An Internet Meltdown

I suppose it shows that my reading habits have changed, but I only caught the news of Hugo Schwyzer’s meltdown last night. Schwyzer has been kicking around the feminist blogosphere for a long time. He’s a self-described male feminist, who likes to tell other men how to be good feminists like himself. But he’s really writing for women who want to hear men tell other men how to be nice.

I didn’t read his stuff for a lot of reasons. I don’t like his variety of feminism, which can be rather intolerant and orthodox for me. I like feminism that says, “here is situation X, which we can back up with research. And here’s why it is bad for women, and let me back that up with more concrete information. Here’s how we can remedy this situtation, and what the heck, let me give you more quantifiable information.” That’s how I was trained to look at women’s issues, so I can get very uncomfortable with some of the religious fervor and the sloppy jargon on that side of the feminist blogosphere. Hugo hung out with them, so I avoided him.

Also, my first suspicion with any guy who spends too much time talking about the evils of men is that he’s saying that stuff to get laid. I’m sure that MOST guys who call themselves feminists are not doing it to get laid, but there is a sizable enough chunk in that cohort that have scummy aims. I thought that Hugo was one of those guys, and I was right. Ha!

I think he wrote something interesting about teaching at a community college a while back, but maybe that was someone else.

Anyway, the guy had a complete mental breakdown at the end of July. Turns out he was cheating on his wife and being a hypocrite to orthodox feminism, not that I care. The weird thing is that he seems to be milking this meltdown for all its worth. He is continuing to tweet crazy shit. I smell a memoir! Ew.

Look at his website. The dude describes himself as an author, speaker, professor, shattering gender myths. The grammar on that tagline is a mess, first of all. And who the hell describes himself as “shattering gender myths?” An asshole does that.

This guy is giving tons of interviews talking about his recent and past bad behavior. His past bad behavior is rather shocking. But I am totally grossed out watching this guy capitalize on Internet infamy. Can we please stop interviewing this guy?

Some more info about this story is here, here,

And this guy was teaching classes on Porn Studies at a community college. What the hell is Porn Studies?