Liberal Mansplaining and Double Standards: The Reckless Misandry of Jonathan Chait

“Fashion tends to attract girls suffering from estrogen poisoning.”

Imagine a magazine article about soccer, golf, cosmetics, art, literature, tennis, finance, or…well, let’s say fashion, that included a phrase suggesting women’s interest in it was related to “estrogen poisoning”.

Unthinkable. Ghastly. Unforgivable. There would be an immediate call for its author to be fired. An immediate, prolonged Twitter riot, a festival of shaming. The author’s name and home address would be leaked, the author would get death threats. Demonstrations in front of the magazine’s offices would begin. Calls by celebrities, business leaders, fashion editors, newsmakers, politicians, and perhaps even the president of the united states, for the publisher of the magazine to step down, publicly apologize, or both. Advertisers would flee. It would be the hot topic on news programs and talk shows for days, and days.

But write an article that includes a phrase like that in a New York magazine, in reference to boys, about sports? No problem. Here’s the actual quote:

“Football tends to attract boys suffering from testosterone poisoning.”

I kid you not. I looked for evidence he was being ironic, self-aware, or humorous. Not there. Dude is serious. As most of us have heard it, when said by women, it’s tongue-in-cheek, a shot at male obsessions, like cars, or cigars, or boats, not exclusively about sports. Or, in an unguarded situation, when no men are in the room, I imagine, more at liberty to be frank, hostile and demeaning. Free to refer to the normal condition of being male as “poisoned”.

Since when do men say this? About boys?

Perhaps after years of exposure to it, Chait internalized the phrase, detached from any resemblance to humor or playful overstatement. Is this how liberals talk to other liberals? With a straight face?

Courtesy of Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine readers can endure a lecture by an insulting, sanctimonious, sexist, long-winded liberal, aimed at other misguided liberals, about sports. He thinks you don’t understand football. And he’s here to mansplain’ things.

Wait, there’s more. Imagine, if you will, a sentence like this in a respected New York magazine:

“Interior design channels girls’ misandristic hysteria into supervised forms, shapes them within boundaries, and gives them positive meaning. These virtues, like those often attributed to the fashion industry, can feel like clichés imported from an earlier era.”

Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s Chait’s actual sentence:

“Football channels boys’ chauvinistic belligerence into supervised forms, shapes them within boundaries, and gives them positive meaning. These virtues, like those often attributed to the military, can feel like clichés imported from an earlier era.”

There are other choice quotes, but you can read the whole spectacle here. But readers should know, the author a male. He is uneasy. And he wants you to know it.

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