January 20, 2020

"There are no 'male feminist' gay guys," Joe Rogan asserts — to make the point that the "male feminist" is always faking it, faking it to get women.

"It's such a weird, sneaky thing... It's greasy!... Whenever I read 'male feminist' posts... I know what you're doing: You're a greasy man!"



Joe is speaking in the extreme, stating absolutes, and that works as comic expression, whether or not the absolute version of the statement is precisely true. Of course, if you had to defend it as precisely true, you could easily win by using a "no true Scotsman" approach to what "male feminist" means.

Also, "greasy man" is an excellent insult. It's old too. I looked it up in the OED. It's "a contemptuous or abusive epithet" that's been around since the 1500s.
a1529 J. Skelton Poems against Garnesche in Poet Wks. (1843) I. 121 Wherto xulde I wryght Of soche a gresy knyght?
a1616 W. Shakespeare As you like It (1623) ii. i. 55 I quoth Iaques, Sweepe on you fat and greazie Citizens.
1641 J. Milton Reason Church-govt. Concl. 62 Not Epicurus, nor Aristippus..but would shut his school dores against such greasy sophisters....
1856 W. Goodell Kansas Struggle (1857) 8 Free society! we sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of Greasy Mechanics, Filthy Operatives, Small-Fisted Farmers, and moonstruck Theorists?...
1974 D. Smith Fisherman's Whore 61 I watch him let the robe clot at your feet as his greasy mechanic's hands slide under breasts only he and I have ever seen naked and lived.
The OED has a specific note on the phrase "greasy mechanic": "used of Northerners by Southerners preceding and during the American Civil War." I looked up "greasy mechanic" in the NYT archive and found "The Greasy Mechanic in a New Light" from September 30, 1861:
There's also greaser culture — the grease of "Grease." Wikipedia ties this term to the old insult:
The word "greaser" originated in the 19th century in the United States as a derogatory label for poor laborers, specifically those of Mexican, Italian descent. The term was later used to refer to mechanics. It was not used in writing to refer to the American subculture of the mid-20th century until the mid-1960s, though in this sense it still evoked a pejorative connotation and a relation to machine work. The name was applied to members of the subculture because of their characteristic greased-back hair.
I went to high school in the 60s, and there were lots of teenagers of Italian ancestry who styled themselves in a way that is called "greaser," but that wasn't the word were I lived (in Wayne, New Jersey). We called them "hoods" or "hood-y kids."

Anyway. Let me gather all the points I want to make into a list so you don't think I just took an off ramp, lost my way, and left you stranded in some backwater of English usage and my long-lost youth:

1. "Greasy" is an excellent insult with a long tradition.

2. The "male feminist" is indeed suspect.

3. Comedians have the license to state things in the absolute that are not actually absolute.

4. Never forget the "no true Scotsman" argument (which is a fallacy, but that doesn't mean you can't use it).

5. I think some gay guys really do believe in feminism (and don't mind saying so).

6. There's an important difference between believing in feminism and calling yourself a "male feminist."

7. I think "male feminist" should only be used as an insult. If you're feminist and male, just call yourself a "feminist." It's like "male nurse." Who says that and why? If you're male and a nurse, you call yourself a "nurse," don't you? It's those other people, who sound rather dumb, who keep saying "male nurse."

75 comments:

rhhardin said...

NOW meetings were for picking up babes, in the 70s.

Feminism is nagging. If you're a guy, putting up with nagging is part of the deal.

Jeff Brokaw said...

Any woman you can get with the male feminist pose is not worth getting.

Don’t most millennial women kinda hate that and prefer, you know, a real man?

How the hell did we get here?!

J. Farmer said...

Same is true of the New Age movement. A straight man involved in New Age stuff is almost always a creep trying to get in somebody's pants.

Fernandinande said...

"Greasy man" is an unfair insult to greasers.

Fernandinande said...

