Men and Gone Girl Feminism

How the Gone Girl Feminists think of their male conspirators

Two terse remarks sum up the male response to my call for justice. When I tell them that I was attacked by a network that targets British men in Berlin; when I tell them I was harassed and abused at my work for two years before being sexually assaulted; when I tell them two consecutive girlfriends were part of the network and performed scripted abuses on me; when I tell them I sought out other jobs only to be targeted there. When I tell them I was targeted and sometimes drugged in cafes and bars and eventually abandoned going out; when I tell people I kept moving flats because I keep landing in flat shares ready and waiting for me. When I reveal that I was guided into a flat which was set up to drug me, that my PhD thesis was stolen and published by the network, and when I describe how other career paths have been cancelled, the answer of my father is typical: “That’s what you say!”. This is typical even of men who know that I am being drugged. They chose to believe that the abuse, that the drugging, can’t be that bad. Women are not capable of anything that bad, not ‘their women’ anyway.

Then there is the response to my claim that I am innocent. Men who acknowledge the abuses I have suffered, hold that I must have done something to deserve them. Indeed, there seems to be a fortuitous correlation between the degree of my abuse, and the degree of my guilt, such that they always cancel each other out. Men typically justify their acquiescence with, “Well you must have done something, if all these women have a problem with you”. I could reply that these men do not understand how social media works. That the number of people involved does not prove the truth or justice of what is being shared. I would do well to point out that this is an obvious case of ‘victim blaming’. A term most men will not know because it derives from feminist discourse. However, there is something deeper going on. When men employ victim blaming to exculpate themselves of a campaign against men, they take on a noble appearance. On the one hand, they signal that other men are toxic and women rely on them for protection. On the other hand, they signal that women are innocent and vulnerable, and they must have been provoked into taking the unnatural course of violence.

It was Gone Girl Feminists who introduced me to the presumptions of these men, as vindication of their campaign against men. Their broader argument is that misogyny is not a problem with a few individuals or their actions, the problem is structural. Any man you meet, they argued, will either be a husband, a father, a landlord, or an employer. On that basis alone, the activists claim they are justified in taking vengeance on behalf of either the wife, daughter, renter, or employee who is in no position to defend themselves. The activists who expounded this argument did not note the irony of telling me, their latest victim, while I served them cappuccinos, while stuttering in foreign language, far from friends and family, earning under minimum wage. They knew I was not a father, a husband, or an employer, nor a landlord. If they systematically target British men while isolated in a foreign country, it is not to target the most powerful and privileged men in Berlin.

So, men are wrong to presume that if women are taking vengeance on men, it must be revenge for something that the man has done. Every man is worthy of abuse according to these activists. While these feminists might be relatively few, it only takes a handful of such feminists to administer a group chat and mislead a large army of casual activists. The latter know nothing of the leaders of the movement, of what happens in Berlin, nor of the victim, and thus they follow the orders of these anonymous activists blindly. The broader network is built up of concentric circles distinguished by the varying degrees of knowledge that they are entrusted with. The innermost circle is willing to carry out acts of violence and control what the broader network knows of their actions. Meanwhile the furthest reach of the network is comprised of ‘normies’, mothers and daughters, who are considered ignorant, and part of the problem. The support of these normies is vital for the network, not just because they make up the majority, but because they have the ears of men. Most men are on the fringes of the outermost circle, being trusted only to say a few short lines, or to spike their victim at any opportunity. If the feminists in Berlin despise the kind of women who refuse to believe that women like them exist, they have even more contempt for their men.

Again, the reasons for this contempt were explained to me by two activists who had been sexually harassing me for years. They were trying to entrap me to prove that I was a cheating cad. Not only had I rejected their advances in the bar, but I had shown some knowledge of feminism. I had dropped in some facts that demonstrated I supported women. At intervals, they seemed to accept that I was not the man they thought I was, and at one point the floated the idea of drugging people for them. I rejected the idea immediately and gave them my reasons. They grudgingly respected me for refusing to drug people for them. They sounded sorry for me when they said, “Every man has done what we have asked him to do with out fail.”.

This summed up the arrogance of men for these women. No man thinks, even for a second, that he could be the victim, that women might think just as little of him as the man he is to spike. The feminists had a theory that every man is brought up being told that he is special by their mother, and that men spend their life looking for women to tell them that they are special. So, when they approach a man to drug someone, the man naturally presumes that the women realise that he is special and not like the other men. Every single man thinks that way- “The arrogance of men!”. You can imagine how women lean into this, ‘We knew we could trust you, because we knew you would understand’.

It is important to appreciate the point of view of the feminists who do this repeatedly. Think about how many times they have asked men to do their dirty work and drug someone. Think about the number of times that they have got together after another scripted harassment or drugging and compared notes, “How did it go?”, “Did the barman say he would do it?”, “What did you say to the barman?”. Think of the impression that men make on them, when most men jump at the chance to drug a stranger and to impress them as women. Imagine their surprise when a man interrupts them before they have the chance to properly explain. Instead, they started mouthing off about men like ‘that’, and presuming he is soo very different. Like every man does.

