I just got this in my inbox from my uncle, whom I have repeatedly told not to email me anything, ever, unless he needs something important, because this is all I ever get from him. I'm sure some/all of you have seen it before, but I just wanted some input on this... Or more correctly, someone else to be angry, too. Misery loves company and all. Thoughts?
WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED: Men Are Just Happier People-- What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles add character. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100. People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One mood all the time. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck.You can play with toys all your life. One wallet and one pair of shoes -- one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache. You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes. No wonder men are happier.
Send this to the women who can handle it and to the men who will enjoy reading it
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Why Men Are Happier, Or: Why My Uncle Should Never Email Me Again.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/11889
I've never seen such a cheerful boasting of privilege before.
You'd think men WOULD be depressed, being summed up in a short description that didn't allow them any consideration as individuals.
Charming...
That's inane. And a good reason to mark emails from him as spam.
Also, I think you may have italicized the entire community page.
So... men are happier because they're children all their lives?
"Dear Uncle,
Thank you for sending me this very nice definition of Privilege. Things like this remind me why we still need Feminism - and here I thought we had made so much progress!
Sincerely,
Me"
You do realize the primary purpose of this stuff is to antagonize, right? It's a waste of time and energy getting seriously riled up about contrasts between ridiculous caricatures of women and men. It's like getting angry at the difference between Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
I do sympathize with you though insofar as getting crap spam from people you know is extremely annoying.
Yeah it's to antagonize, I don't know what sort of relationship this poster has with her Uncle, but to me expecting a relative to understand you well enough not to send you something you'd find antagonistic doesn't seem all that unreasonable.
Then again, some of my relatives had to be taught not to send anti-feminist, right-wing, or proseletyzing religious emails the HARD way, so if that is what must be done...(a scathing rant with the "reply to all" button hit usually takes care of things.)
I don't think this should be considered anti-feminism....it's a faux anti-feminism.
If men are thoughtless, cheap, shallow, don't care about their appearance or health, can't have children, are exactly like every other man, and are all the happier because of it!!??
well, we can all pitty the poor idiots.
To define one's feminism by pitting it against such inane cartoon punching bags (as what's in the joke) can weaken one's feminism.
The joke could almost be considered an ingenius mechanism of patriarchy to ensure that there's lots of tempting easy targets and decoys around to sap, debase, and divert feminisms energy potential.
I wasn't speaking about this email specifically, just stating that I've received anti-feminist emails from relatives and "trained" them not to do it.
Though now that you mention it, inane or not, I would take a "joke" email gloating over perceived male privilege as anti-feminist as well.
It's of course annoying to receive emails that you don't want...and your uncle should respect your requests and stop forwarding you stuff. That being said...i think you're overreacting just a tad. It's "funny" because it's ironic. If you don't appreciate the irony/find it amusing that's one thing...but all you do by taking such a ridiculous caricature of gender roles personally is empower the stupid. Don't empower the stupid. Just tell your uncle...again...to stop sending you junk mail.
I similarly read the above list as ironic. Now, you totally know your uncle and would know if he meant the email as ironic or not. (From the right person the list could be either obviously sexist for embracing pedantic gender norms or obviously satirical for ironically presenting those same norms as truth.) I personally found the list quite funny because it is pure bullshit.
Tell your uncle to call you since he can't seem to fathom email etiquette. I imagine that would stop the spamming as I can't imagine he'd be willing to leave you a 3-minute long voice mail reading through this list.
If men are so much happier, why do they kill themselves more often than women?
To expand on that, in the US, 17.7 compared to 4.5
Maybe because of stupid e-mails that just assumes men are happier and if you're not then you must be defective...? Or men haven't been historically socialized to know that it's OK to be sad or depressed.
Actually our whole country seems to be sad-and-depressed-o-phobic. Sad? Take your pills and put on a frickin' smile!
Well, actually... men may commit suicide more often than women, but women attempt suicide more often than men.
I think your uncle's email has perfectly proven the continuing need for modern feminism - he's given you great ammunition. After all, it's not saying 'Why men are better', it's saying 'I admit that men have it easy', and, well, aren't we feminists because we agree that women don't have it easy and men often get away with far too much? As someone who's tired of having any discussion about women's problems marred with some man crying 'But men get raped/beaten/eating disorders/discriminated against too!', it's nice to see man being honest about how damn easy they really do have it. By saying that it's a good thing never to have to be pregnant, this email is admitting the stranglehold that reproductive issues have over women's bodies and lives, which surely is some pretty enlightened feminist thinking? Ditto the lines about never having a car mechanic lie to you, never having your chest stared at, being credited for tiny acts of thoughtfulness. To me this is all saying 'men have it well easy, and women don't.' Again, isn't this echoing why we feminists see the need for our cause?