P.J. O'Rourke reverse-echoed Rogan's statement.

dgstock said...

Male feminists mimic certain mating behaviors seen in nondominant males of other species, perfectly described as sneaky fuckers.

pious agnostic said...

I think the earliest connotations of (figurative) greasiness is the wrestler who covers himself in grease so that his opponent cannot get a grip. A "greasy sophist", then, would be someone who doesn't debate in earnest, but who slips away from any point.

Sounds like a lot of people.

Gahrie said...

Are male feminists a problem?

I'd be more concerned with the fact that apparently men make better women than women do.

chickelit said...

"It's such a weird, sneaky thing... It's greasy!... Whenever I read 'male feminist' posts... I know what you're doing: You're a greasy man!"

Shouting Thomas called them "sneaky fuckers."

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Who is slimier than that snide, smirking, greasy Maher? Maybe Michael Moore, physically, but only because he can't wipe himself.

Michael said...

There is a big difference between acting in good will and good faith toward all persons, and allowing Progressive activists to lead you around by a ring in your nose.

Shouting Thomas said...

I don't accept any of the premises of feminism. Women in the West were never second class citizens or oppressed.

I'm anti-feminist. In every way.

Two pertinent documentaries that I'd love to read the prof's comments on:

1. Aaron Hernandez biopic on Netflix. Dings all the prof's buttons. Gaydom. Bisexuality. Football.

2. Gloriavale documentary on Amazon. Great, compassionate portrayal of a fundamentalist Christian commune in New Zealand founded in 1969. Still thriving. Unlike just about all other documentaries on this subject, it's told from the perspective of the commune, not from the perspective of the few dissidents who left.

I was particularly impressed with the Gloriavale documentary because I lived in Woodstock, home of the hippie communes, for decades. The hippie commues collapsed quickly because free sex and wife swapping, although great fun, don't create stable communities.

TML said...

Ann, I'm VERY curious about the reason why you enjoy (I'm assuming you do, and not that you watch to report on it) The JRE. I've recently started watching, too, and I'm fascinated by his style and find it excellent for creating a great conversation. The Bernie segment was excellent. Thanks.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Same is true of the New Age movement. A straight man involved in New Age stuff is almost always a creep trying to get in somebody's pants.”

To be fair, getting into somebody’s pants is what guys do.

My theory is that alpha guys can succeed at it by being alphas, but the betas have to suck up some, and omegas have to cheat their asses off to succeed. Incels are the ones too clueless to eve do that. back when my partner was was in the dating market (when I was out of town) several guys had some ingenious ways to try to succeed there. One was her movie buddy, who would come over, and the two of them would watch Movies on TV in their PJs. Then he would go home. Another one pretended to have bone cancer. In reality, his real problem was beer and cocaine, but he had her, and her daughter, convinced that it was the chemo when they would find him passed out. His daughter finally told my partner that she was convinced he was faking it. He was.

Shouting Thomas said...

One of the few times the prof has told a self serving whopper was a few months ago when she claimed that I am opposed to equality for women and gays.

That's nonsense.

Women and gays were never not equal in the U.S.

tim in vermont said...

He’s not wrong either. Men and women’s brains are different, and while a man can be for equality of opportunity for women, I would say it is all but impossible for a man with a fully developed male brain [No true Scotsman!] to honestly buy into 90% of the crap feminst branded women are selling.

It took me a long time to figure out how to get laid because I had been indoctrinated to believe that taking the lead in the little dance was “rapey.” I only ever got laid if she all but raped me. Turns out that women generally like it when the man is somewhat forward. Certainly, when they say “no” without all of the coy little qualifications, it means no, but I am still so reserved that I can’t imagine it ever reaching the point where a firm no was required. Once I figured it out, I thought back on many situations with women I was very attracted to where I simply blew it and didn’t know it. But no matter how desperate I got, no matter how long the drought, I would never stoop so low as to try the male feminist gambit.

