If Progressive Women Won’t Date Me, I’ll Become A Misogynistic Trump Voter

I feel obligated, once again, as a straight white man to set my fellow straight white men…well…straight. Here we go again, the argument continues that it’s women’s fault that Trump is in office, because, now get this, they refuse to date conservatives. No, I’m not hyperbolizing, that is literally the title of a recent piece published by The Federalist: “Your Refusal To Date Conservatives Is One Reason We Have Donald Trump”. All of these articles might as well just be called “Women Find Me Undateable, So I Guess I’m Just A Nazi Now”.

The most recent take highlights OkCupid’s new feature, a Planned Parenthood badge that male or female users can add to their profile. The author, Jerrod Laber, argues that using politics as a qualifier amounts to “…progressives who can’t risk interacting with someone with whom they disagree…”. Setting aside the flip side of this argument — that conservatives would also use the PP badge as a disqualifier for potential dates — it’s just a ridiculous, argument, not to mention a manipulative, abusive, and threatening one.

And it’s not an outlier; this rationale is part of a general theme from conservative male writers. Conservative online content is full of men who rationalize their hatred of women and their opposition to women’s rights with some sob story about how women won’t give them the time of day. They can’t get a date, despite being “the nicest guys”, so it must be those frigid women’s fault. (Oh by the way, the latest Twitter insult from the angry bros on the left and the right is this oxymoron: “frigid whores”. It’s fun how undateable men from across the political spectrum can come together and use the same stupid term to degrade women. There’s hope for bipartisanship yet!) The theme of lonely men finding solace in conservative political ideology is so common they even have a name for themselves: incels.

“Incel” is a term coined on alt-right and men’s rights circles. It’s a self-identifying label that is an abbreviation for “involuntarily celibate”. Basically an incel is a man who would like to have a sexual life, but nobody wants him. They call women “femoids” because women are just cold, unfeeling robots. Why else wouldn’t these entitled men get a little attention? And rather than cast his criticisms inward to discover what makes him so off-putting, this kind of untouchable dude projects his problems and his feelings on everyone else. Most of these bros put on a show of not understanding why women find them so repulsive. There are whole forums where men rant and whine about how women won’t date them so they’re going to just be mean to them.

Some of the stories they swap are as simple as men declaring that they refuse to hold a door open for any woman. (That’ll show them.) They also seem to be upset if a woman is to hold open a door for them, it’s very emasculating.

Darker though, at their worst, online incel forums encourage, excuse, and fantasize about rape and other violence. Publicly, you get a rare figure like Roosh Valizadeh who openly advocate for legalizing rape. Valizadeh follows that trend of popularizing his violent anti-woman views with right wing political branding. It’s no coincidence that people like Valizadeh or Mike Cernovich, who considers rape “liberal fiction”, celebrate Trump’s election as a win for predatory men.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the angry men on the left who have also peddled in misogynist, and violent ideologies. By now, we’ve all read about Bernie Sanders’ 1972 “rape essay”. This is not to say that Sanders currently promotes the same ideology as the alt-right online warriors, but he did write that essay, and for personal profit. His spokesman casts it off as a “dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication”. Okay, maybe we can write it off as something he said a few decades ago that he regrets, we can all relate to that. But it does shine a little light on some of the rhetoric allowed to fester among Sander’s supporters: “Bern The Witch”, “Democratic Whore”, and other clearly misogynist tones. Most of those, the candidate himself or at least the campaign later disavowed. Sometimes it was a little too late though. The day after a Sanders surrogate called Hillary Clinton a whore at a huge rally, then immediately welcomed candidate Bernie Sanders onto the stage, other Sanders supporters capitalized on the moment and threw dollar bills at Hillary Clinton’s motorcade. Protesters said that demonstration was about campaign finance laws and foreign policy stances. I don’t know, something about a man calling a woman a whore on stage, and then people throwing money at her the next day, all before Bernie was finally forced to condemn the statement seems like the motivation was not entirely policy driven.

And of the ride-or-die, Bernie-or-bust crowd of what can legitimately be considered the alt-left, there is a faction who argue lefties should work with people like Cernovich. Not to get sidetracked here, the issue really is the threatening posturing of typically right wing identified men, but I do have to acknowledge that some of these ugly and violent sentiments come from the left, and sometimes they come from women. The left is not immune from the isms of the world. And internalized misogyny is a real thing; sometimes women can be their own worst enemies. But as a man, I can really only speak to the violent attitudes and behaviors of men. And right now that male entitlement and aggression is channeled most often, though not exclusively, through right wing politics.

Most of the examples are not major, public spectacles. More often, the arguments fester anonymously online. When these men’s rights talking points come out into the light, they’ve been softened a bit and come off as sort of subtle threats, rather than direct violent fantasies. Take the Federalist piece or others like it, claiming that if only women would pitty date these men, the men wouldn’t feel so isolated and have such bad bad very bad feelings and wouldn’t adopt alt-right ideologies. But they still lead to very public and open displays. Look at the fragile, angry, lonely white dudes who showed up at the Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Nearly every one of them has some story about feeling rejected and latching onto a hate group, their shared community for damaged souls. Seriously, their argument is: women find me objectionable so I might as well just join the Klan or become a neo-Nazi, get myself a Richard Spencer haircut and reject all of them. Their whole public tantrum amounts to “You can’t reject me, because I reject you. And it’s not my fault my life sucks. Women are to blame for my misfortune, and black people, and Jews, and foreigners, and basically anyone I can cast the blame onto. I’m awesome. I’m a ‘nice guy’.”

