Caveat: The following PSA can’t be considered sexist or biased against men in any way, shape of form. My male slave said it isn’t sexist*, so it can’t be. Charges and accusations thereof will be ignored or laughed at.
*Granted, I had to adjust the nipple clamps and use the whip a few more times, but he said it. I win!
Hysteria has for centuries been proclaimed a condition that affects only women, but a male version does exist and it is not only a lot more virulent and a lot more common, but also a lot more dangerous. Its correct name is testeria.
CAMaB = coercively assigned male at birth.
Testeria. n. Medical condition that affects only CAMaB, but disproportionately white CAMaB among the 12-48 age group. It involves estrogen levels dropping drastically. As a result, without nothing to stop it, cortisol levels go up. To prevent irreparable damage to the nervous system, the body creates antibodies. These antibodies are so aggressive that they eat brain cells, causing the patient to say and do things that defy common logic and, more often than not, endanger the patient and those around him.
Physical symptoms: excessive sweat, trembling hands, dialted pupils, flustered face, clenched teeth.
Psychological symptoms: persecution complexes, tendency to get defensive, diminished capacity of reasoning, verbosity, tendency to repeat oneself, persistent self-aggrandization, tendency to see the world at large in terms of black and white, solipsism. For some reason, which remains still unexplained, this condition affects disproportionately CAMaB in developed countries.
Deviant behaviour testeria patients partake in include:
Repeating evo-psycho claptrap at every opportunity.
Obsessing over imaginary sexual dimorphism.
Obsessing with finding differences between men and women in every aspect and then “proving” them.
Joining Men’s Rights Movements.
Obsessing over one of the following prospects: a) being sexually assaulted by a woman b) being forced to pay for the support of nonexistent children c) being “falsely accused” of sexually assaulting a woman d) being sexually assaulted by a homosexual man.
Developing an unexplainable dislike, distrust, fear and jealousy towards men of color, particularly black men.
Developing an obsessive interest in statistics and percentages as well as old studies in which the “evidence” is shaky at best. The Bell Curve; The Essential Difference; The Blank Slate; Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus; The Male Brain; The Female Brain; and The Selfish Gene are popular.
Obsessing over racial superiority, race and intelligence and melanin and intelligence.
Developing an unhealthy, unproductive interest in dominance hierarchies; then applying the patient’s very limited understanding of said hierarchies to real life.
Obsessing over the naturalistic fallacy, and then using it to criticise any behaviour the patient personally doesn’t like. Male homosexuality, miscegenation, remaining childfree, and female authority are popular targets.
Developing a persistent, unexplainable fear of pre-op transsexual women, whom they believe will try to sexually assault them at some point.
In the vast medium of the Internet, testeria manifests in many forms. Here are some of the most common ones, which often pass undetected:
Author Specific Idiocy
Backpacker Syndrome. n. When an author assumes that a three-day visit to a country he has never lived in and has no knowledge of can make him more knowledgeable about said country than someone who was born there and lived there for thirty years. The author also assumes that because of this visit, nothing he says or does and no work of fiction he produces can be racist or xenophobic.
Exemption By Proxy Syndrome. n. Even more fallacious and asinine version of “Some Of My Best Friends Are X”. When an author gets incredibly defensive, and claims that his work can’t be misogynistic, homophobic or racist because a woman / person of color / queer person he knows said it isn’t. Said person doesn’t even need to exist. Often overlaps with Pull a Bakker.
Pull a Bakker. n. An author writes blatant misogynistic propaganda, and when the female audience points this out, he gets defensive. He proceeds to claim there is hidden subtext that makes the “message” of his work more feminist than anything Hedwig Dohm, Simone de Beauvoir, Natalie Angier and Joanna Russ have ever written combined. The author in question usually exhibits signs of gender-based insecurity and self-indulgent persecution complexes that border on paranoia.
Pull a Watts. n. When an author defends another author whose work has been accused of misogyny, racism or homophobia; and in the process spouts misogynistic, racist or homophobic diarrhea in industrial proportions.
Howard’s Law. n. No author, living or dead, can be accused of racism, because he is “a product of his time”; therefore making his rampant racism not his fault, completely justified, and a-okay.
