Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder Kicks Harrison Butker's ... uh ...

Butker went after women -- and abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, Jews, Pride Month, President Joe Biden and pro-choice Catholics.

At the MGM Grand on May 18th, after a brilliant opening act fronted by a woman, Vedder took the mike and had this to say about Harrison Butker’s hideous commencement speech at Benedictine College, which was founded by a bunch of … uh … woman. Saith Butker:

“The irony was that the football player, well, kicker, you see the kicker doesn’t have the pads because he doesn’t tackle anybody or get tackled. But he started telling men, ‘Don’t forget to puff up your chest and be more masculine. Don’t lose your masculinity.’ The irony was that when he was saying that, he looked like such a [expletive].

“There’s nothing more masculine than a strong man supporting a strong woman,” Vedder said.

Sports writer Adam Zagoria published a video of Vedder’s comments, and it quickly went viral on X, racking up more than 2.3 million views in under 12 hours (Bravo).

Kelly Stafford, wife of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, posted a strong message against Butker’s speech on Instagram.

“Women already experience enough imposter syndrome and to have a man use a platform to enforce a woman’s deepest fears is troubling,” she added on her Instagram Stories, US Weekly reported. “The fear that we don’t have a choice and we don’t belong.”

The reaction has been split:

• Butker’s speech was condemned by the Benedictine nuns in a long rant about how damned awful it was.

• The NFL stated flatly its policies were the diametrical opposite of Butker’s.

• More than 200,000 Christians have signed a petition condemning his statements and positions.

• A bishop in Indiana applauded Butker’s stance, but he seems vastly outnumbered by Catholic clergy who don’t agree.

Then we had some people defend Butker saying that he was just expressing his opinion. Whoopie Goldberg was one of them.

But there’s a problem here. When someone is preaching anti-Semitism, the inferiority of women (yes, he did, implying men need to be setting the tone in the culture and women should be home), the alleged sinfulness and unnaturalness of gays and non-cis-gendered people …

THAT’S NOT AN OPINION. IT’S BIGOTRY AND GROSS SELF-ELEVATION. AND IN THIS CASE, IT INCITES CONTROL OF OR VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN.

Now … where does Butker fall in the Toxic Manosphere?

---

The Toxic Manosphere

We’ll be looking at this more in the coming weeks, but Butker falls into the Men’s Rights Advocates framework. In short, MRA rhetoric criticizes gender equality, women’s rights, and women’s status in society more broadly. Some believe, for example, that women’s suffrage, women’s right to education and to a life in the public sphere rather than just domestic sphere have all contributed to a declining status and power of men in society, and that this needs to be reversed.

Or, like Butker said, they feel emasculated. And it’s women’s fault.

This is a major WHINE running through the manosphere. And it goes, “When you have power, I feel emasculated, so give up your power … and your freedom … and your education … and do, for heaven sake, give up having control of your own money. Or I can’t feel like a man.”

WHAT?????? WHAT A RACKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---

---

What you’re missing isn’t your manhood — it’s privilege. And if the privilege of bullying and controlling a woman is what makes you feel like a man, then you’re not a grown-up, much less a man. Work on yourself. Grow. Become a responsible adult because this is a manipulative number an adolescent runs.

And it’s not a woman’s responsibility to fix an overgrown adolescent boy who has no sense of manhood because … he’s not a man yet.

And Butker backs his whole raft of bigotries with his religion—and, in fact, religion is the enforcing agency of patriarchy.

Not all MRAs fall back on religion, but those—like Butker—who do, have immense ammunition in the verses of the Bible and the surah of the Qur’an to tell them they are in charge of women (or should be) and to preach the philosophy and use it as an excuse to demand that a wife stay home, not seek education, not have a career.

Funny, or maybe not so meaningless, Harrison Butker’s mother has been a college research fellow for 30 years. Not a stay-at-home mom.

---

The Toxic Manosphere’s Connection with Terrorism

Three of the four major groups that carried out the January 6th insurrection were initially based on misogynism and anti-feminism: the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers. So the concern from a national security point of view is that MRA philosophy connects to or leads into a toxic matrix of male supremacy, white supremacy, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. Add Evangelicism, and you have MAGA. Much, much more on this in the coming weeks.

---

Loss of privilege is a strange feeling. When you are born into a culture that elevates you because of some physical quality—whiteness, maleness—you never have any other experience than being privileged just because of what you quite naturally are: white, male, tall, beautiful, rich … and it feels like a right. After all, if you’ve always had it, you must deserve it, right? It just must be the natural order of things that you are treated well, looked up to, not challenged, adored. The seas part for you because you deserve them to!

And when, suddenly, you lose that, you feel angry and ripped off. That was yours, and nobody had a right to take that from you.

If you’re a man, that means women are supposed to have your kids for you, keep the house, do all the dirty work, defer every decision to you, stay out of the job market — and don’t compete with them!!! — and pretend you’re better than they are. And love and adore you.

Men are watching all this privilege — including getting all the plum jobs for all the big money and never having to negotiate for sex by being kind, well-mannered, considerate, and respectful — drift away. And some of them see this as a joyful proposition because when they let go of the quest for privilege they can relate to a human being who may turn out to love them more than they could possibly ever have imagined.

But MRAs want to roll back the clock. And that’s not happening. And anger and real threat are rising.

Meanwhile, thank you Eddie Vedder. You made my week.