Feminism and Anti-Feminism
| November 29th, 2005What if I called myself a conservative - but virtually all of my writings on the subject were devoted to passionately denouncing conservatives, and I didn’t actually favor any conservative policies to address any of today’s problems? What if I had virtually never published a positive word about conservativism (apart from “however…” type passages in essays denouncing conservatism?) What if my self-styled conservativism had the practical effect of giving myself a better platform from which to denounce conservatism?
My guess is that, if all that were the case, most conservatives would find my claim to conservatism suspect. Modern conservativism encompasses many different views, but it doesn’t encompass the view that modern conservatism is a terrible idea that ought be done away with.
On a feminist mailing list, I recently called Cathy Young an “anti-feminist journalist.” Cathy has taken issue with this:
Okay, let’s take this a bit at a time.
Is “Anti-Feminist” Always A Pejorative?
Do I use “anti-feminist” as a pejorative - that is, as the OED puts it, as “a word or expression which by its form or context expresses or implies contempt for the thing named”? I don’t think I do. I use it just as I use words like “libertarian” “republican” and “conservative” - terms which describe political philosophies.
It’s true that in the loose talk of a comments section that was (at that moment) pretty much all-feminist, I wrote that Cathy said “stupid anti-feminist things.” In hindsight, I should’ve put that more diplomatically (i.e, “endorses terrible anti-feminist ideas”), but I’m sure I’ve also referred casually to “stupid republican things” at some point in my life - and I bet many conservatives have done the same with words like “feminist” and “liberal,” when they’ve been talking casually among the like-minded. That doesn’t make any of these words pejoratives which can’t be used in a good-faith debate.
What Does “Feminist” Mean?
Before we can define “anti-feminist,” we have to discuss what “feminist” means. And here, we immediately run into trouble: feminism has dozens of meanings, depending on who you speak to. And, clearly, I have no authority (or desire) to define feminism for anyone apart from myself; people who want to think of themselves as “feminists” are free to do so regardless of if I agree.
So I’ll just talk about what “feminist” means to me. Here’s how I’ve put it in the past:
1) Believes that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.
2) Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Cathy would presumably find that a “rigid ideological definition of what ‘feminism’ is.” One of Cathy’s anonymous readers is harsher, writing that “Anyone with whom [Ampersand] disagrees on gender issues is ‘anti-feminist’ and is therefore a complete reactionary bigot.”
I don’t think either of these claims hold up to scrutiny. Far from being “rigid,” my definition of “feminist” is a vast sprawling tent, easily encompassing countless contrary feminist opinions (radical feminist, eco-feminist, liberal feminist, socialist feminist, womanist, cultural feminist, trans feminist, third wave feminist, etc etc). And although I disagree with aspects of most of those views, I’ve never called them “anti-feminist” views - because they’re not.
What is Anti-Feminism?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines an anti-feminist as “One opposed to women or to feminism.” Cathy doesn’t oppose women, but you’d have to impossibly distort her work to argue that she doesn’t oppose feminism; virtually all her writings on feminism are attacks on feminists and feminism. The OED offers a second definition: “a person (usu. a man) who is hostile to sexual equality or to the advocacy of women’s rights.” Cathy isn’t hostile to equality (and she’s not a man!), but her writing clearly is “hostile to… the advocacy of women’s rights.” She thinks women already have virtually all the rights they need, and therefore further advocacy is unnecessary.
In the introduction to her book Ceasefire!, Cathy concedes that in one area - the family/work balance - women might still have a legitimate complaint. But virtually all other concerns that justify a “case for continued feminist activism,” she dismisses as illegitimate. There’s a big difference between criticizing some feminist views, and denying that there’s a legitimate need for a women’s movement at all. How can anyone who doesn’t see a need for a movement for women’s equality, be a feminist?
As I wrote two years ago:
So, for example, conservative “feminists” argue that we shouldn’t worry about the wage gap, because it’s merely a matter of worker’s individual choices, and has nothing to do with discrimination. They argue that the rape crisis is fiction, a result of feminist exaggerations and morning-after regrets. They argue that domestic violence has nothing to do with sexism because (as Christina Hoff Sommers argued) men are equal victims of spouse abuse.
Note the common theme - in each case, the conclusion of the argument is that sexism against women is no longer a problem, and political, activist solutions - that is, feminism - is no longer necessary.
Well, that’s nice - but it’s not feminism. Feminism is and has always been about activism; feminists are trying to change society. In particular, feminism is about changing society so that women, who are unfairly kept down in our society, can at last experience full equality.
If you don’t believe that sexism is an important problem keeping women down today, then you may be a nice person, and you may believe in equality - but you’re just not a feminist.
Why This Matters: Does Feminism Have Any Meaning At All?
The danger I see in Cathy’s views is that, if they were generally accepted, the result would be that the word “feminist” would be drained of meaning. If Cathy is a feminist, then feminism is no longer “an organized movement for the attainment of… rights for women” (to quote the definition of “feminism” Cathy cites). Feminism no longer means fighting sexism against women. Judging by Cathy’s writings, her brand of feminism involves attacking feminism at every turn while generally supporting men’s rights activists.
In Cathy’s view, being a feminist doesn’t require endorsing any feminist policy positions, or ever taking a pro-feminist stand in public, or being part of a movement for attaining women’s equality, or thinking such a movement can do any good at all. In the end, Cathy seems to think “feminist” is a term that can reasonably be applied to anyone who doesn’t explicitly oppose equality. But nowadays, virtually everyone says they favor equality, so that means nothing.
I agree with Cathy that a “rigid ideological definition” of feminism would be a mistake. But the opposite mistake - being so all-inclusive that “feminism” ceases to mean much of anything - is just as bad.
Uppdatering: There seems to be a related discussion going on here. Unfortunately, I can’t understand a word of it Swedish. If any “Alas” readers can read that language Swedish, please let the rest of us know the gist of their discussion. :-)
Uppdatering Uppdatering: There’s a translation, by the author, posted in the comments now. Yay!
November 29th, 2005 at 5:14 am
My favorite definition of feminist is found in Tomato Nation:
Feminism - as befits the longest and most successful revolution the world’s ever seen - is very, very encompassing.
I would think it’s fair to say that people who believe that the revolution has gone too far, that women have more than achieved equality, are people who do not “believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes” - because they are content with the present, unequal, state of affairs. If you are not capable of perceiving when women and men are unequal, or if you believe that the present inequality is inherent to women and men’s natures, then you are certainly not much of a feminist.
On the other hand… Historically speaking, the measure of the success of the feminist revolution has consistently been that radical feminist ideas turn into mainstream feminist ideas turn into mainstream ideas that everyone’s forgotten used to be radical feminism.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:23 am
Actually, Barry, there are quite a few self-identified conservatives who have argued that the dominant brand of conservatism today (neoconservatism) is a betrayal of everything true conservatism stands for. I haven’t heard anyone refer to them as “anti-conservative.”
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:29 am
Cathy, if you want to join the discussion on this thread, I would actually be more interested in your response to this part of Ampersand’s post:
(I should admit: I am not familiar with your writings, and while I tend to trust Amp’s judgement, I’ve no direct knowledge of the kind of thing you write.)
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:57 am
Jesurgilac — yes, I do intend to reply to that. In the meantime you might find it interesting to read my post which Barry links, which explains what my understanding of feminism is.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:00 am
Amp, I’m not sure that I agree with you about iFeminists. On McElroy’s site she says
Sounds good to me.
She goes on to add
Now, I don’t agree with that. I think you’re right that it assumes women are already equal. but I don’t think this is anti-feminist. The goal is the same, the methods are just different. Nor do I think having people like iFeminists are hurtful to the feminist movement. While they’re not always right, I think they serve as an important counter-point to feminists who view women as the eternal and unwitting victims of patriarchy. We have made progress, and we still have a ways to go. I think this tension keeps me honest and realistic about that state of women right now.
I know this is a little bit off-topic, because everything I’ve read from Cathy I do consider anti-feminist because I find her writing disrespectful and dismissive of women who don’t agree with her, but I don’t think it can be applied across the board to others you mentioned in your post.
This comment was written by just a thought.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:06 am
which explains what my understanding of feminism is.
I read it.
If you wish to let that stand as an expression of your beliefs, yes, of course you are anti-feminist: I’m a little bewildered that you should want to claim yourself a “feminist” when you plainly dislike feminism so much.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:19 am
I guess one of my problems with Amp’s characterization of Cathy is the claim that most of her writings attack feminism. I don’t see that this is true. Have you tried to quantify that claim, Amp? I would say that just as many of Cathy’s columns, etc. attack the loony right as much as the loony left.
Cathy is right, too, re:” paleoconservatives. Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan are 100% against the war in Iraq and hate Bush to boot, but nobody in their right mind would call them liberals.
This comment was written by Adrienne.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:47 am
Actually, Barry, there are quite a few self-identified conservatives who have argued that the dominant brand of conservatism today (neoconservatism) is a betrayal of everything true conservatism stands for. I haven’t heard anyone refer to them as “anti-conservative.”
That’s because you’ve flipped the ends of Barry’s analogy. The “self-identified convervatives” are the old skool, concerned that the neoconservative use of “conservative” as a buzzword to cloak a decidedly non-conservative agenda is, well, damaging the meaning of conservatism; who on earth is left to stand athwart history and yell stop? —It’s those neoconservatives who are stretching the word into meaningless taffy. And trust me, demonstrating that the “dominant brand of conservatism today” is anti-conservative is something of a cottage industry.
This comment was written by Kip Manley.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 8:37 am
Cathy,
This comment was written by Broce.I just moved from Boston to Colorado, and have been a Globe reader all my life. Sometimes you make sense, but far too often I would agree with Amp that the positions you espouse are anti feminist. Many, many times, your writings have made me want to put pen to paper and let you know where I think you’re off track.
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November 29th, 2005 at 8:53 am
Cathy, I’m based in Boston and am familiar with your Globe columns. Everything you’ve written pretty much dismisses feminism and its ideas. How, exactly, does this make you a feminist?
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Well, I guess the issue is whether feminism is a “set of beliefs” or a “direction.”
In 1970, people could say “I’m paying John more than Mary because he’s got a family to support,” or “We’ve really got to hire a man for this position, to create a sense of group cohesion,” and that was completely legal. There used to be different classified sections for Men and Women.
Today, that is all obviously illegal, and I think todays “feminists” and “anti-feminists” both think this is a good thing.
The question becomes, once you’ve achieved “de jure” equality, do you declare victory and go home, or do you keep fighting until you get equal outcomes. If you stop, were you a feminist before you achieved legal equality, but stop being one after you have? Can a person, without changing her beliefs an iota, be called a feminist in 1960 and an anti-feminist in 1980? Under Amp’s definition, it seems so.
I can certainly see why someone who was identified by everyone as a feminist at Point A would think that the definition should stick.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Richard: Can a person, without changing her beliefs an iota, be called a feminist in 1960 and an anti-feminist in 1980? Under Amp’s definition, it seems so.
Under the dictionary definition of feminism, you are a feminist if you take part in “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests”. (I’ve never met a feminist who didn’t agree with the Tomato Nation definition of feminism, after all.) If, in 1960, you take part in “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests”, if you “believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes”, then you are then a feminist. If, by 1980, you have stopped doing any of that, then you have stopped being a feminist. If by 2000, you have started working and/or fulminating against people who “believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes”, then you are an anti-feminist.
Had Phyllis Schlafly lived in 1864, with the same beliefs she held in 1964, Schlafly would have been a feminist. Mainstream feminist beliefs in the mid-19th century became normal ways of thinking a hundred years later. Does this mean we should refer to Schlafly as a feminist?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:10 am
On the basis of that definition, I’m a feminist.
BTW, Amp, I’d second Cathy’s analogy of neo-conservativism vs. “classical” conservativism.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:16 am
But, as Amp says, it’s OK to be an anti-feminist. That’s not an insult (except on this blog I guess, and in certain other places). It’s merely descriptive.
It can be a virtue if you think there’s something gravely wrong with feminism (a legitimate opinion, even if I don’t agree with it), just as being anti-Republican is either a virtue or a vice, depending on your opinion of the Republican party.
This comment was written by Susan.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:21 am
I don’t claim that most of her writings attack feminism. I claim that most of her writings about feminism attack feminists or feminism.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:22 am
It seems to me the issue is one of complex , or systems ,thinking opposed to simple,or reductionist. Feminism , like every ism or conceptual structure ,is a matrix of interrelated aspects, theoretical, organizational etc and any definition WILL have an ideological component. Thats part of the tension (and a good thing). So we don’t argue yes or no whether women are oppressed but to what degree or in how many aspects of that matrix. A capitalist, white, Protestant woman is certainly less oppressed than a working class, colored, Muslim woman, or ,for that matter (here is where it gets interesting), man. Take all these variables, shift them around and arrive at different levels of subjugation, oppression,exploitation etc..
This analysis is not cookie cutter and therefore hard to sell as a program but I believe feminism as a movement for “equal rights”needs to see itself as a subset of “humanism”, or the movement for the much more magnificent concept of Justice. Here is where Left leaves Right and if you can’t go there….
This comment was written by Troutsky.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:26 am
Ifeminists consider formal equality under the law the be all and end all of feminism. I don’t think that’s enough - and neither do most dictionary definitions of feminism, for that matter.
More importantly, Wendy’s record is more than just what you quoted. And, like Cathy, Wendy virtually never uses her column to say anything pro-feminist; only to attack feminists and feminism. Check out some of the “Alas” archives about Wendy McElroy to see what I mean.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:29 am
A feminist:
1) Believes that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.
2) Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
It seems to me that Wendy McElroy and Cathy Young would agree with you on (2) (At least insofar as they are fighting for whatthey see as equality) but not on (1).
The question becomes, once you’ve achieved “de jure” equality, do you declare victory and go home, or do you keep fighting until you get equal outcomes.
I know this will sound snarky, but the way I (and a lot of people, I think) see the difference between people like Cathy Young and Wendy McElroy and people like the “Alas” writers is that the former advocate equality between the sexes while the latter actually favor feminine supremacy.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:42 am
First of all, what Kip said. :-)
Secondly, I don’t think anyone - either on the neocon or the traditional con side of that debate - is saying anything like (to paraphrase what you say about feminism) “the case for continued conservative activism is based on claims that do not stand up to scrutiny.” None of them are claiming that conservatism itself no longer has any reason to continue; they’re just arguing over which branch of conservatism is best, Ralph Reed’s or Richard Cheney’s.
You’ve overlooked the huge difference between saying “our movement, which is still desparately needed, has taken a terribly wrong turn,” and saying “the case for our movement’s continued activism does not stand up to scrutiny.” That difference is the difference between being part of a fractious movement, versus being against the movement itself.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:51 am
Yes, I agree, they would. But (1) isn’t skippable (at least, not in my opinion).
I think it would sound less snarky if you could actually come up with a single post of mine, anywhere, where I advocate for feminine supremacy.
The odd thing about this dispute is that Cathy and I actually agree on quite a lot. Cathy writes, “I believe we still need a philosophy to guide us on the journey of an unprecedented transition: a philosophy that is not pro-woman (or pro-man) but pro-fairness; that stresses flexibility and more options for all; that encourages us to treat people, regardless of sex, as human beings.” And I agree with all of that. It’s just that I think feminism at its best is that philosophy, and Cathy thinks that feminism is “the biggest impediment” to that philosophy.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:52 am
She quit. She got what SHE wanted out of it, and when feminists started advocating changes SHE didn’t give a damn about, she decided “We’re equal now (equal enough for me, anyway), so feminism is no longer necessary.” She simply refuses to understand what I think is the basic idea of feminism, and that is the idea that women are all different, and have different ideas of happiness and fulfillment, and that they deserve to persue their own happiness and fulfillment, without having to take shit from or be limited by people who disapprove of their choices.
Patriarchy puts women into two boxes (wife/mother and whore) which are really two sections of one box (chattel). Phyllis Schlalfly’s ilk lifted wife/mother out of the chattel box, put it on a pedestal, declared “mission accomplished,” and proceeded to piss on the feminists who are attempting to set the box labeled “chattel” on fire, replace it with a non-box labeled “humanity,” and give each woman (both the whores and the wife/mothers) a blank name tag and pen so that they can define themselves.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Glaivester Writes: I know this will sound snarky, but the way I (and a lot of people, I think) see the difference between people like Cathy Young and Wendy McElroy and people like the “Alas” writers is that the former advocate equality between the sexes while the latter actually favor feminine supremacy.
It is by now traditional for anti-feminists to claim that equality is really “feminine supremacy”.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I think Richard Bellamy got it right.
There’s a difference between camps as to what kind of equality they feel is important. Some feminist do feel it’s acceptable to pay some people more than other on the basis that they have a family to support. They feel this will help alleviate systematic disadvantage against women caused by their caring responsibilities. Others would disagree with that, because they feel other types of justice (such as “equal-pay-for-equal-work”) are important.
It just depends what you mean by equality. Do you mean treating everyone the same, do you mean equal outcomes, do you mean equal respect, or what? The narrowly defined “treat men and women the same” form of equality does have a distinguished pedigree in feminist though: particularly early feminism.
I don’t think the sort of definition war above really helps to clarify things. But I think both schools have a claim to call themselves feminist and I think there are important differences between them.
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November 29th, 2005 at 10:37 am
Legal equality is not the only thing we need. Cultural equality is important as well—for women to be truly accepted as the equals of men, assumed equal until proven otherwise and not vice-versa.
Equality under the law is all well and good, but it is not equality in practice. THAT is what’s important. And saying “you’re equal, now shut up” is not feminist. (Where, precisely, does one find the Equal Rights Amendment in the constitution?)(And don’t say “women have cultural advantages that make up for that,” because they are not advantages to all women, nor do they come anywhere near compensating for all the inequities that far too many people dismiss, ignore, or refuse to see.)
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Cathy:
Obviously you haven’t been reading any of the conservative verbal tar-and-feathering of Andrew Sullivan for deviating from the party line on issues such as torture, gay rights, and the way the current Iraq occupation is being mismannaged.
But *IF* Sullivan also advocated for socialism, gun control, a stronger EPA, anti-globalization measures, abortion rights, afirmative action, oacifism, etc… and called himself a conservative, what then?
You totaly side stepped Amp’s argument with a diversion over the conservative/neo conservative split, which is actualy mostly over deficit spending. Unless you’re trying to claim that the areas in which you deviate from mainstram feminism are that small. To which I say: bullshit.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 11:05 am
I agree that this is what self-professed feminists typically believe. (I myself do not believe it.) I make no comment on whether Ms. Young believes this, or whether it is necessary to believe this to be reasonably considered a feminist.
Most self-professed feminists would claim that this is what they do. In practice some advocate for the advantage of women, while most advocate for the elimination of what they perceive as disadvantages affecting women. Very few recognise, consider, or advocate for the removal, of disadvantages affecting men. It’s not true, therefore, that they advocate for equality, since the result of what they advocate would leave men at considerable disadvantage.
While most professed feminists would probably claim to meet both prongs of your definition, and there undoubtedly some who actually do it begs a rather important question to assert the second prong as part of the definition.
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November 29th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Individuals who subscribe to a philosophy but eschew its wilder, wackier extremes are typically called “moderate,” not “anti.” We have moderate conservatives as contrasted with arch-conservatives and moderate libertarians as contrasted with anarchists. Why not have moderate feminists and arch-feminists? Or classical feminists and arch-feminists? Or classical feminists and neo-feminists.
It’s typical of zealots to think that any non-purist as “anti.”
This comment was written by Karen.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 11:11 am
nik Writes: It just depends what you mean by equality. Do you mean treating everyone the same, do you mean equal outcomes, do you mean equal respect, or what?
Nik, I think the acid test (so to speak) of contemporary feminism is: Do you look around at the way women and men are treated in the world today, and think “Women and men are equal now, there’s no need for feminism!” If so, then you are not a feminist. That would appear to be Cathy Young’s viewpoint: and if, any time she writes about feminism, she spends all her time attacking it, she is not only “not a feminist”, she is an anti-feminist.
I think the attempt on the part of anti-feminists to claim that they are feminists is akin to the thinking that leads homophobes both to express deeply homophobic views, and to claim that being identified as homophobic is an insult - that they are not homophobic, they just believe it’s a bad thing to be gay. Equally, Cathy Young appears to wish to argue that she’s not anti-feminist, she just believes that feminism is bad and wrong and bad. :-)
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 11:41 am
Barry,
This comment was written by Amy Phillips.Let’s assume for a moment that your definition of feminism is correct, that one must believe that there exists “current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women” in order to be a feminist. Feminists, by your definition, would like to see that inequality eradicated, and hope that someday it will not exist. Will you, when you feel that goal has been reached, stop using the word feminist, reserving it only for descriptions of historical figures who lived during a time before the pervasive sexism you perceive was eradicated? How will you know when that goal has been reached? What criteria will you use to determine when it is time to retire the word “feminist” in favor of another word that doesn’t require belief in current, pervasive gender discrimination? And what word will you use to describe yourself when you satisfy the second of your criteria, but no longer satisfy the first because your feminist goals have been achieved?
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
this really will sound snarky, even though i’m refraining from using the language that first popped into my head: someone who believes in equality between the sexes and also truly believes equality has been achieved, may or may not be feminist, but certainly is not living in reality. anti-feminism is secondary; the primary problem here is either ignorance or a lack of logical thinking.
amy: i obviously can’t speak for anyone else, but think once equality (both legal and actual) is achieved, feminism will be moot. feminism is a solution to an existing problem, like affirmative action. it’s all about context- affirmative action only makes sense because of institutional disadvantages that exist, the same way that antibiotics are (should be?) only taken when there’s an infection. after the infection is gone, taking antibiotics is no longer necessary, and would no longer be considered medication. when women are not oppressed, feminism is no longer prescribed.
maybe ‘feminism’ should be renamed ’sexual equalism’ or something non-sexed or non-gendered, but i think someone would have to be pretty disingenuous to suggest that equality is not what the vast majority of feminists are working for. it’s ‘feminism’ because women happen to be the ones who have to overcome the societal disadvantage. again, it’s about context.
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
In general, especially since this thread is obviously going to include people from a wide range of views, I’d like to remind everyone to stay polite.
* * *
But Karen, by any reasonable survey of the philosophy of feminism, I am pretty much at the center, and Cathy - if she’s a feminist at all - is at the wilder, wackier extreme.
And it’s simply not true that I think any non-purist is “anti.” However, there’s a big difference between a “non-purist” and someone who’s entirely opposed to feminism, and I’d argue that Cathy falls mostly into the latter category.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
Kyra writes: Legal equality is not the only thing we need. Cultural equality is important as well…for women to be truly accepted as the equals of men, assumed equal until proven otherwise and not vice-versa.
While I agree with you that cultural equality would be a good thing, I do not think it is feasible. Legal equality is something we can enforce, but cultural equality is a mixture of personal experiences, sub-cultures, and opinions, philosophies, and morals. One would have to affect and manage all of those in order to truly have cultural equality. Such a society would not be one I would enjoy living in.
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
If I may, because the definition was rather vague, what is meant by ‘ opposed to feminism’? Is it lack of support for the ideaology, or a concerted effort to undermine feminism?
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
oacifism?
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
jaketk: One would have to affect and manage all of those in order to truly have cultural equality. Such a society would not be one I would enjoy living in.
Privileged people frequently feel they would not enjoy living in a society where they were no longer privileged.
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November 29th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Hey, Amy. Nice to see you here.
In a future in which women are fully equal, I don’t think it would make any sense to be a “feminist.” It would be like being a suffragette in the US in 2005 - what’s the point?
Or perhaps “feminist” would come to refer exclusively to people who are actively trying to help women abroad who are oppressed.
What would a world with no need for feminism look like?
I’m pretty positive it would have more female office-holders, more female CEOs of the big companies, more fathers spending more time with their families, much less rape, much less intimate violence. It would not be a world in which there had never been a female president or even a serious female contender for president (no insult to Victoria Woodhull or Hilary Clinton). Men and women might not have identical career paths, but there would be much more overlap, and far less of the huge inequalities we currently have - be it women’s low pay or the disproportionate chance of male workers suffering deadly injuries. If there had to be selective service, it would apply to both sexes. Men would be almost as likely as women to take time off when a newborn arrives. In gneeral, there’d be much more social support for combining caregiving and career. While some people would be active in trying to reduce abortion, they’d be doing so by trying to reduce demand for abortion, rather than by trying to use government force to cut off the supply side.
And what if women had all the rights, but men had been left behind? I don’t think that’s too likely to happen, because in my view sexism is a two-sided coin; in most cases (aboriton is the big exception) it wouldn’t be possible to reduce harm to women without reducing harm to men, as well. (For instance, getting rid of the ways the breadwinner/homemaker dichotomy harms women’s interests would necessarily involve benefits for men - less time spent at work, more time spent with family).
But if women were fine and men were oppressed, then I guess the movement I’d join would be called the men’s rights movement. Or at least, that’s what it’s called right now. It’s actually very hard to predict what words end up being picked up and used by a culture, so I don’t feel there’s really any way to say what the word will be.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
i hope i wasn’t impolite. i just think that people who don’t see the (anti-female) sexism in our society (and other societies) just don’t get it. i want to be open to other’s ideas, but i have a hard time with people who actually believe we have sexual equality. it seems that they’re either not really paying attention, or they’re somehow benefiting (or think they’re benefiting) from the inequality and/or the denial of it.
daran: i don’t think you’re being fair to feminists. i don’t have statistics on what all self-proclaimed feminists believe, but all feminists i associate with would like sexism-based disadvantages to be removed for men, too. especially my very ‘femmy’ male friend who is teased and insulted, a friend who is treated unfairly in his child custody case because he’s male, guy friends who worry about being drafted, etc. but a lot of these disadvantages for men result from the very beliefs feminists want to abolish. once people accept that being femmy isn’t bad (female is not bad) and that women don’t have to be the primary childcare givers, things will improve for both sexes. right now i can’t think of disadvantages for men that are not caused by the type of sexism feminists want to overcome, but i’d like to think i’d support the abolishment of them, too.
This comment was written by jane.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 1:05 pm
umm, sorry for the reiteration of amp’s ideas- i’m a slow typer.
This comment was written by jane.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I said:
I should clarify. It’s the ‘on balance disadvantages women’ bit I disagree with. There are certainly current, significant society-wide inequality and sexism that disadvantage both sexes, men to a greater degree.
Nor am I convinced that most feminists would insert the ‘on balance’ rider. It seems that most deny, trivialise, and/or dismiss the disadvantages faced by men.
The -ism I subscribe to, recognises that both sexes suffer in different ways from society-wide inequality, and seeks to understand and remedy this for both sexes. That -ism does not appear to be feminism.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
by any reasonable survey of the philosophy of feminism,
I haven’t surveyed feminism. I simply lived it. I remember well the bad old days. I have plenty of war stories. And plenty of “firsts.”
Once upon a time, feminism was about equal rights for women, equal access, equal treatment. There are still a few areas in which women do not have equal rights, for example, the right to serve their country in military combat, but only a few.
