Official FF Generic Catch-All Thrad for Reverse Racism, Misandry, etc.

[BrotherMan]

I guess I'm just a hen-pecked beta "male" because I've only read 5 of those and owned even fewer.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

That list is a testament to something else: to how fragmented reading habits are these days. Since we've more-or-less shed the middle-class assumption that certain books convey class or status, there are no books that go around with a "you MUST read X if you wish to appear cultured" imprimatur, which is why this list has such an antiquated feel to it.

Of course, I have no idea what her real intent was, but my immediate impression was that it was just some sloppy list of things she'd seen on multiple people's shelves. I could probably come up with a similar list, just based on vague recollections.

Infants aged 12-40, for example, would have American Psycho, House of Leaves, Fight Club, maybe The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, some David Foster Wallace, some Jonathan Franzen, and they lur-de-durve Jon Krakauer and Bill Bryson. Maybe Paolo Coehlo. Those aren't all totally up to the minute new or anything, but I'd call those part of the Youthful Offender Canon. Plus the Hairy Porters, too, of course.

Around my age, add Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, On the Road, Naked Lunch, and that one stupid one that bugs me that I apparently have a mental block against. That one. The one I hate. Also, I'm going to say it. Are you ready? Tears and recriminations: Those books about boats that Matlock's username is from. I can't even remember what they are. I think The Master and Margarita is in this age category too.

Old guys add some James Michener and The Godfather and Portnoy's Complaint (I hold the world record of 'youngest person to have read Portnoy's Complaint,' BTW), and for some reason, every old person has a copy of Dana's Two Years Before The Mast, but nobody has ever read it. It is a mystery. For all anyone knows, the pages are completely blank, or it's just a block of balsa wood or something. Nobody knows.

I'm pretty well-read, and even I didn't know some of these names (who the hell is Tucker Max?). It was also news to me that John Lennon had ever done any drawings or that Keith Richards had published an autobiography. I might have guessed it, because everybody who's ever been famous for more than ten minutes has one, but I didn't know. I can only imagine these would be of interest to people old enough to remember The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, whereas I was born in the same year as John Lennon's death. These people are as remote from me as the Doges of Venice and Helen of Troy.

They might just be wedged in really far. I'm sure if you lay down flat on your stomach and get all the way under there, you will find them under your bed.

PS:

Call of the Wild
by Jack London

A man was lost and starving on a remote tundra, his only companion his faithful dog. They ate snow for hydration, but neither had eaten for days when they came upon the rotting corpse of a snow animal, like an elk or a reindeer or whatever.

The man was hesitant, but his dog ran immediately to the corpse and tore greedily at its flesh, eating until he was full. (The dog was a man dog.)

The human man still stood back, watching the dog closely. In short order, the dog began to heave violently and finally regurgitated the rotting meat.

Rushing to the heap of steaming vomit, the man cried, "I knew if I held out, I'd get a hot meal!"

[Nullifidian]

That's pretty much the same for me. The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby were assigned to me in high school, and a couple of the others I read while in high school, but not as assigned works. I read On the Road for a self-selected English class project on the Beat Movement, inspired by the fact that I'd recently picked up The Letters of William S. Burroughs, Vol. 1, 1945-1959 from a bookstore discount pile. I also ended up reading The Subterraneans by Kerouac, Long Live Man by Gregory Corso, Kaddish and Other Poems and Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsburg, A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton (the father of James Lipton, of Inside the Actor's Studio fame), which was the one purely nonfiction account in the bunch.

While in high school, I also read A Clockwork Orange again (I first read it when I was in seventh grade, yet another time I would have horrified any nosy teacher by reading something not "age-appropriate"). That edition, which I found among my grandmother's books, was the American edition that left off the 21st chapter. So when the Norton published the novel with the 21st chapter complete, I had to get it. Back in 1995, this meant calling around to nearly every bookstore in San Diego, and I eventually found it at a nice independent bookstore (now sadly closed) called the Blue Door Bookstore, where I also picked up the Oxford World's Classics edition of Boccaccio's Decameron (tr. Guido Waldman).

The other book here that I read during high school was Atlas Shrugged, because Rand's Anthem and The Fountainhead had been assigned in English class, and I took it into my head that I should give Rand a third chance. Why, I don't know, but now I wouldn't have bothered. So given that I had a three-day school trip for a Model UN Conference on my plate, I thought Atlas Shrugged would be ample distraction. Instead, it drove me to distraction.

