The Sexist Trope of “Whining”
I love calling out whiners, I really do. There’s not much more annoying than a whining adult because that’s behavior we associate with children in need of a nap or discipline. As adults we have a natural aversion to appearing childish and we judge other adults who act childish. Lately, in our culture, being childish has become “in” with certain groups — women acting like spoiled princesses is the easy example, typically accompanied by a Disney princess or fairy sticker on her car, but examples abound for men as well. Because of this new fascination with remaining children whining is also on the rise.
But there is a difference between whining and genuinely having a grievance, and also between whining and actually fighting back.
Donald Trump is often accused of whining when he points out parts of the process he doesn’t like — people being unfair to him, the nomination process being subverted, and so on. This may be true. He may be whining. Either late yesterday or sometime today he called out Hilary using the phrase “off the reservation” in reference to dealing with men, and he implied it was sexist. By the end of the week there will be articles accusing him of whining about this as well. Because of that I want to address this: He isn’t whining here, whether he is on the other topics or not.
When he said that Clinton was running on being a woman (an accusation she admits is true) people called him sexist. She fought back and started issuing “Woman Cards”. While some of the too-clever-by-half, snarky and self-impressed radical feminists out there might find that amusing it is a terrible image. First, as many have noted, the thing appears to have a magnetic strip like a credit card. Second, the woman on it is from the bathroom symbol. Both of these will bring to mind any number of negative tropes for a huge, huge swath of people.
Then she said she “knows how to deal with men who wander off the reservation.”
First of all, what does that mean? What will she do to men that “wander off the reservation”? Second of all, what constitutes “wandering off the reservation”? Third, why only men? She chose poorly. Because, as a man, I see this as implying men disagreeing with her must be dealt with, and only men. Trump called her out on that — he’s not whining, he’s observing. It’s a horrible statement. A terrible card followed by a horrible statement. And her own SJW-types are calling it racist.
Poor idea. Donald Trump is correct here.
Whining As A Sexist Insult
God Help Me, this is going to sound like something from the MRA camp. But the word “whining” is most often used in popular media as a cudgel against men, almost a flip-side to the term “nagging.” Whining is seen as childish and very negative, a terrible quality to have. It’s seen as the opposite of being manly, and evokes a lot of negative images over-all about the man accused of it.
Think about it: When was the last time a major article of any sort accused a woman of “whining”? What would happen if Bernie Sanders hit out at Clinton and said she was “whining”? He’d likely be called a sexist (and definitely would if he called her behavior “nagging.”) Remember, a few months ago the SJW Cuck Prince Wil Wheaton got in a whole lot of hot water for using the word “harpy.”
Often, when men bring up any injustice — regardless of how they do it — this is called “whining.” It is the same way “creepy” is a cudgel, used to define vast swaths of male behavior based on the filter it is viewed through — often depending on the status of the man doing the behavior. (There was an SNL skit once with a regular cast member and Tom Brady about “how not to be accused of sexual harassment” or some such — the reason many men find this humorous and believe it, is because the perception exists that the underlying idea — being desirable — is a get-out-of-creepy-free card. And it is.)
Personally I like the word whining, and I like whinging, bitching, nagging — they are all apt descriptions of given behaviors. But the popular usage, like “creepy”, is becoming a one-sided attack on the male gender. This shouldn’t be accepted by anyone, because those sorts of double standard create a great deal of strife and frustration. Anger large swaths of the population at your own peril.
This ends up coming back to a similar theme I’ve explored before: whether or not you think it is fair, whether or not you agree, a great deal of people are angry about perceived mistreatment. A lot of men feel like their concerns are ignored, like they’re disposable, like they don’t matter, and like they are hated and reviled for being how they are born. Mocking and ignoring those concerns doesn’t make them go away, and it does nothing to mend fences between groups. The feeling of being derided and ignored is a large part of what propels such furious devotion to Trump, even among people who disagree with him: “yeah, he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole, and he’s not afraid to tell off the people that treat us poorly.”
When SJWs are triggered by chalk “Trump 2016” on the sidewalk, when the media finds him repulsive, when the Republicans are willing to tank an election for fear of him, when Democrats hate him — suddenly, all the groups his supporters hate are all aligned against Trump. All the right people dislike Trump and that makes him mighty.