Recently, a blog for male feminists called The Good Men Project linked to my article about women in comedy.

They didn’t like it.

The writer, Josh Bowman, said his anger was “violently stoked” by what I had written. Later, he went back in and edited the metaphor, noting that it “may have inaccurately or inadvertently suggested actual acts of violence.”

Now, I didn’t actually think that Mr. Bowman was literally going to hunt me down and violently attack me, but I did think it was fucking excessive to claim you were made violently angry because someone has a different opinion on comedy than you do. It wasn’t threatening, it was overly dramatic.

Let’s put this topic aside for a moment, though, because none of this matters until you know exactly what The Good Men Project is. From their “About” page:

The Good Men Project is not so much a magazine as a social movement. We are fostering a national discussion centered around modern manhood and the question, “What does it mean to be a good man”?

What DOES it mean to be a good man? I thought that was a decent enough question, so I asked my partner Marcus for his opinion. I consider him to have all the qualities of a good man: He’s hard-working, kind, insightful, and he treats the people in his life with love and respect. I figured if anyone would have the answer, he would.

He said: “Real ‘good men’ don’t need a project in order to be good. What is this shit? That looks retarded.”

There’s a reason the word “good” often has sneaky, nefarious connotations in art and literature. Doubleplusgood, Goodfellas, Good Omens, Only the Good Die Young. The word “good” is often more closely associated with “fake” and “up to something” than it is with “moral.” Perhaps this is because the more interesting minds instinctively know there’s no way to define being good. Good people don’t go around talking about how good they are. Good people just are.

In the words of Oscar Wilde: “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”

One article that seemed to sum up the milieu of the Good Men Project for me was this: “Men May Never Truly Understand a Day in the Life of Women. But Shouldn’t We Try?” in which the author discovers that a day in the life of a woman is one of CONSTANT HELL AND TERROR.

“Women face lives that we men will rarely see and never feel,” he says, referring to the rampant daily CEO-rapings which we women must endure in order to be allowed to collect a paycheck. (Contact your local Senator, this practice should be illegal!) He continues: “Women are constantly reminded that they are different from us.”

Jesus Lordy, talk about hero worship. We’re constantly reminded that we’re different? I’m surprised the article isn’t accompanied by photos of women taking out the trash and buying Vitamin Water under the heading: Women: They’re just like US!

What’s a day like in the life of a woman? Well, allow a woman to tell you. It’s just like a man’s, only once a month we squirt a stream of menstrual-period diarrhea out our smoothly shaven assholes. If you want to be a woman, eat lunch from the shady Halal truck on 10th Avenue. You will soon discover a day in the life of a woman: blood, cramping, and watery, unstoppable shit.

So, the premise of The Good Men Project now being firmly established (blood and halal poop), I admit I was a bit shocked to see my article so quickly dismissed.

I had to wonder: Why is an article about women’s rights so dismissive of the opinion of another woman? I figured being linked to from the article entitled me to leave my opinion on the article, which I did. And it was promptly deleted.

Here’s what I said:

In short, I was being my usual irreverent assholish self. Nothing over-the-top as far as I could tell. I’ve been thrown across a room headfirst into a wall, sure, but mainly, I was disturbed that, in his quest to defend women’s rights, this guy picked out an article by a woman and claimed it made him angry.

About 15 minutes later, I received this email:

Feminists believe in the radical notion that women are equal to men. Which, I guess, is why my comment was censored. Can’t have women disagreeing with men when they’re busy trying to be pro-women, can we?

The commenting policy lists a bunch of normal blog violations which will get your comment deleted including posting threatening or harassing messages, linking to porn sites, etc. The usual. None of which I did.

But here’s where it gets super-faggy. The comment policy goes on to say the following:

“Ad hominem abuse involves insulting or belittling one’s opponent in order to invalidate his argument, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensible character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent’s arguments or assertions.”

Is this a commenting policy or a grad-school application? Congratulations, your commenting policy has been accepted to the NYU Media, Culture and Communications program!