Edited to add: Bort and Mr. Pea are sneaky in-between posters, because the above is directed to ImGod. But I forgive Mr. Pea because of his hilarious take on The Call of the Wild.

I will further add that I'm an honorary old fart because I do have Two Years Before the Mast AND I've read it, so I can confirm that there's actually text in there. I'm a sucker for maritime stories, autobiographical, biographical, historical, and fictional. I've also read Joseph Conrad's The Mirror of the Sea (not to mention his novels), the Hornblower novels of C. S. Forester, the Aubrey-Maturin novels of O'Brian, Shackleton's South and Worsley's Endurance, Cook's Voyages, Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, plus some even less familiar primary sources or secondary histories.

[BrotherMan]

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

I read On the Road for a self-selected English class project on the Beat Movement, inspired by the fact that I'd recently picked up The Letters of William S. Burroughs, Vol. 1, 1945-1959 from a bookstore discount pile. I also ended up reading The Subterraneans by Kerouac, Long Live Man by Gregory Corso, Kaddish and Other Poems and Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsburg, A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton (the father of James Lipton, of Inside the Actor's Studio fame), which was the one purely nonfiction account in the bunch.

OK, so just in case I haven't told this enough, I was pretty into the beats for a while, so when I was about 13 or 14 and I discovered that Allen Ginsberg taught poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, I made my parents give me the money to take it. I think I only paid for the one class, but I did end up becoming temporary besties with with Peter Orlovsky, so I was around him and Ginsberg and also their fanbase a fair lot during that time.

The class was pretty much me and a bunch of probably 20-something fanboys (I was young enough at the time that I just thought of them as 'old,' so the age guess is in retrospect). And pretty much to a one, they worshipped Kerouac. At least a couple of them had gone on On the Road style pilgrimages and had memorized long passages from his books, which they would recite at even the slightest provocation. It was super-weird, because Ginsberg was right there, and they were constantly asking him about Kerouac. One guy, for an assignment, wrote this poem about following Kerouac's steps all the way to his grave and then pissing on it. It was p. edgy and symbolic, I tell you what. I mostly remember it because of the extremely awkward silence that followed before Ginsberg said something like, "Okay."

But my point being: There was, at least at the time, a pretty devoted Beat poet fanboi base, particularly around Kerouac. Almost all men, and scarily devoted to the point that even as a young teen girl, prone to a fair amount of fawning, thought it was weird and over the top.

Also, literally all men do that. If you don't think you ever did, you probably just forgot.

[ImGod]

My wife tried to get me to read 50 Shades of Grey when her book club read it to discuss. But I told her I'd seen the movie like 10 years ago.

It took her a minute.

Reading is sort of optional and they don't really discuss, they mainly drink.

[Janet]

I think that list is complete bullshit. As a librarian, I am fairly certain that the vast majority of White men don't own 79 books, period. Maybe men of a certain class or a certain age, but unless they are genre addicts, that just isn't the reality in the men I see around here. I don't know why, but the classism inherent in that list annoys me.

Also, Firefox doesn't think classism is a word. Fuck you, Firefox! You're part of the problem!

[lisarea]

Oh, of course it's bullshit. The funny part is that white guys are pretty much the only people who aren't used to seeing bullshit that's about them.

And holy shit, this may not exactly form the most articulate and cohesive narrative, but danged if the random smileys don't create a poetic mise en scene on the aggrieved white man theme.

[Clutch Munny]

Most of my own books fall under Why Philosophy Is Stupid And Boring. My other reading (which is most of it) is from the library, of which we are almost daily users. So not only do I own pretty much none of those books, I can't even remember what books I've read because I don't see the spines reminding me. For all I know I've read Portnoy's Complaint 30 times, though I doubt it, because that shit sounds stupid and boring.

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by lisarea

You got twice?

[lisarea]

Well, plop.

I probably just clicked that one twice, missing another one.

[Dingfod]

Right now, as of this moment in time, I probably have twice that many books. But that doesn't represent even a fraction of the books I've owned in my life, and but a tiny fraction of the number of books I've read in my life, thanks to school and public libraries. Am I the average white male? Even though I think I am, I'm probably not. I'm probably not as well-read as the average er, but among my peers at work, I am a virtual bookworm. And I've only read a few of the books on that list, and own even fewer.

