White male fragility is everywhere you look these days, despite the fact that white, straight, cisgender men continue to be the least suppressed demographic in the United States. Look no further than recently sworn in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh huffily answering to his behavior as a teen—not to mention the response of other white men who saw Kavanaugh as the real victim.
Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, white male victimization is particularly rampant online on Twitter, Reddit threads, and comments sections, which can probably be best summed up by Twitter user and self-proclaimed intersectional feminist @Xlayre, who went viral last week with the following observation.
“The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and still isn’t as sensitive as a white man on the Internet,” she not inaccurately tweeted.
https://twitter.com/xlayre/status/1088157058744999937
As the tweet spread like wildfire, it didn’t take long for Piers Morgan to weigh in with a predictably ghastly take of his own. Within 24 hours, the professional troll fired back, claiming that he would be “banned from Twitter and fired for racist toxic masculinity” if he were to turn the tables and make the same statement from a white man’s point of view.
The penis has 8,000 nerve endings too, but if I said 'it still isn’t as sensitive as a black woman on the Internet' – I'd be banned from Twitter & fired for racist toxic masculinity.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 24, 2019
Why is racist toxic feminism – like this tweet below – any more acceptable? https://t.co/99QiZDzWnE
Aside from the fact that Morgan was incorrect in his basic claim about the nerve endings in a penis (the glans of a penis has half the nerve endings of a clitoris, but what are facts?), he also essentially proved her point.
God forbid Piers Morgan of all people to be able to take a good, hard look at himself without jumping the gun and lashing out at a stranger on the internet for hurting his feelings.
But as the dueling tweets continued to go viral, it didn’t take long for it to become a Twitter meme, as others came up with other examples of things that are not as sensitive as the 8,000 nerve endings of a clitoris, or just general jokes riffing off of the original tweet.
The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and it is still not as sensitive as Donald Trump. #science
— altNOAA 🇺🇸 (@altNOAA) January 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/gooner_toni/status/1088330683980886017
https://twitter.com/__gaciria/status/1088416278983991296
the clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and men can’t find one https://t.co/JuzF9Oy3yw
— scoobs 🐻 (@22scoobs) January 24, 2019
The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and still can't see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
— Eggtopath Traveler II (@RaknaKadaki) January 25, 2019
And of course, it didn’t take long for someone to turn it around on Piers:
Let's rephrase this slightly then to something a large number of us can relate to…
— Stacie (@Shep4612) January 24, 2019
The clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings and still isn’t as sensitive as @piersmorgan on Twitter.
On one hand, it’s best not to feed the trolls, on the other hand … nailed it?