"Yeah, it’s men."

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

This is a really fascinating—and infuriating—piece by Walt Hickey at FiveThirtyEight about how male reviewers are sabotaging the online reviews and ratings of female-centered television shows:

"Sex and the City" [a show that has seven Emmys and a suite of Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards, and which ran 94 episodes through six seasons] has an overall rating of 7.0 on a scale from 1 to 10 — the average score of an English-language television series with 1,000 or more ratings is 7.3. So why did a show roundly considered seminal in the now ubiquitous genre of driven-New York-women-make-a-go-of-it programming score so low?

Yeah, it's men.

...When you rely on the wisdom of the crowd on the internet, you risk relying on the opinion of mostly men. ...Now, if men didn't feel compelled to crap on shows that plainly aren't aimed at them, this might not be a problem.

That doesn't appear to be the case.

Over and over and over, in every aspect of our culture, from online TV ratings to feminist blogs to presidential elections, any space or medium or person who fails to center the most privileged men gets attacked.

And, in each and every case, there's always an excuse. That TV show is crap. That blog is garbage run by a misandrist monster. That candidate is a bitch. Sure. Of course. It's all crap. All the blogs are garbage run by misandrist monsters. All the female candidates are bitches. (Except for that one you'd totally vote for, who just doesn't happen to be running.)

Everything by and for women is totally the worst, which justifies treating all of it—and us—with seething hostility.

But misogyny doesn't exist, and we're just looking for things to get mad about.

Yup.

[H/T to Deeks.]