Yancey Ward said...

Sneaky fuckers- LOL!

tim in vermont said...

Sneaky fuckers is a recognized thing, even among social scientists. Every type of man around today is around because their anscestor types were successful at implanting sperm in one way or another.

tcrosse said...

This is anecdotal, but my 70's feminist first wife liked it rough. YMMV.

Bruce Hayden said...

“ Once I figured it out, I thought back on many situations with women I was very attracted to where I simply blew it and didn’t know it.”

Yeh. Have had plenty of those. Probably the first one was the sophomore wing TA of my college girlfriend, when we were just getting recently. And then, the last was just before I met my partner, 20 years ago. In one instance, I was talking to two women about 40 during happy hour, and one told me that her friend taught her how to wear a thong. The friend responded that the other one had taught her how to go without panties (it was Phoenix in the summer) both then giggled. A couple months later, nearing closing time at a club, a woman I had been eyeing for a couple weeks sits down next to me at the bar. We started talking, and she commented that she had been wearing undergarments designed for dancing, had gotten too hot dancing, took them off, and then proceeded to prove that to me by pulling up her skirt.

rcocean said...

Mexicans are greasers. Italians are wops or guineas. Germans are krauts, the Irish Mics, Southerners are rednecks, Canadians are "Canucks" and the English are limeys. Spic is an all purpose insult for anyone south of the border.

Let's get it all right.

tim in vermont said...

Lady Gaga:

I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be
A little gambling is fun when you're with me, (I love it)
Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun
And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun, fun
- Poker Face

Scott M said...

Any woman you can get with the male feminist pose is not worth getting.

I disagree. Even bad pizza is still pretty good pizza.

tim in vermont said...

Well Bruce, even I would have gotten hints like those.

Scott M said...

I don't accept any of the premises of feminism. Women in the West were never second class citizens or oppressed.

How does this statement bear up under the fact that suffrage wasn't passed until 1920? There were women aplenty in the West (even if you're only counting the U.S.) prior to that.

rcocean said...

Male Feminists, like Pajama Boy, or most Democrats are obnoxious poseurs. IRC, Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton were big feminists. FDR used to talk about Women's rights in public in the 30s and 40s, while treating Eleanor like shit. Lou Hoover, Mrs. herbert hoover, was a big feminist, but she walked the walk, instead of making speeches like Eleanor.

tim in vermont said...

"I disagree. Even bad pizza is still pretty good pizza.”

Why does the joke about not paying hookers for sex, but paying them to go away come to mind.

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann, I'm VERY curious about the reason why you enjoy (I'm assuming you do, and not that you watch to report on it) The JRE. I've recently started watching, too, and I'm fascinated by his style and find it excellent for creating a great conversation. The Bernie segment was excellent. Thanks."

I listen to podcasts (I don't sit around watching the video) when I'm doing things that don't permit me to concentrate at the level I need to follow along with an audiobook. So, I do audiobooks when I go for walks, but I listen to podcasts when I'm brushing my teeth, cooking, doing laundry, taking a bath... that sort of thing. I like having a conversation going and Joe Rogan's conversations go on for a very long time, with a relaxed atmosphere and interesting rambling on miscellaneous topics. I enjoy that. He's especially good with guests who aren't particularly famous.

I also listen to Marc Maron, but not as much anymore, because Maron's mood is more frenetic. That said, Maron is better than Rogan when the guest is very famous. Maron was far better when he had Brad Pitt with Leonardo DiCaprio recently than Rogan was with Robert Downey Jr. the other day.

tim in vermont said...

"How does this statement bear up under the fact that suffrage wasn't passed until 1920?”

You should read Jonathon Haidt. But women getting the vote has made their lives worse. Sure you can always point to exceptions, but on the whole.

rcocean said...

