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.
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