The sign off 'send it to the women you think can handle it' is admittedly a bit antagonistic, but the rest of the contents don't bother me one bit. Considering some of the woman-hating garbage I've been emailed before, this is practically a telegram from Germaine Greer by comparison. I'd thank your uncle for proving your choice to be a feminist a wise and informed one.
Women can't open their own jars? Oh shoot, I guess now I'm going to have to write a letter of complaint to the makers of the jam jar I opened yesterday telling them that they need to step it up. Maybe then I can ask a cute guy to open it for me and we'll fall in love! But if I write them a letter, I might break a nail! Oh, what's to do?
You can be president.
Add to that Pope, Priest, etc.
Some of it is true and therefore an admittance of male privilege.
Some of it is sexist. You may want to point out which is which to your uncle.
I find intelligent response to emails of this variety often shut down the flow -
you become the feminist who "takes all the fun out of " such things or
the teacher who actually opens the eyes of family members and friends.
The thing is, a bunch of that stuff is accurate, and very reflective of sexism in society. Given the other, sexist remarks in the list, however, I'm sure the original author--and, pardon me for saying so, your uncle--never intended the list to be a genuine effort to empathize with women. It's got a condescending, "Oh, those silly girls, they should run their lives better!" sort of attitude.
I think that many items on this list are a sad inventory of everyday sexism that women face; it was very nice of your uncle acknowledge how difficult it can be for women to get equal treatment in today's world. From the rest of your post, it doesn't sound like he meant it like that though.
My husbands grandparents sent me random crap forwards that really offended me for a while. They were a slightly different type- usually something about how immigrants are ruining America. I kept quiet for a while, not wanting to alienate family, but they kept coming. So I started making up my own forwards. If they sent me something about immigrants ruining America, I'd look up quotes about civil rights and human rights and the immigrant foundations of American society and reply all. If they sent me something ridiculous about poor people scamming us out of some welfare grant, I'd send them the relevant Snopes page. Eventually they took the hint, but taking the hint requires a basic amount of decency. It may be easier just to block your uncle, and assume that in case of emergency he'll find another way to get in touch, like by phone. But sending him some of your own beliefs might be pretty satisfying...
I second a witty retort with "Reply All". I think the suicide stats would be enough in this case. and a "I asked you to please not send this to me. I ask you again, please don't send this to me. It'll make us ALL happier -- even the men. Sorry about the suicide rate, irony sucks, huh?"
I really like your idea of educating them on the opposite viewpoint.
Honestly, besides the turning the nut thing, I think that email is pretty much a feminist argument. It points out a lot of things that make life just a little bit harder for women, but which are completely unnecessary and which are usually overlooked.
Yeah, I too read this as being one step away from being self-aware. The fact that there are some things in there that are stereotypes rather than examples of privilege leads me to believe the original author was not, in fact, making a feminist argument. What a smug batch of douchebaggery, if that's the case.
As awful as it is, some of the points are true. Many good examples of why we still need feminism and how far we really have left to go.
Hahaha I think its funny.
It made me think of a Joe Dirt-ish guy cleaning his nails with a knife and wearing hideous hawaiian shorts. hahahhaa.
Funny. I do most of that stuff and I still consider myself female. Oh wait... I get mistaken for a guy. Hmmmmm. Do I care? Let me think. No.
Actually I find this part, "Send this to women who can handle it and men who will enjoy reading it" more offensive than the body of the email itself.
Hm. Maybe it's because I find manipulative statements like that more offensive than your run-of-the-mill "haha joking.. but not" sexist ones. Weird, I never thought of it before.
Oh, good goodness, these types of emails still exist? Sigh. But - an Idea, partly inspired by buggie and pcwhite's comments here. This email seems ludicrously close to self-parody, no? Well, why not simply subvert it, by flipping the sentiment of the last few lines - "no wonder men are happier, so send this to... etc., etc." on its head, into a pro-feminist argument; something like, 'Thank God for Feminism' (or whatever) and then send it cheerily winging its way back to the very same people? Including the suicide stat would be an added punch.
I bet the original was written by a woman.
"Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack."
Um, whatever. Only if you wear weggie-inducing, near see-through briefs that tear in a month.
Now, for the support and far less weggie-tastic experience of boxer-briefs, I'll pay double that for a single pair. Especially a "trunk." I like to have my junk in a... BWHAHAHA!!!! Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face there.
The rest of that email is dead on, though. >eye roll
Some men like to boast about certain qualities that they share in common with primitive animals.
This is no different.
Congratulations, you know stuff about tanks...why hasn't this man run the world yet?
Let me walk your commissioner through this: A bad Anchorman joke is a popular culture reference. A sneezing baby panda is a popular culture reference. McLovin is a popular culture reference. Anything that involved a celebrity and the police might be part of the popular consciousness, but that doesn't make it funny or appropriate. Do they get stuff like "We Jump as High as Robert Downey Jr. was in the 90s?" Did they get bedroom furniture any "popular culture references" that related to white people's suffering? (e.g. Heath Ledger)