The biggest users of the True Scotsman are libertarians and commies. every criticism is met by "Hey Marx didn't say that" or "That's not something libertarians believe". Even when you quote Das Kapital or Lennin or The Libertarian party platform, you're told that's not the current, true belief.

Ann Althouse said...

"1. Aaron Hernandez biopic on Netflix. Dings all the prof's buttons. Gaydom. Bisexuality. Football."

Buttons aside, I don't have Netflix.

I'm not a fan of biopics at all. I'm assuming this isn't a documentary but a film where actors play the roles? Don't like that.

rcocean said...

Woman's suffrage occurred BEFORE 1920. Wyoming gave women the vote in 1890, Utah and Washington in 1896, New York in 1912, etc. Wyoming gave women the vote because they thought women would move there to enjoy the "feminist friendly state" - they found out wrong. Women wanted to stay back east and eat bon bons - and NOT vote.

tim in vermont said...

Under the patriarchy, a small subset of women were very unhappy, the ones who wanted to work their whole lives in important jobs, the people who work in important jobs has always been a tiny minority, regardless of sex. Under feminism a larger subset of women are unhappy, the ones who would be quite happy staying at home raising their children and chatting with their friends while their husbands worked, a far larger segment. The latter lifestyle is now only available to wealthy women that is to say women who have married very well.

Meade said...

I generally prefer feminine feminist females who subscribe to the radical notion that men are people.

rcocean said...

I can't imagine anyone just sitting there watching or listening to a Radio Talk show or a podcast. I too, have to do something else. I even do that with sports. I can listen to Baseball game while doing yard work or walking, but just sitting there and watching it? Forget it.

tim in vermont said...

A lot of the problems that feminist doctrine has created is blamed on capitalism.

Howard said...

I shovel snow to get into my wife's panties. Every swinging dick needs a schtick.

rcocean said...

People, people who love people are the luckiest people in the world. Up with People friendly feminists.

Ann Althouse said...

"Mexicans are greasers. Italians are wops or guineas...."

I never heard any ethnic epithets at my high school. None. I'd heard of these words, but never heard anyone use them.

I think maybe we said "hood" because "greaser" had not yet become the word for the cultural style. Anyway, it wasn't a way to say "Italian," but a reference to the hairstyle, leather jackets, shoes, tight pants (jeans weren't allowed in school), and a tendency to not to do well in school.

"Greaser" became THE word for this cultural style in the 1970s.

narciso said...


I guess some change of the headline is in order,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/the_trumpgrabbed_schrodingers_pussy_theory.html

chickelit said...

Shouting Thomas asked: Two pertinent documentaries that I'd love to read the prof's comments on:

The soft parade of response

chickelit said...

'Greaser' became THE word for this cultural style in the 1970s.

It helped that John Travolta was Italian-American: link

Meade said...

"I shovel snow to get into my wife's panties."

I don't see how shoveling snow would help you get into panties. Just wear a larger size.

Gahrie said...

But women getting the vote has made their lives worse.

It's made everyone's life worse.

Yancey Ward said...

"I don't see how shoveling snow would help you get into panties. Just wear a larger size."

Meade, Howard's main problem is that he lives in Los Angeles.

Howard said...

Shoveling is the secret to a tight butt.

Jupiter said...

Men and women have never been identical, and therefore have never had equal anything. Women die in childbirth, men die in logging accidents. In the long run, the question for any social arrangement is whether it works, not whether people are happy with it. From what we have seen thus far of feminism, a feminist culture is a culture which cannot reproduce itself. I suspect that the designers of feminism would not regard that as a problem. They were enemies of the culture in which they induced feminism.

chickelit said...

From what we have seen thus far of feminism, a feminist culture is a culture which cannot reproduce itself.

Nonsense. They just need a variety of splooges on tap.

Shouting Thomas said...

My great-grandparents arrived in the U.S. in the mid 1890s, in the great wave of European immigration.

Nobody in my family had the vote until about 1900. Women obtained the vote in 1920.

