Mark Ruffalo is an Idiot

“My response to the “I am not a feminist” internet phenomenon….

First of all, it’s clear you don’t know what feminism is. But I’m not going to explain it to you. You can google it. To quote an old friend, “I’m not the feminist babysitter.”

But here is what I think you should know.

You’re insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for your right to vote, less than 100 years ago.

You’re degrading every woman who has accessed a rape crisis center, which wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement.

You’re undermining every woman who fought to make marital rape a crime (it was legal until 1993).

You’re spitting on the legacy of every woman who fought for women to be allowed to own property (1848). For the abolition of slavery and the rise of the labor union. For the right to divorce. For women to be allowed to have access to birth control (Comstock laws). For middle and upper class women to be allowed to work outside the home (poor women have always worked outside the home). To make domestic violence a crime in the US (It is very much legal in many parts of the world). To make workplace sexual harassment a crime. 

In short, you know not what you speak of. You reap the rewards of these women’s sacrifices every day of your life. When you grin with your cutsey sign about how you’re not a feminist, you ignorantly spit on the sacred struggle of the past 200 years. You bite the hand that has fed you freedom, safety, and a voice.

In short, kiss my ass, you ignorant little jerks.”

Have you seen that before? If you have, you will probably know that this was written about a year ago and it may be old news to you, but, it's the internet. It's still out there and people are still reading it. If you haven't seen that before, it was written by Mark Ruffalo on his official tumblr. You can see it on his tumblr for yourself here.

The reason I am doing a post on it is because so many people have seen it and there are so many things wrong with it that I can't just sit here and let him write an extremely rude, ignorance filled post aimed at people who disagree with him, such as myself. This post may be a bit long, so let's get right into it.

First, if you're not sure what he is responding to, a few months before he posted this, there was something going around the internet where people were responding to the modern feminist movement by taking pictures of themselves holding signs explaining why they were not feminists and posting them on the internet, as seen in the following photos.

Here are a few examples to what Mr. Ruffalo was responding to, though there are plenty more out there if you are interested in looking. In his own words, he thinks all these women are "ignorant little jerks" because they don't agree with him. Strong, independent women who don't believe they are oppressed or weak are jerks, according to him. Not very pro modern feminism if you ask me. But that's just the beginning. 

Now to address the post itself.

“My response to the “I am not a feminist” internet phenomenon….

First of all, it’s clear you don’t know what feminism is. But I’m not going to explain it to you. You can google it. To quote an old friend, “I’m not the feminist babysitter.”

This is the first thing he wrote and he's already lost my respect and shown he's just a typical liberal feminist. The first thing they do when someone disagrees with them is say we have no idea what we're talking about and refuse to explain it to us. I've had several of these people tell me I don't know what a word means, don't understand what something is because my opinion is different from theirs, don't know what feminism, racism, sexism, etc is but have yet to have one single person give me a definition. 

They are quick to say we don't know what something is, but refuse to define anything so we can make sure we are on the same page. They prefer to just call names and say we are stupid. But, you know, when someone tells me I don't know what something is just because I don't share their viewpoint and then refuse to explain what they think I'm ignorant of, my first thought is they themselves don't know what it means. If I am in a discussion with someone and want to validate my position, if you don't seem to know what the issue even is, the first thing I am going to do is explain it to you so we can have a rational discussion and both know exactly what we are talking about. I will not say you clearly don't know what the basic foundation of this discussion is and I'm not going to tell you but here's my opinion on it. 

Elementary mistake here. He won't define his terms (which you should always do when speaking on a topic this broad), but he'll rant on about how stupid we are for disagreeing with him when he hasn't even explained what it is I'm supposed to disagree with! He didn't define what he meant by feminism so how does he know we disagree with it? This makes me think Mr. Ruffalo doesn't know what feminism is because he won't (can't?) explain it. 

So, google it. Great advice. Google is the ultimate authority on things like this because whatever results you get from google are automatically correct. If you don't know what feminism is, google it, because that will clear everything up. That's obviously what Mark Ruffalo did before writing this stupid rant. And I'm not "the liberal babysitter" but I'm going to define my terms anyway because that's what we do in a rational discussion/debate. 

That being the case, since Mark uses google to as his resource, I will use it to look up feminism as he suggested so that we all know what we're talking about. Since he suggested we google it, I'm assuming he is basing his rant off of the definition provided by google which is:

Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Now that we all know what feminism is, let's move on. 

But here is what I think you should know.

You’re insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for your right to vote, less than 100 years ago.

You’re degrading every woman who has accessed a rape crisis center, which wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement.

