Biological weasels are cute and blameless ~ unlike metaphorical ones |
Like all conservatives, Brooks blames victims if they point out that they are victims. The basis of the conservative mindset is that people who are victims only have themselves to blame. That way the people who are actually responsible for the victims' misfortune are let off the hook. People like the Koch brothers, who I predict will go down in history as the foremost contributors to the global warming crisis. The Koch brothers and their lap dogs like Brooks have a deep self-interest in promoting the philosophy of the blamelessness of the powerful.
Another belief of right-wingers is that we now live in a time when men and women are completely equal and the term "patriarchy" is just some crazy bra-burner mythology. This is a subset of the blame the victim tactic - how can women complain about the way things are when men have it just as bad?
This leads to the usual false equivalency as Katz demonstrates in his latest blog post.
They are the men who complain that the world is rigged to favor women and spend all their time railing against injustice (“I had to pay for dates! She didn’t even call me back! American women are emasculating hags with no sexual market value over the age of 30!). They are the women who complain that everything is part of a greater patriarchy designed to oppress women. If you question it, you’re a part of it.
As always, Katz employs the straw feminist: "They are the women who complain that everything is part of a greater patriarchy designed to oppress women" Naturally he doesn't name names because there are literally no woman anywhere complaining that everything is blah blah blah. Now there are organized Men's Rights Activists who are that extreme, but since Katz can't find any feminists who are as extreme as MRAs are, he must invent them in order to maintain his fantasy "both sides are just as bad" position.
He also uses this post as another opportunity to lie about his past advice:
So although 50% of my advice is to tell women to stop putting up with bullshit from men, the other 50% is to tell women how to act more effectively with men. It often means being nicer, more patient, more accepting, more understanding, more easygoing – putting yourself in his shoes the way you’d like him to put himself in your shoes. Basically, it’s good people advice that somehow gets twisted into a patriarchal attack on women, because evidently men aren’t entitled to expect better treatment from women as long as other men still treat women poorly.He doesn't merely tell women to be nicer, more patient, etc. He tells women to be passive.
The sweet irony here is how Katz is claiming to be the victim - his advice "somehow gets twisted into a patriarchal attack on women."
Evan Marc Katz needs to own the fact that he is a conservative - but he won't because he'll lose some of his poor gullible marks that way and because he's a weasel. And I apologize to biological weasels who are much less harmful to human social progress than Evan Marc Katz.