He is a dangerous man, leading a dangerous army of trolls and he is credibly accused of some vicious, violent offences.
He has shaped online discourse for thousands of young men, largely hidden away, for the last couple of years.
This isn’t about insults. This isn’t about “gender based body shaming.” This is about how this particular online space (Twitter) is no longer safe due to the actions of the new owner, and people needing to take effective action in order to shut-down harassment campaigns.
Nuance is important in any discussion and it’s especially important here.
I can easily forgive and applaud Greta for her takedown of this douchebag as it was he who swung first, and she responded in kind by giving him a taste of his own medicine. She brought the hammer down, hit back harder than this douchebag imagined, and smacked him down.
(Also: Great posts by Banquet Bear above!)
…I think killing people is bad but if a person is experiencing domestic violence and the only way to stop an active, vicious beating is to kill the other person then I’m gonna hope that the law gives that person a “self defence” pass.
There are no absolutes in the legal system and there shouldn’t be absolutes here. There are more important issue here than a single sentence written in a single tweet. We don’t need to both-sides this. We can give the person being harassed by the guy currently in jail for allegedly committing horrific crimes a pass.
…“body shaming insults are ok for everybody to use or nobody” is pretty absolute. That you also happened to think it was funny just means that I can’t tell what you actually think here. So please, by all means, feel free to clarify what your position actually is.
If these types of insults are fine to use it’s OK with me, if they’re not it’s OK with me, if they’re only OK when the target is a size large asshole it’s OK with me, if they’re wrong and immoral if they’re used on a demographic you identify with, but fine if they’re used by a demographic you identify with, not so much.
I’ve made an effort to eliminate them (and ethic, orientation, gender identity) from my speech, and I gently nudge my friends and co-workers in that direction.
Since people were talking about it in this thread, I offered my opinion that, while I disapprove of them in general, Greta’s was pretty good. But that’s more than enough for a breaking news thread, start another if you want to argue the nuance of gender based insults.
…all this talk about “size large asshole” or “a demographic you don’t identify with” completely ignores the substance of everything that I’ve argued. This wasn’t just an asshole. This was a sexual predator who had been let loose by the owner of that particular platform to be able to effectively say and do whatever they liked, who was targeting a teenage girl and sending waves of misogynistic trolls after her to harrass her.
And the thing is that completely ignores the fact that “big dick energy” means:
Which means that “small dick energy” would be the opposite of that. And the opposite of that isn’t body shaming. Neither are gendered. The “aura” that Andrew Tate gives isn’t understated, it’s massively OVERSTATED.
You don’t have to both-sides everything. You are allowed to continue to eliminate them from your speech and gently nudge your friends and co-workers in that direction no matter what the climate-change activist decides to say and do. You are your own person.
And yet, our personalities, while shaped in part by our formative years, are in large part a manifestation of our internal wiring. In a way, one’s “dick energy” is as much a part of one’s body as the very genitalia that it evokes, and denigrating it is not significantly different from physiognomous body shaming.
Unprompted body-shaming is bad, from either side. But this guy literally made a fortune on saying “My dick energy is big”. When you set yourself up like that, of course people are going to say “No, your dick energy is small”. What other possible response is there? If Tate didn’t want to be judged by the size of his dick energy, then he shouldn’t have told people to judge him by the size of his dick energy.
What’s a bit odd here is that in the last 40 posts so far as I can tell everyone seems to have converged on pretty much the same view of this, yet some are acting as though there is vehement disagreement.
In any event, I don’t think too much hinges on a nuanced analysis of this fuckwit’s philosophy of life and what exactly he meant by “big dick energy”.
As I said I have no sympathy for this guy and the retort was perfect for this circumstance, but I’m not down with this usage generally. What if we started describing women as having “tight pussy energy” or “big tit energy” (whatever those might be expressions for)? As someone with a small dick (yes, I’ll admit it here and now), I’m not happy with the general existence of the term “big dick energy.”
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