There might be generational differences to how much of this boyish arrogance is carried over into adult life. Men who met their wife as teenagers will probably be more prone to this. However, even young men are likely to still believe what their mother told them. If they have not settled down with anyone, they will be most keen to win the affections of women. We shouldn’t presume that it is mainly working-class men, like barman and baristas, who are easy prey. The feminists made a point that male academics and doctors are keen to participate, and are prone to similar presumptions. It is easy to imagine that after courting professors to gain their patronage in the academy, that successful men enjoy the fanning of their ego in turn. It is not unusual for a clinic to me manned with male doctors, with an all-female body of nurses looking up to them. In all walks of life, and all levels of education, men can live and work in the belief that they are special.

The kind of feminist who is taking extreme actions against men, does not think that every man is special, nor that every man is a feminist. It’s not just the arrogance of men that is demonstrated be men in Gone Girl Feminism. According to the Gone Girl Feminist, it is another demonstration that men lack basic care and compassion towards others. The feminists have their own understanding of why men are not deserving of basic dignity, but they know men know nothing of that. It is rather a general lack of compassion that allows men to abuse a stranger. Men are not even capable of compassion towards men, as men. They see no reflection of their own humanity in the men they dehumanize, so, “Why should women show them any compassion?”

The pleasure that apparently all men take in performing some scripted humiliation, robbing or spiking someone, is not from his long commitment to feminism or social justice. He might pay lip service to the righteous anger in response to the rumours that their victim had been sleeping around, or that he hates German women. This is not taken as a raw and true expression of moral character by the feminists. Toxic masculinity takes delight in the domination and humiliation of others. It is no surprise that men take the opportunity to incapacitate another man with drugs and otherwise humiliate him in public. At least, he will when there is no chance of facing consequences for doing so. The men most obsequious, and helpful to the campaign, are only fulfilling the expectations that many feminists have of men and toxic masculinity.

There are probably women who still have sympathy with the understanding men have of themselves. They want to play the role of protector to women and children. Most women looked kindly on men trying to fulfil that role, and many today will still see their efforts as well-meaning. However, for some it reveals a childish naivete, or a sexist preconception that women need protecting. The role of protector is a corollary of the role of conqueror. Men ape the archetype of a commanding figure who has an instinct to conquer and dominate. They protect what is theirs for fear of being seen as weak and unmanly. No wonder then that they are eager to match the level of violence demanded by women, and drug a total stranger, on the pretence of rectifying some wrongs that the victim is rumoured to have committed.

The understanding that men have of themselves finds it corollary in their perspective of women. If men have an instinct to command and dominate others, women are emotional and affected by the emotions of others. It is traditionally their job to reign in the man’s instinct to command and dominate others. We see this in the pantomime of masculinity, when men shout threats at another man, but tarry for their wife to intervene. More sophisticated men skip the dancing and simply make the point that, ‘You’re lucky my wife’s here or I’d come over there and…’. Sometimes the wife does not even need to be there, ‘I better get out of here, before I say something I shouldn’t’. The men should always display their dominance, and their women should appear to recognise that dominance and reign it in. If women are demanding violence, there is nowhere for these men to hide, except behind secure anonymous group chats.

According to outdated gender roles, women look up to their man as her superior and her special protector. Women are vulnerable and need protection. Many men like to believe that women, ‘their women’, are incapable of fooling them. This is meant in both senses; they are thought cognitively incapable of outsmarting them, and morally incapable of deceiving them. That is to say, the traditional understanding of women is that they are pure and innocent. They are not corrupted by desires, ambition, greed, or a lust for power, or an instinct to dominate, command, and humiliate. These are the virile impulses that a man needs to wrestle with. Of course, if women demand violence then life is made simpler, because women speak as our social conscience. It’s easy to see how the trust in women can be abused.

Many feminists recognise that men’s participation in Gone Girl Feminism, their eagerness to drug and humiliate strangers, is an obvious expression of toxic masculinity. It is impossible to know how many other women are still sympathetic to men, and even feel guilty about the level of influence they have over them. They know that men want to be told they are good, and they are loved. It is also easy to imagine many wives who, although far from being feminists, think their men deserve what they get. They deserve to be made a fool of by their own presumptions. They know how special, and how much smarter, men think they are at times. I think there is room for something in between.

Even women sympathetic to men might wish they would take on the responsibility of making ethical choices themselves. It can be easily overlooked, that by doing what the women in their life would have them do, they are passing the responsibility for their choices and their actions onto women. Not only will some women be held responsible for any negative consequences that arise from their advised course of action, but they must agonize over the difficult decisions, taking the man’s emotional investments into account. The inverse is also true. Women might wish that they had a man who helped them with moral dilemmas, someone they could rely on to provide trustworthy advice. Many women do. From another perspective, most women would like to know that a man has a moral compass of his own and that he can be trusted.

This brings us to the most sinister aspect of men’s role in Gone Girl Feminists, one that perhaps only the latter grasp fully, but one that most women sense after the horrifying case of Dominique Pelicot. Men are willing to drug, abuse, and humiliate a total stranger, with a network of strangers, once they are convinced that there can be no consequences for them. Even if they take this line of action for women, or more cynically to gain favour with women, it is conspicuous how easy they are to convince. The Gone Girl Feminists in Berlin viewed their male accomplices with an appropriate level of contempt for this reason. Even they had to grudgingly respect my decision not to drug men for them. I think most women would respect the men in their life for saying, ‘That’s not right, I’m not getting involved in drugging someone’. It would be modest first step to demonstrate that you have some moral boundaries of your own, and you would be willing to speak out to protect people from dehumanizing abuse.