But Mr De Niro has repeatedly gone overboard in a way that should have alerted anyone to the fact that there was something up. In public appearances, he kept stressing how much he would like to assault the President. In October 2016, just before the US election, De Niro appeared on video saying that he would like to punch Donald Trump in the face.
The desire of certain tough-guy actors to be tough-guys in the non-pretend world may be the motivation for such over-reach. But he went further. At the Tony Awards, in 2018, De Niro decided to do the naughtiest thing that a celebrity can possibly do and dropped the F-bomb live on television. More than half a century after Kenneth Tynan swore on the BBC, and almost half a century after that tearaway Peregrine Worsthorne did the same, Robert De Niro showed that the age of rebellion has not died and swore about Donald Trump live on CNN.
So absurdly over-the-top did the actor’s explosions become that a number of us now realise that we had in fact made a Hitch-style mental note about De Niro. Can we remotely feign surprise now, when we read that De Niro’s former assistant is suing him for gender discrimination and harassment?
None of this, I must stress, means that Mr De Niro is guilty of the crimes of which his former assistant – Chase Robinson – complains. I merely read descriptions such as this with an eyebrow carefully raised:
“De Niro would unleash tirades against Ms Robinson – often while he was intoxicated – in which he denigrated, berated, bullied, and hurled expletives at her. De Niro made vulgar, inappropriate, and gendered comments to Ms Robinson. He would joke with Ms Robinson about his Viagra prescription.”
And yet readers should not think that this curse only strikes down famous creepy male feminists. It afflicts the famous and obscure alike, dispersing a form of justice that drops from the heavens.
Take the case of Jon Tennant. Mr Tennant is a very little-known researcher, involved in the perhaps unwisely named “OpenCon”. He is also a pioneer of creepy male feminism. Relatively early in the current wave Mr Tennant could be found in fine mid-season form on social media doing what creepy male feminists do, and desperately shouting about trying to correct the behaviour of other men — the better to show that he was not one of them.
He started with the usual unasked for and highly debatable assertions, so in October 2016, he could be found on Twitter announcing “There’s no excuse for all-male panels anymore. If you can’t find enough women speakers, you’re not looking hard enough!” Elsewhere he would be urging his fellow males to “help with” such things as “speak[ing] up against banter (yucky word and action)”.
All of this is classic creepy male feminist behaviour: white-knighting where nobody has asked you to, protesting rather too vociferously and pretending that you would just love to write yourself out of your own field. And so, as sure as a fall follows pride, we recently see the aforementioned “OpenCon” having to release a statement about the – ahem – behaviour of Mr Tennant, with the somewhat cryptic:
“The OpenCon Code of Conduct Committee has decided to remove Jon Tennant from the OpenCon community and disallow his participation in future OpenCon events—in-person or online.”
It may be said that there are not yet enough entrants to diagnose this trend, but I would say that from Louis CK to Sam Kriss and Morgan Spurlock, it is worth keeping an eye on. Normal, regular men, do not need to try to scream their virtue on social media or anywhere else. Normal, regular women happen to notice that there is something slightly off about the sort of man who does.
So perhaps I can invite people to join me in keeping a small notebook on these cases. Next time a man talks about the importance of cancelling men, just sit back and set your watch.
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SubscribeA bit late, but the even better example of creepy male feminist is now-disgraced Canadian radio personality Jian Ghomeshi, who proudly wore his feminist and progressive credentials on his sleeve, all the while physically/sexually abusing female staff members, starstruck female fans, and even some Canadian actresses.