[Janet]

This morning I was listening to the classic rock station on the drive in, because Flint radio is crap and I'm not going to make an effort to put on something of my own for a less than ten minute commute. They played The Doors' People Are Strange which I was only half listening to, but this time one line jumped out at me.

Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted

If you asked me to sum up MRAs, Gamergaters and other assorted misogynists in a sentence I couldn't possibly improve on that.

[chunksmediocrites]

Mad Max: Fury Road enrages Men's Rights Activists who claim they are being duped by action sequences into watching 'feminist propaganda'

...Clarey (who hasn't actually seen the film yet) describes being mortified when discovering from critics, who hailed Theron’s performance and the well-rounded nature of her role in the film, that Fury Road was not your average action movie.

“Charlize Theron kept showing up a lot in the trailers, while Tom Hardy (Mad Max) seemed to have cameo appearances. Theron sure talked a lot during the trailers while I don’t think I’ve heard one line from Hardy. And finally, Theron’s character barked orders to Mad Max. Nobody barks orders to Mad Max,” an obviously distressed Clarey wrote.

He claims that he and other men are being “duped by explosions, fire tornadoes and desert raiders into seeing what is guaranteed to be nothing more than feminist propaganda, while at the same time being insulted and tricked into viewing a piece of American culture ruined and rewritten right in front of their very eyes.”

[Nullifidian]

Janet beat you to it, chunks. It's not the same article, but the Indepedent cites the same people and quotes.

[livius drusus]

Beaten by a girl in the misandry thread. randos all

[lisarea]

As much as it pains me to come to the defense of a man, I kind of think this needs to come up in every thrad, because I want to make sure nobody missed the story.

Now somebody go tell Bob.

[mickthinks]

You'd be making a good point there, lisarea, if chunks had linked to the same story as Janet but in another thread. As things stand, it has still come up only in this one.

totally random

[lisarea]

Oh, uhhh, yeah. I meant every, um, either page or post.

Yes. That is what I meant!

[Ari]

[lisarea]

Men Who Rock II - Features - The Stranger

and the first one: Men Who Rock

[erimir]

My Title IX Inquisition - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Can a female professor be a target of misandry? I suppose she was defending a male colleague, so there you go.

All in all, seems like a pretty ridiculous process.

I hope these people aren't creating the conditions for an anti-feminist backlash which any traumas suffered by reading an opposing viewpoint will pale in comparison to.

[lisarea]

I can't see the article. It told me the website is for nerds only or something.

(Though, as much as I hate to feed into the myth, I have seen people get pretty over the top and kneejerky about accusing people of sexism for really convoluted reasons. It doesn't seem really common or anything, but I'm pretty sure it happens. That doesn't excuse any backlash, though. Everything's got its crackpots.)

[erimir]

I'm not sure why the link works or doesn't. It's some weird paywall thing. You might have to follow a link from the original tweet I got it from? It worked for me when I looked at it last night, but now I can't read it again.

My Title IX Inquisition - The Chronicle of Higher Education

But to summarize, it has to do with Title IX complaints and protests over this article: Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe (this one doesn't seem to be paywalled). She wrote the article, a hundred students protested her carrying mattresses and asking for the university to punish her in some way. Two students filed Title IX complaints (coincidentally, one of them was barely mentioned in the story, the other was doing it on "behalf of the community") alleging retaliation for talking about another student's lawsuit and for having a "chilling" effect on students to make complaints.

She wasn't allowed to talk about the Title IX complaints against her publicly or have a lawyer present during their interrogation. But she was able to talk about the complaints after a student revealed them on Huffington Post in a hyperbolic piece that is both in violation of the very process she's claiming to protect and demonstrates exactly Kipnis's point - this student has faced no consequences for accusing the president of the university of an "absolute betrayal" of his students, but she's portraying him as basically the dictator of the university.

Yada yada.

I find it worrisome that there is such a large group of students apparently willing to join in this effort. Of course this doesn't discredit feminism and it's "weak-manning" (straw man except you find an idiotic argument somewhere on the internet instead of making it up yourself). But this kind of behavior seems to be getting more common and more consequential so I don't think it's wrong to call it out.

[erimir]

Non-paywall link!

http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/up...le-Review-.pdf