I do not recognize what some today call “feminism.” I don’t know what happened while I was off living my hard-won, equal-righted life confident that the cause had prevailed and I could retire from it. I am at a disadvantage in this discussion because I’ve obviously missed a lot of activity. From what I see, though, it seems that something went wrong about the time of the great equity feminist/gender feminist debate. It’s all well and good to engage on the subject of spousal abuse, for example, but don’t call that feminism. Call it “women’s issues” if you insist that it be gender-centric. Or “post-feminism” if you’re attached to the label. But don’t exclude equity feminists from feminism. It is dismissive of the good work of the pioneers and it reduces the pool of supporters going forward.
Re Cathy Young, I discovered her only recently. I found her general political commentary smart and it resonated with me so I now read her daily. If you find her “attacking feminism,” I submit that she does so in the same context that conservatives attack Pat Robertson for some of his utterances.
Movements have stages. An important marker in any movement is the determination of when to declare victory and move on. If that cathartic event doesn’t occur naturally, movements can spin oddly. They can beat dead horses or overreach or go off on some tangent or morph into something else or become a parodies of themselves, among other possibilities. It seems to me that current feminism has lost it’s touchstone and should try to find it and revisit it every now and again.
This comment was written by Karen.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Daran,
I am interested to know more about where you see anti-male discrimination. I certainly think it exists, and I have some ideas about the shape of it, but would like to hear more from others about where they see it. When thinking about equality, I do feel that there are places where women have an edge. Are different approaches needed to combat anti-male discrimination, or is it just that feminist ideals are not being applied to practices that discriminate against men?
That said, I think that in general, women’s position in the world (in this country but more dramatically in others) is materially worse then men’s position in the world. Men have more explicit power (power to command) while women’s power tends to be implicit (power to persuade, charm, cajole). Men have more money, more sexual autonomy (even without abortion/childbirth, look at women’s inability to insist on a condom in much of Africa plus general slut/stud dichotomies), and more men are in power in the business world and in politics, as pointed out by Amp. This implicit/explicit power divide is particularly problematic because it allows women to be painted as morally inferior–”sneaky,” “manipulative,” “dishonest” and men to be congratulated for being straightforward.
However, I also think that anti-male discrimination should be abolished as well–but I’d like to have a better idea of how men are discriminated against and start talking about what we can all do about it.
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
But, as Amp says, it’s OK to be an anti-feminist. That’s not an insult (except on this blog I guess, and in certain other places). It’s merely descriptive.
I don’t consider it to be an insult, although I am a feminist. It’s simply a statement of fact. It may make some folks uneasy (I’m thinking of the folks who run the site Ladies Against Feminism) if they soley identify/define themselves by what they oppose.
Karen, I’m glad you think that feminism’s done it’s job and everything is hunky dory now.
It’s all well and good to engage on the subject of spousal abuse, for example, but don’t call that feminism.
You know, even Richard Gelles, the researcher that the anti-feminists cite, has made it very clear that the majority of intimate partner violence is perpetrated by men, and the majority of people targeted and injured by these acts are women. To say that’s not a feminist issue, and that it does not point to a serious power imbalance, is ludicrous.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
I think I am in love with this blog. I would marry it if I believed in that sort of thing.
When I use the term anti-feminist is is prejorative because being anti-feminist is being discriminatory against women. That is a bad thing. Just like being racist is bad.
Young, McElroy, Sommers and Patai are cut from the same cloth of women paid and otherwise rewarded by right wing organizations to pump out antifeminist drivel. Without feminism none of these cheecky monkeys would have a job writing anything with their names attached to it.
What is ironic is that so many of them stump for FIRE and other reactionary organizations while consistently and strenuously trying to tell other women what they can’t say and viciously attacking them if they won’t shut up. Sommers tried to get a feminist philosopher kicked out oher her professional association because she didn’t like what she talked about. Patai spends a significant part of of her time complaining about what other professors (who she has never met nor observed teaching) are doing in their classrooms. McElroy and Young write the same boring articles every month making such inane claims as women are as violent as men. Give us a break ladies! How is this productive?
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November 29th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
That language in the blog update link is Swedish. I don’t know it well enough to make any reasonable translation.
My impression of Young, McElroy, and other “iFeminists” is that they tend towards the libertarian wing of the Republican party and not towards the religious/Big Nanny wing.
Libertarians tend to believe in the absense of informal discrimination, and in blind meritocracy, ie, that if government was minimized, the talent rising to the top would be predominantly white hetero male upper-middle-class-upbringing because those individuals must be naturally smarter and harder-working than all others of different gender, sexuality, color, or economic origin. Libertarians who happen to be female or persons of color tend to view themselves as exceptions to their gender or race, and hold most members of their gender or race in contempt as lazy, stupid, etc.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Libertarians do not, in fact, believe any such thing.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:21 pm
They must, or else there’s no explanation for the fact that most of the government, media, and most corporations are ruled by rich white men. If women and minorities “can’t even” succeed with the government helping them out with the occasional affirmative-action law, there’s no reason to believe that they’d succeed if we just let things go on as they have.
I am open to an explanation of how this is not true, though.
This comment was written by nerdlet.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
Jesurgislac writes: Privileged people frequently feel they would not enjoy living in a society where they were no longer privileged.
It has nothing to do with ‘privilege’. I do not know of anyone who would enjoy living in a society that dictated what you could think, feel or express, even if the society were considered a utopia. I do not think removing bias is worth removing or controlling people’s thoughts.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
I’ll be glad to derail Amp’s thread with a lengthy exposition of the libertarian philosophy and position, but right now I’m slamming on deadlines. Raincheck?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
Thank you for articulating this so succinctly. I have often found this to be the case in personal interactions with Libertarians infuriated by any efforts to correct discrimination. Since they obviously believe white male superiority to be the natural order of things, any efforts to correct for institutional bias are somehow “cheating” and unfairly favoring the assisted group. You will never, ever hear them admit to this, despite the intellectual dishonesty required to argue for this position while simultaneously denying any personal bias.
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November 29th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
Arrgh, I can’t *believe* I actually feel compelled to jump in and take this position, but:
I do think it’s possible to hold libertarian and feminist views at the same time. By Amp’s definition, no less.
I find it perfectly plausible that someone can recognize gendered discrimination and work to fight that inequality, while at the same time believing that the government is an inappropriate or counter-productive place to have that fight. One might believe that the inherent nature of government is to protect the powerful, and that attempting to create change through it will always inevitably lead to perversions of what is intended. (See, for example, what happened in Canada after MacKinnon and Dworkin passed the anti-pornography law. You know the only businesses that have been gone after with this law? Feminist- and gay-oriented bookstores. The master’s tools, etc.) Instead, they may believe that you need to have grassroots change, change attitudes rather than laws, etc.
Not saying that most, or even many, libertarians believe this. But I do think there’s some value in keeping this viewpoint in mind when thinking about how to effect change, although I certainly don’t subscribe to it whole-heartedly. (Whether this is what iFeminists actually believe, I have no idea. Someone else will have to make that judgement.)
This comment was written by AB.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
jane:
Of course. Just about everyone agrees that there should be equality between men and women, and that nobody should be disadvantaged or discriminated against because of their sex. There are very few people who are explicitly supremicist.
It’s when you go beyond the bland statement of equality, and look closely at feminist discourse, that this laudibly gender-neutral stance gives way to highly one-sided analysis and advocasy.
I assume you’re in the US
Indeed, these men have a real and justifiable fear of being enslaved by their own government and sent, possibly to their deaths, and at the very least to kill other men.
Your female friends do not have that fear, or anything remotely like it. In my opinion, this trumps every significant society-wide inequality or sexism that disadvantages women in the US today.
Not only do you apparently hold the opposite view, but you regard the expression of mine to be ‘disingenuous’.
You attribute the persecution suffered by your femmy male friend to the notion that “female is bad”, yet you don’t attribute the discrimination against fathers in family courts to the idea that “male is bad”.
You do not appear have an explanation for why it is that men and not women are generally subject to conscription. I give mine below.
I see little evidence that feminism generally has recognised that society regards men as expendible cannon-fodder. As children we watch men being casually wasted in a thousand adventure films and television shows, and it doesn’t matter. The death of a woman by contrast is almost invariably depicted as shocking or tragic. As adults we are always reminded in the media to shed an extra tear whenever there are “innocent women and children among the casualties”. It is this which conditions us all - men and women alike - to accept as normal the conscription of men, the high rates of male death in the workplace, the disproportionately high proportion of men excectuted, the millions of males selectively killed throughout the world in wars where they were either not combatents or or no choice but to be combatents.
If this is “the type of sexism feminists want to overcome”, then why aren’t feminists talking about it? Where are the feminist media analysis that discuss it? I can find any number that look at the same media, and complain about how men are depicted as being proactive, in positions of power, etc. There is a lot of feminist attention (rightly) paid to the rape of women as a war attrocity. Where is the comparible attention to gender-selective murder of men as a war attrocity?
Feminism is not the cause of these problems, of course. But feminism has been sucessful in projecting its message into the mainstream in a way that is detrimental to any solution.
Jane (in another post):
As long as it maintains it’s gendered focus, any attempt to rename it would be dishonest.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Jaketk, I agree, but I don’t think anyone here has proposed removing or controlling people’s thoughts.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 4:12 pm
I think people here should be cautious about assuming too much about Cathy’s views - especially the stereotypes of what libertarians think. Here’s part of what she wrote in a comment on the thread at her blog:
There’s almost nothing in the above quote I’d disagree with - although I’d point out that the “soft discrimination” of societal and family expectations is a form of sexism, as objectionable in its own way as direct employer discrimination.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
jaketk Writes: It has nothing to do with ‘privilege’. I do not know of anyone who would enjoy living in a society that dictated what you could think, feel or express, even if the society were considered a utopia.
Nor do I, but no one’s proposed it. What you said you would not enjoy was a society in which personal experiences, sub-cultures, and opinions, philosophies, and morals had been affected/managed by feminism to create cultural equality: that is, a society in which men were no longer privileged. That would affect personal experiences, sub-cultures, opinions, philosophies, and morals - but not because anyone was dictating what you could “think, feel, or express”.
A hundred years ago, you would almost certainly have thought that the idea of women having the vote was absurd and ridiculous. You would probably have thought that the idea that when a woman did the same job as a man she should be paid the same wage was absurd and ridiculous. You would undoubtedly have thought that when a woman marries a man she ought to take his surname and all her children should take his surname, too - and that anything else was possibly illegal, and certainly subversive. All of these things were radical feminist notions then: they are now part of mainstream thinking. I am willing to bet that your “personal experiences, sub-cultures, opinions, philosophies, and morals” with regard to these (and many other) areas has been affected/managed by feminism - but not because anyone ” dictated what you could think, feel or express”. Just because society changed, bringing radical feminist ideas into the mainstream.
Feminism is a revolution that’s been more successful than any other, in the long term, and all without killing anyone or brainwashing anyone.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
AB, this is the reason I can’t get on board with many anti-porn feminists: as long as the folks who get to decide how to use the power to censor think of “man fucks woman, subject verb object” as the norm and think of kinky lesbian sex as deviant, they’ll never use that power as I would have them use it.
(Not to get off on a tangent, but I always thought Lorde’s metaphor was wrong. A tool has no agency. Either a hammer of a screwdriver can be used as a paperweight, a doorstop or a dildo. No matter how ill-suited they are for those uses, they will not complain. Nor will they complain of who uses them, or of who benefits from their use. The master’s tools will tear down the master’s house. It is the master’s servants who won’t. )
Statutes always leave a fair amount of discretion in application. If they create private rights of action, they’ll be used by anyone with standing as they see fit. If they create regulation, their implementation and enforcement is in the hands of the regulatory agency. If they impose criminal sanction, they leave the enforcement in the hands of the prosecutor. It is in my view not only acceptable, but really necessary, for feminists to consider whether giving the government power to do something will really result in that something getting done, or if it will merely result in the government using more power for ends we do not support.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
daran mostly-
to start, i’m sticking with my “it’s about context” theme- as in “it’s called feminism because on the balance, throughout the world, women are more disadvantaged than men.” that’s why it maintains its gendered focus. when men are more disadvantaged, we’ll work toward a masculinism movement.
i’m not sure if you’re saying that *my* gender-neutral stance gave way to one-sided analysis and advocacy, or if that’s feminist discourse in general. but in case you are addressing me specifically, i will point out that i noted that i couldn’t think of any disadvantages men have that wouldn’t be at least partly addressed by feminism/ attention to women’s issues. and you didn’t give me one, so all i’ve got to work with are my own examples. and i still believe each one is related to anti-female sexism.
i don’t want to belittle your fears, but very few men of my generation confront the fear of the draft as often as women of my generation confront anti-female sexism. no-one in my generation was alive and over 18 for the last draft. and none of my male friends were/ are seriously worried about it happening. i’d be scary if it happened, but it hasn’t. no-one in the us today faces forced conscription.
it’s hard for me to accept that men’s abstract fear of a draft trumps the lower wages, rape, etc that women face every day.
and, while i think conscription is bad in general, if it does exist, women should be included.
but i still think all of these things are related to underlying sexism that is set against women. at dictionary.com, a synonym for ‘female’ is ‘weak.’ of course, if female=weak, we don’t want to send women into the military. and as a man, you must prove you are not weak, because to show weakness is to be feminine. the underlying assumption is still female=weak=bad. the end result is that men are conscripted, which is horrible, but still, the reason men are fighting is because man=strong. and feminists *are* trying to overcome this. feminists don’t believe that female=weak, male=strong.
(i’d like to point out here that there is forced female conscription in many places, although not usually enforced by the gov’t- the maoists in nepal, for example. also, i’m too lazy to look this up- what are the number of women killed in war these days as compared to men? a lot of women are killed as civilians.)
the childcare thing is an extension of this: if men take care of children, they are feminizing themselves. again, men suffer here– they don’t get custody of their kids, they lose out on relationships with their kids– but i’d argue that the underlying assumption is not that man=bad, but that man-acting-like-woman=bad.
this is also why there’s so much horror about gay men (and much less worry about lesbians): one of those men must be putting himself in the position of a woman, either in the relationship as a whole, or just during sex (being on the receiving end). a real man should be doing the fucking, not getting fucked. women are the ones who are supposed to get fucked (preferably by a man).
**in the end, even if you don’t believe the feminists are working towards these issues for men, i think that they will be resolved by feminism.**
so, give me an example where men are disadvantaged for reasons other than the anti-feminization of men, where feminism won’t help the situation, and i’ll try to fairly deal with it.
This comment was written by jane.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 5:36 pm
Yay, I get to correct this common Dworkin-MacKinnon misconception.
1. MacKinnon & Dworkin not only never tried to pass any laws in Canada, no form of the ordinance they proposed in the USA was ever adopted by the Canadian government.
2. Dworkin has written against obscenity laws such as Canada was discussing in the Butler case.
3. Books detained for inspection by Canadian Customs officials were done so under guidelines in effect for years before 1993 and these guidelines were unaffected by the Butler decision.
Thomas, you’re confusing giving individual citizens hurt by pornography the power to sue pornographers (the Dworkin-MacKinnon ordinance) with giving governments power to censure pornographic materials (the inadequate ‘obscenity laws’ we’ve got right now). Corporations and governments are already abusing their powers of censure in all the ways you express fear about, but since the proposed solution to addressing the harms of pornography is a civil remedy it would not put any more power in government or corporate hands. Quite the opposite.
Now that’s outta the way…
The first letter to the editor I ever had published was a response to a Salon.com article Cathy Young wrote in 2000 dismissing the wage gap between men and women as evidence of sexism. I agree with Amp that of the most known anti-feminists Cathy Young is one of the more cogent, but in my opinion that’s not saying too much. I also think the ideas expressed in her writings on feminism are easily identified as antagonistic to the basic concept of a feminist movement and thus are rightly called anti-feminist.
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November 29th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
This has all gone rather far from the point that I intended to make, which was that one of the prongs of Ampersand’s definition was contentions because some people would argue that many feminists do not meet it.
Ismone:
I’ve already given a few answers.
I do not agree that equality is a feminist ideal. It seems to me to be a fundamental contradiction to suggest that equality is not in practice being applied be applied equally. Sure, most if not all feminists espouse equality, but so do most non-feminists.
The problem is that most feminist discourse is one-sided, focussing upon the advantages enjoyed by men and disadvantages suffered by women, both percieved and real, while ignoring, dismissing or trivialising those that operate in the oposite direction, If it didn’t, you wouldn’t need to ask me how men are disadvantaged. You wouldn’t need to look beyond feminist discussion.
Explicit power is power that can be easily taken away. Consequently men are also more likely to be powerless. Men, not women, are conscripted, and conscripts are not typically given the power to command. More men than women are subject to forced labour (and international law permits this, for men only. Women are protected (in theory, anyway)). Men who do cannot fight are more likely to be massacred.
This doesn’t contradict what you said, but is the flip side of the coin.
I can’t comment about the situation in the rest of the world, but in the west a wift, with her smaller household allowence may have more freedom to choose what to spend it on than the husband, who has to pay the rent, pay the electricity, etc.
Again I can’t really comment on the situation in the rest of the world, nor even the power dynamics that take place in western bedrooms. It’s certainly not clear to me that women are in practice less powerful than men.
Childbirth options vastly favour women in the west. After intercourse, she can take the morning after pill, have an abortion, give birth and put the child up for adoption, or bring it up herself and demand that the father financially support her to do it. In some states she can even legally abandon the child in a designated safe place. The father can only wait to see if he has to pay for it, and maybe get some access rights if she decides to bear it.
The flipside of the slut/stud dichotomy is that a woman who choses not to have sex is regarded as chaste, while a man who choses not to have sex, or worse, who “can’t get laid” is less of a man for it.
Many more men are not in power in the business world and politics. That the Bushes are a powerful family in the US, does not mean that Dave Bush, the New York rest-room attendent, is powerful or that he derives any benefit merely because he has something in common with some powerful people.
It also allows men to be painted as abusers with women their victims.
That would be a great start.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:30 pm
How come men’s rights advocates nearly always ignore the substantial disadvantages that come with pregnancy?
Yes, only the pregnant person can choose to get an abortion - that’s an advantage for women, in a way. But it’s also true that only the non-pregnant person suffers the considerable difficulties of being pregnant - including a small but real chance of injury or death.
When will your posts acknowledge that men aren’t the only people in the world with problems? Do you really think that pregnancy confers nothing but advantages on women?
If the father brings up the child himself, he has a corresponding right to be paid child support (one of the former employees at my workplace has her paychecks garnished and paid to the Dad). That’s equal rights, not extra rights for women.
In some states, so can the father.
In practice, of course, it’s mostly mothers who end up in this situation - but that’s because the father, unlike the mother, is biologically capable of abandoning a child during the pregnancy. I think it’s obvious that the situation contains advantages as well as disadvantages for fathers.
Legally, an adoption is not valid if the biological father doesn’t approve of it.
Of course, biologically fathers and mothers are not identically situated; it’s possible for a mother to keep a pregnancy and adoption secret from the father, but not vice versa. However, I think it’s clear that the biological inequities (1) probably can’t be solved by legislation, for the most part, and (2) contain advantages and disadvantages for both parties. To describe them as favoring women, as if being the “pregnant party” didn’t also have substantial disadvantages, is silly.
Another thing that must be asked in these discussions is, what’s fair for the child (assuming the child is born)? Most of the solutions proposed to make things “fair” for Dads - such as giving fathers the right to cut and run without obligation (i.e., “choice for men”) - would obviously, in a society as bad at supporting poor children as ours, be unfair to children. Furthermore, because men would have fewer incentives to use birth control, we’d end up with more fatherless children then we currently have.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
AB wrote:
This is a very important point. The problem with legislation to fight discrimination is that government power is, at core, the power of force — laws are obeyed becasue the government enforces them. I’m not so sure it’s proper for the government to intrude into, say, private hiring decisions. If certain employers want to be sexist in whom they hire and how they treat their employees, that is, in a way, their right, just as free speech protections also apply to people we don’t like. And everybody else has the legal right to boycott those employers and write them angry letters, and write eloquent blogs to convince the public at large that sexism is wrong. We don’t want people to be nondescriminatory because it’s the law; we want people to be nondescriminatory because they know and believe with perfect reason that that’s what’s good and right and just.
In this way, de jure equality under the law isn’t the end of feminism to a libertarian feminist, but merely the end of feminism as a political movement. The cultural “battle for hearts and minds” must continue onward.
This comment was written by Zack M. Davis.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
How come men’s rights advocates nearly always ignore the substantial disadvantages that come with pregnancy?
Because pregnancy is biological, and outside the scope of what can be controlled or argued about. We can argue all day that it isn’t fair for Maude to have to carry the baby; changes nothing. We can argue about who should have control of the reproductive process in a social context, and make real decisions.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 6:53 pm
as someone who just watched a woman go through a bad pregnancy, and having been through an extremely painful abortion myself, i think that the fact that women can choose the morning-after pill, abortion or adoption, is at least met by, if not outweighed by the fact that women are the ones who *have* to choose the pill, abortion or adoption. yeah, it sucks that after a woman gets pregnant the guy loses the decision about whether a kid is born, but it also sucks that i’m the one puking and shitting and bleeding all over the bathroom floor after his sperm meets my egg, while my boyfriend is eating dinner in the next room.
i don’t even know how to answer the ‘wife with an allowance can spend it however she wants’ comment. hello?! she only gets the allowance if he gives it to her! are you serious?
and ummm, doesn’t holding most political and top corporate positions give men more power? political and economic power don’t matter in your accounting?
daran, do you really believe men are more disadvantaged because of sexism than women are? and if so, why haven’t you given us lots of examples? (’she gets to have an abortion’ and ’she gets to spend an allowance’ don’t count. and i answered the military concern above.) what are the numbers for forced labor for men? i’m sorry guys feel bad to be branded with the “can’t get laid” label, but i need more than that…
again, if you can show that men are more disadvantaged, i’ll join the masculinism group. until then, i’m going to fight on the side of the people that are politically and economically underrepresented.
This comment was written by jane.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
Zack M. Davis-
Does a fictional entity created by the government and given powers and rights not available to natural persons - such as limited liability, the centralized management of collective resources, and immortality - all for the benefit of people who can afford to invest portions of their wealth - have a right to be sexist in whom they hire and how they treat their employees?
Make a libertarian argument for allowing sole propriterships to discriminate, and I will listen. I might not agree, as there are government pressures on even those to consider, but you will be starting from a reasonable philosophical position. Ask me to let Wal-Mart off the hook, and you have abandoned any logical libertarian position. Wal-Mart would not exist without government intervention.
This comment was written by Decnavda.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
Daran,
Yes, this has gotten out of hand. If you can tell me what you think should be done to advance equality, instead of criticizing strawfeminists, I would love to hear it. Until that time, I’ll answer your arguments.
As a feminist, in fact because I am a feminist, I support drafting women. I don’t think that women’s lives are any more valuable than the lives of men. If you’ve made any other arguments, I haven’t caught them. Most feminists I’m familiar with (including MacKinnon) support women in combat.
Equality is a feminist ideal. How well certain well-publicized feminists live up to that ideal is another matter. All I argue for are policies that advance equality–equal pay for equal work, equal treatment in the workplace, equal prosecution of crimes committed against women, equal educational opportunities, etc. In the real world, this doesn’t yet exist, not even in the west. I am also concerned that right now, men are underrepresented at American universities. (Incidentally, my dad doesn’t care.) As for feminist discourse being one-sided, that is what is most commonly reported, but not what is true. Prof. MacKinnon has discussed the double standard that harms men–the myth that men are always up for sex, the fact that men are more often treated violently, that women are exempted from the draft, etc. Also, since women are materially worse off everywhere, even in the West, it’s no big shocker that feminism is focused on discrimination against women. There is more of it.
That point about husbands and wives is too ridiculous to respond to. The bottom line is, more women are below the poverty line than men, even in the US. It gets worse in third world countries.
I won’t answer the sexual autonomy point as to pregnancy and childbirth, because that’s not what I was talking about, and Amp hit that point. You didn’t answer my point about women’s inability to say no or to protect themselves against STDs.
When it comes to sexual double standards, I agree with you that it is wrong to encourage men to be sexually indiscriminate, and to punish them if they are not sexually active. I think that every person, male or female, should enter into sex freely, not be pressured into it or out of it due to social norms. A lot more women get called sluts than men get called virgins, though. And I want to get rid of the dichotomy. That means men don’t have to be studs, either.
I would disagree that explicit power can be taken away more easily. The reason that implicit power is so problematic is that it can’t be enforced. Persuasion means that the target doesn’t have to listen. They often do not.
As for women as victims, if a man, even her husband, commits an assaultative or sexual offense against her, he should be convicted. If she commits an assaultative or sexual offense against him, the same is true. There are a lot of women in the US being convicted as abusers because they tried to defend themselves and their partner called the cops first. Just like you, we’re only victims when someone commits a crime against us. If you read crime stats., most men are victimized by strangers who are also men. Most women are victimized by men who are either intimates or family members or friends or acquaintances. I’d be interested to hear what you make of that.
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
Just a few quick points.
1. It simply isn’t true that I never say anything positive about feminism. I’ve said, repeatedly, that I think feminism in the 1960s and ’70s was (despite its excesses) a worthy and much-needed movement. And by the way, it’s simply not true that “everyone” today claims to be for equality. Legal equality, yes, but it’s a leitmotif among conservative writers on gender issues (e.g. Danielle Crittenden, Wendy Shalit, Maggie Gallagher, Harvey Mansfield) that the feminist-driven of sex roles and sexual norms has harmed society and by and large made women themselves miserable. That’s a position I’ve consistently opposed.
2. I don’t think that everything today is “hunky-dory” as far as gender equality goes. (I will add, however, that the only instance I can think of today in which sex discrimination is enshrined in law — military roles — it clearly disadvantages men more than women. The ban on women in combat does disadvantage women for whom military service is a career, but male-only draft registration applies to all men, and men in the military do not have the option of serving in non-combat roles.) I simply think that today, institutional sexism against women is not nearly as great a factor in holding women back from parity in all walks of life as are unequal family roles. (By the way, I can instantly think of at least two feminist books making the same case: Kidding Ourselves by Rhona Mahoney, and Flux by Peggy Orenstein.) Unlike most conservatives, I don’t think these unequal roles are preordained by nature, immutable, or good; but I think the cultural attitudes that shape them are held by women as much as men, and give women significant advantages — such as greater flexibility in balancing work and family and greater freedom to pursue a fulfilling but low-paying occupation.
3. I think that in many areas, the so-called feminist movement in its present form is actively working against equality — e.g., demanding that female perpetrators of domestic violence be treated differently from male ones. (By the way, I’m a bit puzzled at the notion that a gender-egalitarian society would necessarily have a lot less domestic violence: isn’t this idea thoroughly refuted by the fact that domestic abuse is no less common in gay and lesbian couples than in heterosexual ones? The notion that lesbians batter each other out of “internalized misogyny” — see this article, for instance — strikes me as, to put it as politely as I can, unconvincing.)