When it comes to actually publishing in some place like the Federalist or New York Times, the argument has a little less fire, but the threat is still there, if only slightly veiled. The threat is: if you don’t date me, I’m going to make your life miserable, even if indirectly through electoral politics. It’s just as manipulative and abusive. These articles put the burden onto women to “do the right thing”, to offer up their bodies to conservative men or else. In the case of Laber’s complaint about OkCupid, it’s not even enough that a woman shouldn’t have bodily autonomy and shouldn’t support organizations that offer a range of reproductive care including abortions should she need one. He takes it a step further, she shouldn’t even consider whether a potential partner values her autonomy. In his view, she should have so little autonomy or self-respect that she be willing to date any man, even a man who believes she isn’t a fully functioning adult. She practically has an obligation to date conservative men, to give them a chance, to hear them out, to nurture them, to pitty them, and -ulitmately — to have sex with them. And if she’s not willing to subject herself to sleeping with conservative creeps, well then they’re going to have to vote for Trump, who publicly boasts about his long history of predatory sexual assaults. That’s what you get, women. That’s what these men feel you deserve.

But didn’t women vote for Trump? Of course some women did. About 53% of white women voted for Trump, voting along party lines in pretty much the same percentage as they usually do. Key things to remember: internalized misogyny, racial privilege, and abusive rhetoric aimed at women. So some white women did vote for Trump and that segment who did so can own their share of the blame. But women of color voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, which means women on the whole voted for Clinton, about 54%. So stop blaming all women for Trump. Blame white people on the whole if you want. Blame men on the whole maybe, but then again, men of color voted Clinton right alongside women of color. Blame white men; you’d be more correct. Especially blame old, white men. That was Trump’s most solid block of voters, white men 55 years and older. Old white men turn out in a general, and don’t think they wouldn’t support their own this time.

I’m not even factoring in voter disenfranchisement - minorities who tried to vote but were prevented. Just looking at the people who actually did vote, women and people of color did their part to oppose Trump. White guys, Trump is on us. Trump was able to activate white male voters who don’t usually even participate, a segment nobody thought could be expanded beyond previous years’ results. He capitalized on a white male anxiety. All those folks who couldn’t stand a black president. All those men who couldn’t get a date and saw Hillary’s face and projected their years of bitterness on it, and called her a bitch and a whore. A woman on the ticket lit a fire under their butts and got them to the polling booth. A predatory old white man, that just sealed the deal. They knew who spoke for them.

And part of the reason white women may have voted for Trump is the very messaging we’re talking about here: the implied “or else” in the veiled threats of these articles, the accusations of “voting with your vaginas”, the decades long sexist smears against Hillary Clinton, the overt and covert misogyny from the right and the left during the primary and general election cycle, online and real life threats made against women who voiced their support for Hillary Clinton. There was a very real risk for women who put themselves out there as Clinton supporters, and a history of manipulative and abusive language used to control women’s actions.

It is a clear continuation of rape culture. You don’t want to sleep with conservatives? Fine, they’ll elect a sexual predator who, like them, doesn’t care what you want. They’ll get Betsy DeVos to protect the rapists. They’ll actively work to take away your rights like equal pay, to punishing women for exercising their reproductive choice, to blocking the reporting and enforcing existing laws for sexual assault. They will make your life harder in any way they can because that’s what they think you deserve for rejecting their advances.

So men, we need to talk. Bro to bro. Dude to dude. None of this is okay. Notably, the very programs that Trump and DeVos are trying to dismantle and defund fall under Joe Biden’s banner of “It’s On Us.” Whoever you put in office, it’s still on us. It is on us to be better men. It is not women’s fault you’re such a creep. And you don’t get to punish them directly through violence, or indirectly through your votes, because they won’t date you. If women are repulsed by you, maybe you need to do some introspection before you have your little testosterone tantrum. Maybe you’re not the “nice guy” you like to think of yourself as.

You can be a nice guy. Just stop saying you’re a nice guy and actually behave like one. Talk like one. Listen like one. Value women as your equals, and you might start seeming a little more attractive to them. Stop lashing out when you don’t get what you want. I’m telling you, it is not an attractive trait. Women are not into that. Women don’t owe you their bodies, they don’t owe you their attention, they don’t owe you their vote. Society has taught you, as a man, to feel a sense of entitlement. It is not real. You are not entitled to anything. Specifically, you are not entitled to sex. This is just me, giving you a little advice, man to man. It’s on us. It’s up to us men. This is a distinctly male problem that we, as men, need to talk about to solve. So, my bro tip: stop being an asshole. Besides, it’s kind of an empty threat isn’t it? If your ultimatum is for women to date you otherwise you’ll hate them and objectify them, you’ve already shown yourself as someone who hates and objectifies women. Don’t be that guy. Do better please.