Disaster Pants: Will Wheaton Attempts a Brief Defense of "BernieBros," Then Collapses Into a Quivering Pile of Shame and Fear

He pushed back, slightly and not terribly cleverly, at the "BernieBro" stuff, asking, perfectly fairly I think, if those tossing about the "BernieBro" term as an insult would think it was fair if people began saying "Hillary Harpy" in return.

So far, the charisma-free former child actor is just acting like a kind of a man, who, when he feels other people are trying to bully him into submission, proudly (and properly), gets (weakly) scrappy.

Not exactly the Battle at Stirling Bridge in Braveheart, but whatever, he's doing the best with the small amount of testosterone he has.

Then people began criticizing him for being insufficiently deferential to Narratives of Intersectional Oppressation.

He began meekly protesting:

Someone complained that "bro" wasn't perjorative but "harpy" was, so he had committed a WordCrime by upping the ante so dramatically. Oh, by the way, "bro" is of course meant perjoratively in the "BernieBro" insult.

So he apologized. I don't want to say he apologized like a little bitch, but I have seen small female dogs beg for forgiveness, and they looked a bit like this.

Except they looked more like men, four legs and fur and all:

But that apology isn't enough: He doesn't humiliate himself completely enough, nor savage himself for his horrible behavior in coining "Hillary Harpy" as a hypothetical equivalent to "BernieBro."

So he prostrates himself, rends his clothes, and begins smearing feces on his own flesh to show that he can self-chastise enough, with no need of outside assistance.

Who would want to live like this? I would kill myself.

I wasn’t defending terrible behavior, but I understand why it seemed that way.

I stirred up a shitstorm on Twitter earlier today, and as I thought about what I said, how I said it, and how people responded to me, I needed more than 140 characters to work it all out.

I’m going to acknowledge my privilege right now, before I get into this. Because I’m a middle-aged white dude, I don't have the same experience in life tha... well, pretty much everyone else who isn’t has. I know that the world is set up to make life for people like me as easy as possible (Scalzi's "lowest difficulty" setting), and even though I try to see from outside of my own limited perspective, I don't always succeed.

By the way, your particular life as a straight (technically) white male, as a child actor and professional Dungeons and Dragons dork on YouTube, is probably a bit easier than many other straight white dudes' lives, who have done things like gone to war to fight for your pathetic ass, so do not include them as you abase yourself.

Speak of your own soft, flabby existence -- but don't assume other people have spent their whole lives playing dress-up with spock-ears and hobbit-feet.

Good Lord, then he whimpers some more. It's really a shameful spectacle.

On Reddit, they're laughing, because Will Wheaton was a major (weakling) thug in the GamerGate wars, and still can't see this same bullshit -- attack and then cry "harrasssment" -- was and remains the preferred tactic of the Social Justice Warrior.

By the way, part of the reason for Wheaton's self-abasement is a column he cites by feminist idiot Amanda Hess. Hess says, in the most State-ish way posible, that "Everybody is Wrong" in the Bernie Bro nontroversy.

She is a feminist. Her claiming "everyone is wrong" is her crabwalking manner of conceding that "the feminists are the only ones wrong." She's forbidden to actually say that, so she says, like the Black Knight, "All right, let's call it a tie."

Here are her examples of why this "feminist critique" of "BernieBro" culture was "necessary."

[A critic's claims about a "BernieBro" problem] was buttressed, though, by a series of tone-deaf pieces that served as a Bernie Bro proof of concept, essays by Sanders boosters like Walker Bragman ("Hillary’s personality repels me"); Michael Sainato ("Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and Hillary Clinton all share a common insincere, yet polished, demeanor inherent with an affluent lifestyle”); and Ben Norton, who dismissed feminist identification with a female candidate as "high-school clique drama."

These are all things that are Forbidden to say, she's claiming -- you can't say that Hillary's personality is repellent. You must give her Respect.

You can't say she comes from an affluent lifestyle. And note especially: The point of this statement, which Hess cutely omits, was to say Bernie Sanders' wife does not share the tropes of the affluent; he was praising Bernie Sanders' wife for being of a different kind.

