Ok, some of you may have seen on Sunday my tweet talking about how if your knee-jerk response when a woman tells you to quit talking out of your ass is to call her a facist, you’re a dipshit.

Seriously.  I’m not going to sugarcoat this any more.

Look, I get it.  Getting called on your shit sucks.  No one likes that.  I don’t like it.

The difference between this guy and me is that when it happens with me, I have (finally) learned to take a step back and reflect before opening my big mouth.

Sometimes, often if the incident involves me hurting someone, I will apologize before anything else.  Then take a step back, and do some thinking.

Only after I take some time will I come back to either re-state what I was trying to say, because I’m usually not trying to be a jerk to marginalized folks, and likely chose my words poorly.  Or I’ll just let the apology stand and move on.

What I don’t do is call someone a facist, unless they are actually acting like a facist.

Telling you to stop your bad behavior is NOT the same as telling you to shut up, random dude with a bad case of mansplaination and poor reading comprehension on twitter.

I realize that really doesn’t narrow it down.

Now, what my anger was about.

When you, a dude, come into a discussion of the Captain Marvel movie, among women and their male allies, to scoff  at a point one of those women made with your foolish, Joseph Campbell worshipping bullshit, you’re gonna get told to stay in your lane.

Someone pointed out that Captain Marvel’s character arc was essentially, a dude telling her she’s too emotional, and her journey to tap into those emotions that “rational” dude was telling her were bad, to kick not only his ass, but an entire army’s ass, because those emotions were justified.

Reasons this is not “The Hero’s Journey.”

1. The Hero’s Journey is bullshit, and I blame Campbell for the state of modern fiction.

2. In the Hero’s Journey, as explained by the vaunted Campbell, and demonstrated by Star Wars and sundry other dude centric films, the hero is:
A. a dude about 9 out of 10 times.
B. who starts out wildly emotional (afraid, angry, etc…), and only triumphs when he masters those emotions.
C. aided in this quest by a wise old mentor (also a dude).

There are other parts, but those are the big three.

In Captain Marvel, we go from a place where her emotions are really tightly constrained  and she’s constantly being told that she’s too emotional to succeed, to a place where she realizes just how much bullshit that is.

In spite of the existence of Dr. Lawson, Carol Danvers does not have a wise elder guiding her.  What she has is an oppressive captor in the guise of a mentor, and a young Nick Fury, as a sidekick.  He’s not her mentor in any way shape or form.

So, yeah, her story is, if anything, an inversion of the Hero’s Journey bullshit we’ve all had crammed down our throats since the 1960s.

One of the reasons that women feel this story so strongly, is that if you are a woman with an opinion any dude disagrees with, you have been called overemotional, hysterical, and irrational more times than you can count.  Even if you’re the one remaining perfectly calm and he’s the one frothing and screaming at you.

CONSTANTLY.

So, yeah, Mansplainer du Jour, I told you to stop. I told you to quit your bad behavior and butt out of a conversation that wasn’t for you.

Could I have been nicer?

I’m sure I could have.  But I didn’t want to.

But telling you to stop your bad behavior in a thread you had no business in is not facism.

Facism would be banning you from speaking in public ever, throwing you in jail for same, executing you or putting you in a work camp.

I did none of that.

And I like to think that even if I had that power, that I wouldn’t.

But the thing all you “free speech” commandos lose sight of is that your right to free speech does not extend to anyone else being forced to listen to your bullshit.

Ever.

You can blow smoke all you want.  I get to block, mute and ignore you.  That’s my right.

I also get to have boundaries, and police conversations of which I am a part.  You mansplained, incorrectly which is the core of mansplaining, something to a group of people who were having a perfectly lovely conversation.

Asking you to stop is not infringing your free speech rights.  Neither is blocking your poorly socialized ass.

Now, who wants to talk about Captain Marvel?

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