4. As posters on this site may or may not know, I have repeatedly and quite harshly criticized conservative anti-feminists along with feminists (see, for instance, here, here and here. My book, Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, is primarily a critique of contemporary feminism but also has a chapter criticizing conservative gender politics (and another chapter which features some strong criticism of the men’s movement). I hate to pat myself on the back, but as my book was headed for publication I was advised by several people to either take out or substantially tone down the chapter criticizing conservatives in order to ensure that the book received support from the conservative media. I refused to do that.
5. I don’t really want to quibble about the definition of “feminism,” though I will note that under the dictionary definition, support for “the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes” should be sufficient to qualify, whether or not one supports the movement that claims at any given moment to be advancing these goals. Frankly, I believe that the term “feminism” has been so debased by its practitioners that I’m not particularly interested in laying claim to it (and I also think that it inherently has overtones of being “for women,” rather than “for gender equity” — which isn’t always the same thing). However, I think that the term “anti-feminist” has a very clear dictionary meaning: someone who opposes equality of the sexes. I therefore consider the term to be both pejorative and, in my case, inaccurate.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Decnavda wrote:
That’s a good point. I concede.
This comment was written by Zack M. Davis.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
One the key things I learned in women’s studies classes is that there isn’t one monolithic feminist viewpoint. There are different feminist frameworks and a process of dialog between them - liberal, socialist, marxist, radical, lesbian, -feminisms. A radical feminist (someone who believes that that sexism is the root of social inequality) could make a career out of critiquing Marxist feminism (women’s inequality is a by-product of the class struggle, comrade). To someone who wasn’t clued in, that might look like anti-feminism. The TA in my ws101 class got really hostile when i self-identified as an anarcha-(pro-)feminist - it fell outside the range of responses she was equipped to handle. I was suprised as how conservative Amp’s view of the world after feminism wins is. Presidents, Chiefs, conscription - hierachy and domination.
This comment was written by arbitraryaardvark.To those of us fighting for women’s liberation, that ain’t it.
Amp defines feminism solely in terms of equality.
It’s not that bad a working definition, but I have a few quibbles.
So if the the status and condition of men were reduced to the current status and condition of women, would that be a win?
If the Vogons came and life on earth was destroyed, so that men and women were equal, would that be a win?
I don’t know Cathy Young’s writings, so I’m not in a position to decide whether they are anti-feminist or what.
But for those of us who became sex radicals amidst the larger context of the women’s liberation movement and the anarchist tendencies of the anti-war movement, it’s quite possible to find things to criticize about today’s mainstream feminism, without being anti-feminist.
- arbitrary aardvark
i-(pro)-feminists tend to be concerned with more than is the pie cut fairly. we think about who made the pie and why, how large is the pie, will there be more pie tomorrow.
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November 29th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Jesurgislac writes: Nor do I, but no one’s proposed it. What you said you would not enjoy was a society in which personal experiences, sub-cultures, and opinions, philosophies, and morals had been affected/managed by feminism to create cultural equality: that is, a society in which men were no longer privileged.
if the basis of cultural equality is that one must agree with the feminist ideology, then such a change would only result from dictating and controlling what people could think, feel, and express. opinions that are critical of the ideology would be deemed sexist and therefore unacceptable. we have seen this before, though the term used then was ‘heresy’. what you describe has a rather utopian feel to it. perhaps rephrase it without the ‘privilege’ bit.
I am willing to bet that your “personal experiences, sub-cultures, opinions, philosophies, and morals” with regard to these (and many other) areas has been affected/managed by feminism
affected, in the area, yes, just not positively. managed, no. i generally have problems with ideologies that claim to be the ‘right one’ and i am not allowed to question that premise. not surprisingly, me and most religions don’t get along.
Feminism is a revolution that’s been more successful than any other, in the long term, and all without killing anyone or brainwashing anyone.
in order: i don’t think so (Christianity beat you by about 1900 years), that’s debatable and i know several people, including myself, who can prove that wrong. if you honestly think feminism can do no harm, is never wrong, and beyond distortion, others have thought the same thing, and… they didn’t end well. the 20th century is pockmarked with those mistakes.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Daran - there are a lot of us who believe strongly that if a draft is called it should call men and women alike. I have been heard to argue loudly and repeatedly in my conservative family that a government that would send my brother to war (married, child, pacifist) off to war, while excusing me (unmarried, childless, not pacifist), was certifiable. Fortunately for us both we are now past that age (and I have children and a spouse now), but the belief still holds. If a draft were called, I would not want my brothers, husband, sons, to be sent off to die while I sat at home because of my sex.
Does that mean that I’m not a believer in equality because I also believe there are a lot of disadvantages for women that should also be addressed? Because that’s the impression I got from your post.
This comment was written by Tapetum.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
I’m beginning to feel like a lion in a den of Daniels here. A lot of people want to take issue with what I’m saying - which is fair enough - but it’s very difficult (and time-consuming) for me to reply adequately to you all.
Ampersand:
I was responding to the claim that “men have more sexual autonomy” in the context of societal inequalities. That only women get pregnant and suffer physically is not something imposed by society. The choices I mentioned are all choices that society gives to women. (That a morning after pill is possible for a woman and not a man is a physical fact. That one has been developed and made available to women is a societal choice).
That’s a strawmen. I’ve never denied that women have problems. I’ve never denied that women suffer as a result of societal inequality. The only part of the first prong of your definition of feminist to which I do not substantively subscribe is the clause that says “which on balance disadvantage women”. In my opinion, it’s the other way around. (I do subscribe to your view that your first prong is a necessary veiw to hold, in order to reasonably be considered a feminist, but that’s a different matter entirely. I do not consider myself to be a feminist)
No, I think Western society confers advantages on pregnant women. Big difference.
That’s equal rights in theory. In practice men are less free to bring up their children himself, for a whole lot of societal reasons.
Again, theoretically.
He’s physically capable of walking away. The law (i.e society) tries to prevent this. She can’t walk away without undergoing an invasive medical procedure. Society facilitates this, if she wishes. Society also allows her, but not as a practical matter him, to walk away after the birth.
The upshot of all this is that all the choice, all the autonomy, that society can grant lies with the woman. The man is spared the physical ordeal, and can physically walk away. Neither of these is is society’s doing, and in fact, society tries hard to prevent the latter.
Obviously, but those advantages that society can grant and which can reasonably be described using the word “autonomy” fall to the woman.
This is not an area of law that I’m familiar with, but I doubt that is an absolute restriction.
The ‘as if’ part didn’t come from me. All I’ve been doing is rebutting Ismone’s proposition that women have less sexual autonomy than men, in so far as that remark was intended to apply to women “in this country” which I have presumed to be America, (context supplied by her) and in so far as that autonomy arises from societal rather than physical considerations (context originally supplied by you). (I decline to address her remarks about condoms in Africa because I am not sufficiently well informed on that subject to be able to debate them intelligently.)
On the other hand, you describe the biological inequities as “contain[ing] advantages and disadvantages for both parties.” as if those advantages and disadvantages (again in the context of autonomy) were not tipped by society in favour of women. I think that ‘as if’ coming from you, because otherwise there would be no point of disagreement between us.
Again, you are responding to arguments I have not made. Even if we were to agree that current situation was the best of all possible worlds, it would still leave all the autonomy that society can grant with the women, and therefore still represent a counterexample to the claim that women are societally disadvantaged.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
I said:
Which contradicts my original ‘no comment’. Ah well, it’s a man’s prerogative. :-)
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 29th, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Daran,
Not familiar with other Western law, but in the US, both parents must consent to adoption unless they (whether male or female) are found unfit in a court proceeding, and the standard for unfitness is that the evidence be “clear and convincing.”
My point about sexual autonomy is that the slut/stud dichotomy means that every time a woman has sex, she has to worry not only about pregnancy and the fact that she is more likely to catch a sexually transmitted disease than the man she is sleeping with (AIDS, among other diseases, is more easily transmitted from M to F than vice versa), but that having sex will ruin her reputation or damage her career.
Have you ever thought, I can’t sleep with her because if she blabs I will be branded a slut and my professional reputation will be ruined? People will gossip about me and not take me seriously? Maybe other women will treat you with disrespect and assume you’re up for it all the time?
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 12:15 am
Give back “liberal,” and we’ll talk.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 12:36 am
jane:
I don’t doubt that it sucks. It’s just not an example of “significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.”
You don’t have to, since I never said anything of the sort.
They matter, but they can look after themselves. It’s the powerless and poor that consern me, who are no less powerless and disadvantaged if they happen to be the same sex as most of the powerful and rich.
I think that, taking into account the severity of the injustice and taking a world-wide view, the total wieght of sexist injustice suffered by men exceeds that suffered by women. By ’sexist’ I mean arising from differential and distriminatory attitudes toward the sexes whether ’societal’ or individual. (individual attitudes arise from society, of course.)
I also don’t think it matters. Both piles of injustice (not to mention the pile that can’t be attributed to sexism) are so mind-bogglingly huge that the only thing to do is to take whatever tiny portion of the Augean shit that lies within your power to remedy, and do so. Think about the individual lives that you can make better, and not about the enourmous scale of the injustice that remains beyond your power to address.
Both of those were rebutals. ‘She has less sexual autonomy’ doesn’t count in so far as the claim was intended to apply to “this country”. I never said “gets to spend an allowance”. That’s a strawman. I was thinking more of my own spending, which (because I live alone) includes both typical breadwinner expenditure (rent, untilities etc) and typical allowance expenditure (food, clothing etc.) Now it so happens that I have a lot of freedom to choose what I buy in the way of food and clothing, and very little when it comes to the rent and untilies.
In reality, only a tiny proportion of my spend is truely discretionary, and it really isn’t clear to me that the discretionary spend availabe to women in households with a male breadwinner is less than that available to the man.
No you didn’t. You dismissed it. “Not my country, not my generation”. You didn’t respond like that to Ismone’s African condoms which are also not your country, not your generation.
I know that there’s been no recent draft in the US, but I think there’s a genuine danger that the Iraq situation could lead to one. And while individuals here might say that any draft should apply to both sexes, we know very well that it won’t. Nor can I imagine the feminist movement marching the streets to demand the draft for women.
What there has been in the US is a call-up of reservists, many of whom might legitimately consider their service done.
There are plenty of men in other countries who are conscripts, and plenty of men left in yours, not of your generation, who were.
One of the few very scholars to have attended to the genocidal (or “democidal”) dimension of forced labour is R.J. Rummel. In his book Death by Government, Rummel offers the estimate that “at a rock-bottom minimum, 10 million colonial forced laborers must have died” as a result of the brutal exploitation inflicted upon them, and “the true toll may have been several times this number …
Gendercide Watch is aware of no estimate of the gender breakdown of these deaths by forced labour, but the casualties must be at least 85-90 percent male, probably higher. Most corvée institutions in antiquity, in the colonial era, and in the modern age of state-building appear to have targeted males exclusively or almost exclusively. As such, corvée labour, along with female infanticide, may be reckoned the most gendercidal institution in human history
http://www.gendercide.org/case_corvee.html
I need more than women getting branded with the “slut” label, to which that remark was a response.
The “masculinist” movement, to the extent that I’ve been able to identify it, consists of a lunatic fringe with no discernable moderate mainstream attached to it. Maybe I just haven’t been looking in the right places.
Again, I don’t accept the premiss that the rich and powerful ‘represent’ the poor and weak whose gender they share.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 12:56 am
No it’s not, and you shouldn’t. The alleged “special privileges” of corporations are dramatically overhyped and actually amount to very little. Centralized management of collective resources and corporate immortality aren’t special privileges; they’re just part of a legal framework designed to simplify the operation of large corporations.
And all limited liability really means is that you can’t sue shareholders for things they didn’t do. If you’re wronged by a corporation, then you can sue the corporation and take everything it has. I believe that you can also sue the specific individuals responsible for the wrong, if they behaved in a criminal or negligent manner. But why should you be able to sue shareholders who weren’t even aware of any wrongdoing?
You also can’t sue creditors who lend to partnerships that have wronged you; is that a special privilege that gives us an excuse to regulate the hell out of partnerships, too?
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:06 am
Mostly I just read Amp’s blog rather than comment, but I’m afraid that I have an issue with one of the comments made in this thread.
I think you are terribly mistaken. If you take into account the rest of the world, barring the Western world, you’ll find that sexism affects women more than it does men. Your argument would have had some validity had you just said the Western world, but I’m afraid you really don’t know a great deal about the rest of the world if you feel that way.
First of all, most Middle Eastern countries do not allow women to have rights. In many, women cannot even vote. Women have to have chaperones. Burqas and other headwear for women is not just a sign of sex, but also a way of women to hide their skin because they are not allowed to reveal it. Rape is the fault of women, not men.
In Iran, women cannot drive cars. In the same country, girls are legally accountable at a ridiculously young age (if I remember correctly, it’s 8), while for boys, it is somewhere in their teens (this means they can be prosecuted as an adult for their crimes)
Let’s not forget the famous “honour” killings.
In China and India, countries that are grossly overpopulated, parents use infanticide and abortion on female babies/feti. Sons are valued more, and that’s why there is a huge gape between the sexes, particularly in China.
In many African countries, rape is used as a war crime. The Rwandan Genocide is one example. Yugoslavian rape camps are another. It is used as a control, and it is also the reason that more women than men have HIV in Africa.
In Turkey, a muslim country that has an extremely high rate of unemployment, women constantly risk being kidnapped and sold into the sex slave trade. Children are at risk, as well. (The sex slave trade is among the worst in Turkey.) These are countries where more women than men are unable to find work or to find work that pays for their basic needs, assuming that the law permits them to even have a job.
The list goes on and on. If you want to make claims that men have it worse in the Western world, I can understand where you’re coming from even if I don’t agree. However, to argue that men have it worse than women in the rest of the world is blatantly ignorant of different cultures.
I’m just hoping that I completely misunderstood what you were trying to say.
This comment was written by Donna.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:49 am
jaketk Writes: if the basis of cultural equality is that one must agree with the feminist ideology, then such a change would only result from dictating and controlling what people could think, feel, and express.
No. As I said, I think most (all? Well, I hate to be sweeping) people in the US believe women should have the right to vote. You probably do - don’t you? A hundred years ago, that would have been a radical feminist position. It isn’t now, because the culture in the US has changed: you now agree with that part of feminist ideology. You agree not because anyone was dictating or controlling what people could think, feel, and express about women having the right to vote, but because the feminist revolution changed the culture you live in.
in order: i don’t think so (Christianity beat you by about 1900 years),
Feminism, as a revolutionary movement, is just over two centuries old: let us say that it began to prove its successes by the time it was about a century old. For Christianity to have “beaten” feminism by about 19 centuries, it would have had to be a successful revolutionary movement in 25 B.C.E., which seems like a rather improbable claim to me.
However, that’s a historical quibble. You could always argue that you meant to say 1300 years. :-)
Christianity is a successful revolutionary movement, but not one that could ever make the claim that it’s never killed or brainwashed anyone.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:52 am
Cathy Young Writes: 1. It simply isn’t true that I never say anything positive about feminism. I’ve said, repeatedly, that I think feminism in the 1960s and ’70s was (despite its excesses) a worthy and much-needed movement.
You really can’t bring yourself to say anything unqualifiedly positive about feminism, then - not even for the brief era, well in the past, providing rights that are politically safe these days to openly support? Evidently not.
Cathy, what bothers you about being referred to as an anti-feminist, when quite patently, that’s what you are?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 3:59 am
Jesurgilac:
Do you think that not taking an “unqualifiedly positive” view of “X” amounts to being “anti-X”?
If I had said, “I think that while America has done some bad things, it has still on the whole been a force for good in the world,” would you call me anti-American? Somehow, I seriously doubt it.
How can any sane person deny that 1970s feminism had its excesses, considering that some feminist activists at the time equated marriage with prostitution and some urged complete sexual separatism?
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 4:20 am
Do you think that not taking an “unqualifiedly positive” view of “X” amounts to being “anti-X”?
Feminist ideas tend to take at least a generation to move into the mainstream. That you can, now, bring yourself to accept that feminist accomplishments in the 1970s were necessary, really says nothing more than that you don’t oppose feminism once it becomes mainstream - and that you cling to the status quo: you prefer not to associate yourself with any of the discomfort necessary to make changes, but are willing to accept the rights once they have been won for you. If you merely kept your head down and took the benefits, that would make you a non-feminist: as you attack feminism, that makes you an anti-feminist.
“I think that while America has done some bad things, it has still on the whole been a force for good in the world,” would you call me anti-American?
If you spent all your time online attacking America, and pointing out all the bad things the US has done and is doing, I would expect people to refer to you as anti-American, yes. Further, if you could not bring yourself ever to say anything positive about the US, without qualifying it with a reminder that you hate the things the US does, then perhaps you would deserve the label.
How can any sane person deny that 1970s feminism had its excesses, considering that some feminist activists at the time equated marriage with prostitution and some urged complete sexual separatism?
Feminist activists have been pointing out since 1900s at least that so long as hetero marriage legally means that the woman provides sex and the man provides financial support, marriage is akin to prostitution. (Obviously, if sex ceases to be a legal obligation and financial support becomes a mutual requirement, marriage then moves away from prostitution. But the equation has been pointed out by feminists for around a century, if not longer.) Urging sexual separatism is even older than that obvious equation: Aristophanes wrote a comedy about it in the 4th century BCE, for heaven’s sake. To pin ideas that have a long, long history on to “1970s feminism” shows a lack of historical awareness, or a willingness to believe the worst of everything labelled “feminism”.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 4:21 am
If you spent all your time online attacking America, and pointing out all the bad things the US has done and is doing
(Or even: whenever America was discussed, you attacked the US.)
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 5:04 am
Is there a category for “moderate feminists”?
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 5:39 am
Mendy: Sure, there is. But “moderate” is a funny word, that can mean different things.
I think of Molly Ivans as an example of a “moderate feminist,” in that she’s certainly not a radical feminist like Catherine MacKinnon, but at the same time she’s not far to the right of most feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers. But I’m not sure if that’s the sort of thing you’re wondering about or not.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 5:59 am
Jesurgislac:
First of all, it’s a gross caricature of my views to say that I discuss gender issues only to attack feminism. I have, for instance, extensively criticized conservative attacks on working mothers and on women’s sexual freedom. I have also criticized “biology is destiny” arguments that invoke evolutionary psychology and research on sex differences in the brain to justify traditional sex roles. I’ve written very positively about women’s athletics as an example of feminism at its best. I have written in favor of full equality for women in the military. I also find it a bit bizarre that you try to portray me as pro-status quo when I have repeatedly said that we need to change cultural expectations about male and female roles in the family. In fact, I would say that in arguing for equal treatment for men and women in such areas as child custody and domestic violence, I am far more “anti-status-quo” than today’s feminist movement.
you prefer not to associate yourself with any of the discomfort necessary to make changes, but are willing to accept the rights once they have been won for you.
“Discomfort”? What discomfort? As I see it, the “feminist” movement today is mostly about demanding female privilege, not equal treatment. “Discomfort” would be accepting that you don’t automatically have superior child custody rights because you’re a woman, and that if you assault your partner you should be treated exactly the same as a male batterer.
As for the anti-American analogy: I guess, then, your definition of “anti-American” would include any person who for the past several years has had nothing but critical things to say about American foreign and domestic policies, and who believes that the Bush administration has warped everything that America stands for?
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:27 am
Cathy: In fact, I would say that in arguing for equal treatment for men and women in such areas as child custody and domestic violence, I am far more “anti-status-quo” than today’s feminist movement.
Men and women have equal treatment under the law with regard to child custody. That women, more than men, tend to be awarded child custody, is because women, more than men, tend to have been the parent who took care of the children prior to divorce. Today’s feminist movement certainly supports allowing men who want to be more involved with child care to do so.
Men who are beaten or abused by their partners do not receive equal treatment: not only is there a strong cultural resistence for men admitting they are being beaten/abused, many resources for people subject to domestic violence are available for women only. Today’s feminist movement certainly is not opposed to men becoming more willing to acknowledge themselves as victims of domestic violence, nor opposed to men setting up domestic violence shelters for male victims. (Men appear extremely resistent to either course, but that’s hardly something that can be put down to feminism.)
So, if you’re for there being cultural changes in employment and in male status that would enable men to take equal responsibility for child care, that would enable fathers on divorce to ask for equal custody, then you are indeed in line with the current feminist movement - I’m not sure why you would think you weren’t.
Equally, if you’re for the cultural changes required that would let men being readier to admit that they are being abused and need help, and for men getting involved in helping male survivors of domestic violence, then again, you’re in line with the current feminist movement - and certainly, moving against the status quo.
Now, what have you written about wanting the status quo to change so that men work more to help other men (rather than complaining that women aren’t doing it), and men take more part in the “invisible” household work of cleaning, cooking, and looking after children? About changing the culture of employment so that taking a career break to have children doesn’t mean, for either women or men, being permanently disadvantaged in the job market? About employment law changes to enable men to claim paid paternity leave and work become more family-friendly? Without, that is, also attacking feminism?
As I see it, the “feminist” movement today is mostly about demanding female privilege, not equal treatment.
And that would be precisely why you are anti-feminist. If you perceive working for equal treatment for women and men as “demanding female privilege”, then you’ll always be anti-feminist, until the equal treatment worked for is achieved, and far enough in the past, that you can perceive it as equality rather than privilege. Supporting the status quo of male privilege is anti-feminist.
I guess, then, your definition of “anti-American” would include any person who for the past several years has had nothing but critical things to say about American foreign and domestic policies, and who believes that the Bush administration has warped everything that America stands for?
Why are we now discussing what makes someone “anti-American”?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:32 am
Cathy wrote:
I don’t think that saying that feminism was worthwhile three or four decades ago, but doesn’t serve any positive function today, is a message I’d call pro-feminist.
They still say they’re for equality - they just define equality more narrowly than you or I do. And I acknowledge that you’ve been a consistent critic of conservatives, and that you often say things I agree with. That you have the integrity to avoid easy partisanship is one reason I’ve said you’re the best of the anti-feminist writers.
I agree with you - feminists long ago won the battle for formal legal equality, apart from the military (where feminists have consistently favored formal equality, but without success). But formal legal equality is not the be-all and end-all, as I’m sure you know.
Who, specifically, is demanding this? I don’t think such a demand is widespread within the feminist movement.
What you call a “fact” is refuted by the National Violence Against Women Survey, which is (to my knowledge) the largest and best study that surveyed both lesbians and heterosexuals with a random, representative sample. The NVAW found that both gay men and heterosexual women were twice as likely to have been victimized by a male partner sometime in their lifetime, compared to the odds that straight men or homosexual women had been victimized by a female partner sometime in their lifetime. (See “Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence,” published by NIJ/CDC, page 30.)
More importantly, while there is no single cause of any complex and widespread phenomenon, I think one major cause of intimate partner violence (and also of rape) is the messages we teach kids - but especially boys - about masculinity, entitlement, and violence. A less sexist society would result in fewer men - gay or straight - who batter and rape.
Well, the article you link to is sums up research, but doesn’t describe the research in enough detail for me to be convinced or unconvinced.
However, as a matter of theory, I don’t find it hard to believe that some women are misogynists, nor that women who beat other women are particularly likely to be misogynistic.
Which is great, and says a lot about your integrity. You should be proud of your refusal to give in to such pressure. Again, when I say I think of you as an anti-feminist, that doesn’t mean that I doubt your integrity; it’s just how I describe the political position you’ve taken.
I’m not sure how to respond to this. Logically, if I can quote a definition from a respected dictionary which doesn’t have the meaning you cite, that absolutely proves that the meaning you cite is not the only legitimate dictionary definition.
I’ve already quoted the OED, which is often considered the world’s most authoritative dictionary. That dictionary definition said (emphasis added by me) “One opposed to women OR to feminism”; it did not say that anti-feminists necessarily oppose equality of the sexes.
The dictionary definition you claim for “anti-feminist” does not appear in all respected dictionaries; you can’t reasonably claim it’s the only legitimate dictionary definition out there.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:34 am
One more comment, and I’m afraid I’m probably going to have to bow out of this thread for lack of time.
Barry’s definition of “feminist” incorporates supporting a movement for equality between men and women.
I have, in fact, repeatedly said that I think we need a gender equality movement. I just don’t think that’s what feminism (by and large), is today.
Good day to you all.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:50 am
Thanks for taking part in this thread, Cathy.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:54 am
Cathy, thanks for taking the time to post on this thread, and for being so nice about being the subject of criticism.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:34 am
Sheelzebub,
the majority of intimate partner violence is perpetrated by men, and the majority of people targeted and injured by these acts are women. To say that’s not a feminist issue, and that it does not point to a serious power imbalance, is ludicrous.
Working backwards from that statement I come up with a definition of a feminist issue as any power imbalance that disadvantages women more often than men. That’s an OK definition. It’s not my definition, but it’s a coherent one and you’re entitled to it. You are entitled to it right up to the point where you treat men and women unequally in the same situation, that is. That would be a departure from feminism. Preferential treatment for women is anti-feminist as I have known and lived feminism.
We women best maintain the power we have worked so hard for by not overreaching. We overreach when we seek preferential treatment, when we frame issues such as violence as woman-centric rather than violence-centric, when we leave out of your definition “inherently, significantly, and remediably” as modifiers for “disadvantages,” and when we convey an attitude of hostility towards men. Those are all self-defeating in the long run, IMO. Women would be better served by feminists avoiding the the false consensus effect and the immoderateness nurtured in the feminist echo chamber exemplified by choosing not to “other” women like Cathy Young .
This comment was written by Karen.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:41 am
Since I didn’t see Jesurgislac and Barry’s last posts before mine, I’ll reply.
If you perceive working for equal treatment for women and men as “demanding female privilege”, then you’ll always be anti-feminist, until the equal treatment worked for is achieved, and far enough in the past, that you can perceive it as equality rather than privilege.
Pardon me? I think I can distinguish equality from privilege, thank you very much. You keep trying to ascribe to me a pro-status-quo view, when I actually think that the status quo does, in part, represent female privilege. (And yes, aspects of male privilege still exist as well.)
Also, has it ever occurred to you that political movements tend to self-perpetuate and that for people whose identity is wrapped up being a feminist, there is always going to be some elusive measure of equality that has not yet been achieved?
So, if you’re for there being cultural changes in employment and in male status that would enable men to take equal responsibility for child care, that would enable fathers on divorce to ask for equal custody, then you are indeed in line with the current feminist movement - I’m not sure why you would think you weren’t.
Really? Is that why the National Organization for Women passed a resolution a few years ago comparing men who seek custody of their children to batterers? Is that why, any time there’s a high-profile case of a successful career woman losing custody of her children, there is a howl of feminist outrage about women being “punished” for career success?