My mother, born in 1926, was never called into combat.

My father, born in 1917, suffered through four years of the most outrageous combat in the history of humanity in WWII.

So, pros and cons from both sides, right?

Curious George said...

"Italians are wops or guineas"

Or dagos.

tim maguire said...

Jeff Brokaw said...
Any woman you can get with the male feminist pose is not worth getting.

Don’t most millennial women kinda hate that and prefer, you know, a real man?

How the hell did we get here?!


Pretending to embrace women's issues is a well-known mating strategy for young men who can't compete on traditional male playgrounds. And you touch on the irony of it--women don't want woke men.

Or as some wag once put it, no woman ever fantasised about being ravished by a hippie.

JAORE said...

Soy boy identifying as feminist to get some = desperate times call for desperate measures.

Scott M said...

You should read Jonathon Haidt. But women getting the vote has made their lives worse. Sure you can always point to exceptions, but on the whole.

That's quite possible, but beside the original point. If you are a citizen of a country and can't vote, you're a second-class citizen. I certainly agree with the overall point that women in the West, today, are not oppressed and, in fact, are the least oppressed people on the the planet, but what I too exception to was the use of "never".

tcrosse said...

In Minnesota, a Hot Dago is a traditional sandwich of an Italian sausage patty and Marinara sauce.

J. Farmer said...

@tim in maguire:

Or as some wag once put it, no woman ever fantasised about being ravished by a hippie.

Tell that to Ira Einhorn.

walter said...

Had a vegan college roommate who joined "Men Stopping Rape".
I don't think he succeeded.
The next roommate (journalism major) bought non RX John Lennon style glasses to make him look smarter.

Louie the Looper said...

I think the OED has been lazy in its selections of quotations for “greasy.” It appears to me that the term is being used rather literally. The Shakespeare and Milton quotes associate greasy with fat or gluttonous. As for mechanics of the 1800s, they actually were greasy. Those old steam engines did not lubricate themselves.

Louie the Looper said...

In my Suburban Chicago high school in the early to mid 1960s, the students were split between Greases and Climbers. The Greasers were from the Italian-Amaerican neighborhoods and wore leather jackets, baggy green work trousers, and shoes with Cuban heels. They generally took shop classes. The Climbers wore madras shirts, white Levi’s, and penny loafers. It was more like “Happy Days” than “Grease.”

n.n said...

How is the transgender spectrum relevant in this context? Ah, I get it. Perhaps they are not pure trans/homo, but rather trans/bi, or trans/neo simulating a female.

Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Women and men reconcile on Earth. #HateLovesAbortion

Tank said...

Tank was in Teaneck, NJ when Althouse was in Wayne, NJ. Hood was the term used. Maybe it’s a Jersey thing.

Drago said...

This is similar to how all the "lifelong republican" "principled conservatives" funded by lefty billionaires are really just leftists. Period.

Jupiter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jupiter said...

Blogger Jupiter said...
"Nonsense. They just need a variety of splooges on tap."

I am not saying that feminists are incapable of reproduction. I am saying that the birth rate of Western cultures has fallen below the replacement level. I don't doubt that some way will be found to occupy the habitable space, but I don't believe the inhabitants will be feminists.

I'll say it again; when women's reproductive function was largely or entirely under the control of others, Freud may have cared about what women wanted. Evolution did not. But once women gain control of their reproductive lives, Evolution pays very careful attention to what they want.

Jupiter said...

Put another way, when women were managed breeding stock, it didn't matter if they were crazy, because they had male "husbands", who arranged their affairs so that they reproduced at a high level. Now that they are handling the management themselves, some of their bloodlines will be going extinct.

Bill Peschel said...

Shouting Thomas: "Women in the West were never second class citizens or oppressed."

* Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, single women were routinely denied access to credit cards. Married women had to have their husband co-sign.

