The Dan Chronicles

What is the purpose of this site?

Nigel regularly reports the ongoing saga of Dan’s stupidity and his responses to it, and it occurred to me that sharing it could be useful. By keeping a journal of one typical misogynist, I hope that others are able to come to better understand that men like this are very prevalent in the patriarchy, they are a product of it, and chances are you or your significant other (if you have one) works with or knows someone like this. Too often we let misogyny pass when we could stop it, we ignore its offenses and pretend as though it were acceptable to treat women as objects. Dan is what happens when you do this. Learn from him. Laugh at him. Loathe at him. But most of all, realize that Dans are everywhere. Personally, I’d love it if the word “Dan” was co-opted by the feminists to describe all men of his ilk.

What do you mean by the patriarchy? Women have equal rights.

This site takes for granted that you have a basic understanding of the principles of feminism. If you don’t and you find yourself boggling or recoiling from the concept of a radical feminist, chances are you haven’t really looked into what feminism is, and/or you are currently trapped in the patriarchy’s web of bullshit, either as a woman-object or a privileged man. There’s a list of great sites in my blogroll that can get you started in understanding feminism.

Don’t you feel bad for exposing this guy Dan to the world without his knowledge?

Dan is not exposed. Only his stupid behavior. And I don’t feel the least bit bad about that.

Why did you censor my comments?

It’s my blog, and I can do what I want with it. You aren’t entitled to post here. If I did moderate your comment, it’s probably because it was obnoxious, insulting, or otherwise lacking in understanding for the feminist framework.

If you believe that men are so bad, why did you marry one? How does Nigel put up with your feminism?

None of your business.

Does Nigel know you’re doing this?

Yep. He often reads over my shoulder and makes helpful suggestions.

Are you a real person?

Don’t be stupid.

Dan sounds unbelievable. Is he real or are you making this up?

I really, really wish I were making it up. If you’re asking this, it’s probably because you’re a woman. Most men will read this and nod, because they’ve known a guy like this sometime in the course of their acquaintances and it doesn’t surprise them. They just don’t tell you all the gory details, because they don’t want you to know that men like this exist and that they haven’t done anything to stop them. But they do exist.

Everything that Dan says is taken from Nigel’s diligent debriefing. Some of it I’ve heard over the phone myself when Dan didn’t realize Nigel was talking to me on his handsfree. Though there is undoubtedly some slight misquoting here and there as I’ve recorded the stories, I promise you that it is very close to exactly what was said. I don’t need to add anything to make it worse, and I really don’t think I could imagine a fiction that was worse than the truth of his misogyny. My sensibilities still reel whenever I hear yet another awful tale.

When guys tell you that the things they’ve heard other guys say are vile and wrong, Dan is what they mean. The rub is… does your fella laugh along? Remain passively accepting? Correct him? Or, is he throwing in a tale or two about you? Think about it.

Why doesn’t Nigel just hit Dan? Or tell him to stop being an asshole to women and quit associating with him?

Nigel’s choices are for him to make under the circumstances (and no, hitting him isn’t an option). We often discuss his reactions afterward, and I point out the ways he could have responded differently, and he explains his reasoning, which more often than I’d like is simply that he couldn’t think of what to say in response. Nigel does have to work with Dan, and so it is not always easy to know exactly how to respond, and I understand this. Only through continued discourse as we examine his dialogues will Nigel grow past his lens of privilege and understand that while to him Dan is merely absurd and ignorant rather than threatening, to me the behavior is a threat. This project is just as much for Nigel and I, as it is for anyone else who finds it useful.

Isn’t engaging with him encouraging his behavior?

Honestly, I don’t know. I do hope that Dan will learn something from these conversations, but I think it equally likely that there may come a day when Dan stops talking to Nigel, because he finally realizes that Nigel seriously doesn’t approve of his behavior, and Dan will seek out a more favorable audience. At least, I think that’s more likely than that Dan will see the light and become a feminist. In the mean time, these conversations are useful to me. They’d be happening anyway, if not with Nigel, with someone else (and often do in Dan’s case), and so I will subvert his patriarchal entitlement into something useful for women, because I’m a radical art-bitch like that.

Hey, when you wrote [comment I made] I found it offensive and insensitive. Have you thought about your privilege lately?

I can always use a privilege check. If you notice something I’ve written smacks of insensitivity, then by all means leave a comment, so I can re-evaluate my thoughts. It’s also possible that I didn’t mean what you thought I meant, and I just wasn’t clear enough, so I always appreciate the opportunity to clarify, because if you misunderstood, then it’s likely that other people will as well. I do have some privileges, for instance being pale-looking enough to be taken for Caucasian (though I’m not), living in America, being slim, meeting a Western standard of male-approved fuckability, and other things I’m not remembering right now. Feel free to point out when these things might be screwing me up.

Hey, when you wrote [comment I wrote], I found it offensive because I’m a man, and I’m not like that. Have you thought about how that makes a guy feel?

I’ve spent most of my life thinking about how every aspect of my being makes guys feel. Everything around guys is oriented toward making them feel better. This one teensy website isn’t, unfortunately, going to change your privileged world just because it does not revolve around making you feel good. You can easily go away and find things that will repair whatever offense I’ve caused you, whereas the folks your privilege allows you to thoughtlessly repress have very few places they can turn to. This happens to be one of my such places. Get. Over. It.

Nigel is working for a corporation that is destroying the environment, fostering sexist hiring practices and exploiting the labor class in a hazardous environment. Can’t he get a job somewhere else?

Hahahaha… okay. I really didn’t expect this question. Sure, we’ll do that right after we get back from our sabbatical in the Loire. Yes, we know that making bombs that blow up the earth and allow rich men to get richer raping the environment and human rights is not an ideal place to work. But, if you think about it for a half a second, it might occur to you that if we really had as much privilege as you apparently do, Nigel would certainly be working somewhere better. We know far better than you the things that we are compromising to keep ourselves out of poverty, and your elitist condescension isn’t giving us any new clues about that.  Nigel is risking his very hard, very dirty and dangerous job (understand that his job is what keeps me in medical insurance for my lupus) by causing dissent among his peers there, and this means a literal risk to health and home, in order to try to make some difference.

I’m not saying we’re heroes here, but a little perspective wouldn’t hurt you.

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Any questions about me, my whereabouts, my family, my sex life, or those that are designed to attempt to cleverly outwit my feminist philosophies are unwelcome and will go unanswered. Content yourself with what I’ve written, or stop reading and go do something else.