Equally, if you’re for the cultural changes required that would let men being readier to admit that they are being abused and need help, and for men getting involved in helping male survivors of domestic violence, then again, you’re in line with the current feminist movement - and certainly, moving against the status quo.
We must be looking at two different feminist movements, then. Are you aware that two years ago, the staff of a domestic violence shelter walked on on the meeting of the Family Violence Council in Cecil County, MD to protest the showing of a video about men abused by women?
As for your question to me: If you want to read more of my work, you’re welcome to look around my website (www.cathyyoung.net). I have written more than once about the need for society to facilitate male involvement with children. Have I done so “without attacking feminists”? Well, in this article, for instance, I have good things to say about some feminists and bad things to say about others. As I have said, I think that the women’s movement in its current form is part of the problem, so my solution is going to include criticism of “feminists” from a pro-equality point of view. Sorry if that isn’t to your liking.
Barry, re feminists demanding that women who commit domestic assault be treated differently from men: I think we had this discussion recently on my blog. Obviously, we disagree about some pretty basic definitional issues. You think they are trying to keep battered women who use violence in self-defense from being treated as abusers. I think they’re trying to ensure that women who use violence are presumptively treated as victims whether they are or not.
About the NWSA and gay/lesbian violence: as I recall, the sample of gays and lesbians in the NWSA was pretty small, probably too small to make any statistically significant conclusions. Studies with comparable samples of lesbians and straight women have found that lesbians are at least as likely to be abused.
Finally, returning once again to the term “anti-feminist.” I object to it because it lumps me together with people who favor traditional gender roles and oppose gender equality (which is its most commonly used meaning). If you had called me a “critic of feminism,” I would not have batted an eye.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:45 am
And sorry, this really has to be it for now. I apologize if the tone of my last post was somewhat snarky toward Jesurgislac. Barry, thanks for the discussion (and Karen, great post!).
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:45 am
I think I can distinguish equality from privilege, thank you very much. You keep trying to ascribe to me a pro-status-quo view, when I actually think that the status quo does, in part, represent female privilege.
Well, that would argue that you not only can’t distinguish equality from privilege, you also perceive male privilege and female disprivilege as female privilege.
But, as you’ve already said you wanted to leave this discussion, I’ll refrain from engaging your other points.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:59 am
Samantha, thanks for the correction. I quoted without thinking, and I’m frankly embarrassed that I didn’t notice the error, because I used to know this stuff.
I agree that Canadian customs was always homophobic, etc. Butler merely gave them more excuses to censor what they wanted to censor.
In the US, the federal statute that attempted to enact a private right of action was called the Pornography Victims’ Compensation Act. (You probably know all this, but) it was introduced by that right-winger Mitch McConnell in the wake of the Meese Commission, but never passed. I’m not sure what position Dworkin or MacKinnon took on it. I read the bill during the years when it was a live issue, and I remember thinking that the real goal was to put forward church members who had standing to stop the production of BDSM-related material and to chill further production. So, I re-read the bill, which I found here. I was troubled by this:
coupled with this:
And that’s before we get to the definitions:
So, by definition, a man or woman with a dildo inside him or her is violent.
Also, material depicting bondage is violent.
Further, the statute is gender-neutral. I’ve been open on this blog that I’m a sodomasochist, and that I’m mostly a bottom. So, suppose my wife and I do a scene where she tells me to kneel in front of her, naked, and kicks me in the testicles. If we take some video and put it on the web, and some right-wing activist comes forward to say that he was forced (perhaps by a male partner before he was “cured”) to kneel naked and kicked in the testicles, then he can sue my wife and I — even if we posted the material to a BDSM forum intending that it be viewed by folks who do consensual BDSM. Even if we did it for no money, just to give something to the community. And his evidence might just be the similarity. Now, I don’t think that’s all that similar, but remember that this gets tried to a jury in, what, West Memphis? Littleton, Colorado? Provo, Utah? The jurors don’t know anything about BDSM, so to them any BDSM is essentially similar; and anyway they may not care — to them, I’m obviously some kind of pervert who is going to hell.
The pornography problem is one of commercialization of the female body — the cultural push of the sense of entitlement to sexual access to women by men. The San Fernando Valley fungible porn picture harms women more than BDSM by and for the community ever will. The problem is certainly regulation and censorship will be used by people at the margins and not the core of the industry, which is the opposite of the result I want; but even the private right of action will be used that way. Under that ordinance, a feminist lawyer would not have a case against mainstream companies for most of their material; but the right-wing fringies and the anti-BDSM feminists would have a powerful tool against photographers like Barbara Nitke who chronicle the BDSM community.
I’ve seen various versions of the Dworkin-MacKinnon ordinance, and there are some good ideas in there, but I recall thinking there were a lot of problems with it too — first of all, IIRC, there’s no clear way the a producer of sexually explicity material could prove the consent of the participants. Second, I seem to recall a similar attack on BDSM.
It could be that I’m misremembering how those ordinances were drafted, though. I’ve had my facts wrong before.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 8:13 am
From reading this thread, it has made more clear the reasons why I choose to be anti-feminist.
It is the whole “Your either with us or against us” attitude.
Feminism is a social theory, and a lot of the issues that are discussed within feminism are based on theorys that are not proven fact.
This means it leaves room for people to question and critisise the movement.
Also I find feminism is not self critical enough, and this has been shown in this thread. It seems unwilling to look at it self in a critical light.
This is clear when someone in the media makes mad statements in the name of feminism, but does not get condemed by other feminists for what they said, all you get is “well that’s not my idea of feminism” with a reluctance to condem what was said.
I can be against feminism but for female equality, feminism is just one idea about how it will be achived but not the only idea.
For feminism to state that it is about equality for all is a joke, it is about women and women only, why not admit this?
As statement like this make it clear that this is what it means to many feminists
Jesurgislac Writes:
“Today’s feminist movement certainly is not opposed to men becoming more willing to acknowledge themselves as victims of domestic violence, nor opposed to men setting up domestic violence shelters for male victims.”
This is the reply men who are concerned with the lack of support for male DV victims get “Well go build it yourself” this does not take into the account the amount of time and money these things take and how much work and effort this is for men to convince politician and funders to part with case to achive this.
Why cant feminist help out and give backing to this, and advice and support on how they went about doing it? If you are truely about equality for all.
And by the way the shelters we have for women, were not just set up and built by feminists, many men and women were involved in these projects, it is not something that feminists can claim as a sole success of theirs! Men helped women when they needed it, why is it not being reciprocated? That is what gets some men so angry!!
Well thats my bit, I thought I should let you know why I choose to be anti-femisit but pro woman.
Wookie
This comment was written by Wookie.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 8:21 am
We women best maintain the power we have worked so hard for by not overreaching. We overreach when we seek preferential treatment, when we frame issues such as violence as woman-centric rather than violence-centric, when we leave out of your definition “inherently, significantly, and remediably” as modifiers for “disadvantages,” and when we convey an attitude of hostility towards men. Those are all self-defeating in the long run, IMO.
When the vast majority of people assaulted by their partners is women, and the vast majority of the abusers are men, it’s a gender problem, not just a violence problem. It is an imbalance of power and bespeaks some very serious entitlement. That even pointing this out is being seen as hostile to men is ludicrous.
You’ll just have to forgive me if I’m not sweating some random guy’s injured feelings when he hears that his gender has more privilige.
Women would be better served by feminists avoiding the the false consensus effect and the immoderateness nurtured in the feminist echo chamber exemplified by choosing not to “other” women like Cathy Young.
You obviously have no idea what the feminist movement is like. It’s hardly an echo chamber, although it is far from the Victorian tea party you’d like it to be. Susie Bright, Andrea Dworkin, Katha Pollitt, Bell Hooks, and Urvashi Vaid are all pretty strong feminists with very divergent points of view. The thing is, none of them tiptoed around the facts, nor did they ignore the facts, which Young and her anti-feminist cohorts do.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 8:46 am
Sorry if this is a double-post, but I’m not seeing it go through:
I’d be curious to hear the “Feminist” response to Linda Hirshman’s “Feminist” article in The American Prospect about the failure of “Choice Feminism.”
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10659
I don’t know if it qualifies as feminism or not, but it’s certainly in a left-wing magazine. It seems, however, to contain many of the tropes that anti-feminists criticize feminists for using:
A woman who chooses to stay home by her own volition is a moron:
“This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust. To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, “A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.””
She is making a bad choice for himself and for women everywhere:
“Finally, these choices are bad for women individually. A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one’s own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives. ”
The decision to have two children is a bad choice.
“If these prescriptions sound less than family-friendly, here’s the last rule: Have a baby. Just don’t have two.”
Go to college to get a career, and become a capitalist:
“It is shocking to think that girls cut off their options for a public life of work as early as college. But they do. The first pitfall is the liberal-arts curriculum, which women are good at, graduating in higher numbers than men. Although many really successful people start out studying liberal arts, the purpose of a liberal education is not, with the exception of a miniscul
e number of academic positions, job preparation.”
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Wookie: This is the reply men who are concerned with the lack of support for male DV victims get “Well go build it yourself” this does not take into the account the amount of time and money these things take and how much work and effort this is for men to convince politician and funders to part with case to achive this.
Actually, it does. That’s rather the point. If men want support for male domestic violence victims, rather than demanding it from women - demanding women’s time, money, work, and effort - men should put their own time, money, work, and effort into building support for male domestic violence victims. In general, men seem unwilling to do this, but very willing to complain that women aren’t doing it either.
Why cant feminist help out and give backing to this, and advice and support on how they went about doing it? If you are truely about equality for all.
I imagine that if a men’s group was interested in setting up support for male victims of domestic violence, and politely asked an existing support group for female victims how they did it, they’d get advice: that’s free. But until men are willing to act, demanding that feminists “help out” is in fact demanding that women do the work that men are not willing to do. What have you done, Wookie, to help male victims of domestic violence?
Men helped women when they needed it, why is it not being reciprocated?
Maybe it will be, if men ever get together and start working on it. But until they do, what is it that women are supposed to do about it?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:13 am
Jesurgislac, voting is a legal right, not a cultural norm. It is still matter of the enforcement of the law. I agree with the idea of allowing everyone to vote because I agree with the premise that we are all equal. That is to say you are entitled to no more than I am entitled to. Feminism has nothing to do with that. Non-biased views are not exclusive to feminism.
As for feminism as a revolutionary movement, you began from the beginning of the movement, from the 1800s, so I started with Christianity from the point where it began to coalesce, which was sometime around 100 A.D. And you cannot honestly claim that feminism has not resulted in brainwashing, death, or harm to people. No movement is beyond such things, and as I said, there are plenty of people who are living proof of that.
With regards to men and child custody, children tend to be awarded to the mother even in cases where the father is the primary caregiver. I do not think we can honestly discuss the family court situation if we are unwilling to address the bias that “children are better off with their mothers”. And so far, virtually every attempt to level the field by starting from the position that both parents are good parents and should have equal time and custody with their child(ren) is often dismissed by feminists.
Likewise, having been involved with male survivor groups for the past few years, I can attest that the feminist movement has on many occasions opposed the creation of men’s shelters (often because there is this unrealistic fear that the shelters would be built with “their” money) and have offered more dismissal and criticism rather than consideration and support to male victims of any form of abuse. The stigmas that are faced by male victims, whether it be that he is a ‘wimp’, a ’sissy’, ‘gay’, a ‘rapist’, a ‘pedophile’ or some sort of ‘deviant’, have not been addressed by feminism. In fact, they have been maintained by feminism by perpetuating the myth of female = victim, male = abuser. The negative male stigmas work in feminism’s favor.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:16 am
That is just not true.
I’m not sure feminist are to blame though. Adoption law was framed with the idea that unmarried girls would be put under a great deal of presure to give up their baby. The rights of either the mother or the father weren’t really of interest. It’s a shame that, despite things being much easier for women, the framework still works against the interest of men.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:43 am
That is just not true.
In most places in the US, it is true. There are exceptions–for example, Oregon law apparently removes the biological father’s objections if the parents are unmarried, and he was not around or attempting to support the mother during pregnancy. But as the “Baby Jessica” cases showed us, the default is that biological parents have to give up their rights before somebody else can assume them.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Jesurgislac ,
You forget that you are writing from a “majority” position, as women are the majority of DV victims. If, at any given time, there are 30 battered women in an area looking for a shelter, and 3 battered men, it doesn’t make sense to cut off a small minority, and say “Go do it yourself.”
Or maybe this is a fine thing to say:
If Muslims want support for Muslim domestic violence victims, rather than demanding it from Christians - demanding Christian’s time, money, work, and effort - Muslims should put their own time, money, work, and effort into building support for Muslim domestic violence victims. In general, Muslims seem unwilling to do this, but very willing to complain that Christians aren’t doing it either.
I imagine that if a Muslim group was interested in setting up support for Muslim victims of domestic violence, and politely asked an existing support group for Christian victims how they did it, they’d get advice: that’s free. But until Muslims are willing to act, demanding that Christians “help out” is in fact demanding that Christians do the work that Muslims are not willing to do.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:50 am
Nik,
I’m not sure what country’s laws you are referring to, but in the US, for a child to be given up for adoption, both biological parents can block the adoption. The only exception to this is when a parent, either male or female, is found to be unfit. This requires a hearing, and unfitness has to be shown by clear and convincing evidence. A man, even a non-custodial parent, can block an adoption.
Block an adoption is the operative phrase here–he has to affirmatively assert his rights. (So does a non-custodial female biological parent, i.e., in a situation where the custodial father wants to let his new wife adopt his children. Granted, these situations are rare, since there are fewer custodial fathers in teh first place.) So it is true that this is somewhat different from consent, because the father is not sought out. However, any father may withold his consent, and if the mother gives up custody, he gets custody (absent a finding of unfitness) and can get child support from her.
Actually, there is a second, even narrower exception, which says that the biological father of a child whose mother is in an intact marriage TO ANOTHER MAN at the time of the child’s birth has no parental rights. I think that is wrong, because it favors the rights of the biological mother over those of the biological father. Also, in the case where that rule was handed down, although the biological mother was married to someone else, for most of the child’s life, she and the biological father had jointly raised the child in the same home.
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:53 am
Wookie Writes:
What this sounds like is now that “women” have done all the hard work, spent time and money and effort to convince mostly male politicians that DV victims needed funds and access to DV centers, help leaving violent relationships, counseling and help starting new lives, now that all the hard part is done, that “men” should be able to take advantage of everything that women accomplished. That women, having set up methods to attempt to help women should now take care of men. That men shouldn’t have to do any of the hard work. You don’t want advice and support, you want the work already done and handed to you. If you think there needs to be more DV centers for men? Do the leg work, take the time, spend the money, make the effort. Women did.
This comment was written by mousehounde.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:59 am
When the vast majority of people assaulted by their partners is women, and the vast majority of the abusers are men, it’s a gender problem, not just a violence problem.
I didn’t suggest it wasn’t a gender problem. My use of “-centric” meant that it’s not primarily a gender problem but rather primarily a violence problem. (It’s also a mental health problem, a drug problem…) It’s a matter of how you slice things, frame them, what prism you are using. Anyone who sees the issues of the world primarily in terms of gender–who thinks that there are two kinds of issues–gender issues and other issues, is a zealot. I don’t think that feminist zealotry is in the best interests of women. Zealotry has fatal flaws that compromise the mission.
In summary, let me just state that I think that it is in the best interests of women that the tent be big enough to include equity feminists. (And libertarians, too–the more that feminism is viewed as lefty, the less support it has. But that’s something for another forum, another day. )
This comment was written by Karen.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 10:20 am
jaketk Writes: I agree with the idea of allowing everyone to vote because I agree with the premise that we are all equal. That is to say you are entitled to no more than I am entitled to. Feminism has nothing to do with that
That shows a lack of historical awareness that is really almost scary. Did you ever wonder who Susan B. Anthony was, and why she was on the silver dollars in your pocket? Your agreement with the idea that women have the right to vote has everything to do with feminism. As I said: it’s been a very, very successful revolution.
And you cannot honestly claim that feminism has not resulted in brainwashing, death, or harm to people.
*blinks* Actually, I can. Name me the massacres perpetrated by feminists on non-feminists or on different branches of feminism. Find me examples of feminists killing non-feminists or anti-feminists. Show me examples of feminists brainwashing people into agreement with them.
Then I’ll match each example you come up with, with massacres, killings, brainwashing, and other harm done by Christians.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 10:23 am
Richard Bellamy Writes: You forget that you are writing from a “majority” position, as women are the majority of DV victims. If, at any given time, there are 30 battered women in an area looking for a shelter, and 3 battered men, it doesn’t make sense to cut off a small minority, and say “Go do it yourself.”
And again, Richard - what have you done to support male victims of domestic violence, that you feel free to berate others for not doing enough?
Or maybe this is a fine thing to say:
Wow, could you have come up with a more pointless analogy if you tried?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 11:07 am
Wookie, you seem to be treating “feminist” as an all-male category, and MRA as an all-female category. That’s not true; there are male feminists, and female MRAs.
Most DV shelters feel that they can’t take in men because they can’t both allow in men and provide for the security of their female clients. Asking DV shelters to compromise on security is totally unfair - not that the average MRA appears to give a damn about the well-being of battered women, of course.
Some DV shelters have hotel vouchers or other such programs to help men; some don’t. I really think that if the MRAs would approach DV shelters with a spirit of cooperation - “we’d like you to have a hotel voucher program to help battered men, and we’re going to do the extra fundraising to make it happen, so that helping battered men doesn’t mean taking resources away from battered women” - they’d get a better response.
However, most MRAs have an attitude towards DV shelters and the people who work there which can kindly be described as belligerent. Most DV shelters are already turning away battered women and making due with insufficient staff due to lack of resources; into that situation comes stumbling some MRA folks who know nothing about DV shelters, who say, in essence, “You lying feminist bitches owe us help, and we don’t give a damn what it costs your current clients.” Is it any surprise that no fruitful relationships have resulted? It’ll take a lot of work to heal the disrespect and anger that MRAs have gone out of their way to create.
Despite this, as I said, many DV shelters do have voucher programs to help the rare battered man who needs help - because despite the constant accusations of MRAs, most feminists aren’t man-hating monsters. But that there is DV help for men available is no credit to MRAs. Nor has any MRA organization, that I know of, made a point of seeking out those DV shelters that do help men and helping them with fundraising or other needs.
Ironically, if the MRAs were right - if there were as great a need for battered men’s shelters as there is for battered women’s shelters - then I think it would be a viable idea for MRAs to build their own shelter network, modeled on the work that feminists did building DV shelters. Fortunately, however, men aren’t that bad off, and in most areas of the country men’s shelters would die out for lack of men needing their services.
For that reason - and here I disagree with many other feminists here - I think helping battered men is going to have to be something added on to what already existing DV agencies do. There simply isn’t enough “business” for a separate men’s network to be viable, and it’s morally necessary to help the (relatively rare) male victims, just as it is to help female victims.
But it’s not fair to demand that DV shelters divert already insufficient resources from battered women. If MRAs want existing DV shelters to expand what they’re doing to help men, then they’ll have to start working with existing DV workers in a respectful, reasonable fashion, including working on establishing grants to allow existing DV shelters to add on help for men. And I haven’t seen any sign that MRAs would be willing to do that.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 11:42 am
And again, Richard - what have you done to support male victims of domestic violence, that you feel free to berate others for not doing enough?
Generally, I do what most people do. I contribute to charities.
Since I’m in Philadelphia, I contribute financially to Women Organized Against Rape (www.woar.org), which is a local counseling/support group that openly assists both male and female/ adult and children victims of sexual assault. I don’t know how many adult men they help in a given month, but since they are physically located right in the middle of the primary gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, I would guess more than most.
The counselors help navigate the criminal justice stuff, and recommend various services (like shelters) if needed.
I had assumed that, since they say they provide these services to both male and female victims, they would have recommendations for both of them about where to go. I don’t know anything about specific shelters in the Philadelphia region, or which ones take men and which ones take women. I assumed there were at least some that took men, or that had some alternative procedure in place. I leave the details to the WOAR experts, who are trained to know this stuff.
I was merely reacting to your assertion that a DV group had no obligation to help men, and that it’s up to “men” as a group to take care of a particularly marginalized group of men who likely don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of a dominant male culture.
In any event, I certainly wouldn’t contribute to a shelter that didn’t at least have an alternative arrangement in place for male victims.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 11:45 am
Just as a historical note, feminism did not start in the 1800s. There were feminists in the Roman Republic, so you’re looking at least 2400 years back. The political movement has a discontinuity in it (political feminism requires a level of widely-distributed economic and cultural wealth that, broadly, disappeared with the Republic, and did not reappear until modern capitalism) but the ideas are a lot older than that.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
As I understand it, it is generally illegal for a governmental agency to discriminate in providing protection of law based on suspect categories such as race or gender. As I understand it, it is generally legal for a private entity to do so. So private DV shelters may discriminate on any basis they choose, but public ones may not discriminate on the basis of a suspect category unless the policy is narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate governmental purpose.
Maximizing the benefits of finite resources seems like a legit. gov. purpose. So if a shelter allocated resources to the people with the greatest need, then I don’t see any violation of the Equal Protection clause even if all the people with the greatest need were women.
But may a public DV shelter exclude men simply on the basis that the majority of the shelter’s traumatized clients do not wish to associate with men? Legally, that’s tough. This would seem to make a public institution the instrument of private discrimination.
I don’t believe that women in DV shelters generally have cause to fear all men (any more than the rest of us do), just as I don’t believe that soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder have cause to fear all loud noises. But I would not be surprised to learn that they do. And it might be naive to design programs for their benefit that ignored this dynamic, no matter how irrational the dynamic might be.
Alas, loudness is not a suspect category for Equal Protection analysis; gender is. To get out of this box, I guess we have to argue that the practice of excluding all men is a narrowly-tailored policy to promote the legit. gov. purpose of helping the majority of DV victims. That the therapeutic benefits of being men-free are crucial to achieving this purpose, and that resource limits do not permit any other remedy. This may well be true, but it seems like a tough case to me.
This comment was written by nobody.really.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
Government housing is not discriminatory when it meets a distinctive population need and a defined public purpose. As a developer, you can get (increasingly shrinking) government funding to build affordable housing for the elderly. Just because I earn over 80% of area median income or am under 62 (or whatever the guidelines are) does not mean I am discriminated against if I am refused a unit. Likewise, emergency shelter for homeless persons is very often based on age and/or family structure. I would not be admitted into our local shelter for runaway or homeless teens, even if I am homeless. Why would I (being well north of 21)? Likewise, why would I complain about not being admitted into our local Union Mission for homeless men, not as long as there are beds at the shelter for homeless women. What’s the beef?
My experience has been that our local dv organizations provide services to anyone who asks. They are just not in the position to provide co-ed shelters. Understand that right now, most shelters are having to turn away women on a routine basis. So it is a little strange to ask shelters to expand the populations they serve (persons made homeless by domestic violence) when there is little to no money for expanding the facilities they have. Especially when shelter workers have often described the problems that would accrue, such as abusers trying to gain access to their victims.
The problem is, for all the talk about men being battered by their wives and girlfriends (and there are probably some, I would never say never), they just don’t even register in terms of persons made HOMELESS by dv. Apart from the gender politics of dv, I have never seen one study of homelessness where dv was identified as a cause of homelessness for men. By contrast, it is a major cause of homelessness for women.
I have been a grantwriter for 15 years, and I have written grants for homeless shelters. On one blog, just to make a point during one of these discussions with the MRA types, I offered my services, GRATIS, if they were interested in doing a HUD Continuum of Care application. Not one taker. Wasn’t surprised. None of them had any interest in rolling up their sleeves and actually getting a men’s shelter going, even with free help. On the other hand, there is a persistent and consistent desire to “shut down” the women’s shelters, either through nuisance law suits or threats to shut down major sources of funding, such as VAWA. I think that pretty much sums up the agenda. There is no real concern for dv or any abused person, much less all these men who are supposedly in need of shelter. This an abuser’s agenda, not a reformer’s agenda.
Likewise when I point out the major causes of homelessness among men (apart from stagnant wages and skyrocketing housing costs, especially in our major cities), namely the cutbacks in mental health services and drug/alcohol addiction services, there’s a big yawn. Absolutely no interest in advocating for the homeless men right under their nose, but they somehow whip up a lot of hysteria for a population so small that it doesn’t register on the radar (men made homeless by dv).
Another thing. For all the discrimination accusations against VAWA, programs like Continuum of Care are just as “sexist”, though more subtly. The HUD funding priority is what they call the “chronic” homeless: SINGLE persons who have been homeless for extended and/or multiple periods of time. As it turns out, this is mostly men. Women are more often homeless with children and for economic/dv reasons which tend not to fit the definitions of “chronic.” With that in mind, do you see feminists demanding that Continuum of Care funds be slashed? On the contrary, I know lots of women who work in the homelessness field, many of them feminists, and all agree that the money is totally inadequate.
That’s the difference between abusers and reformers.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
it really is very hard for me as (what i consider to be) an ardent male feminist to admit that there are significant female privileges in american culture. it’s hard to admit, because i’d be afraid that i was just giving ammunition to those who would deny the obvious (to me) structural advantages that men have, and portray them as victims.
but there are some ways in which i feel that my life is harder because i’m a man.
because i am a responsible man, i feel the need to behave in a respectable way towards my fellow humans. what that meant practically when i was a 16-23-year-old virgin was that it was impermissible for me to express sexual interest in a woman for fear of being considered a creep. i think a lot of young men feel their sexuality oppressed in this way. it’s not worse than the slut/mother dichotomy, mind you, but it is real and significant for men involved.
almost every day, i feel less able to do my job than some of my female colleagues. i teach in a coed high school. female teachers (over, let’s say, 40 years old) feel perfectly free to hug and touch their students, male and female, and don’t think twice about it. i avoid all contact beyond pats on a shoulder, handshakes, and high-fives (all of which i do with both bys and girls). if i started hugging kids, it would look (again) creepy. but it keeps me at a distance from the kids i teach compared with my female colleagues.
so…there…i said it. i think there are a few ways that men are disadvantaged by the social structure in the US. let me reiterate that there are many more ways that women are disadvantaged. but i only bring it up because some people asked for examples, and i think those are legitimate ones.
This comment was written by Polymath.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Cathy wrote:
I object to the way you’ve phrased this, Cathy, because putting it the way you do - as a matter of what feminists are “trying to” do - takes the debate away from being an empirical question, and into being about what feminists intentions are.
Here’s what Mary Haviland, of the Family Violence Project, wrote in a letter to the New York Times:
That’s pretty typical of feminist criticisms of mandatory arrest laws I’ve read. If we assume that Ms. Haviland and other feminists are telling the truth, then I’m correct and you’re mistaken: feminists are trying to avoid false arrests, not trying to ensure that female abusers aren’t punished.
For Ms. Haviland and other feminist critics to be “trying to ensure that women who use violence are presumptively treated as victims whether they are or not,” you’d have to assume that when they say what they’re trying to do is prevent mistaken arrests, they’re lying. I don’t think that assumption is fair-minded or in any way justified.