You’re undermining every woman who fought to make marital rape a crime (it was legal until 1993).

You’re spitting on the legacy of every woman who fought for women to be allowed to own property (1848). For the abolition of slavery and the rise of the labor union. For the right to divorce. For women to be allowed to have access to birth control (Comstock laws). For middle and upper class women to be allowed to work outside the home (poor women have always worked outside the home). To make domestic violence a crime in the US (It is very much legal in many parts of the world). To make workplace sexual harassment a crime. 

In short, you know not what you speak of. You reap the rewards of these women’s sacrifices every day of your life. When you grin with your cutsey sign about how you’re not a feminist, you ignorantly spit on the sacred struggle of the past 200 years. You bite the hand that has fed you freedom, safety, and a voice.

Wow, just wow. It's now obvious that Mark Ruffalo doesn't know what feminism is. And he is loudly showing off his ignorance on the matter. I don't see how of the signs the women made saying why they didn't need feminism showed how they were for or against any of these things. 

He is saying because I don't believe being cat called is oppression and leads to rape, that I don't want women to have access to birth control and that I don't want domestic violence to be a crime. Because I don't believe we live in a rape culture I am against voting rights for women and I'm not against marital rape. Because I don't appreciate modern day feminism, I support work place harassment. 

That is quite the attack. He is making a lot of serious accusations towards a lot of people, including many women. And he is not even talking about what the movement has become, he's talking about what it was when there were real inequality problems such as women not having the right to vote. But that's not what feminism is today. Feminism today is so petty and the problems aren't real. They blow things out of proportion all the time. A woman can be CEO today or President. How is there a war on women? How are they oppressed? Women today just want to be able to walk down the street naked and pretend it's going to stop rape. And that's what feminism today. It seems to me that Mark has this all backwards. In my opinion, to be a modern day feminist and whine because you of the questions you get asked in interviews or female movie stars who make millions of dollars a year saying it's not enough because men make more is an insult to the feminists who came before you. It's an insult to the women who fought for your right to vote and to work outside the home. What they fought for was equal rights, what you're fighting for is entitlement. 

As we saw in the definition, feminism is about equality of men and women, not the empowerment of women. And all feminists do nowadays is talk about bad things are for women and you never hear them say anything about the problems men face. Men get raped. Men face sexism. But all feminists care about is how things are for women. And that's why I'm not a feminist. I want equality for both sexes, not entitlement for one. And that doesn't mean I don't think women should vote and I don't appreciate rape crisis centers or support domestic violence as the ignorant Mark Ruffalo would have you believe. 

Then, once again, he tells us that we don't know what we're talking about and tries to minimize a whole belief by referring to the pictures as "cutsey signs". You know, there are hundreds of people out there who held "cutsey signs" saying why they needed feminism and posted a picture on the internet but Mr. Ruffalo didn't say anything about them. Apparently, if the signs are pro feminist, they are a good way to spread the word and help women everywhere, but if they are anti-feminist, they are "cutsey".

Mark goes on to say because we don't agree with the liberal idea of feminism that we are spitting in the face of the feminist movement of hundreds of years ago that brought equal rights to women which is complete crap. Just because I disagree with you, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about or that I support violence against women. In fact, it is because I know what feminism is that I disagree with you. Not the other way around. 

                             In short, kiss my ass, you ignorant little jerks.

Ah, there it is. It just wouldn't be a good ignorant liberal argument without the name calling thrown in there somewhere. Good thing he got it in there at the end, though. But, yeah, anyone who dare disagree with him (when he won't even tell us what he's talking about) is an "ignorant little jerk." Well, Mr. Ruffalo, I say you are an ignorant enormous jerk. And I am not saying that because I disagree with you on feminism. I am saying that because of the rude, demeaning, unresearched, idiotic, accusatory way you presented your pathetically weak argument. You intentionally insulted thousands of men and women because they don't agree with your idea of feminism. You just told all of us that because our opinion is different from yours we are insulting, undermining, degrading and spitting on the movement that helped violence against women, that gave us voting rights and jobs. You have told us that because we don't agree with you, we are okay with rape. 

It is you, Mark, who is the one who is being insulting, undermining and degrading. You are the ignorant one in this scenario. I don't mind being called a jerk by someone whose opinion of me I couldn't care less about - Mark Ruffalo is not important to me in the slightest. But I do mind you saying that everyone who disagrees with you is undermining rape, sexual assault, marital rape, voting rights, and access to birth control just because we want men and women to be equal and don't think cat calling warrants a public protest.