When Being a Male Feminist Means Insulting the Right Women, aka the Smooth Kobra story
Two days ago, Emily Robinson put together a painstaking collage of Smooth Kobra’s most bigoted tweets.
Clinton supporters have been trying to deploy feminist and anti-racist verbiage to shut down the many feminist and anti-racist critiques of their candidate for months, but Smooth’s “brocialism” essay, and his dismissal of women who criticized it, was a particularly sloppy, disgusting layer of icing on the cake.
It was clear that Clinton supporters’ invocation of anti-racism and feminism was less-than-sincere even before now, but something about Smooth made it harder to keep giving them all the benefit of the doubt.
Clinton’s most prominent online supporters generally treat Twitter as if it’s the world, so when they dismissed Wendell Pierce’s real-life violence as less important than online harassment, it made sense, in an insular way. So, when these people embraced someone with a history of being misogynist online — presumably just because he hated Bernie Sanders alongside the “ugly chicks,” and “faggots” he also hated — it felt like a glitch in their matrix.
The Case of the Kobra is a memorable moment in Clinton’s problematic supporters’ crusade against less-conservative democrats. But when this campaign is over, Kobra, as an individual will likely be forgotten. Clinton will be president, and the most she’ll ever know of Smooth is when she sees Neera Tanden retweeting him and says, “You’re on Twitter again, Neera? Get back to work.”
But I hope that Smooth Kobra is remembered, because he’s a symptom of some bigger problems in today’s gender politics. Sexist men like him are embraced and encouraged by many self-described feminists when they demonstrate superficial support for women, while many actual feminists are dismissed.
The thing about being a genuine male feminist is, it mostly consists of being a good person. But in a patriarchal and hypercompetitive society, being a good person is actually not easy.
When you’ve been taught that women, as Saul Bellow famously said, are “the rails on which men run,” it takes a concerted effort to unlearn that. It takes patience to teach yourself that women are also “trains,” and you need to get your own damn rails. If you generally think of yourself as nice, good, and liberal dude, it’s stressful to discover the erroneous, gendered beliefs you’ve held about the women in your life.
I can attest that, if you’re a man who’s becoming aware of their own sexism, but feels overwhelmed by the work of becoming a better, less-narcissistic person, Clintonian Liberal Feminism is a godsend. It tells you that it’s OK to dismiss women, as long as you ask a woman which other women she dismisses.
For contrast purposes, let’s look at leftist feminists. If you ask a leftist feminist what she thinks of Hillary Clinton, you’ll get a variety of answers. Some will say they flat-out see nothing good in her. Some will support her, with reservations. Some will support her in one context but not another. If you read Maureen Tkacik’s essay in the anthology “False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton,” you’ll understand what it’s like to feel an emotional bond with Clinton as a woman but be repulsed by her policies. You won’t get a consensus that’s as satisfying as the consensus you get from Clinton’s more-conservative supporters or her more-conservative haters.
On top of that, you’ll walk away with the impression that leftist feminists don’t need or want you to perform symbolic acts of male feminism — evaluating the feelings of male allies is a low priority for leftist feminists.
But if you ask a Clintonian liberal feminist, you’ll get a different set of answers. Yes, they need you as an ally and supporting Clinton is the feminist thing to do. Support Clinton and you’re a good ally to women. Done. All of those women who don’t support her are just doing it because of internalized sexism. “Some of the women who support Sanders, I suppose, might be nice people,” they’ll say.
I lived this way for a long time, reading columnists like Marcotte, Valenti & Filipovic. I mostly learned which women were OK for Good Men to dismiss and which women’s opinions I should repeat. I’d share those articles & get positive comments. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s challenging to be that type of Male Feminist. You don’t have to examine your own beliefs about gender and you get to dismiss the opinion of any woman who disagrees with you.
And Smooth Kobra is a glaring symptom of that. If you hate the people that certain feminists have told you to hate — ie Bernie Sanders and his supporters — you can be as sexist as you want. They’ll hand out feminist approval & “progressive” credibility as a reward for your loyalty.
After his history was made so public, Smooth Kobra may no longer get retweeted by the Neera Tandens of the world. But more will take his place — perhaps a Slick Anaconda or a Soft Rattlesnake will come along and say things that make the average woman’s skin crawl. And journalists and political operatives will egg him on— as long as he says the right bad things about the right women.