Now, you could argue that the empirical effect of Ms. Haviland’s policies, if carried out, would be that women and men would be treated differently. I’d still disagree with you, but at least that argument would be empirical, which I think is a more appropriate and fair way to hold the debate.
The sample size of single workers with MBAs used in a study you recently cited was 138, which you presumably feel is large enough, or you wouldn’t have cited that study. In contrast, the sample size of gays and lesbians in the NVAW study was 144. I think you were right the first time - a sample size in that range isn’t too small for conclusions to be drawn, especially if the sampling design is good.
144 is large enough for standard tests of statistical significance, at least regarding the particular issue we’re discussing. According to the NVAW researchers, the “differences between same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants are statistically significant” (page 29).
Plus, sample size isn’t the only issue when evaluating how good a study design is. It’s generally accepted that representative, random sampling is ideal, and should be used whenever possible and appropriate. You don’t say what studies you’re referring to, but I suspect they either don’t have a much larger sample size, or theydon’t use representative random sampling and so are not as reliable.
You’re shifting your case. At first you were talking about dictionary definitions; when I pointed out that you were mistaken about that, you shifted to “most commonly used meaning.”
Among feminists, at least in my experience, a very commonly used meaning of “anti-feminist” is to refer to folks like yourself, Christina Hoff Sommers, Wendy McElroy, Katie Roiphe, Warren Farrell, the IWF, and so on - the group that might more keenly be called the “anti-feminist feminists.” I don’t think that’s because me and other feminists have misunderstood your views; I think it’s because we correctly understand that you are strongly biased against feminists and feminism.
And to use the term “anti-feminist” to mean “strongly biased against feminists and feminism” is hardly a strange or counter-intuitive use of the term.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Robert Writes: Just as a historical note, feminism did not start in the 1800s.
The modern feminist movement is generally considered to begin in the late 1700s, in fact: Olympe de Gouges’s ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen, 1791: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792: from then on, it is possible to trace a clear line of descent.
Obviously, ideas do not spring from nowhere, and ideas and concepts that we might today recognise as feminist have been around long before the 18th century and in other places than Europe and North America. But the feminist revolution of today, recognisable as a political movement, has been rolling along since the late 18th century.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Polymath,
Although I’m not a guy, I had observed similar phenomena as well–that male sexuality is stigmatized as “creepy” and that males cannot have physical contact with others–as you described with children (pedophilia assumptions), but also arguably with other men (sexuality assumptions), and even women (weakness.)
So, anyways, it is nice to hear that another feminist worries about these issues as well. It’s also good to hear from someone who has had the experience, because as a woman I can only guess how men are treated unless I observe it or a man tells me about it.
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Richard; I had assumed that, since they say they provide these services to both male and female victims, they would have recommendations for both of them about where to go. I don’t know anything about specific shelters in the Philadelphia region, or which ones take men and which ones take women. I assumed there were at least some that took men, or that had some alternative procedure in place. I leave the details to the WOAR experts, who are trained to know this stuff.
It’s entirely possible that there are arrangements made for male victims of domestic violence in the Philadelphia Region. If you’ve never troubled yourself to find out what, though, you’re not in a position to complain if it’s not enough.
I was merely reacting to your assertion that a DV group had no obligation to help men, and that it’s up to “men” as a group to take care of a particularly marginalized group of men who likely don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of a dominant male culture.
I don’t see why you think it’s up to women to take care of male victims of domestic violence if men are unwilling to do anything positive to help male victims of domestic violence. Why should taking care of men be seen by men as women’s responsibility?
As others have observed, domestic violence shelters and programs are generally strapped for cash and short of volunteer or paid worker hours. If someone complains about the services these shelters and programs provide, it’s always fair to ask exactly what that person has provided to such shelters and programs themselves.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 2:56 pm
Or at least, how they’d propose to remedy the problem. For instance, offhand I think it would be reasonable for MRAs to propose that governments make grants available for DV shelters to use for staff and services to help underserved male victims of DV.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
Oh, the “only men fight and die” trope. Well, that is becoming less and less true, since support troops are taking significant hits in Iraq, and by law, that is where the women are allowed. You are still dead if the enemy blows you up, whether you were firing a tank or merely fueling it up. That tank ain’t moving unless someone comes into the combat zone and refuels it, and those “someones” are support troops, not combat troops.
I find it curious that in this day and age, men who claim anti-male discrimination point to the military, without also considering the class issues. I’d say the current situation works against poor young men (and women) with poor public schooling, no college money even for a community college, and living in a lousy job market. The volunteer, and even the conscription, military system works just great for the wealthy and well-connected men. Our pResident W got a cushy stateside gig to avoid the draft, and didn’t even stick out the whole obligation. Our Vice pResident got 5 deferments. Our Secy of Defence has never served and undoubtedly got some deferments. Most of the Republican senators of the Vietnam era never served, with the notable exception of McCain. Children of senators and congressmen are not currently serving on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan, and truth to tell, never did serve on the front lines in conscription wars, unless the eminent offspring raised holy hell and insisted on it.
Oh, and only non-combatant men suffer by being war victims? Uh, rape, followed by evisceration if already pregnant, killing if rapist wants an extra kick, or leaving alive if the rapist needs a spare fuck or wants to send the woman back to her community to taunt it.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
Donna:
I’m sure that there are many things about the rest of the world of which I’m ignorant. However you have not shown this. Every single one of the points you make below I was aware of, to some degree. Many of them I could discuss in considerably more detail. Indeed, had I set out to map the contours of sexist injustice against women, as you have done, I would certainly have started with female infaticide, and gone on from there to discuss honour killings, wholesale sex slavery practiced in various parts of the word, rape as a war crime, and the general low status of women throughout the non-western world. I would also have mentioned FGM, ‘voluntary’ prostitution in so far as its not voluntary at all, but a product of economic necessity, domestic violence, etc. The list does indeed go on and on and on.
What this does, is support the point that I’ve already made that the pile of sexist injustice suffered by women is mind-boggling huge. But it can’t support the claim that it’s bigger than another pile until you look at the other pile to see how big it is..
Here I would, as I already have, start out with forced labour and conscription, before going on mention blood feuds (such as happen in Albania, where men are exclusively targetted. Women sometimes participate, but are protected from retaliation by the code of honour) The gender-selective murder of non-combatent men as a war crime, for example in Ruanda and the former Yugoslavia. (When the women were being sent to the rape camps, where do you think the men were been sent to?) , the vast numbers of non-dangerous men incarcerated (and the sexual slavery that takes place behind prison walls) ‘voluntary’ enlistment into the military so far as its not voluntary at all, but a product of economic necessity (or the only way to avoid being a victim of war)
Why did you not mention these things? Were you not aware of them? If you weren’t, why not? You seem to be well informed about feminist issues. Why didn’t feminism inform you about these issues? How can you trust feminism’s verdict that the female pile is bigger, if it ignores relevent data?
If you did know about these things, the question stands. Why did you mention them? Or to put it another way: “When will your posts acknowledge that [wo]men aren’t the only people in the world with problems?”
And why didn’t Ampersand ask that question of you?
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
Ismone:
I didn’t know what to do when I read Polymath’s post. So poignently, so painfully does it describe my own feelings, that I didn’t, and still don’t feel able to reply to it directly. Thank you for giving me an oportunity to thank him in the third person for expressing what I could not.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
But it can’t support the claim that it’s bigger than another pile until you look at the other pile to see how big it is.
And having looked at the two piles?
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Daran,
I’m not disregarding that men suffer injustices due to their sex, but to claim that men suffer more than women because of their sex and only using the argument of war to back it up is extremely weak and again, ignorant.
First of all, women suffer at the hands just as much as men. Rape is a tool of war. While women do not actively participate as soldiers in war, rape is used against them, their homes and villages/towns are destroyed. Think of Somalia, where in the early 90s, hundreds of thousands of people died from starvation (women, children, and men) because the government would not give them any food. Women are incarcerated along side men. What do you think happened in Vietnam? Women were incarcerated all the time and accused of consorting with the enemy. As an example, I give you Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman who was incarcerated along with other women during the Vietnam War. All of this is against their will. War does not solely affect men.
You talk about the Code of Honour, but codes, like laws, are not always followed. You don’t honestly believe that women are not affected or harmed because they have such a thing? To say yes would be incredibly naive. It would be like saying that every Iraqi captured by American troops is not tortured because International Law says it’s illegal.
You have not laid any argument to prove your case, Daran. Stating that men are conscripted/drafted (which is actually ILLEGAL in some countries) and/or coerced into becoming soldiers and actively participating in war is not a good argument because like I said, war affects everyone. War is not good period, and no one, male or female, benefits from it.
(And just as a side note, there are some countries, like Israel, that have mandatory military service for both men and women.)
I try to be well informed on global feminism because one of the problems I have with Western feminism is that it IS Western, and the prejudice and discrimination that goes on here is not at all anything that goes on in a global scale. While in countries like Canada, the United States, and Europe (most of Europe, anyway), women have, for the most part, equality with men within the law, if not in practice. The rest of the world is a different place, and women are not protected by the law; they do not have rights period, whereas men are protected because of their sex.
I know that there are prejudices against men. However, those prejudices are more often the result of stereotypes than they are written in the law. From a human rights perspective, it is not men who suffer the most. It is women and children. Read articles from Amnesty International, which is a gender neutral organization, or from the United Nations (UNIFEM and Women Watch), an organization I’m not particularly fond of but they do occasionally have some interesting stuff.
I doubt I will get through to you. I’ve never actually known anyone or heard anyone (even from misogynists, anti-feminists, or chauvanists) make a unfounded assertion that women are not the marginalized group in the world - that it’s men. I’m absolutely flabbergasted to say the least.
You can stop with the “what about the men” attitude. Feminism is not just about women. Just because it is a discourse that focuses on women does not mean it sidelines men. I am not ignorant of the issues you mentioned, and please do not make blind accusations about feminism if you cannot prove that it has actually done something wrong. Just because you have a preconceived notion of feminism and its purposes does not mean that it has failed. It just means you have misunderstood.
This comment was written by Donna.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
Ampersand writes: Or at least, how they’d propose to remedy the problem. For instance, offhand I think it would be reasonable for MRAs to propose that governments make grants available for DV shelters to use for staff and services to help underserved male victims of DV.
When you assume that people who advocate support for male victims do nothing because you are not falling over results, you imply more than you probably intend. It took several years for the first DV shelter for men in Britain to open. And when it did, the response from feminists was one of intense disagreement. Proposals only work if there is enough political pressure to accept them. Eventually persistence does pay off, but imagine how much sooner the shelter would have been made available had feminists not consistently impeded those proposals.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Amp:
That is exactly what I was interested in. I fall somewhere between the radical ideology and the ifeminist veiw of things, and I was beginning to get the idea that it was an “either, or” proposition with no middle ground.
I often find myself inbetween the extremes of ideologies. I’m not sure why that is, but it has always been that way for me. But, I’m glad to know that I can still call myself a feminist even if I modify it with the word “moderate”.
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Jesurgislac, none of us who work to bring aid, support and services to male victims think women should take care of male victims. I am not really sure where any feminist gets this perception outside of the assumption that male support must come at the expense of female support. I cannot speak for others, but personally I do not want feminists to do anything for me. If anything, I would like you to stop being a hindrance when issues about male victims are raised, like trying to turn it into a gender-centric argument of who has it worse when these issues are brought in front of local congresses.
Of all the support services provided to male victims that I know of, the funding often comes out of the pockets of the providers, their friends and family, co-workers, friends and family of survivors, and often straight out of the pockets of the survivors themselves. Certainly if you have no interest in this area then you would never see this. Again, I am not sure where this notion of taking money from women’s shelters comes from because no one I know has ever suggested it.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
My definition of feminism
Feminism (n): women’s particularism.
That’s it. That’s all. That simple. And it is true.
All the definitions of feminism that refer to equality of the sexes might have been originally intended to be true, but in the course of history they became factually false.
There is a slang phrase in Poland that you use when you want to say that you don’t give a damn about something: “To mnie obchodzi tyle, co Magdalene Srode rak prostaty”, which translates roughly to “About this I care as much as Magdalena Sroda cares for prostate cancer”. Magdalena Sroda used to be the Government’s Mandatary on Equal Status of Women and Men. She must be credited for demonstrating to Polish society what feminists mean when they say “gender equality”. Her idea of “equal status” was to have a “Women’s health” section on her office’s website, but not a “Men’s health” section, despite women outlive men by 9 years in Poland, the chance to die within one year is higher for men in all age groups, etc. Now, there might be feminists who really care about equality, but the public image of feminism is shaped by those feminists who are politically active. Thus, Polish society ended up identifying feminism with female particularism and with utter disregard for the condition of men.
I don’t have a problem with particularisms. What I have problem with is one specific particularism having a special status over other particularisms. I don’t think feminism should be completely done away with, but I do think it should be driven down from the moral high ground it currently illegitimately occupies, and treated as any other particularism within the social conflict management framework known as democracy.
This comment was written by The Unpronounceable One.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 7:51 pm
Would you like examples of MRA’s filing lawsuits against women’s shelters? Is that not a massive drain on their resources?
One example: Blumhorst vs. Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men et al v Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. There are examples from other states as well.
Frankly, I think it is nothing but a well-coordinated campaign of harassment by basically abusive individuals who don’t want anyone, male or female, to get services.
I just don’t see that feminists are the aggressors here. It’s the MRA’s who’ve embarked on campaigns of legal harassment and have advocated for funding elimination by obliterating VAWA.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I will assume that you’re responding to me.
This is a strawman. I have never said that only men fight and die. It is overwhelmingly men who fight and die in battle, overwhelmingly men who are conscripted (i.e. forced) to fight, or left with little economic chice but to fight. And where there is gender-selective targetting for murder during war, it is overwhelmingly men who are targetted.
Of course there is often indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatents during which women are slaughtered along with the men, but in so far as this is not a “current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages” one or other of the sexes, it hardly seems pertinent to the discussion.
On the other hand, during the two Iraqi wars, the allied attack have been far less indiscriminate than in other conflagrations. Consequently a much greater proportion of the total casualties were confined to the Iraqi Army, which was overwhelmingly conscripted, and almost exclusively if not exclusively male. I have no figures, but I would expect that the ratio of male to female casualties was higher in each of the Iraqi wars than, say, WWII, where there were more civilian casualties than military.
I agree with all this, of course. Wealthy powerful men rarely suffer in wars. If feminism “believed that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages people who are not wealthy powerful men.” then I would be a feminist. But that is not where feminism draws the line. And by not drawing the line to include disadvantaged men, it further disadvantages them.
Another strawman. What I said is that where there is gender-selective murder, it is overwhelmingly men who are targetted.
That’s a horendous attrocity. Rape is, by it’s nature, a gender selective crime, and while males can be raped, and even targetted for rape, overwhelmingly its females who are raped in war. Sometimes they are raped and murdered. What does not happen is that females are murdered as a war attrocity while males are left alive. If anyone can cite an incident where this happened, I’d be very interested. However there are any number of cases where the males are massacred.
We stopped moving when we heard automatic weapon fire. We turned our heads to see what was happening, but it was impossible to see the men. We saw the ten-to-fourteen-year-olds [boys] running in our direction; when they got to us we asked them what was happening. They were very upset; no one could talk. One of them finally told us: “They released us but the others are finished.” We stayed in the same place for some twenty minutes. Everyone was crying. The automatic weapon fire went on non-stop for a few minutes; after that we heard short, irregular bursts of fire for some ten minutes or so. My father, my uncle and my cousin were among the men killed. Kajtaz Rexha and Qazim Rexhepi were also killed, as were many other members of the Bajraj, Bajrami, Rexhepi, and Aliu families. Then ten Serbs caught up with us. They said lots of obscenities and again told us: “Now you must leave for Albania — don’t stop, just go.” We had to leave. … My father had given me his jacket because I had been wearing another jacket that said “American Sport” on it and he was afraid; he wanted to cover that up. Because I was pushing the wheelbarrow and wearing a man’s jacket, they thought I was a man. They told me to stop and then to come over to them, but I was too afraid. It was the scariest moment of my life. Then they shined a flashlight in my face and saw that I was a woman. One of them said, “Let her go.” (Human Rights Watch, “Witness to Izbica Killings Speaks: Possibly Largest Massacre of Kosovo War,” Kosovo Human Rights Flash #39, May 19 1999.)
Seguing from war attrocities into infaticide, you have the opposite situation. Here it is the females who are massacred while the males are left alive. Not always, some boys are killed along with the girls, and some boys are targetted for being boys. But this is the exception rather than the rule.
It would be dishonest of me to suggest that Donna said that only girls were the victims of infaticide. She did not. Equally dishonest would be to use the fact that some boys are murdered to deny or diminish the inherent misogyny of the practice. It is overwhelmingly female babies who are murdered.
Ampersand asks “”When will [Daran's] posts acknowledge that men aren’t the only people in the world with problems?” I’ve never done anything else. I’ve never denied or trivialised the real problems and disadvanges faced by women because they are women the world over.
I don’t object to the list of examples of disadvantages suffered by women Donna raised in her post. I even added a few to them. I don’t even object to her silence about disadvantages suffered by men. What I object to, is her silence in a post which is about the balance between the two. And I object to Ampersand’s silence about Donna’s silence.
This isn’t personal. This isn’t about Amperand or Donna, and I hope I haven’t upset or offended them. It’s about feminism. They (and you) just exemplify it.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Barry, popping back in here for a minute:
Thanks for bringing the gay/lesbian battering numbers from the NWSA to my attention. I still think that when you have a sample of 8,000 people of whom only 144 are gays and lesbians (the total size of the NWSA sample was 8,000, right?), conclusions in comparing heterosexuals and gays should be drawn carefully.
I am familiar with two studies that show high numbers for lesbian battering:
Lie, GY and Gentlewarrior, S. “Intimate Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Discussion of Survey Findings and Practice Implications,” Journal of Social Service Research, v. 15 (1991), pp. 41-59. A survey of more than 1,000 lesbians which found that 52% had experienced violence from a partner and the same percentage had inflicted violence on a partner. However, I’m not sure about the design of this study — the summary I read (in Donald Dutton’s “Patriarchy and Wife Abuse”) says only that it was a “non-random sample.”
Lie, GY et al., “Lesbians in Currently Aggressive Relationships: How Frequently Do They Report Aggressive Past Relationships?” Violence and Victims, v. 6(2), 1991, pp. 121-135. In a sample of 350 lesbians, 46% reported having been physically assaulted by a female partner. (78% of those women had previously been in at least one heterosexual relationship, and of those, 32% reported having been physically abused by a male partner.)
I agree that more research is needed on this subject and we don’t currently have enough evidence to make well-founded conclusions about violence in gay and lesbian relationships.
I should also add that the NWSA differs from many other DV studies because the respondents were asked about their experiences of intimate violence in the context of a survey about “personal safety.” So, if someone had experienced minor violence that did not make them fear for their safety, they might be less likely to think of it in the context of that survey. It’s likely that both women and men perceive male violence as more threatening, both due to cultural attitudes and due to actual differences in physical size and strength.
Do I doubt the claims of the Family Violence Project? In a word: Yes. Because in my research, I have seen too many instances of battered women’s advocacy groups explaining away clear instances of female aggression as defensive. (Among other things, it is somehow presumed that the women are always telling the truth.) I discuss this at some length in my book. I have records on an actual case here in New Jersey in which a woman who was arrested and thrown out of her home after attacking her estranged husband in a family counselor’s office received housing and legal assistance from a battered women’s shelter. This is how a shelter staffer described the circumstances in a letter to an attorney on the woman’s behalf:
“Mrs. C. grabbed Mr. C. by his necktie [and] he pushed her away. Mrs. C. then punched his face and her nail cut his neck.”
This is characterized as an instance of “physical abuse by the husband.” I would say that there are some serious double standards going on here.
I see that there’s some discussion going on of “female privilege,” and I’d like to throw out one scenario (a real-life story) as an example of how conventional feminist analysis can be inadequate in understanding gender and privilege.
Jack is a classical musician who gives piano lessons and occasional recitals while working toward a career as a peormer; his live-in girlriend Jill is a ceramics painter who works as a secretary on the side. Jill gets pregnant and announces to Jack that while she would like to have the baby, she’ll get an abortion unless he gets a “real job” that will allow her to quit her secretarial job. Jack gives up music, enrolls in a computer course and gets a well-paying job in a bank which he asbolutely loathes (both because it bores him out of his skull and because he has ideological objections to it as a leftist). Two years later, Jill gets pregnant again and insists on having another child even though Jack has serious misgivings about it. After the second child, Jack pretty much accepts the fact that he might as well give up on being a musician (despite the fact that he is widely regarded as a very talented pianist) and continues to slog along in his hated bank job (which also leaves him constantly deprived of the time he’d like to have with his children). Jill, meanwhile, is greatly enjoying being a stay-at-home mom (her own mother, who runs a day-care center, has offered to her discounted day care if she wants to go back to work, but she has refused) while continuing to paint and having her works displayed in exhibitions here and there.
Now, according to conventional feminist analysis, Jack is the one in a position of greater privilege because he makes a lot more money than Jill does. I would say that in real life, if one of them is “oppressed,” it’s definitely not Jill. And by the way, if they get divorced, the fact that he worked full-time is going to be held against him while her staying home will be treated as a “sacrifice” for the children.
I don’t want to go the Warren Farrell route and argue that the male breadwinner/female homemaker arrangement virtually always involves male self-sacrifice and female exercise of free choice. I think there is real power in being the one with the paycheck, and I could also cite a case I know of personally in which a woman who loved her career was emotionally bullied by her husband into quitting because he believes children need a full-time mother until they’re out of high school.
But let’s not pretend that these other cases don’t exist and that the Jills of this world are not beneficiaries of female privilege.
Read Peggy Orenstein’s Flux (I doubt that anyone would ever call Peggy Orenstein an anti-feminist) — you’ll find interviews with young women who quite consciously say that they want it to be their option to scale back or temporarily give up their careers when they have children, and that they don’t want their future husbands to have this option.
Finally, about the term “anti-feminist”: I would suggest that if that’s the most commonly used label in feminist circles for critics of the feminist movement who espouse many basic feminist tenets, this may reflect primarily an unwillingness to truly engage these critics’ arguments as having any relevance to feminism.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
Without commenting one way or the other on the subtantive issues, I want to respectfully remind you that there are probably a hundred reader comments a day - sometimes a few hundred - on “Alas.” And there are many time-consuming tasks involved in blogging aside from answering reader comments - it would be easy for me to never get around to posting new posts, if I allow myself to spend hours answering comments. And I have a life apart from blogging.
Frankly, I’m amazed I even have time to read all the comments (and sometimes I fail even at that). To criticize me for failing to reply to any particular comment suggests that you don’t have a realistic appreciation of the practical limits to how much time I can spend on comments (or of how slow a writer I am! :-P ).
P.S. That said, I appreciate your posts on this thread, and especially your civility. Your response to my response to you is one of the comments I regret not having found time to respond to. (Yet).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
November 30th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
Daran,
I apologize if you feel that I’m not being inclusive, and I really don’t like turning this into a “who has it worst” exchange because that really solves nothing (even though it has already turned into that). Regardless, I think that saying I have been “silent” on issues is like beating a dead horse because I could make the same argument vice versa. However, that is pointless, and I don’t particularly feel like derailing the thread.
I don’t want to come off the wrong way, particularly because I haven’t been commenting here for very long, and I respect your opinion even if I don’t agree with you.
However, I think there are some serious holes in your argument, and you still haven’t explained to me how oppression affects men more on a global scale than it does women, which was where this whole thing began. My initial comment was in rebuttal to that argument. At least give me something more than war because the fact that men are more often than not the ones fighting them is not the fault of feminism. From my understanding, feminists haven’t had an impact on drafting or coercing men into going to war. Most feminists, including myself, do not believe in forced participation in war, nor do many believe that the military should be a sexist institution.
Women should be able to have the same military opportunities as men, and the fact that the military still marginalizes women and prevents them from fully participating is, again, not the fault of feminism or feminists. The fact that there are more male casualties in war than females is a reflection of that sexism. Feminists are not to blame for the fact that sexism that prevents both men and women from equal participation in matters of military and war. It is a system that feminists are attempting to dismantle.
This comment was written by Donna.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 12:20 am
Ampersand:
I did, before making that comment, verify that you had posted at least once to the thread after Donna, thus had had an opportunity to read it (which you’ve not denied having done). You certainly have now, and have had the post drawn to your attention. It’s not through lack of time that you’ve not addressed the substantive issue, it’s because you haven’t made it a priority.
I don’t blame you for that. I merely observe it, and that you did make it a priority to ask the following question of me, despite having what are likely to have been similar calls on your time.
Ampersand (in the earlier post):
When will your posts hold feminists to the standard that you hold me? And if you judge that question to be prejudicial, do you recognise that it is no more so than yours?
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 1:14 am
Daran, I respond to the posts that catch my eye at the moment, using the time I have available at that moment. I didn’t have the time or impulse to respond to Donna at the moment I read her post, and I did when I responded to your post; that’s a molehill that you’re determined to turn into a mountain.
There are plenty of times I’ve disagreed with other feminists, including times that I’ve argued that patriarchy hurts men too. But I don’t respond to every single feminist comment which doesn’t acknowlege that men suffer - any more than I respond to every single MRA comment which doesn’t acknowlege that women suffer. It’s unreasonable of you to seemingly expect me to.
If you really think it’s essential that I comment on a particular post, try asking me politely (rather than in a “gotcha!” high-handed manner, as you’ve done so far), and including the post number so that I don’t have to go back and reread the thread to figure out what you’re talking about.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 6:58 am
Daran,
On feminism meaning “believed that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages people who are not wealthy powerful men”–read MacKinnon. She is a feminist-marxist. And that’s a pretty good nutshell of one of the many things she says. Because she is a feminist marxist, she focuses on how hierarchies place powerful men over other men and women, etc, and how men and women both are harmed by this.
Also, there’s a bit of pot-calling-the-kettle black here, considering that you still haven’t responded to my post 64, although you have commented on a subsequent post of mine. A lot of it is exposition and some concessions, but the rest is focused on areas where women are still not equal TO MEN. You still haven’t answered the poverty point, the education point, etc. And we haven’t even gotten into human trafficking.
Is it true that men are sometimes targeted because they are men, for war crimes, etc.? Absolutely. But women are targeted for being women even when there is not a war on. That’s kind of disturbing. If the rules have already broken down and there is chaos, they target you. If the rules are still working, the rules target women.
This comment was written by Ismone.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 7:54 am
Libertarians tend to believe in the absense of informal discrimination, and in blind meritocracy, ie, that if government was minimized, the talent rising to the top would be predominantly white hetero male upper-middle-class-upbringing because those individuals must be naturally smarter and harder-working than all others of different gender, sexuality, color, or economic origin..
Actually, most libertarians probably don’t really care. Their feeling is, if the talent is mostly white males, so be it. If not, so be it.