That is, in fact, the entire point of his piece; he's writing about what a nice First Lady Bernie Sanders' wife would be.

In other words: She lies.

Or, let us say this of her: She is claiming that an attack on the soft and easy assumptions of the upper middle class is the same as an attack on women, probably because she herself shares in those assumptions, and she's too vain and proud to countenance any sort of attack on herself. So she conflates a criticism that is all about class, not gender, as an attack on gender.

Let's face it, as many poor or minority women have noted: "Feminism" as currently configured is nothing more than a lobby for the people who control it, nigh-exclusively: upper middle class Private College white women. So if you casually note that Hillary Clinton is of this class -- and she is, obviously -- they take that, rightly, as an attack on their own Identities and Tribes.

But because no one besides Comfortable Class White Women Feminists gives a shit about the worries and preoccupations of Comfortable Class White Women Feminists except Comfortable Class White Women Feminists, she pretends that this was an attack on "women," rather than a very specific sort of woman. (And a championing of another kind of woman -- something she, again, deliberately hides from her readers.)

Here are her other proofs:

The Sanders campaign’s critics had plenty of material to work with beyond those blithely condescending columns. They could throw in a bunch of bottom-feeding social media sexists, like the poster in a pro-Sanders Facebook group who called Hillary "clitrash." The campaign also made its own gendered gaffes, including the smug statement that Bernie was "willing to consider" Hillary for veep. Finally, there’s the tendency of online Sanders supporters to call Clinton fans corporate-shilling "Hillary bots" and to argue that journalists are “auditioning for jobs with the Clinton White House.” Put it all together, and you have a perfectly reasonable (though not unimpeachable, and certainly not universal) argument that Bernie has a little bit of a Bro problem.

And that's her case: One rando said "clittrash." Someone who is so completely marginal she doesn't even bother to name him (or her).

That Bernie Sanders said, horrifically, he'd be willing to consider Hillary as Veep. What should he said? That he would not consider her? Or, a I think the feminist robots would prefer: "No, I would never consider her as Vice President because she's plainly to Superlative to be anything but President and I herewith endorse her for same."

That women journalists are debuting for jobs in Hillary's White House? 1, of course they are, 2, of course they are, 3, this isn't a gendered attack, this is an attack about self-serving mercenary careerism frequently seen in the Comfortable Class White Woman Feminist ranks, Media Auxilliaries, and 4, of course they are.

And that some people call Hillary's supporters "Hillary bots." I call Marco's supporters RubioBots. Trump's supporters are called Trump Bots.

This is such a standard claim -- and frankly a fitting one; people who do nothing but regurgitate week-old propaganda talking points sound like fucking mind-dead robots -- that it could not possibly be considered 'gendered" or "sexist," unless, as one suspects, the real claim being put forward by Comfortable Class White Women Feminists is that We Must Always Be Treated Like the (Real Body Type) Queens We Are, and Must Never Be Contradicted Or Disputed.

One does strongly get a whiff of that from this foul, narcissistic crew.

I understand the desire to always be praised. Everyone has that. But, being a man, I have no ready ideology to cite that says I should always be praised.

Only Comfortable Class White Women Feminists do. (Well, any "minority" has this as well, I suppose.)

What can we say of this overt, open claim by Comfortable Class White Women Feminists that they must not be spoken of except in praise, and they should not be spoken to, except in deference?

As one female critic of feminists put it, in one of the most stinging and perfect lines I've ever read: "This isn't 'feminism.' This is merely female."

But based on this scanty and absurd list of Grievances, Amanda Hess finds that the made-up "BernieBro" nontroversy is a teachable moment for both sides, and the craven, worm-like non-man Will Wheaton debases himself.

Who would want to live like this?

How does anyone live like this?

Welcome to the future -- where you're all six year olds forever, and you have fifty thousand angry mothers scolding you until you die.

posted by Ace at 04:15 PM

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