* Women were not allowed to serve on juries in most states, less than half the states in 1927 allowed women, and it wasn't until 1975 that the Supreme Court ruled that such bans were unconstitutional.

* I assume you've heard of the suffragettes and the right to vote fight, so I won't go into that.

* In Great Britain, women were banned from most professions. They couldn't be surgeons or lawyers. They were not allowed into Oxford or Cambridge until 1920 (Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the early pioneers, but while she was admitted, she wasn't allowed to earn a degree.)

* During wartime, World War I and II, women were allowed to serve in factories because of a shortage of men. When the war was over, they were fired to free up jobs for men.

* Then there's the whole "boys will be boys" notion that excused male behavior against women. For example, Issac Asimov was a serial groper who was never seriously called out for his misbehavior. That was just something men did, right?

If you can explain how being barred from professions, forbidden from voting or handling your own money and risk being groped in public doesn't make you feel like a second-class citizen, I'm all ears.

chickelit said...

Jupiter said...Put another way, when women were managed breeding stock, it didn't matter if they were crazy, because they had male "husbands", who arranged their affairs so that they reproduced at a high level. Now that they are handling the management themselves, some of their bloodlines will be going extinct.

And by a large measure, those women don't seem to care. They will import hordes of hot latinos to tend their gardens.

chickelit said...

I will never forget overhearing a young female law associate proclaim " I am so outsourcing childbirth." It sounded radical back then, but it's now commonplace, at lesast in deeds if not thoughts.

Narr said...

"Die a greasy death!" became a mocking taunt in my circles (D&D, wargames) in the early 70s--it still comes up in our banter when we get together.

"The squeaky wheel gets greased" has some applicability in most organizations.

As to male feminists, I was a male librarian at a Southern state university and found good old-fashioned gentlemanliness (which I can fake like nobody's bidness) served me well in all but the most extreme situations. And now it can be told--if lady academic librarians were, as a group, better looking, I would have been sorely tried in my restraint.

Certainly the campus was infested by male feminists real or pretend by the time I shuffled off, but few took them seriously. Whether it garners them any nookie I have no idea.

Old Barzun's Dawn to Decadence has some interesting observations on women in Western history.

Narr
Sisterhood is powerful

n.n said...

"Women in the West were never second class citizens or oppressed."

Not uniformly as a diversity class.

n.n said...

They just need a variety of splooges on tap.

Sperm banks, and, with progress, rent-a-wombs.

tim in vermont said...

Yes Bill, women who really wanted to work in factories, rather than raise children at home, were oppressed. It’s not as simple as it sounds. Upper class women were liberated, the rest were all but enslaved. Those kinds of power point arguments can’t settle a question this complicated.

rcocean said...

I assume you've heard of the suffragettes and the right to vote fight, so I won't go into that.

* In Great Britain, women were banned from most professions. They couldn't be surgeons or lawyers. They were not allowed into Oxford or Cambridge until 1920 (Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the early pioneers, but while she was admitted, she wasn't allowed to earn a degree.)


Yeah, We're NOT England. So who gives a fuck? Looks like we got ourselves a male feminist here. Hope you're getting some guy.

rcocean said...

Women may have been 2nd Class Citizens in the "Western World". They were NOT in the USA.

rcocean said...

Given the results of having women voting, and women dominating college life, you can make a case that all those "Male Chauvinist Pigs" were right. The sad truth is that every female DOMINATED organization is at best mediocre at worst a failure. You can have women leaders, you can have women MANAGING things, but once you get too many women in charge, its Goodnight nurse.

Tom said...

If feminism means equal rights for women under the law and treating people equally in the workplace, I’m a feminist. I believe fiercely in equal protection under the law and treating everyone with a basic level of respect. But, I also reject any attempt to control or main dare specific behaviors in our personal or business interactions.

When feminism means special rights, privileges, or when it is used as an instrument of power - yeah, any man who is professing that BS is trying to get laid. I mean, that’s worse than picking up women at a funeral.