My thoughts (I am paleoconservative with libertarian tendencies) on each category:
(1) The talent would be mostly hetero unless gays are very disproportionately talented, because there are far more heteros than homos or bis.
(2) The talent would almost certainly be disproportionately Jewish, and likely Asian as well. Current evidence suggests that in business and intellectual fields, non-Hispanic whites on average do have an advantage over blacks and Hispanics. I see no reason why we have to assume that the entire reason is “institutional racism.”
(3) Men tend to occupy more of the highest level of success than women. I tend to think that part of the reason is that men tend to vary more than women in a number of categories (e.g. more male geniuses, but also more male idiots). This is because biologically men are more expendable than women so “nature can take more chances” with men.
(4) The talent would likely from the upper-middle class, because to the extent that talent is heritable (from genes or from upbringing), those who initially manage to achieve the upper-middle class status are probably disproportionately talented to begin with and so their children are more likely to inherit talent.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 8:27 am
Actually, most libertarians probably don’t really care. Their feeling is, if the talent is mostly white males, so be it. If not, so be it.
My impression is that libertarians mostly are middle-class white men - they’re a group so unthinking in their privilege, and indeed generally so blind to their own privilege, that they honestly believe it’s talent alone that has got them where they are. They are also usually those who complain loudest at any intervention that removes any of the privilege granted to middle-class white men, as to them, their privilege is their entitlement, granted on merit.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 9:09 am
Hi, Cathy. Thanks for taking the time to write your response.
Cathy, with all due respect, I don’t think your objection holds any water. What does the proportion of gays and lesbians to heterosexuals have to do with anything? Would a study comparing 144 gays and lesbians to 144 heterosexuals somehow be more valid? There’s a widely-accepted, non-idealogical method of testing for statistical significance; why should this standard method not count in this instance?
It’s the nature of random, representative sampling that there will be more majority folks interviewed than minority folks (apart from special designs like oversampling). That doesn’t make the study less reliable, and it doesn’t change the fact that for making these kinds of comparisons of prevalence a random sample is better than a non-random sample.
If I recall correctly, the researchers surveyed lesbians attending the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. It was important, groundbreaking research - hardly anyone had researched IPV among lesbians in 1991 - but it doesn’t tell us anything about the relative prevalence of intimate violence in same-sex and cross-sex relationships.
I agree that we should be careful about what research says (although you must admit that you didn’t use such cautious language in post 65). It’s always possible to do new, better studies - for instance, maybe the next round of the NVAW could oversample people living in same-sex partnerships. On the other hand, the always-existing chance that future, better research will change our mind, shouldn’t prevent us from drawing inferences from the best of the currently existing research.
For the purpose of comparing prevalences of same-sex and opposite-sex partner violence, the NVAW is obviously better than studies that use non-random samples, that have definitions of “abuse” that make cross-study comparisons problematic (for instance, non-violent emotional abuse is counted in some studies, not counted in others), and that often don’t even survey heterosexual women. The NVAW - while not perfect - is the only research currently existing that uses an appropriate methodology for comparing prevalences. The research you’re relying on - while excellent in many ways - is simply not appropriate for the comparisons you want to draw.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 9:41 am
Continuing my response to Cathy, and regarding the story of Jack and Jill, I think it’s important to understand that feminist analysis applies to men and women as a class, and obviously doesn’t tell us much about every individual person or couple.
All else being equal, there’s a lot of reasons to think that men are advantaged in our society (although I think it’s also clear that sexism harms men, as well). For instance, outside of prison, women are more likely to be victims of rape than men. However, there are individual married couples in which the husband is a survivor of rape, but the wife is not. The fact that there are individual exceptions to overall averages doesn’t make all analysis based on the overall picture illegitimate.
In the example of Jack and Jill, I myself wouldn’t apply the alleged “conventional feminist analysis” to their case, and I’m not sure I believe that most feminists would. Feminists are not, by and large, idiots; we realize that general theories aren’t always applicable to all individuals. (You have a tendency, in your ultra-harsh judgments of feminists, to find isolated examples - sometimes from obviously dubious sources like student newspapers - and treat them as if they represent the norm).
And I certainly agree that the conventional, sexist gender roles have hurt men like Jack - and, for that matter, men like me. But I think that for all its flaws, feminism is the movement that’s doing the most to fight those conventional, sexist gender roles.
I didn’t say “most commonly used label.” And, obviously, there are many critics of feminism who “espouse many basic feminist tenents” who are not widely perceived as anti-feminist - Naomi Wolf, for example. Or Catherine MacKinnon, for that matter (non-feminists tend to forget that a huge portion of MacKinnon’s writings are critiques of feminist thought).
What you don’t seem to be willing to admit is that there’s a real and important difference between criticizing feminism and simply being against feminism in all its current forms. It’s the latter that makes you anti-feminist. However, I don’t think it’s true that because (IMO) you’re anti-feminist, I am therefore unwilling to take your critiques seriously; that’s an assumption that you’re making without any warrant.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 9:47 am
Directly from the outbacks of the world. A speedy, and probably lousy translation. However you are welcome to comment if you like.
***
In Sweden, there is an organisation called Anti-feminist community. The main ambition is to be against feminism as such, but not against equality. The reason I’ve always found that ‘anti-feminism’ is a bad choice of word, is mainly because it implicates being against equality, whatever one otherwise claims. It also rests on a one-eyed assumption of what constitutes feminism. As if there is only one kind of feminism. It’s understandable from the view point that a majority of the feminist movement can be claimed to have been hegemonized of typically left-wing views and such analytic grounds. It is this tendency of hegemony that has led to a strange placement of (classic) liberal and individualistic feminism, whetever they are attacked from (classic liberal) right or left.
Feminism an sich is not in opposition to classic liberal and individualistic ideas. This usually greatly surprises individuals who regard themselves as classic liberals, libertarians and individualists. It is as if feminism can’t constitute anything else than the popular vote, and thus a left-wing idea and ideological base. This means that classic liberal and individualistic feminism are attacked - from the right - with arguments that often aren’t relevant. The same is the case as a large part of the left-wing is consumed with the ever tiresome and selfproclaimed interpretation of feminism. Too often debates of feminism ends in suspicion of individualistfeminists being anti-feminists [as have happened to Cathy Young here] even though the arguments are valid through a classic liberal and individualistfeminist perspective. The odd thing is that even though that a legitimate and a valid feministic approach exists, individualistic feminism are treated variably and dependingly from where the attack comes from, either as:
1) as critical to main stream/contemporary (left wing) feminism, and thus as anti-feminism.
2) as contemporary feminism (left wing), and thus as incompatible with classic liberalism.
Neither is correct.
Related link tip: Cathy Young [etc]
This comment was written by Louise.***
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December 1st, 2005 at 9:50 am
There, Cathy - the Swedes support you! :-)
Thank you for providing the translation, Louise!
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:17 am
“…Jill gets pregnant….Jill gets pregnant again….”
Mm-hm.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:24 am
Feminists are not to blame for the fact that sexism that prevents both men and women from equal participation in matters of military and war.
I attended a lecture on male violence and the male lecturer mentioned he thought the difference between “just wars” and “unjust wars.” was that in just wars every man, woman and child that is able to pick up anything they have to defend themselves by any means necessary does so to defend themselves. If war is only supposed to be justified as a last resort by people defending themselves and that’s not merely an excuse for imperlialism, then what you see is everyone in the community pulling together everything they have to stave off attackers.
In “unjust wars” it is mostly trained, armed men conscripted by wealthier men who do the fighting. Imperialism, racism and sexism are intertwined oppressions.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:27 am
>>Jack is a classical musician who gives piano lessons and occasional recitals while working toward a career as a peormer; his live-in girlriend Jill is a ceramics painter who works as a secretary on the side. Jill gets pregnant and announces to Jack that while she would like to have the baby, she’ll get an abortion unless he gets a “real job” that will allow her to quit her secretarial job.>>
So Jack’s girlfriend says she will get an abortion and keep working if Jack wants to continue being a classical musician giving piano lessons. He apparently wants to be a father, so he decides to quit his vocation and get a paying job so that he can support his kids and the parent who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.
That bitch!
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:29 am
Daran: if you cannot envision why women would claim a need for greater equality without also envisioning that this said equality would subtract from men’s quality of life, then I believe you have wholly underscored that indeed there is a vast inequality for women. Men would have nothing to lose if women were trully equal. Your re-hashing of the social risks that men face is sophmoric in its blatent denial of who created and who currently maintains those risks. If you don’t like the draft, fight that; don’t bitch at feminists because they want greater social equality.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 2:25 pm
He apparently wants to be a father, so he decides to quit his vocation and get a paying job so that he can support his kids and the parent who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.
Actually, the scenario states that she’s giving up her secretarial job, not her ceramics painting. Seems like she hasn’t given up her art career.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 2:30 pm
[snort] Ron, take it from me. “Art” and “career” are frequently mutually exclusive, at least in this country. You can paint ceramics until your basement is six feet deep with post-Fiestaware. It does not follow that monied folk will beat a path to your door automatically.
You know better than that, so stop playing games.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 2:40 pm
“And I object to Ampersand’s silence about Donna’s silence.”
Hey, Amp, I was a sysop back in the day. My general attitude was, “If you don’t like it, try another board.” Not nearly as tactful as your replies, but sometimes brevity serves multiple purposes. I happen to think you’ve got a hell of a blog here; despite obvious disagreements between me and a number of the posters, the discourse is generally civil and informative. Seems to me that many of the tenets of feminism can be summarized as “No one has a right to demand something of you that you don’t want to give.” For any reason. I’d apply that right here. You are under no obligation to post, to respond to a post. Anyone who demands otherwise is being rude.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 2:47 pm
alsis39, I didn’t mean to imply that she was making a bunch of money off of the artwork. It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art. Whereas the scenario makes it clear that she did nothing of the sort. To say “who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.” is in direct variance with the stated scenario, where she continues to make ceramics and exhibit them.
And hey - if the ceramics painting DIDN’T pay, why couldn’t she have quit the ceramics painting and taken that time to do some kind of part-time work? Perhaps she could have taken more secretarial hours? I think this is the kind of question that the scenario was put forward to consider.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 2:51 pm
RonF: It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art
You’ve obviously never looked after a small child!
if Jill’s staying home to look after the baby, she has given up ceramics painting - for at least a year, if not longer. Looking after a small child is a full time, and exhausting, job.
This comment was written by Jesurgislac.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:19 pm
“You’ve obviously never looked after a small child!”
I’ve taken care of kids. We’ve had two of our own. My wife and I both held down full-time jobs the entire time. We were quite lucky in that her place of employment had child care available. And I work with several women who have kids of various ages with various day-care arrangements. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who has given up work for a year or more after they’ve had a child; usually, they get the 6 weeks or whatever it is and then back to work. I work with one woman who has just had a child and is coming back part-time; she also has 3-year old triplets.
“if Jill’s staying home to look after the baby, she has given up ceramics painting - for at least a year, if not longer.”
Not according to the scenario:
Jill, meanwhile, is greatly enjoying being a stay-at-home mom (her own mother, who runs a day-care center, has offered to her discounted day care if she wants to go back to work, but she has refused) while continuing to paint and having her works displayed in exhibitions here and there.
Now, you want to argue with the plausibility of the scenario, go ahead. But don’t directly contradict it without saying so.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
This is a strawman and possibly an hom. I’ve said nothing whatsoever about the effect of demands for equality upon men’s quality of life. To the extent that your remark is predicated upon the notion that I’m partizan in favour of men, it’s an ad hom.
My argument hasn’t been fully developed, but it is essentially that in order to sustain the claim that “current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism [...] on balance disadvantages women”, feminism must deny, dismiss, and trivialise current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which disadvantages men; that feminism does deny, dismiss, and trivialise this; that this is offensive; and that it is counter-productive.
Women would have nothing t fear if the inequality and sexism which disadvantages men was recognised as such.
Another criticism I have of feminism is that it equates “(in)equality” with “(in)justice”, which leads (some) feminists into such grotesque positions as advocating the extension of the draft to women.
But that isn’t the argument I’ve been making up till now.
The risks are created by the same forces that create all other social structures. Each group and subgroup acts to organise society to it’s own benefit. There are other factors, most notably inertia. Social structures
However not all groups are equally powerful. The group of very rich, very powerful men dominate to such an extent that the rest of us are oppressed by it.
Do you agree with that? If so, where have I “blantently denied” it?
As I said before, I try to deal whatever part of the shitpile is within my reach. Right now, I seem to have a small audience. Some of that audience appear to be in favour of extending liability to any draft to women. That I haven’t addressed this point is solely due to the fact that I have too astonished and flabbergasted to summon up a response. Conscription is process whereby rich powerful men enslave poor powerless men for the purpose of oppressing other men and women. Now in the name of equality, some feminists here would like that extended to women? Equal opportunity to be enslaved? Equal opportunity to be forced to oppress others?? Equal opportunity to be forced to oppress other women??? ARE YOU MAD???
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:35 pm
I believe that the hypothetical “Jack and Jill” that was posited stated that the woman who gave up her job did have showings at local galleries. That is the mark of a carreer.
Having said that Ron was correct in his quotation of the original posited hypothetical, I will say that the story is nice but not very realistic. I would love to quit my job and pursue my education full time. For financial reasons that isn’t feasible. My union job provides better benefits than my husband’s employment, and it takes both of our incomes to have enough left over to save for retirement.
In the real world Jill would likely go back to work when her baby was older. But the reality is that the situation would breed resentment between Jack and Jill, and a divorce would be the most probable outcome. And that begets an entire new set of realities for Jill and Jack.
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Samantha:
With regards to the lecture you attended, your lecturer put forward his own definitions of what he thinks what “just” and “unjust” wars are. The statements “in just wars every man, woman and child that is able to pick up anything they have to defend themselves by any means necessary does so to defend themselves.” and “what you see is everyone in the community pulling together everything they have to stave off attackers.” conjure up a picture of an unorganized rabble trying to fight off an organized, well-armed invader. Is that a good thing? It appears that he believes that we should not maintain a standing army, one that is composed of “trained, armed men”? Does he think that having such and using it to defend our country is unjust?
I wonder what he thinks of our current military. It’s composed of trained and armed men and women, not just men. Additionally, it’s all volunteer, with no conscripts whatsoever. Is it just, or unjust? Set aside how it’s currently being used; that can be argued, I’ll concede.
Is there no justification for extending one’s army across one’s borders? According to the above definition, WW II was unjustified and imperialist, since Germany never invaded the United States. Should we not have gone to war and assisted France and Britian? Should we have waited until they invaded the United States to start arming?
Let’s look at a real-world scenario, one that’s currently playing out.
Iran is a formal theocracy. The religion they proseltyze forbids separation of Church and State. The government believes that their religion requires them to foment an “Islamic revolution” across the planet. The President of Iran has called for the destruction of Israel. Not a withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, but a complete wipe-out of Israel and it’s inhabitants. As expressed by that government, their religion permits the killing of any Jew, Christian, or any non-Moslem that does not accept their civil and spiritual authority. They are working very hard to create atomic weapons, and are using every diplomatic method to stave off any international efforts to make them stop until the question is moot. They are suspected to helping to fund terrorism world-wide, and the insurgent and terrorist activities in Iraq in particular.
What do you think Iran’s intent is?
What do you think Israel should do?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:41 pm
Men would have nothing to lose if women were truly equal.
Just thought it was something that would bear repeating. Of course, some men would lose something; those that couldn’t handle the competition for jobs, etc.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 3:49 pm
silverside, you failed to mention in your post the reason why those shelters were sued: they refused to admit male victims of domestic violence.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Daran:
Conscription is [a] process whereby rich powerful men enslave poor powerless men for the purpose of oppressing other men and women.
Conscription is a process whereby, with due process of law, citizens are required to give service in a way defined by the state. The purpose to which that service is put is entirely separate from the process.
BTW, slaves don’t get paid, don’t serve a fixed term and leave service, and don’t get bonuses to get encouraged to stay when they can otherwise leave. Conscripts, on the other hand, have a fixed term to their service. Slaves can’t vote, either.
What do you think would have happened if we’d tried to fight WW II without conscription? Do you think that the purpose of WW II was to oppress other men and women? Or was it to stop the oppression of other men and women?
Actually, I think that conscription might not be a bad idea. And I say this as someone who during the Vietnam War gleefully used his “2S” his first two years in college and his high draft number the last two years. But I’d change it a bit. To start, and this isn’t meant to be fully formed:
1) Everyone goes. Everyone. Male, female, married, single, hale, disabled, everything else. At age 18, everyone goes.
2) An array of different service opportunities are provided. Military, security, the Peace Corps, the old CCC, feeding the homeless, emptying out bedpans, teaching, building public works, etc. You only go in the military if you so choose.
Everyone puts in 2 or 3 years. Imagine what could be built. Imagine what we could all do for each other.
Then there’s the universal service option in “Starship Troopers”. There’s no conscription. But if you go into service (for purposes of this discussion, as above not necessarily the military), you’re a citizen. If you don’t, you’re a subject. The latter have all the rights of the former, with two exceptions; the rights to vote and to hold public office. No other laws can make a distinction between the two groups. That’s an interesting concept. Maybe too much subjugation of people to the State?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:14 pm
Daran: paint me confused. I thought above you were complaining that men had such heavy social risks as the draft… and somehow that should make the feminists all shut the hell up. As if men’s social risks automatically dismiss the need to address women’s risks and inequalities. You don’t make much sense.
Further, if I cannot fight for my country either through combat or worse case scenario, the draft, how fully equal am I to my male compatriots? If half the population views me as something to be protected (insert rollyeyes here), then accordingly laws, judicial processes, restrictions on physical and personal freedoms, all play out against me. As is the current case in the US (and pretty much everywhere else). You seem more horrified that we potentially want to be cannon fodder for the powerful white man, while all the while ignoring that fact that we *are* fucking cannon fodder already for all men. Men are raping women; men are beating women; men are killing women. There might be a very small percentage of women who do this to other women, but the numbers play out every freaking time: men brutalize women. And then men like you are horrified that we think we should be part of the draft process.
Me personally, I want every women in the US to know how to load, aim, and shoot a gun. And that every spineless misogynistic male out there knew that we have this knowledge. And not get all hyperbolic about the grotesqueness of our wanting to join in the battle. We’re already in the battle; it’s called the status quo.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:21 pm
>>alsis39, I didn’t mean to imply that she was making a bunch of money off of the artwork. It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art. Whereas the scenario makes it clear that she did nothing of the sort. To say “who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.” is in direct variance with the stated scenario, where she continues to make ceramics and exhibit them.>>
…Which is yet another place where his scenario takes a detour from reality. I sincerely doubt the man knows a damn thing about maintaining a studio, exhibiting art, health restrictions during pregnancy (hint: heavy metals in pigments), or trying to mother a small child (or two) and create art on a professional basis at the same time–especially if the art in question is as labor-intensive as ceramic art. A woman in Jill’s situation would very likely face the same creative roadblocks as Jack; the only reason “the scenario” doesn’t mention that is that the guy who wrote the scenario is extremely biased.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:26 pm
>>Now, you want to argue with the plausibility of the scenario, go ahead. But don’t directly contradict it without saying so. >>
Okay: the scenario is completely implausible. Most people cannot make or market art and run around after children at the same time. Most people cannot run around after children and expect to have the energy to create when your spouse gets home. Don’t even get me started on the “grandma, who lives locally and just happens to run a daycare center, would be overjoyed to care for the kids for free.” Since it would be an insult to Daran’s intelligence to pretend that Jill’s continued ability to do art has anything to do with reality, I chose to go with the much more sane premise that a full-time mom has no more opportunity to fire pots than a full-time banker has opportunity to strum guitars.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:37 pm
>>And hey - if the ceramics painting DIDN’T pay, why couldn’t she have quit the ceramics painting and taken that time to do some kind of part-time work? Perhaps she could have taken more secretarial hours? I think this is the kind of question that the scenario was put forward to consider. >>
Because she was taking care of the kids, is why. That’s her job in this story. Jack clearly never considered staying home to watch his children himself (see how annoying that kind of reasoning is? “It’s not covered in the poorly-written scenario, therefore it’s not worth commenting on”). There are many implausibilities around this whole setup, but it doesn’t assist with the “What to do about supporting a family?” question by ignoring most of the choices available to Jack, and arguing as though all of this has simply happened to him.
It doesn’t pay, generally speaking. Most people who sincerely love art and do art do not make money off of creating it. Given the amount of money you have to pump into an art form like ceramics, Jill would be lucky to break even. And with two children, it is extremely unlikely that Jill would have been able to continue making art–especially this kind of art–on the basis described in the scenario; it would have been the equivalent of coming back to work without putting your children in daycare.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 4:48 pm
Jaketk you’re being dishonest again. Those guys wanted access to women’s shelters when they could have formed thier own or gone to gay men’s shelters. Their purpose was to harass women. Try again.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 8:03 pm
ginmar, why do i sense you did not read the article? it is illegal to discriminate against a person because of his gender, particularly when it comes to publicly-funded facilities. the shelters even defended their discrimination against males; they jumped from denial to admission, and rather quickly at that. it is not harrassment to sue when denied access to public health services due to bias against one’s gender. unless you support such discrimination, i cannot see how i am dishonest. try again.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Conscription is a process whereby, with due process of law, citizens are required to give service in a way defined by the state. The purpose to which that service is put is entirely separate from the process.
BTW, slaves don’t get paid, don’t serve a fixed term and leave service, and don’t get bonuses to get encouraged to stay when they can otherwise leave. Conscripts, on the other hand, have a fixed term to their service. Slaves can’t vote, either.
It is still involuntary servitude. The mark of conscription is that people are forced against their will to serve. It is a statement that the state owns you, and has the right to demand service from you.
And by the way “slaves don’t get paid” refers to a very limited concept of slavery. What defines slavery is that someone else has total control over your life, not that you get no pay.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 8:31 pm
what is the provenance of ifeminist? and is it too late to suggest a change for the better in common usage?
all of these cutely-prefixed terms (especially those that begin with e or i) have a very limited shelf-life. in general, they faded with the close of the late nineties internet boom.
This comment was written by Tyrone Blakely.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 8:54 pm
Thanks for the translation of the Swedish article, Louise — I was going to ask a Swedish correspondent to translate it for me, but you’ve saved me the trouble.
Barry, I’ve looked at the NVAW study you reference; actually, the tables on p. 29 and 30 say that some of the numbers pertatining to abuse in same-sex couples are statistically significant and other are not (with a standard error rate of 30%). Clearly more studies on this subject are needed.
As for the “Jack and Jill” example: I find it amusing that while most people here presumably think there’s nothing wrong with mothers with young children working outside the home, now we’re seeing arguments that a woman can’t possibly take care of a small child and paint at home. Maybe you didn’t notice that I said that before they had a baby, “Jill” worked as a secretary while painting? (I have another friend who has a full-time office job and also paints and has occasional showings.) Now she takes care of children while painting. It’s not really a “career” — she makes maybe $500 a year selling her stuff. And who says that “Jack” never considered staying home? My experience is that today, most men under 35 are at least aware that that’s an option. To have him stay home was not an option TO “JILL.” By the way, I also didn’t say that grandma had offered to take care of the children “for free,” I said that she offered discounted day care. (And if someone thinks it’s implausible that a woman with kids would live close to her mother who runs a day care center… all I can say is, my former next-door neighbor had her two kids in a preschool run by her sister.) The point is — “Jill” is leading exactly the kind of life she wants, while “Jack” is not.
And no, of course I’m not saying that that’s true of all male breadwinner/female homemaker families. I myself, in the same comment where I described the “Jack and Jill” situation, described another situation I know of in which it’s clearly the husband’s preference and not the wife for the wife to stay home.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:25 pm
daran,
i guess…thanks for your praise and for letting me know that i’m right in my intuition that i’m not the only one who was hurt by the stud/”nice guy” dichotomy. it is particularly cruel to a young man who just wants to be respectful. i was probably 25 before i realized that showing sexual interest in an appropriate (in age, relative social position, etc.) woman can be done in a way that does not necessarily consitute harrassment. i really believed that was impossible, and i really believed that admitting my sexual interest to female friends would probably cost me friendships that i highly valued.
on the other hand, daran…sorry buddy…but i think you’re wrong about the whole “men have it worse because of war” thing. i don’t think white, heterosexual men (and you may or may not be in either of those categories, i know) can really fathom what it’s like to be on the daily (that’s the key word) receiving end of system oppression. the rage, the helplessness, the loss of self-worth…unimaginable.
and that’s why the whole men’s rights idea is so crazy to me. it’s like when the christians claim to be persecuted by the secular left. you can’t be persecuted when your, hello, president actively courts your votes and professes your beliefs. the men’s rights groups are IMHO clearly just men thrashing around in fear of losing control to a situation of (hopefully) equity with women. in fact, their very thrashing is evidence to me of how bad systemic oppression is. as soon as they lose just a little of their privilege, they’re all up in arms about it. so how can we blame women for organizing a movement of their own when they’re told they can’t vote/drive/holdajob/controltheirbodies/befreefromrape?
i know a lot of smart, caring, non-manipulative women. they tell me systemic oppression is bad. not out of a desire to gain power…just out of telling the truth. who am i to disbelieve them?
This comment was written by Polymath.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Cathy, I don’t disagree. But let’s be accurate: specifically, exhibit 8 (on page 29) says that the “differences between same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants are statistically significant” for the catagories of phyiscal assault by a intimate partner, and total victimization by a intimate partner. In other words, for exactly the thing we’re discussing - the differences in rates of abuse between same-sex and opposite sex cohabitants - the numbers are statistically significant.
In other areas - such as the exact percentage of lesbians raped in their lifetime - the standard error rate is 30%. I think that future surveys could improve on that by oversampling lesbian and gay subjects, and that would make for a better survey. But just because not every result in the NVAW is statistically significant, isn’t a reason to throw away the results which are.
What bothers me is, based on a non-random sample based on handing out surveys at a radical feminist music festival, you said with great certainty that it was a “fact” that abuse is as high among lesbian couples as it is among straight couples. But when faced with a study that has clearly superior methodology, and which is statistically significant for that exact comparison, you’re suddenly switching positions and saying we can’t draw any conclusions. I don’t think that’s very logical.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:39 pm
ummm…so those italics should just have been for the word “president”. whoops.
[Don't worry, I fixed it. --Amp]
This comment was written by Polymath.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I think it stands for “individualist feminism.”
That would be up to Wendy McElroy, who coined the word and (I think) owns the ifeminist website. She’s been using the word for years now, though, so I doubt she’d be eager to change it.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I don’t think that debating the specifics of Jack and Jill’s case makes much sense. Cathy’s point, if I understood it, is that there are individual couples for whom the standard gender roles end up benefiting the woman while being negative for the man.
Regardless of the details of Cathy’s example, surely the general point she’s making is correct. There are individual women who love nothing more than being home and raising children (yes, it’s hard work, but some people find it immensely rewarding); and there are individual men who hate their jobs and feel stuck in a life they don’t like due to their “family breadwinner” responsibilities.
