Grade: C

Mark Zuckerberg’s little sister Donna is a leftist classicist whose book discusses how the red-pill community has appropriated the art and literature of the classical world.  Yes, the manosphere “use and abuse classical antiquity.”  Although the great thinkers of antiquity did happen to be white men, Zuckerberg resents that it should be white men who still find solace in this literary inheritance. 

It might be a little uncomfortable for her, however, that the ancient world was pretty “red-pilled” itself.  Feminist classical scholars, Zuckerberg explains, have had to “confront these problems,” which is to say, they have had to reconcile that their chosen field of study is, well, triggering. 

Is Classical Literature Sexist? 

Zuckerberg gives plentiful examples of misogyny in classic Greek literature dating back from 800 BC.  She readily concedes that ancient Greek and Roman writers such as Juvenal and Xenophon held views of women that wouldn’t be too out of place in the manosphere. When she delves into the beliefs around gender of the ancient Stoics, she ultimately comes off as a scold: 

“Stoic texts are also filled with insinuations that women are generally inferior to men” (74). 

She substantiates this with references to Seneca, Cicero, and Marcus Arlius, all of whom had fairly reasonable, yet certainly not feminist-approved opinions about women.

Throughout Not All Dead White Men, Zuckerberg is triggered by the “stereotype” that women are more emotional than men, and the implications of this for stoicism, which is perceived as a philosophy in which one does not display their emotions.  That is in fact one denotative meaning of being stoical–with a lowercase “s.” 

Zuckerberg throws around the phrase “dead white men” to describe the authors of classic literature, which shows a lack of respect for the culture which she apparently makes a livelihood studying.  She thinks of that culture as leaving a “complicated and problematic legacy” (38), and I’m sure this is that attitude of a lot of feminist scholars whose field involves Western culture and history.  Namely, the “study” it to pick it apart and critique it.  They are therefore unworthy to be the carriers of the legacy of Western culture, with their spiteful focus on race and gender, the vista of feminists scholars/ nags.

Racial Resentment? 

Zuckerberg takes umbrage at the manosphere’s use of the phrase “The New Jim Crow” to refer to their situation, namely the discrimination against men.  This term, she explains, has already been ear-marked for the purportedly discriminatory situation in which many black men are incarcerated.  The red pill community’s rhetoric, according to Zuckerberg, has the effect of “intentionally introducing confusion about who, precisely, is being oppressed” (41).  The problem is that Zuckerberg considers it axiomatic that just about everyone other than White men may be oppressed, while she assumes that this victim status can never be applied to White males.  She must not be familiar with affirmative action, which has been adjudicated several times before the Supreme Court.  In fact, it may be the only systemic discrimination in existence, discrimination in scholarships, discrimination in promotions, and job applications.  

Yet perhaps due to her own animus, Zuckerberg refuses to see through this “frame,” as she would put it.  Indeed, she uses “white men” as a pejorative, referring to the manosphere practitioners as “a group of angry white men.”  She repeats this silly phrase in one breath, while in the next breath lamenting tropes such as “angry black man.”  In her mind, Zuckerberg has decided a priori that only people of color have suffered injustice, whereas white males have only enjoyed unearned privileges.  So how could such a racist spiteful person be entrusted to study and preserve the tradition of the classics?  

Indeed, Zuckerberg resents the implicit “white maleness” of stoicism, or at least this is how she thinks it is being presented by men whom she disapproves of.  But…weren’t they white males?  It is doubtful that Zuckerberg would seek to deconstruct the “Asianness” of Confucianism.  Anyway, we are of course all free to study any philosophical tradition, regardless of race. 

Appropriating Stoicism? 

Zuckerberg feels that the alt-right and the manosphere are appropriating classical literature, in that they see their own vision of gender relations in this literature, while ignoring the progress we’ve made in the two-thousand years between:   

“These Red Pill analyses of ancient texts may seem simplistic and misguided to us” (44). 

However, she never really explains how they are wrong in identifying traditional gender relations and views on gender in classical literature, except to say that it’s old and therefore bad. In a blurb for the book, The Nation echoes this view, that men’s rights communities have a “limited and distorted view of ancient philosophy.”  But it’s even easier to argue that feminists have a “limited and distorted view,” seeing as that ancient philosophers are closer to the online right in their way of thinking than they are to modern day feminists. 

The book suggests that the Red Pill community is appropriating and misinterpreting classical philosophers, yet Zuckerberg at the same time concedes, in a discussion of Stoic philosophers, that the Stoics held views on gender which are “less progressive than they at first appear.”  In other words, the Red Pill community is not misinterpreting them?  These contradictions are why Not All Dead White Men’s thesis is a mess. 