Larsson’s Law. n. If a work features numerous graphic scenes of male-on-female rape, and fetishized violence against women, it can be interpreted as feminist. No exceptions.
De Chandler. n. Works of fiction can’t be considered misogynistic if the genre they belong to is chock full of misogynistic works. The author is just following the requirements of the genre, not venting against all those vile harpies who don’t date Nice Guys™ like him. Honest.
De Morgan. n. When an author, getting incredibly defensive, claims that any instances of people pointing out his works -or someone else’s- contain misogyny, racism, homophobia or other forms of bigotry qualify as “censorship”. The author usually spouts a lot of unrelated islamophobic comments in the process.
De Martin, AKA Kratman’s Defense. n. When an author’s work is accused of containing misogynistic, racist or homophobic ideas, the author will get defensive and claim that it only contains those ideas because of historical accuracy. The author’s work in question is not historically accurate in any way; his version of misogynistic, racist or homophobic ideas is not only relatively modern, but also pervasive and superfluous to the story; and it often takes place in a world vastly differently from our own – thus throwing all claims of historical accuracy out of the window.
Terez’s Law. n. If a person who is part of a marginalized group finds something offensive in a work of fiction, the fans of said work of fiction will spout all sorts of diatribe trying to “prove” him/her wrong, even after the author of the work of fiction in question has admitted that his creation is, indeed, in some way offensive.
Whedon Syndrome. n. When an author proclaims himself a feminist in order to discourage the audience from pointing out misogyny, gender essentialism or sexism in his works.
Fandom Specific Idiocy
Fandom Law Of Authenticity. If you are going to write fanfiction, portraying the canon universe as more rigidly sexist than it already is will make your story more “realistic”, and of course much better than all the sappy stories those icky fangirls are writing. Cooties, they’re everywhere!
Fandom Law Of Pairing Plausibility. If two canon characters share an immense age gap, have never met, are enemies, share a relationship of power, are related, or are involved with someone else in canon, but one of them is male and the other one female, the pairing is still more plausible than any gay or lesbian pairing will ever be. Anyone who disagrees is a mean, delusional, raging reverse-homophobe, and is not a True Fan™.
Corollary: Two male characters who spend a lot of time together, have talked to each other extensively about emotions and feelings, regularly take hands, have “accidentally” kissed a few times, and have no visible interest in women are totally not gay. Anyone who disagrees with this is being delusional. On the other hand, two female characters who are involved with men, have a strictly professional relationship with one another and don’t interact much in canon, but look good together are totally canonical lesbians.
Fandom Law Of Rape Apologia. If a male character rapes a female character, but the two are a couple or we are informed that he does it out of love -don’t ask how that even works, this is fandom we’re talking about-, then it’s “not really rape”, therefore making it a-okay. If a female character stares at a male character who isn’t interested in her too intensely, and she doesn’t die horribly as a punishment, then the work of fiction is clearly endorsing female-on-male rape.
Fandom Law Of Realism. If a work of fiction takes place in a world in which there is magic, supernatural beings, weapons that in reality wouldn’t work, people with hair colors that don’t occur in nature or people with supernatural abilities, nobody accuses it of being “unrealistic”; but if it also has female characters who are physically strong or have ever won a fight against a man all by themselves, this automatically makes it completely unrealistic. Because the laws of the physics and common sense can be constantly defied without repercussions, but how dare you meddle with bullshit gender difference myths that have already been debunked that.
Fandom Law Of Unfortunate Implications. If something is sexist, it is sexist against men and sexist against men only. Any other view is invalid and a threat to little boys everywhere.
Corollary: If something is racist, it can only be racist against white people.
Corollary: If something is homophobic, it is homophobic against straight people. Don’t ask how that even works. Fandom wank doesn’t have to make sense. “Transphobia against cisgender people” hasn’t been popularized yet, but it will be, because privileged people are that fucking idiotic.
Special thanks to Acrackedmoon of Requires Only That You Hate fame, who already has covered this phenomenon. Readers: spread information, popularize the terms, and if you know someone who is at risk or a patient do what you can to help him.