Interestingly, Josh Bowman replied to me in the comments section, but his comment was deleted as well! It was up for about five minutes before falling victim to the logical merits of the opponent’s assertions policy. I copied and saved it:

My! Sensitive men are sensitive! And snippy!

I’m not going to address specific things in Josh’s reply, because it’s twisty missive of nonsense and self-righteousness and he puts a ton of words in my mouth in order to argue with them. He’s only arguing with himself, so I ignored it.

Basically, he accuses me of being crazy and “going nuts” and being histrionic because I deigned to disagree with him. Goddamn, I’m one uppity slit! Don’t I know my place is to agree with the men who know what’s best for me? Women! We cannot drive cars but we sure can drive men CRAZY! Honk!

It’s a good thing I already knew this guy is out there defending women and stuff or I’d think he was a douche. Glad he’s on our side. Feminism 4-EVA!

One thing that really jumped out at me from him response was how this guy claims to be a comedian and is writing an article about comedy yet has no idea what the phrase “Def Jam-style comic” means. He seems to think it’s Wanda Sykes or Chris Rock. Wanda Sykes’s name, by the way, was on a billboard noting her upcoming performance as we drove through the middle of Pennsylvania this week. Def Jam comics do not perform in the middle of Pennsylvania. Def Jam style is more along the lines of, say, this Cedric the Entertainer clip, wherein he is totally baffled by gay people.

Bowman tries to claim I’m racist for not liking Def Jam comedy, but by his own admittance, he doesn’t understand what he’s even defending. So, Josh Bowman, here’s a homophobic black guy in a fancy yellow hat. You love Def Jam comedy? Sure you do. I’m sure you watch it all the time when you’re not flogging your penis with a tiny whip and putting your own name on Don’t Date Him Girl.

In the end, The Good Men project not only deleted my comment and their own response, but they also deleted another comment from a male friend of mine which said, in part: “Not sure I agree with your post here, pal. Unfortunately, stereotypes thrive because there is a basis for their existence. Whether they’re racist, sexist, or downright culturally harmful. We can stoically deny their prevalence in an effort to decry their social weight, but does that really apply in this case?”

I won’t post the full comment, but except for disagreeing with the thesis of the essay, it conformed with their commenting policy.

Goddess only knows if they deleted any other comments, but from these three examples it appears that The Good Men Project possibly just deletes and censors any comment which doesn’t agree with them. On the other hand, I’ve been called everything from a fat cunt to a kapo in the comments of Street Carnage. But they stay up. That’s what’s called having a sack.

I suppose, in this way, The Good Men Project proves what excellent feminists they actually are: Censor anything you find disturbing. If you don’t like it, disappear it. Radical feminists aren’t concerned with women, they’re concerned with feminism. Women come second. What kind of pro-woman feminist tells another woman that her opinions are invalid?

And herein lies the problem with having a cock and balls while calling yourself a feminist. That is: You feminist men don’t know what the flying fuck you’re talking about. You’re just writing bullshit blog posts desperately hoping that you believe the right thing (and desperately hoping your controlling, ultra-feminist girlfriend will love you enough to milk your prostate while she blows you). But you don’t have your own opinions, you regurgitate the opinions of others. So when it comes to making hard decisions and thinking for yourself, you can’t. You’ll always have to check and see what women think first, because your opinion, ultimately, is nothing more than a compost heap of sycophancy, guilt, and sexual confusion.

You’ve convinced yourself that woman have it so hard in life that they must be coddled and protected at every turn. You’re so certain that you’re the bad guy that when another woman stands up and tells you you’re being too hard on yourself, you can’t even process it. Instead, you attack her for challenging your Stockholm Syndrome notion that you’re not the worst human on Earth. You’re the oppressor and the oppressed and the savior all rolled into one. You don’t even know what you are. You say you can’t possibly know what it feels like to be a woman, so stop writing about it! Take off your hair shirt and step away from the blog. You haven’t got a third leg to stand on.

—KYRIA ABRAHAMS

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