Assuming that at least some of the former women and latter men have gotten married and started families - which seems like a pretty damn safe assumption to me - the general point Cathy was making with Jack and Jill - that in some individual cases, women benefit and men get screwed by patriarchal family roles - is true.
And it’s also true, as Cathy points out, that the reverse (hubbies doing well, wives getting screwed over) also happens.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 1st, 2005 at 11:40 pm
Barry: actually, the statistically significant comparisons on p. 29 are the ones showing that both women and men who have been (or currently are) in same-sex relationships have higher lifetime rates of partner abuse than those who have been in heterosexual relationships only. The “catch” is that a further breakdown shows that the lesbian and bisexual women in the study were much more likely to have been abused by a male partner than a female one — but those numbers are the ones that have a high error rate. At least that’s how I’m reading the tables — am I wrong?
In any case, I’ll concede your point. I had not seen the NVAW figures before (the two NVAW-based reports I had read did not analyze the numbers of same-sex intimate violence) and I had repeatedly seen, in highly reputable sources, the assertion that gay and lesbian couples have rates of abuse similar to heterosexual couples. So yes, I was too categorical in asserting the latter as fact, and I was too defensive about disputing the NVAW figures. I don’t think the NVAWS is the last word (and I think you agree with me), so it would be accurate to say that we don’t konw what the facts are at this point.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:03 am
piny:
I haven’t made any comment on this branch of the discussion. It must have been someone else’s intelligence getting insulted. :-)
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:55 am
Cathy: Okay, that’s certainly reasonable.
Regarding the “anti-feminist feminist” thing, I haven’t been persuaded that it’s an unfair or inaccurate term.
However, clearly you disagree, and I don’t want to be uncivil. I’ll try to avoid using the term in reference to you from now on.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 3:17 am
Barry, thanks. I appreciate it.
And by the way, I’ll grant that I’ve sometimes made overly sweeping statements about “feminists”/”feminism” — I’ll try to be more careful with that too.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:59 am
Many misconceptions about history and conscription here:
Daran:
It’s not that simple. I am a Finn. There is (male-only) conscription in Finland. It is also rather popular (IIRC, 87% of Finns support the current system, with men being more in favor of conscription than women). Reason for the support is (historically justified) fear of Russia (again) deciding an attempt to conquer Finland. Almost no one would support any offensive war here (oppressing other men and women). Of course, that risk has greatly lessened since WW2, but many still remember the Winter War.
That said, I still agree that on a theoretical,moral field consciption is wrong (check post 164 by Glaivester, for those reasons). In short, conscription here exist as a safeguard against oppression, but it arguably is oppression in itself. The question is whether it is the lesser evil (I would be biased toward thinking that) or not (I see the point in thinking that, too).
RonF:
The “rabble” can get organized. There is no rule against that. Remember that the British Redcoats were more professional than the ragtag Continental Army, and look what happened. It’s damn hard to fight a people that are unified and fighting for their homes and freedom. The “just” side has great advantage in terms of morale and finding new recruits. They are also less likely to care about economic disadvantages of fighting a long war.
I don’t think anyone argued that the defending side must stay firmly inside their borders. It bears remembering that technically Germany started the war against the U. S, Hitler declared war after Pearl Harbor (which must have been very convenient for FDR). Of course, the U. S was already veryinvolved indirectly in the war (economic aid to Britain, Lend-lease to the Soviet Union etc.).
Okay, I went way off-topic here…
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:29 am
And of course, on the waiting for Germany to invade the United States: Very unlikely. More likely is a scenario in which the Soviet Counteroffensive would not only take whole Eastern Europe and and East Germany, but the whole Europe (save Great Britain, perhaps). The Nazi’s future was bleak even before United States joined (because of the Eastern Front). But that also means that you probably saved Western Europe from Stalin.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:47 am
I don’t know how much of my life story to tell, in response to this.
I never dated a girl until I was twenty one. She was a year older. We used to cuddle a lot and kiss, but she made it explicitly clear that I was not to be sexually aroused while we were making out, that I was never ever to put my hands inside her clothing, never ever to touch her breasts outside her clothing, never ever to see her naked. Of course, we would never have sex. She could put her hands inside my shirt, and on a few occasions she got sexually aroused, but would shortly stop me from doing whatever it was that was pushing her button (rubbing her back, mostly, which seems a strange place to find an erogenous zone, but there you go). If ever I got aroused, I had to disengage instantly. There were also a whole lot of other ‘rules’ that had to be obeyed with her, that didn’t related to the relationship side of things, but were still utterly oppressive. The rules relaxed a little towards the end (I could touch her breasts outside her clothing provided I didn’t grope in an overt way, I was still not permitted to get aroused.)
That relationship continued for several years. When we rowed (are you surprised?) sometimes she’d beat me. I never lifted a finger against her, nor even moved to protect myself. The relationship It ended more or less when I was twenty six, After I was detained in a mental hospital. She told me she couldn’t stand my behaviour any longer.
I lost my job, and my home, while I was in hospital. The hospital itself was abusive, and the trauma of that left me unable to work. That was fifteen years ago. I haven’t worked properly since.
When I was twenty-eight, and in an employment rehabilitation program, I started dating a young woman of nineteen. She made the first contact, via a go-between. I didn’t believe the go-between to start with. I thought she was taking the piss. When we dated I carried on as if the rules of the earlier relationship were still in force It never occured to me that there might be some other way to behave with a girlfriend.
There was no distinct ending to that relationship. We sort of drifted apart. I guess she got fed up with waiting for me to make a move.
My thirty-third year was a good one, on the relationship front. I took a young woman to dinner after a martial arts practice session. We ended up making out in an otherwise deserted hotel restaurant. Eventually, I got round to putting my hand up the back of her cardigan. No bra. (She’d definitely been wearing one earlier. You don’t do martial arts without one, if you’re female). Quite how I got to do that, I have no idea. Eventually I tried moving my hands round to the front, but careful not to touch anything. She let me do that too. Finally I wised up. Unfortunately, it had taken me all evening to get that far, and they wanted to shut the place up. It still didn’t occur to me that we could carry on back at her place (not at mine, because at that time I had moved back in with my parents.) Didn’t occur to her either, or maybe it did, but she never said anything. Never went back to practice either. Probably thought that was easier than having to deal with the guy who turned out to be such a tosspot on the date.
Still, I got to feel a woman’s bare breasts for the first time in my life.
This is turning into an epic, which wasn’t what I intended. I try to be more brief.
Later that year, I lost my virginity, in the most technical of technical senses, in a on-night stand. She picked me up. (There was still no way that I would approach anyone). Said she was twenty.
It was nearly impossible to get hard. I barely penetrated the once before losing it, and ended up bringing her off orally and digitally. I tried to contact her again, but she didn’t respond.
Still I got to touch a woman’s genitals for the first time, and I was no longer a virgin. Sorta. I still felt like one.
Later that year. (Hey, I was on a roll) I got into a relationship with an older woman. Again she made the first actual move. That relationship, consisted basically of us fucking like rabbits at every possible opportunity. That obviously met a need in her. (I had had no idea that women had needs like that). It certainly met a need in me. Despite the sense of manic urgency, I still struggled to get a hard-on or ejaculate inside her, or even in her presence. I used to have her leave the bedroom, so that I could masturbate almost to orgasm, then call her back in in a deparate rush to ‘get it in’ before it was too late.
It was two years, before I could come inside her, and I remember the first time. Thirty four years old, and for the first time in my life, I felt like a man.
That relationship ended three years ago - my doing. It had run its course. She was disappointed and inevitably hurt, though I did my best to end it properly with her, and not just dump her. We remained friends. I have no regrets over that relationship: Not with having it, not with ending it, not with how it ended. I do, however, miss the sex. I’ve not had a relationship since then.
White, heterosexual, British.
can really fathom what it’s like to be on the daily (that’s the key word) receiving end of system oppression. the rage, the helplessness, the loss of self-worth…unimaginable.
I remember when I was a teen, walking the street, head bowed, arms clasped about me, mouthing the word “cunt” over and over and over again to myself, because that was what I felt I was. (Cue feminist discussion about how a word for the female genitals is such at term of opprobrium when applied to a person).
So pardon me, but I do know about rage, helplessness, loss of self-worth, and so on.
Let me tell you about my friend S. She’s a single working mother. Unsurprisingly she struggles, and I give her as much practical help with her life as I can. I’m an emergency baby-sitter, an emergency driver. I lent her my car when hers was smashed up, fix her computer when it crashes. help her with money management and with dealing with officialdom. I do a lot of stuff for her, and there’s not a lot practically she can do for me. (She cuts my hair every couple of months. And that’s it.) But that’s OK. I don’t want practical help from her. What I’d like is sex and affection and friendship. Well, I get the friendship. I did try to take it further (which was a terrifying thing to try to do) but got slapped right down.
We have another mutual friend. He’s a great Guy, but as far as I can see, he doesn’t help her much. They’re not dating or anything, but she lavishes him with physical attention. Right in front of me. My need for love and sex and attention is not being met, and she rubs my nose in it daily, systematically, oppressively.
(Cue feminist argument that men don’t need sex.)
She’s not a bad person, and she certainly doesn’t intend to upset me. It’s hard to convey emotion in a text post, but I’m sitting here in tears, and I’ve had to stop several times just to be able to get through this.
Bullshit.
Your, hello, president is about as far from my beliefs as it is possible to be, and my hello Prime Minister has his tongue so far up your hello president’s arse that you can see it flapping around his tonsils. Tony Blair can court all he likes, he will never ever ever get my vote.
What the hell has any of this got to do with anything I’ve said?
I’m telling you that systematic oppression is bad, and I can’t get you to believe me, because I’ve got a white skin, and I’m male.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:29 am
Sometimes, people that we like don’t like us back. Sometimes, they even like other people. That’s not oppression; that’s just a fact of human existance.
This comment was written by Snowe.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:55 am
Jaketk, why should I read an article from a guy who’s previously exhibited troll-like behavior and who now asserts how wrong and unfair it is that male ‘victims’–in reality MRAs—-can’t shut down womens’ shelters?
I’ve worked with and helped victims of domestic violence, both male and female. I’ve found repeatedly that MRAs have absolutely no interest in helping male victims. None. Your experience is different? I have only your credibility here to judge you on, and you still haven’t responded to what I said. Could it be you’re trying to avoid dealing with that?
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:58 am
I’m sorry everyone. I never intended for this to be about me, and it’s too painful.
Thanks to you all for receiving me so graciously, and I’m sorry that I was able to respond to so little of what I wanted. Thank you, Ampersand, for providing this blog.
Goodbye.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:15 am
“The ‘rabble’ can get organized. There is no rule against that. Remember that the British Redcoats were more professional than the ragtag Continental Army, and look what happened.”
Yeah, they would have lost big time without assistance from France, both on land and on sea.
Warfare has changed in the last 200 years. A lot. Communications, armaments, transportation.
“It’s damn hard to fight a people that are unified and fighting for their homes and freedom.”
Back in 1775, the American farmer and the British soldier had essentially the same personal arms. But these days, you’d have a rabble with maybe some hunting rifles, shotguns and handguns facing soldiers with AK-47s or M-16s and body armor. That’s a lot more uneven. Add in .50 arms, tanks, gunships and other aerial support, medical support, etc., and the rabble has to quickly fall back on guerilla tactics.
“The ‘just’ side has great advantage in terms of morale and finding new recruits. They are also less likely to care about economic disadvantages of fighting a long war.”
That’s presuming that they’ll be in for a long war. Plus, these days, the “unjust” side likely sees themselves as God’s army and figure that getting killed is an express-train trip to Heaven. That’s a pretty good morale builder.
Not that I expect that a foreign army would have an easy time overrunning the U.S. even if the U.S. did not have a standing army. Unlike Iraq, most Americans would be in favor of retaining their present form of government. But the existence of a standing army greatly discourages anyone from trying it and would also greatly reduce the number of casualities (especially civilian ones) if it was tried. Depending on unorganized, untrained civilians to defend the U.S. is a strategy calculated to maximize the likelihood of someone trying to attack us and maximize the number of deaths should such an attack be tried.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:33 am
Q Grrl wrote:
“Me personally, I want every women in the US to know how to load, aim, and shoot a gun.”
Hear, hear! Great idea. Make sure they know how to maintain them, too (especially cleaning). I’m all for people being justified in using deadly force to defend against rape.
Shooting can be fun. I’ve fired black-powder muzzle loaders and .22 rifles at targets, but the most fun was shooting skeet. Check for a local shooting club and I’ll bet that you’ll find they have shooting classes specifically for novices. I have heard of classes specifically for women; apparently some women prefer that, and I have read that there are some issues with upper body strength and shoulder width that need to be paid attention to during instruction that instructors who have generally dealt with men are not always aware of.
So, Q Grrl, where are you on concealed carry? Gonna be hard to deal with a rapist in that fashion if you don’t have your gun with you. I’m “shall-issue”, myself.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:35 am
Amp, I haven’t read all the posts here in detail, but you were the first person to use “MRA” in a post and I haven’t seen what that acronym stands for.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 8:59 am
Daran, thank you for sharing your story. Sincerely.
RonF, “MRA” stands for “men’s rights activist.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:07 am
RonF:
Well, such “strategy” is not advocated by anyone with IQ superior to an amoeba, so I’m not sure why you needed to tell me that…
Also, I have to wonder: Does the word guerilla, and/or the concept of guerilla warfare carry a negative stigma in the US? Lot of training I received as a conscript were on guerilla tactics and fighting in less than optimal conditions.
I’d have some objections to some of the other stuff you wrote (except the French [good point!], and that warfare has changed in 200 years [doh!]), like whether it is a benefit or a liability to have soldiers who are eager to get themselves killed, etc.) But I’m not sure if this is the right place for that. Thanks for the well-written response, but I’m afraid I’ll bow out on those subjects.
As for gun for defense against rape: It would be hard to prove that the man intented to rape, no? But I suppose it might scare some of the rapist assholes into not raping…
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:13 pm
I’d like to know something about this statement:
Is it feminist or anti-feminist?
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:34 pm
I personally would call that statement, taken in isolation, a feminist statement.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:44 pm
The statement argues that women are not entitled to lifetime support upon marriage, but NOW lobbies state legislatures for exactly that - alimony without end.
Is NOW an anti-feminist organization?
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Daran: >>I haven’t made any comment on this branch of the discussion. It must have been someone else’s intelligence getting insulted. :-) >>
Whoops. Sorry. _Cathy Young_ is the person who posited the scenario involving two people sharing a marriage and two children but not the same plane of existence.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:26 pm
No, it is not, in my opinion.
What’s your point?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:41 pm
I believe that Cathy Young agrees with the statement I quoted, which you admit is feminist. Yet NOW disagrees with it, and has in fact denounced it. Yet you say Cathy is anti-feminist and NOW is feminist.
It seems to me that there are currently many types of feminism, and it’s not really proper for people who adhere to one type to denounce those who adhere to other types as “anti-feminist.”
The statement in question was, of course, part of NOW’s Statement of Principles from its founding in 1966. Most of that statement has been repudiated by NOW’s current leadership, but it’s still accepted by people like Cathy and Wendy who seem to get current feminist leadership very angry. The rejection of these principles of equality in favor of principles of permanent entitlement has caused many to reject the feminist label, and for others to argue with the leadership of contemporary “feminist” organizations.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:48 pm
All organizations and movements that are not intentionally and specifically right-wing will drift politically leftwards over time. It’s not surprising that NOW obeys this iron law of political deterioration. ;)
I do tend to agree that there is a lot of “you can’t be a feminist because…” going on. That purity-purge is part and parcel of a leftward drift.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Richard, feminism isn’t a light switch. It’s not black or white. Nor is it monolithic and uniform. It’s possible to have two statements that disagree with one another and have both of them be feminist statements.
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Richard, out of curiosity, could you please provide me a link of NOW denoucing that statement? I’d be interested to read it.
I’ve never said that feminists can’t disagree, or that merely criticizing a statement made by a feminist makes one an anti-feminist. If I had ever said such a thing, then you would indeed have caught me in a contradiction; but since I’ve never said anything of the sort, you don’t even have a shadow of a logical case here.
NOW, at both of the points in time you’re talking about, would agree with the statement that “there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.” In my view, you have to agree with that statement to be a feminist.
NOW can agree with that statement; therefore I consider NOW a feminist group. However, neither Cathy nor Wendy would agree with that statement. Therefore, I personally don’t consider Cathy and Wendy feminists.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Myca, tell that to Barry, he’s the one branding heretics as “anti-feminist”, not me.
I would venture to say that the bulk* of fathers’ rights advocates agree with the statement I quoted, and that they are in fact the true heirs of NOW circa 1966.
*excluding religious nutters like the Fathers’ Manifesto crowd who have no involvement in the political system.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:01 pm
Robert wrote: I do tend to agree that there is a lot of “you can’t be a feminist because…” going on. That purity-purge is part and parcel of a leftward drift.
It’s interesting that neither you, nor Cathy, nor any other critic of me here has repsonded to this from my post, even though I made it clear in my post that this was an important matter:
You seem to be saying that if I think feminism has any meaning at all, then I’m performing a “purge.” That’s bullshit, Robert. And the standard you’re using is one that you’d never dream of applying to any group you considered yourself a member of.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:06 pm
Barry, the last time I checked NOW had a statement on their web site to the effect that the 1966 document was “historical” and did not represent the views of NOW any longer.
The trouble with this discussion is that feminism is first and foremost a philosophy or set of principles, and only secondarily an analysis of current events. Whenever people want to discuss the principles in order to criticize the direction of some of these organizations, they’re immediately met with a wall of assertions about the state of the world and have to drop the philosophical discussion in favor of endless minutiae about the methodologies in particular studies and what not.
This tactic has the effect of shutting down the discussion of philosophy and limits the discourse to the small elite that subscribes to Nexis or a similar academic search service, and it does very little to advance the discussion. Certainly there are areas in which men are advantaged and there are areas in which women are advantaged. But science can’t tell us exactly what they are because it can’t define the desirable state of each man and each woman. That’s where the philosophy comes in.
There was an editorial and a book a few years ago contrasting the approaches taken by the US feminist movement and the French feminist movement which argued, more or less, that the French wanted to improve the lives of typical working mothers and did so through the creation of a “mommy track” in employment. US feminists have by and large rejected the “mommy track” in favor of an effort to increase the number of female CEOs and law partners.
“Mommy track” improves the lives of many women, but the “CEO track” improves the lives of very few. This is the sort of debate that should be possible within the confines of feminist philosophy without anybody getting labeled “anti-feminist”.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:08 pm
Richard, the use of langauge like “heretic” - not to mention using it in the third person, in a contempt-filled tone - is both rude and needlessly inflammatory. Please refrain from using such language to refer to me on my blog, in the future.
If you’re unable to do that, or if you lack the perception necessary to tell insulting language apart from non-insulting language, then please stop posting to my blog. You have your own blog in which you can post about me in whatever language you wish.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:17 pm
The term “heretics” isn’t vital to my point, so change it to “people” or “women” if you prefer. I’m not trying to push buttons, really.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Why should that be possible?
Let’s ignore the particular idea you’re talking about, which would probably require a separate discussion to fully address (you seem to be implying that feminism faces an either/or choice between supporting “CEO track” and supporting “mommy track.” However, I’d argue that feminism is multifacited, and so therefore can support both tracks. But I also admit it’s possible I’m misunderstanding your case).
Unless you’re saying that feminism has no meaning at all, and that all ideas are equally feminist, then it must logically be the case that some ideas are less feminist than others, and even that some ideas are not compatable with feminism at all.
If it is logically the case that some ideas are either less feminist or not feminist at all, why should it not be acceptable to discuss whether or not any particular idea is feminist or not?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Richard, I’m not just asking you to refrain from purposely treating me with contempt - although I appreciate that you’re doing that much.
But I’m asking for more than that. I’m asking you to consciously make an effort to be considerate in how you use language and tone.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Speaking of the empirical definition of feminism Barry offers: NOW, at both of the points in time you’re talking about, would agree with the statement that “there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.” In my view, you have to agree with that statement to be a feminist.
I occurs to me that hard-right masculists may very well agree with this statement, but would add “and that’s as it should be” so I can’t take this as the uber-definition of feminism. Assuming that the conditions postulated by this assertion are remedied at some point, such that the inequalities and sexism are roughly equal, does that mean feminism ceases to exist?
And who’s to say what the balance of inequalities is? Women live longer than men, but men have higher incomes. To achieve balance, don’t we have to bring both to equality?
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 3:30 pm
And that’s why it’s not. There’s a second part of Amp’s definition: 2) Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Incidentally, this is actually in the post that Amp wrote, and fully accessable to you, up there at the top of the page.
There are several different ways that this statement could be taken.
If you mean the first, best meaning, that we eliminate the inequalities and sexism that currently oppress women (and to a much lesser dregree, men), then yes, I think that would mean the end of feminism, just as the advent of women gaining the right to vote meant the end of the suffrage movement. This meaning has been discussed a whole bunch in these comments, most cogently in Amp’s post #36.
If you mean the second, more unkind interpretation . . . that we just work to remove the “on balance” part of the equation, by, say, increasing the sexism for men so that it all balances out . . . well, frankly, I think that it’s an asinine question, and not one that should be taken seriously.
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 3:46 pm
Amp, I’m not criticizing you. Or at least, I’m not intending to criticize you. (Come on, use some of that white male power, and decline to care what I think.)
You’re concerned that the word “feminist” will be drained of meaning if you let people who think of themselves as feminist but who you don’t think are feminists sign up. But this attitude itself treats feminism as a club or organization, and asserts ownership over the membership process.
Cathy (for example) wants equal rights for women - as she understands equal rights. You want equal rights for women, as you understand them. You disagree on what equal rights are, and how to attain them, perhaps, but you both want equal rights for women. You’re both feminists, but you’re not in the same club. But you (the broad, generic “you”) want to say that she’s not a feminist because she isn’t working towards the goals you think she ought to be working towards, in the fashion you think she ought to be doing it.
If you want to come up with reasons why Cathy’s kind of feminism or wrong or bad or counterproductive (”splitter!”) that’s totally your prerogative. Not how I’d spend my energy, but it’s not my decision to make. If you want to make the fight for the word, rather than the idea, the important battle, well, I respect your judgment. You know what the priorities ought to be for your own interests. I personally think feminism would have a lot more success as a philosophy than as a movement, but YMMV.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Pardon me please, Myca, if I haven’t read all 205 comments on this post in great detail.
But again, if the definition of the term “feminist” hinges on a particular analysis of society rather than on a set of philosophical principles, the ability of feminists to look at data coldly and objectively is going to be compromized and they’re going to all have chips on their shoulders about their oppression.
There are some areas of this society in which men are unfairly advantaged over women, and some where women are unfairly advantaged over men. This is offensive to those of us who believe in social justice, and also to those who believe in some sort of ideal of equality, opportunity-wise or in outcome. I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the long run whether feminism is a term held in high repute or in low repute, as the struggle for justice will continue, as it always has, and similarly it doesn’t matter who can call herself a feminist and who can’t.
I do find it a little ironic that a man is telling women they’re not entitled to call themselves “feminists” when they themselves want to, but that’s not really very important.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Richard, one of the things Myca was criticizing you for (apparently) not having read was the post itself. Surely it’s not an unreasonable thing to expect you to have read the post with a little care before you began critcizing me for what I said in it.
For example, you could have read the bit in the my post in which I wrote, “And, clearly, I have no authority (or desire) to define feminism for anyone apart from myself; people who want to think of themselves as ‘feminists’ are free to do so regardless of if I agree. So I’ll just talk about what ‘feminist’ means to me.”
Clearly, I think Cathy is entitled to call herself whatever you want. Next time, please try reading what I’ve written before you attempt to criticize it.
Robert wrote:
Hey, look - it appears that Robert didn’t read it either. Robert, I can’t “let” people sign up, or not, for feminism. There’s nothing to sign up for; no central party organization, no list of members. Nothing I say or do can possibly prevent Cathy from thinking of herself as a feminist, if that’s what Cathy wishes to do.
And I know that you’ve never read any post I’ve written but this one, Robert; therefore you have no way of knowing that I talk about ideas and policy issues much more than I talk about stuff like who is or isn’t a feminist. However, if you stick around a bit, I think you’ll see that most of my posts aren’t concerned with parsing who I do or don’t think is a “feminist.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Dude, you seem pretty ticked off. (Which someone who didn’t know you well probably wouldn’t notice from your even tone.) Chill. There’s no right or wrong here.
OK, you aren’t the gatekeeper of feminism. In which case, your worries that feminism will be drained of meaning if Cathy gets to play ball seem out of place.
Or maybe I’m missing something. What am I missing?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:59 pm
I think you are right on that point. I am a feminist, but unlike most feminists, I do NOT support alimony.
But in defense of mainstream feminists who do support alimony, I think it’s unfair that they are labelled “anti-housewife” by many conservatives. In reality, that have fought hard to give housewives privileges such as primary custody and alimony.
This comment was written by drumgurl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:10 pm
When I want to beat up on somebody, I accompany my attacks with a lot of weasel-words because it makes my attack look more reasonable; lots of people do that. But when you write something like this:
In Cathy’s view, being a feminist doesn’t require endorsing any feminist policy positions, or ever taking a pro-feminist stand in public, or being part of a movement for attaining women’s equality, or thinking such a movement can do any good at all.
…you’re clearly saying that you believe Cathy’s self-professed feminism is illegitimate, regardless of any other caveats that may be present in your post.
The dilemma that Cathy and others of her ilk are in is this: they signed up for feminism believing it was about equality of opportunity and a correction of the inequalities inherent in traditional sex roles. But that movement - illustrated by the quote I offered - has been hijacked by a group of people who are simply interested in increasing female privilege. New feminism is simply another special interest group, not an equality group that all fair-minded people can get behind. While NOW in 1966 wanted to reduce sex conflict and increase the sharing of family responsibilities, NOW of 2005 seems to want to increase conflict, to raise the divorce rate and to see more and more children raised in single-parent families. NOW used to be for joint custody, for example, but now they aren’t.
So what’s a 1970s feminist to do nowadays, try and take back the movement from the hijackers or to reject it outright? Cathy seems to be for taking it back, but to me it’s a lost cause.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:15 pm
As a classic liberal, or “libertarian”, I agree with Louise’s post (#140).
In my opinion, there is a big difference between people like Young and McElroy and the anti-fems at the IWF. I have read some of Young’s writings at Reason and I’m very familiar with McElroy. It might surpise some of you that both women are capable of a good ol’ feminist rant.
The only criticism I have of the two women is that they sometimes make broad assumptions about feminists, but I see Young has already taken note of that.
