). Certainly people who do not respect appropriate boundaries can evoke unpleasant feelings.
I wonder, however, whether part of the appeal of the game might not be found in the fact that the player enjoys its being so exaggeratedly over the top.
Stephen J. says: I’m more inclined to think of it as a catharsis of fear, not so much rage (although as Yoda noted, the two are inextricably linked). At the bottom of all the anger and all the resentment, for a lot of women, is a genuine terror: the fear that the catcalls or the lewd comments or leers are not just froth from harmless idiots, but the first warning signal of an incoming rape attempt.
It is certainly an irrational and overblown fear, based purely on the statistics, but so is fear of flying, and that isn’t going away anytime soon. So, for that matter, is most fear, which is its entire point as a protective reflex: to err on the side of paranoia rather than risk your safety. And even the possibility of rape is certainly something worth being scared of.
Spend long enough being scared, however, and eventually it turns into rage out of sheer frustration and weariness; it also depends very much on how you are encouraged to deal with that fear and anger by your peers. Have it constantly reinforced and reinvigorated by surrounding yourself in a vitriolic echo chamber, and no matter how free and safe you actually are you will always perceive yourself to be demeaned and threatened.
There comes a point where fantasy stops being a harmless relief of negative impulses and starts being a dangerous reinforcement for it; but that point is different for every fantasizer, so it may be problematic to make sweeping condemnations just yet.
Kupocygirl says: ok those xtremists are mentally ill or something. If anything they are not different than some men. I dont think all men are crap. Sure there are some men that do stuff that makes it seem that they all the same but they are not; it’s the same thing that some women do.
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