Fraser Sherman's Blog

The point of the “undead sexist cliche” label is that sexist and misogynist beliefs shamble on, refusing to die no matter how often they’re disproved. Case in point, the idea that being a dick to women — or a dick, period — makes you cool.

Until I started this post, I didn’t realize how much I’ve already blogged about this. For example, idea that if you’re a genius, you’re entitled to be a jackhole (and many geniuses and great men were jackholes to their wives). And geniuses certainly shouldn’t suffer for something as minor as rape.

I also wrote about an economist defending his colleagues talking sexist smack about women: “There’s still hope for mankind when many of the posts written by a bunch of over-educated young social scientists illustrate a throwing off of the shackles of political correctness and reflect mundane concerns that more normal human beings share: prestige, sex, money, landing a job, sex, professional misconduct, gossip, sex. …” Dude, I stand by what I said then: “Just because academics are told they shouldn’t be sexist pigs, that doesn’t make being a sexist pig an act of rebellion. Being a sexist pig is just … being a sexist pig.”

As Andi Zeisler put it during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, 1980s pop culture was all about the glories of being a sexist pig, “modeled, with varying degrees of malice, the notion that good, clean teen-boy fun isn’t just about objectifying women. It’s also about laughing at them and mortifying them in a sacrifice to the larger cause of male bonding and group identity … So many of us either knew that girl or were that girl, which makes me consider that perhaps Kavanaugh is telling the truth when he professes not to recall these alleged incidents. In the rarefied milieu of elite prep schools and Ivy League colleges that nurtured him, jokes like these wouldn’t have been shocking or even particularly remarkable. They were the unacknowledged collateral damage of male bonding, blithely enacted on young women who didn’t have the luxury to forget about it.”

As a regular movie watcher back then, I can say Zeisler is absolutely right about how spying on naked girls or putting them in their place was a common theme in pop culture. At Atomic Junk Shop, the late Greg Hatcher makes the same point (I’ve linked to his column before, I know). Writing now, it strikes me it’s simultaneously treated as good, clean fun and as edgy rebellion. Rape apologist Camille Paglia, for instance, once wrote that “feminism with its solemn Carrie Nation repressiveness cannot see what is for men the eroticism or fun element in rape, especially the wild, infectious delirium of gang rape.” Of course feminists do grasp that men find rape fun and erotic — they just don’t think that’s an excuse, or that rape is any less of a brutal crime because the rapist enjoys it.

As I wrote back in December, “there’s nothing edgy or daring about supporting patriarchy or defending rape — it’s evil, but it’s trite evil. The New York Times spent far more column inches discussing men’s fears of #metoo ruining their lives. than what it was like for women to face less harassment.” Our culture gives rapists a free pass and judges frequently do too. Feminists are not running the show; they are the insurgency rebelling against the system. Just consider that anti-feminist hacks such as Katie Roiphe can get articles in major media complaining that if feminists stamp out sexual harassment, office life will be drab and beige: “Maybe it’s better to live and work with colorful or inappropriate comments, with irreverence, wildness, incorrectness, ease. Is the anodyne drone typing away in her silent cubicle free from the risk of comment on her clothes, the terror of a joke, the unsettlement of an unwanted or even a wanted sexual advance, truly our ideal?”” A woman who won’t accept Mr. Creepy’s comments on her boobs is setting herself up for heartbreak! Why can’t she see Camille Paglia was right and enjoy the “wild, infectious delirium of guys ignoring her boundaries!

Recently we had bro-type leftwingers gushing about Graham Platner and how his adultery and edgy drunken behavior made him edgy and authentic — not one of those “smoothgroin” guys who never put a sexual foot wrong (even after the rape allegations, some pundits are outraged his authentic working-class campaign crashed and burned). Other leftwingers think Democrats appealing to the manosphere appeals to the working class which is the key to winning elections — never mind that lots of the working class are female. And that women are the bedrock of the Democratic vote; somehow consultant, centrists and left-wing bros never consider appealing to the female side of the electorate important.

Showing again the undead nature of this bullshit, a year ago, the NYT offered an explanation why Dems were losing young men: they avoid saying things like “retard” or “faggot” which means they’re not authentic! “If there’s one issue that unites the bro-casters — beyond the need to find three hours of content — it’s a disdain for wokeness.”

Being woke and not calling people slurs is, apparently not authentic, just like Platner wouldn’t have been authentic if he’d been a faithful husband. “Modern bro-caster culture emerged in part as a response to the enforced sensitivity of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which left many young men feeling vilified for their purported privilege.” Criticizing the bro-casters validates their stance as spokespeople for the oppressed! Erik Loomis, despite being liberal, grumbles that the right-wingers are indeed “cool and funny and hip” so maybe the way to beat them is not fuss about language and not worry about offending people (though he’s also argued that offending people who buy into traditional gender stereotypes is a mistake and we should meet them “where they’re at”).