As for the Red Pill community itself, Zuckerberg derides them as being unaware of their “white privilege,” something which she thinks exists as proof by assertion.  

Pick -up Artistry

Zuckerberg is perhaps on firmer ground when she critiques the PUA section of the manosphere.  These gentlemen reference Ovid, who wrote a poem that is a kind of classical version of PUA advice.  In fact, Ovid’s poem got him exiled from Rome to the Black Sea by Emperor Augustus, who was trying to encourage marriage and procreation among the upper classes, not recreational sex.  

Yet like her section on Stoicism, many sections of Ovid’s poem which she quotes tends to conform fairly well with manosphere ethos, which puts Zuckerberg in an awkward spot.  She saves herself from charges of hypocrisy, however, by condemning both Ovid and the PUA community which looks for guidance in his work. 

The PUA community is crass, and if indeed their only goal is to sleep with as many women as possible, one can understand a woman finding that concerning.  Incidentally, Roosh V., whom Zuckerberg discusses at length in Not All Dean White Men, as himself renounced the PUA scene and his own work and has since taken to religion. Another PUA blogger Zuckerberg discusses, who was more popular/ less censored via 2017, is the writer that went by “Roissy” who wrote the now defunct blog Chateau Heartiste. One of Heartiste’s mottos in his interaction with women was “zero fucks given” (ZFG), which is to say that he advises a blase attitude.  

One of the many things that triggers Zuckerberg about the PUA community is their conception of a “binary” between straight and gay.  Likewise, she dislikes the gender binary implied in the manosphere’s discussion of stoicism.  But really this shows a lack of understanding (or caring) from Zuckerberg on the male experience.  In the real world, a man cannot be a little bit gay but also still straight, except maybe in the theorizing of toxic academic books such Not All Dead White Man. 

Rape Culture 

When Not All Dead Men portrays the PUA community as pushing the boundary of consent with high-pressure tactics to get sex, there may be a point there. No decent person wants to think that women who don’t want to have sex are being coerced into it, even if the tactics don’t quite meet the definition of rape. Where the manosphere might be on firmer ground, however, is the topic of false rape allegations, in which men rather than women are the victim, a situation which Zuckerberg is almost by her nature unable to concede.    

As you would imagine, Zuckerberg denies the manosphere’s view of false rape allegations as a major problem facing men.  There is an extended discussion about the prevalence of false rape allegations, with the manosphere claiming astronomically high rates of false accusations, whereas Zuckerberg is more comfortable with the figure of 9%.  One thing is clear, though: She does not seem particularly worried about men being falsely accused of rape.  Furthermore, she tends to deconstruct the notion of rape such that consensual sex might end up being reinterpretted as rape given the “power dynamics.”  When Not All Dead White Men discusses the infamous Duke Lacrosse rape hoax, it refers to it as “Rolling Stone’s botched expose of rape culture in college fraternities at the University of Virginia.” (150).  The unstated premise is that there is rape culture, so the false accusation becomes merely a footnote in the effort to expose the alleged rape culture.  

This is the type of passage which shows that Donna Zuckerberg is good with language, but only in the aims of deceptively framing issues to throw scorn at her perceived enemies: right-wing, white men. 

As for the Greeks and Romans, they held what now seem to be fairly eccentric views on rape.  In certain circumstances, a man of social standing might be redeemed of rape charges should he agree to marry his victim, provided she is also a free woman.  In this case, honor is restored on both sides. 

The main thing though is that Zuckerberg likes to attribute rape culture to White men specifically, and she gets upset when the focus veers elsewhere.  For example, she finds it to be a distraction when the manosphere points to “rapefugees,” but she never explains why supposed rape culture is only problematic when it comes from White men, besides that they are apparently her avowed enemy.  

Granted, the Red Pill community holds some rather extreme views on gender–or at least some of them have expressed such views in thought experiments, such as forced marriage and the like.  But given that the West has the most liberal attitude towards women, you would think that Zuckerberg would turn her critical gaze towards Islam, where such treatment of women is much more egregious.  This is not to say that I have a problem with Islam, but that for some reason white feminists just aren’t interested in applying their withering critique to anyone other than white men. 

On the Bright Side 

On the Bright Side, Not All Dead White Men does allow one to learn about the classics and Stoicism, at least tangentially to Zuckerberg’s main arguments against the manosphere.  There is plenty of opportunity for what I might phrase as incidental learning about the classical world, about which Zuckerberg admittedly knows a lot, along the way of the book’s main focus, which is to excoriate the Red Pill community. 

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