We're not even a week into 2018 and already there's a contender for this year's Biggest Loser - a 21-year-old named George St. George who is in the process of suing comedian Iliza Schlesinger for denying him entry to "Girls Night In" at the Largo in Los Angeles. The November 13 show ran as a one night only benefit for Planned Parenthood, which sounds like exactly the kind of social event that a man like St. George (a serial litigator against women only nights) would be eager to offer his support to. "Girls Night In - No Boys Allowed" was described in promotional material as "a hybrid stand-up show and interactive discussion between Iliza and the women in the audience, aimed at giving women a place to vent in a supportive, fun and inclusive environment. Schlesinger invites women of all walks of life to "come, laugh with her and at her, and be ready to share and feel safe for an awesome night of comedy and love." We can only surmise that St. George has some fairly specific Google alerts in place to allow him to maintain constant vigilance against the encroaching matriarchy and all of its organised benefit concerts, because he purchased two tickets and attempted to gain access with another man. The pair were initially informed they could sit in the back row but were later told that both the theatre and Schlesinger had decided to maintain the women only rule and would be offering a full ticket refund instead. It doesn't take much cynicism to recognise that this is exactly what St. George wanted - the chance to feel vindicated in his manufactured oppression and to try to force some legal consequences for the nasty, mean woman who took one look at him and correctly assessed his motivations for being present that night as less than genuine. He has since engaged the services of attorney Alfred Rava, a fellow man-baby who has filed more than 150 similar complaints against businesses that he claims are in violation of California's Unruh Civil Rights Act 1959, a piece of legislation that specifically outlaws discrimination including that based on sex. According to Rolling Stone, Rava is also a former secretary of the National Coalition for Men, "a non-profit men's rights group that attempts to highlight, among other things, false rape accusations and the 'myth' that men don't do their fare share of the housework." In documents filed, Rava attempts to conflate the experience of St. George and his friend with the violence inflicted on black people in pre civil rights movement America. The two men being denied access to the Largo theatre "can best be described as being akin to the Montgomery City Lines bus company in Montgomery, Alabama circa 1955 morphing into the Woolworth's department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960." Yes, really. When you think of the warriors of the civil rights movement, a few names spring to mind. Rosa Parks. Dr Martin Luther King. James Baldwin. Maya Angelou. These names and countless others worked against a system of oppression that was violent, insidious, and upheld at every turn by the structures of power that also ensured their degradation and dehumanisation. What they did not do was suffer so that half a century later an entitled, arrogant little whinepot could invoke their struggle as if it was in any way, shape, or form comparable to the overblown tantrum of a man angry at women for making him feel bad. This is where the men's rights movement is at today. Instead of focusing on some of the genuinely challenging issues facing men such as the high rates of male suicide, drug-dependence, and oppressive expectations of masculinity (all of which are inflicted by the same patriarchy that feminists are trying to dismantle JUST FYI), they're running websites whining about how they actually DO do quite A LOT of housework BY THE WAY and trying to trick women into excluding them just enough that they can launch a lawsuit against them. Women might have to contend with an array of problems like sexual violence, gender inequality in the workplace, bearing the burden of the world's unpaid domestic labour, and being denied access to education and healthcare in regions worldwide, but that pales in comparison to the trials being inflicted on white men in 2018. Not only do they have to endure being gently teased on the internet, but they have to also suffer the indignity of seeing women and minorities be selected for some of the jobs that have traditionally belonged to them. Women are allowed to leave them or even refuse to date them in the first place, and they don't even have to explain why! Can you even imagine what that must feel like? But worst of all, men now have to contend with being excluded from events they would otherwise have no interest in attending because the hypocrisies of feminism is the very hill on which they are not just prepared but determined to die. As the old proverb has it, "Y'all don't know what it's like/Being male, middle class and white". As we enter the Year of Our Patriarchal Lord 2018, never has the reality of white male oppression been more frightening or blatant.