In another post on Platner, I pointed out how very gendered this idea of authenticity is. A woman who ran wild like Platner wouldn’t have a shot at the senate; woman aren’t supposed to have wild sides. When women call out men for being rapists or rape apologists, that’s not seen as daring, edgy or challenging the status quo, even though they are. No, when they do it it’s “enforced sensitivity.” Nor do they get any plaudits for being willing to offend men by speaking out. Edginess, in this worldview, is something only men get to do. When women do it, it’s a variation on Margaret Atwood’s old line: women’s greatest fear is that men will kill or rape them, men’s greatest fear is that women will criticize them. And a large party of our society accepts that as normal.

For more on misogyny and how stupid it is, pick up a copy of Undead Sexist Cliches. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights to image are mine.

“Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known as a nondisclosure agreement and a system too often run by men for men at the expense of women and children. That is to say, rapists count on getting away with it because of a system that hands them power and steals it from their victims. They count on a silencing system. On profound inequality.” — Rebecca Solnit in 2025.

Which leads me to Frederick Douglass discussing the Founding Fathers: “They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was ‘settled; that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were ‘final;’ not slavery and oppression.” Though they were as blind to women’s rights as they were to the rights of slavery, the principles the Founders embraced should nevertheless apply to all. Justice, liberty and humanity are final; not slavery, oppression and rape. We need to end rape.

Given how widely spread rape culture is in our society, that won’t be easy. Hell, Jesse Watters of Fox News thinks it’s hilarious to imagine American soldiers getting testosterone treatments running around committing rape. The misogynist Tate brothers have a massive fan base including the White House yet they’re allegedly (not that I doubt it) monsters: “The unsealed complaint against Tristan Tate alleged that he regularly choked, beat and raped a woman with whom he was in a romantic relationship in 2012 and 2013. She told authorities that he regularly choked her to unconsciousness, gave her a black eye and whipped her with a belt on multiple occasions, causing welts and bruises, the complaint said.” As I’ve said before, too many people swallow the idea the Tates are edgy and cool. (Here’s a discussion of the legal aspects).

As I wrote a couple of weeks back, I’ve no idea how to end rape but putting forward the proposal is the first step. Even with a time-frame — reduce rape 10 percent a year for 10 years, say — it’s a tall order. It will be taller than it should be because many people who have raped and gotten away with it, or enjoy the thought that they could if they chose, would scream bloody outrage. So would those who believe that punishing men for attacking women is fundamentally wrong. Celeste Davis: “Masculinity is not in crisis because the definition has changed. It is in crisis because it is currently predicated on being ranked above women and femininity in an increasingly gender equal world.” Not being able to rape women is a sign we’ve taken another step towards equality.

And, of course, even good political aims get derailed by politics and cronyism. North Carolina provides millions in grant money to agencies helping human-trafficking victims. In 2021, the Republicans transferred control of the money to a GOP-dominated branch of the government, despite protests from its employees they couldn’t manage that many grants. They couldn’t, and victims paid the price.

There are already men on the right dedicated to rolling back gender equality, like pastor Joel Webbon: “So long as we have democracy coupled with universal suffrage, you’ll constantly be going against the grain. You’ll constantly have half of the population voting for temperance, tolerance, suicidal empathy.  I don’t think you’re going to get people to vote away democracy. It has to be taken. I think that men, virtuous, ambitious, masculine men have to climb the ladder of power and forcefully take away from the people that which is their detriment.” Did I mention he wants the death penalty for women who make false rape charges? I’m sure he’d be fine if that resulted in even fewer rape victims speaking up. He’s one of many (though much as I despise the religious right, there are plenty of rapists and rape-apologists outside it).

When the rape apologists speak out, the media will treat their arguments seriously. “Critics says president’s call to end rape is really an attack on masculinity.” “Plan to end rape will offend believers in traditional gender roles, centrist Dems say.” Etc., etc. So we’d need to be ready with answers, and thoughts on how to deal with a media that, like much of our society, defaults to male dominance as normal. In the meantime, a couple of quotes:

“What many of us can do is try to construct a world in which survivors matter & concrete boundaries regarding abusers exist.” — from a Bluesky thread by Mo Ryan

“No abuser sustains a career of abuse alone. At every stage, they have people willing to give them second, third, 30th chance while the survivors keep being unable to pay their bills. those are also choices, and you don’t get to be automatically loved for them. Who gets all the chances speaks volumes” — Mo Ryan again. “Compassion without accountability is a form of enabling”

““How dare you consistently ask that political candidates have the kind of judgment & maturity that the average high school social studies teacher possesses?? Why are you being so mean to this smol bean white guy who displayed awful judgment many times over the years, including right now???? Ughh!!” — another thread by Ryan, on Graham Platner. “When the bar is set below hell, and somebody still doesn’t clear it, yes, of course, the people pointing that out are the problem, absolutely, makes sense.”

“A Texas man is facing federal charges after prosecutors say he created and distributed AI-generated pornographic images depicting women – including celebrities, public figures, and people he personally knew. Federal investigators accuse Arturo Hernandez of Bedias, Texas, of publishing more than 100 online albums containing explicit AI-generated content over more than a year. According to court records, the images allegedly portrayed victims performing sexual acts without their consent.” If he’s guilty, I hope he goes up for a long time.