This comment was written by drumgurl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:48 pm
drumgurl says:
Well, yeah, NOW has lobbied long and hard to put divorced women in a comfortable position, but I’m not sure this qualifies as “pro-housewife” for the simple reason that the typical divorced man doesn’t make enough money to fully support two households regardless of how it’s divided. So the best way for women to be housewives is to remain married, and NOW’s not real big on (straight) marriage. A tax credit for stay-at-home moms comparable to the childcare credit would certainly help them, and I haven’t seen NOW seeking anything of that nature.
This tax credit dilemma is a good example of the conflict between “mommy track” and “CEO track” policies I was talking about earlier.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 2nd, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Actually, NOW lobbied for tax breaks for stay-at-home mothers, as well as for working mothers, in the late 1990s. They really haven’t done much of that sort of lobbying since Bush took office, possibly because they think it’s pointless, but they have criticized things like the right-wing attack on stay-at-home mothers social security payments.
That’s exactly right - I’m clearly saying that I BELIEVE Cathy’s not a feminist. That’s different from what you had claimed before, which is that I had said anything about what Cathy is entitled to call herself. I explicitly deny any authority over what Cathy calls herself.
Finally, Cathy’s about my age - which means she would have been a toddler when NOW brought out that statement in the mid-60s. To describe her as having joined feminism in the 60 s or 70s seems to be stretching it a bit. Besides, the radical feminism she objects to was, if anything, more prominant in the 70s than it is now.
By the way, you brought up my being a man and Cathy being a woman. Do you really think that Cathy wants me to withhold criticism soley on the basis of her sex, or that my doing so would be anything other than sexist?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 3rd, 2005 at 5:04 am
The question of alimony surely depends on what type of a marriage a couple has had. If the marriage has indeed been an egalitarian one and each partner is capable of paid employment then alimony is not needed. If the marriage has not been an egalitarian one and one partner is not equipped to enter the labor force right away, then at least temporary alimony seems necessary.
I see no paradox between NOW taking the principal stance of an egalitarian marriage but also addressing the problems of women in traditional marriages.
This comment was written by Echidne of the snakes.Report this comment to the moderators
December 3rd, 2005 at 5:59 am
Cathy Young:
Jack is a classical musician who gives piano lessons and occasional recitals while working toward a career as a peormer; his live-in girlriend Jill is a ceramics painter who works as a secretary on the side. Jill gets pregnant and announces to Jack that while she would like to have the baby, she’ll get an abortion unless he gets a “real job” that will allow her to quit her secretarial job. Jack gives up music, enrolls in a computer course and gets a well-paying job in a bank which he asbolutely loathes (both because it bores him out of his skull and because he has ideological objections to it as a leftist). Two years later, Jill gets pregnant again and insists on having another child even though Jack has serious misgivings about it. After the second child, Jack pretty much accepts the fact that he might as well give up on being a musician (despite the fact that he is widely regarded as a very talented pianist) and continues to slog along in his hated bank job (which also leaves him constantly deprived of the time he’d like to have with his children). Jill, meanwhile, is greatly enjoying being a stay-at-home mom (her own mother, who runs a day-care center, has offered to her discounted day care if she wants to go back to work, but she has refused) while continuing to paint and having her works displayed in exhibitions here and there.
It’s sort of funny how “Jill gets pregnant” all the time without any help from Jack. Please tell him about condoms.
This comment was written by Echidne of the snakes.Report this comment to the moderators
December 3rd, 2005 at 8:51 am
Barry, since the question of my background has come up: As you may know, I came here to this country in 1980 from the Soviet Union (where, despite women in the workforce and official declarations of equality, the culture was extremely sexist and drenched in 1950s-style stereotypes), having barely turned 17, and after discovering feminism I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Actually, one of the first articles I ever wrote (in Russian) was a story for a now-defunct Russian community newspaper in New York about the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment, with a decided pro-ERA slant (in fact, I interviewed the then-president of the New York chapter of NOW for it). I subscribed to Ms. for a number of years.
Gradually, I began to conclude that feminism as it was practiced was not about the ideals of equal treatment and female autonomy and strength that initially made it so appealing to me. I never changed my mind about the ideals themselves, but I did about the movement.
And by the way, I don’t have any problem with being criticized by a man with regard to feminist issues.
Echidne: I find it interesting that when the issue is whether men should have any say in a woman’s choice to have an abortion, we’re constantly reminded that it’s women who get pregnant. Yet in this case, it’s somehow un-PC to say that “Jill gets pregnant”? (Actually, as much as I favor equality for fathers, the phrase “we’re pregnant” is a pet peeve of mine — I don’t like it when language is used in a way that overrides biological reality.) “Jack and Jill” are friends of a friend, and I certainly don’t know them well enough to inquire about their birth control methods, but as you are well aware, condoms do fail. Furthermore, the fact is that while she certainly didn’t get pregnant by herself, as long as we have legal abortion it’s ultimately her decision whether to have the baby or not.
This comment was written by Cathy Young.Report this comment to the moderators
December 3rd, 2005 at 11:39 am
ginmar, starting off with an ad homenim is bad form. and since i know you do not care about my experiences, attacking them is pointless.
the word “access” means: the ability or right to approach, enter, exit, communicate with, or make use of. that’s a lot different from ’shutting down’. where is that argument coming from? and if you are unwilling to look at the article or do any research on efforts of men’s groups to help male victims, what are you basing your argument on? i’m geniunely curious because all i did was type in male abuse and male abuse victim and i got a list of resources provided largely by men’s groups.
here’s an interesting thing about your position. you have no problem having men ’shut down’ gay/lesbian shelters. do you consider gays and lesbians less important or less victimized or more deserving of the ‘harrassment’? as you probably know, there are far fewer gay/lesbian shelters and men’s shelters than women’s shelters, so the male victim would still have to go far out of his way to get help. and even then the shelters might be full. it makes no sense to tell a person that he must go twenty miles to get help when help is literally a couple of blocks away and there is available space. it just sounds like you are advocating for and justifying discrimination against male victims, assuming you believe males can even be victims.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Cathy Young: “Is that why the National Organization for Women passed a resolution a few years ago comparing men who seek custody of their children to batterers?”
Do you mean this resolution?
NOW wasn’t comparing men who seek custody to batterers. It was acknowledging that batterers are over-represented in custody cases, and that they should not be permitted to have custody of their children. That is a far cry from claiming that all men who fight for custody are batterers.
This comment was written by The Countess.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
NOW wasn’t comparing men who seek custody to batterers. It was acknowledging that batterers are over-represented in custody cases, and that they should not be permitted to have custody of their children.
NOW seeks to imply that all men who seek custody should be presumed to be “batterers” because such a supposition would make things more smooth for the women. The logic is, as Trish says, that an alleged batterer should never have any form of custody.
The problem with this smear is two-fold: 1) most men are not batterers, but most men want some form of custody; 2) many, many women who claim to be victims of abuse are actually abusive in their own right toward the children. Lenore Walker’s “The Battered Woman” said that battered women are just as likely as abusive men to abuse children. In her study of 100 battered women, a third had abused their children, and a third of the men had abused the children.
So this whole “battered woman” thing is used in custody disputes to deflect the court’s attention from the “best interest of the child” determination which is supposed to be their job.
This comment was written by Richard Bennett.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Echidne: I find it interesting that when the issue is whether men should have any say in a woman’s choice to have an abortion, we’re constantly reminded that it’s women who get pregnant. Yet in this case, it’s somehow un-PC to say that “Jill gets pregnant”? (Actually, as much as I favor equality for fathers, the phrase “we’re pregnant” is a pet peeve of mine … I don’t like it when language is used in a way that overrides biological reality.) “Jack and Jill” are friends of a friend, and I certainly don’t know them well enough to inquire about their birth control methods, but as you are well aware, condoms do fail. Furthermore, the fact is that while she certainly didn’t get pregnant by herself, as long as we have legal abortion it’s ultimately her decision whether to have the baby or not.
My point was that the particular individual story is written up to show a case where the patriarchal assumptions favor the woman and hurt the man. All societal systems have some who like the way the rules are set and benefit from it, even the most unfair ones. Even something like Greek slavery had the advantage for slaves that they didn’t have to fight wars.
That’s why anecdotal evidence is not very useful. When you imply that “traditional feminist” analysis would argue that Jack has the power here because he’s the one with the money you appear to imply that the analyst would totally ignore everything else you reveal. This is not at all likely. In any case, the correct level of feminist analysis is about the classes of men and women, and in that case it is correct to say that the group that has more money in general has more power attached to money.
This comment was written by Echidne of the snakes.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Once again, Jake, you’re being so dishonest it’s rediculous. Why should women do more work for men? You keep avoiding that question. Why should women do anything for men? Why don’t you form your own damned sh elter and your own dmaned blog and whine about feminists there?
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Presumably, she feels that a lawsuit is, in effect, an attempt to shut down shelters. If that’s what she meant, then I think she was exaggerating, but I can cetainly follow the chain of thought. It’s undeniable that small organizations have sometimes been forced out of business by baseless lawsuits. I’m sure that the MRAs who sued realized that one possible outcome of their lawsuit, if it went through a series of appeals and wound up with damages being awarded, would be to bankrupt the people they were suing and thus shut them down.
Anyhow, I assume that’s what Ginmar meant by “shut down,” and I’m sure she’ll correct me if I’m wrong. If I’m right, then it’s inaccurate of you to imply that she thought that gay/lesbian shelters should be shut down, since she never suggested those shelters should be sued.
Many shelter workers believe that it severly compromise their security if they had to give out the location of their shelter to any man who called with a story about being battered. I think that’s a reasonable concern.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Given how rare male victims who need the assistance of a shelter are, I really doubt that a parallel network of battered mens shelters is a practical option. No one’s going to fund houses that sit mostly empty most of the time.
I do think that all victims who need help deserve help. As I said earlier this thread, what I’d like to see is MRAs lobbying to create grants to fund hotel voucher programs and other assistance for battered men, for shelters which would like to provide such a service to battered men. And although I don’t want any shelter to be forced by outsiders to alter their services, I do think MRAs should work on noncoercive persuasion (i.e., talk, not lawsuits) to try and convince shelters to apply for such grants.
In other words, I do think that shelters should help battered men, because who else is going to? But the help has to be sensitive to shelter’s legitimate security and other needs, and it has to come with a funding mechanism attached, so that “helping men” doesn’t become a zero-sum game in which battered women are hurt.
As for Jaketk posting on this blog, I like having some opposing views posting here, and for that reason I’m okay with JakeTK posting here.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Why should women do more work for men? You keep avoiding that question. Why should women do anything for men? Why don’t you form your own damned sh elter and your own dmaned blog and whine about feminists there?
Ginmar, the shelters in the lawsuits in question take tax dollars. Accordingly, it is entirely fair to ask you - why should men do anything for women? Why should male taxpayers pay for women’s shelter?
The answer, of course - both to your question and to mine - is that we’re in this together as a society. Telling one sex to go and be separatist and to pay their own freight is entirely appropriate - in libertarian world, where we don’t live.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
December 4th, 2005 at 7:27 pm
Where I live I can’t even call a shelter. I have to first call either the hotline or go through the police to be put in touch with a worker who will then get me the help I need (if I needed it). That is how serious the women’s and children’s shelters in my area take security.
I often donate both money and goods (clothes, toiletries, toys, etc) to the shelters through third parties.
I agree that any victim of domestic violence regardless of gender should be helped, but for many shelters security is a very real concern. I work with a gentlman who was in an abusive relationship, and when she finally put him in the hospital with a concussion and four broken ribs, the cops finally arrested her for assault. I believe our local Y found him a spot in a shelter until he could get on his feet enough to get his own place.
There are resources for male victims of domestic abuse, but they have to speak up and ask for help just as femal victims do.
This comment was written by Mendy.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 10:25 am
I’ve written on my blog before about unsuccessful attempts by men’s rights groups who have attacked domestic violence shelters. Mark Angelucci and The National Coalition Of Free Men has been behind the attacks I’ve posted about. As I wrote in this first post, “Free Men and other men’s/fathers’ rights groups and individual men have engaged in similar attacks against domestic violence services and laws in other states. Men’s/fathers’ rights groups like Free Men are not interested in establishing services for battered men. They are interested in preventing battered women from obtaining help. The few battered men out there that do exist get no help from men’s rights groups.”
I understand that Angelucci is spearheading yet another attack on a California shelter. I have no further information on that case yet.
Men’s Rights Attack Against Domestic Violence Shelters Dismissed
Another Attack By Men’s Rights Activists On Domestic Violence Shelters Unsuccessful
Domestic Violence Shelter In Maine Under Attack By Men’s Rights Activists
This comment was written by The Countess.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 11:27 am
One thing I find baffling about the shelter debate. The notion that housing services (as opposed to general services) can be separated out by age and sex is well established and hardly controversial. I couldn’t get into our local homeless shelter for men. Nor could I get into our shelter for runaway youth (being well north of 18. sigh). Nor could I get into subsidized senior housing, being still south of 62 and over 80% of area median income or whatever the requirements are. At least in my region of the country, even residential drug rehab programs are single-sex. How come the MRA’s don’t complain about that? No, the venom is strictly channeled at residental services provided to battered women. Interesting.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 12:09 pm
Ampersand writes:
Just as I am sure feminists who have sued various small organizations have realized the same thing. But I thought the principle here was to end discrimination, not continue it because the money involved.
Would it not also be reasonable to screen women who use the shelter to cover up their abusive behavior, not just at their partners, but at their children, particularly since women commit the majority of child abuse? If you are going to automatically dismiss a person’s story, why would you assume that women would be less inclined to lie, particularly when they know they are more likely to get your support?
As a male survivor, I would rather not have to go through any misandrist groups to get assistance. I do not think the assumption that male victims are rapists/abusers (potential or otherwise) is at all helpful, and I would rather not send an abused boy or man to any such group in much the same why I would be extremely hesistant sending a gay/lesbian person to a church for counciling. They deserve better treatement than that.
The money would be better spent providing separate assistance and/or combined assistance (where both genders would be equally treated and welcome). Most of the adovocacy groups I know of focus on providing male-oriented, male-only assistance.
As I said above, when you assume that people who advocate support for male victims do nothing because you are not falling over results, you imply more than you probably intend. All of this takes time, and with feminists groups opposing anything that includes male victims, it will take even longer. This still confuses me since most feminists impede any attempt to get assistance for male victim passed into law, even when it is merely an inclusive measure, like with adding male victims into VAWA. You do not want to help me, but you don’t want anyone else to help me either. It’s just very odd.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Silverside, the difference in the instances you mentioned is that other facilities are generally available. For instance, when I was in foster care, there were boys-only group homes. If I had wanted, I could have pleaded with them to send me there. I certainly felt safer and more comfortable around other boys my own age than I did adults or females. But there were also girls-only group homes. The same with homeless shelters, housing, senior citizen care, etc. Something else exists that corresponds to the excluded groups’ needs. Such is not the case with male victims. Outisde of doing nothing, doing drugs, or physically harming ourselves/suicide (which would bother few people so long as no one else is harmed), male victims do not have many opinions.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Unfortunately, we come back to the needs issue. And I have been back and forth with MRAs on this. With limited funding resources, how can I construct a grant application for men only when I can’t document their numbers? What I hear again and again is that dv program occassionally hear from a few male victims, but hardly any are in need of residential services because the nature of what they experienced has not rendered them homeless. From what I hear, in that case, they are put up in hotels with vouchers. The same happens to women when the shelters are at capacity, which happens frequently as many homeless dv persons are not at a point where they can access permanent housing on their own. As a result, I recently completed an application for transitional housing for dv victims so that we could move some of the women who are overstaying in emergency shelter out. There is nothing theoretically to keep men who need transitional housing out of these units. Of course, they are just regular scattered site units, so the same security and capacity issues do not come up. The fact is, in most locales, men made homeless by dv are going to be a tiny special p0pulation. In fact, in the general studies of homelessness, I have never seen dv mentioned even once as a cause of male homelessness although it is a major cause of female homelessness. Where a male homeless shelter is not appropriate (presence of children, etc.), a hotel voucher may the the most appropriate solution. The same could be said for any other special population. For example, in my poor rural area, gay youths made homeless by abuse might well be put in a special situation out of the area too, because there are no facilities around here that specialize in serving them. We have enough trouble serving the major groups of homeless, much less highly specialized, tiny ones.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Countess wrote:
And as usual, the MRA’s here seemingly have no interest in calling their brothers on this. Their brothers mustn’t be disturbed. Oh, no. Battered men, having been –in patriarchal eyes– symbolically feminized, or even further demoted to the status of children, should be tended to by women. The men still at the top of the heap have better things to do, like harassing feminists. That’s because feminists run everything: The corporations, the grant foundations, the Unions, the House and Senate, the major religious organizations, the major media outlets, the– Oh, wait…
Same old, same old…
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
That’s because feminists run everything: The corporations, the grant foundations, the Unions, the House and Senate, the major religious organizations, the major media outlets, the”“ Oh, wait…
DANG! That’s why I’m so tired. World domination really tuckers a gal out.
Seriously, I do find this to be true, that there is not real interest on the part of the MRA’s to be part of the solution. Just as an experiment, I offered my technical services as a grantwriter, gratis, to anyone who wanted help in preparing one of these applications for funding, which are quite complicated. No takers. Am I surprised? Plus, if you point out some of quite real and documentable problems facing males, such as the shocking number of mentally ill/addicted men sleeping on the streets as opposed to this phantom population of men rendered homeless by violent girlfriends and the lot, they are totally uninterested. (Note that I said phantom population, not phantom individuals). With limited resources, it behooves people to pursue the major issues effecting the population you’re trying to work with, not tangents.
This comment was written by silverside.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 3:09 pm
>>As for the “Jack and Jill” example: I find it amusing that while most people here presumably think there’s nothing wrong with mothers with young children working outside the home, now we’re seeing arguments that a woman can’t possibly take care of a small child and paint at home. Maybe you didn’t notice that I said that before they had a baby, “Jill” worked as a secretary while painting? (I have another friend who has a full-time office job and also paints and has occasional showings.) Now she takes care of children while painting. It’s not really a “career” … she makes maybe $500 a year selling her stuff. And who says that “Jack” never considered staying home? My experience is that today, most men under 35 are at least aware that that’s an option. To have him stay home was not an option TO “JILL.” By the way, I also didn’t say that grandma had offered to take care of the children “for free,” I said that she offered discounted day care. (And if someone thinks it’s implausible that a woman with kids would live close to her mother who runs a day care center… all I can say is, my former next-door neighbor had her two kids in a preschool run by her sister.) The point is … “Jill” is leading exactly the kind of life she wants, while “Jack” is not.>>
First of all, you didn’t say painting. You said ceramics.
(btw: the daycare thing wasn’t “implausible,” merely uncommon. It’s like an anti-single-payer scenario wherein the hardworking single mom with the autistic child just happens to have a local cousin who specializes in treating autistic kids. That situation is not the one most parents find themselves in, and therefore not part of a reasonable argument.)
Is that the artistic life you envision for Jill? Five hundred dollars? In other words, far less than she would need to break even on supplies? In other words, selling three small works _per year_? Then you should have been more specific: Jill’s ceramics are relegated to a hobby she has no time for at all. That’s definitely not a career. A career is not the equivalent of the part-time secretarial job; it’s much more time-consuming and demanding.
Look, your ignorance regarding basic time/material requirements for producing, exhibiting, and selling art is beside the point.
My problem with your scenario was not that Jill was able to sustain her creative life with children. It’s possible, if extremely difficult. The place where your scenario fell apart completely is where you decided that Jack would have to give up his musical aspirations, but Jill would not have to give up her art. If she can nail down two kids and occasional exhibits in galleries, he can handle a dayjob and a music career. You gave the impression that Jack would never pick up a guitar again, whereas Jill neither loses her art nor suffers from the lack of it. That’s illogical.
I’m saying that Jack never offered to stay home just as Jack never made any suggestions, demands, or decisions at all in this scenario. According to you, all of this just happened to him. He doesn’t even help conceive his own damn kids; she just “gets pregnant.” You omit, “Do whatever you want, sweetie, but I choose music over starting a family right now.” “One child is enough for me, snookums.” “Loveydove, I’m getting a vasectomy.” “Why the hell can’t we take your mother up on the cheap daycare, sugarcheeks?” and every other thing that Jack could say, everything a real live human man would say.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
This is actually untrue. Men’s groups, such as the Men’s Center, do in fact provide assistance to male victims. Most survivor forums and groups for male victims are run by men, ususally victims themselves or professionals, and they are indeed men’s groups. I suppose the point of contention here is that you want an extremely narrow definition of what a men’s group is. I define it as a group that focuses on the needs and issues facing men. If I followed your narrow definition, then women’s charity groups are not “women’s groups” because they are not specifically addressing a right, but rather offering assistance to various groups of women.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 8:38 pm
Though you admit you have the slighest idea how many males are abused, and (I assume) you realize that women abuse children far more often than men. Yes, of course…
I’m curious, do you report them before or after you allow them to leave?
Amazingly, probably due my wanton, misogynistic male stupidity, I cannot recall ever stating that there should be an equal number of men’s shelters or that any women’s shelter should be shut down. I know I have been making up fake issues like “male abuse” and “male rape”, but I would think I would recall making such a bizarre statement.
Here’s a thought (assuming my male brain still functions): how about providing the services for the amount of male victims we know of and then seeing what happens? It’s crazy, I know, but in Britain, they opened a shelter for men assuming 300 spots would be enough, and they got well over a 1000 requests within the first couple of weeks. Granted, 617 of those 1000 were probably just lying, and the 49 of those that got in probably thought it was a women’s shelter. But just maybe if we actually provide the services instead of preventing them because it “hurts women”, more male victims (is it okay if I use “victim” or would you prefer “future abuser”), will come forward. It’s just a thought.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
jaketk:
It’s crazy, I know, but in Britain, they opened a shelter for men assuming 300 spots would be enough, and they got well over a 1000 requests within the first couple of weeks.
Link please?
This comment was written by mousehounde.Report this comment to the moderators
December 5th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
Oh, please. How is the right to a safe and comfortable shelter separable from the assitance that brings it about ? Or is this your nonsensical way of claiming that most women who go to shelters for assistance have no right t0 it (or need of it) .
If I followed your definition, I guess that professional football teams are also “men’s groups.”
Mister, go play the Obfuscation Olympics with somebody else.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 4:59 am
Jaketk, when I talk about men’s groups not doing anything for male victims of violence, I’m talking about the men’s rights groups that sue the women’s shelters or complain about them. I know that there are a few men’s groups that do provide services for abused men. Women’s shelters also sometimes assist abused men, as Bean has said. The National Coalition For Free Men doesn’t provide any actual services for abused men. It complains about alleged discrimination of men by women’s shelters, sues them, and loses the cases. It doesn’t actually do anything to help abused men. It attacks women’s shelters.
This comment was written by The Countess.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
bean, the only argument i have made is that men should be given asstistance now because so few services are available for male victims. once available, there would be no need to use women’s services. you seem to be under the belief that i think no services are provided for males and that i am speaking only of domestic violence. i am not. but that does not change that there are not a lot of services out there to address the issues of male victims.
the issue of money is moot because the funding is primarily from tax dollars, and no one group can claim access to tax dollars to the exclusion of others. since i have not heard of any groups literally taking funding from women’s shelters, i still do not see where this point is coming from.
likewise, why would you assume that i do not assist male support services in my area? just because i think it is still a problem does not mean i do nothing.
This comment was written by jaketk.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Jaketk: honest question from me… are you even a taxpayer yet?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
Oh, that’s a relief. I’ll get right on the horn to the Pentagon tomorrow morning and tell them that I want a modest 25K to live on next year. As one from that famed and fabled group: The Artists, I find the NEA’s cut quite horribly stingy relative to –say– Lockheed Martin’s . I think it’s high time that other famed and fabled group, The Weapon-Builders, stopped hogging all the big bucks for themselves. After all, nobody has a right to exclude my group from the federal feeding trough. You all heard it here first.
Gevalt.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Oh alsis, how you do go on about the obvious. ;)
I suppose those over 65 don’t count as a group and that their SSN benefits are just different kinds of tax monies. Or what about public schools? Don’t they count as a group? DOT’s… now there’s a doozy. Since I choose not to drive, I’d like a, oh I don’t know, 10% cut of their tax monies.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
jaketk,
Once upon a time - but well within my lfetime - there were no shelters for women.
Then women got together, they listened to eachother, they worked out what form of service would help and, in the case of shelters, that some sort of building would be needed to provide both physical safety and emotional respite. No fairy godmother came dashing in with buckets full of cash - it was raised penny by penny in all sorts of ways. They scrounged furniture, dyed old sheets to make curtains and lived from hand to mouth, sometimes for years.
Only after the women had proved that a problem existed and that they had devised at least part of the solution were they in a position to ask that, for instance, the police take domestic abuse more seriously and that the courts act to protect women and children in danger.
Now many shelters and other services have some support from the taxpayer but the women involved sweated blood to arrive at that stage. In many cases such funding is insecure, requiring repeated applications for small amounts and quite likely to disappear. No woman running a shelter is exactly rich or believes that she has a job for life.
Your fellow citizens keep telling you that some services for abused men exist. They may not be exactly what you need. If that is the case, then you’ll have to do what the women did - get out there, talk to people and create whatever it is you do need.
Stage one would be to admit that you could use some help, stage two to accept that trying to derail the discussions on this blog is not going to produce it for you.
I’m pretty sure that among this blog’s readers are many who could offer you practical help based on experience. The big question is this - can you be courteous enough just to ask and could you, in the meantime, stop rubbing salt into the wounds of those who have shared their experiences here?
This comment was written by maureen.Report this comment to the moderators
December 6th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Jake, I think your history is tragic and worthy of commiseration; you have my sorrow on your behalf. But I also think your position is untenable.
If men want shelters, men need to build shelters. If that takes money, well, grant applications are difficult but not impossible. Grant writers don’t work free but plenty work at reasonable rates. Or you could fund a private shelter on a payback system, or fundraise from hippie comsymps like Hugo. Hell, I wouldn’t be averse to supporting the right men’s shelter, and as a good Republican I hate all non-victims for reminding me of my humanity. There are a lot of options. This is America. You’re free. Go do it.
I’ve seen a fair number of self-styled “advocates for men” come wandering through here, and a lot of them have taken feminists to task for being dismissive of their experiences, obnoxious towards their goals, and so on. Some of those criticisms have been very fair. There are some feminists who are nuts, and others who are just assholes. Well, life is full of nuts and assholes. Deal.
What I’ve never ONCE seen is for a men’s advocate come through saying “wow, that’s an interesting discussion. Hey, if anybody is interested, I’ve built a website over at TucsonMensShelter.org. We’re trying to raise seed money for a regional battered men’s shelter and it would sure help us to raise awareness if some of you feminist type people could come over and read our posts and give us ideas and maybe kick in a little dough.”
Not once.
Sure, there are marginal figures on Alas! and other places who would respond with the abuse and ignorant immaturity that explains the peripheral place of their views on the American stage. But there are also women and men of good faith whose response to such a plea would, at minimum, be positive to the tune of “sure, I’ll check out what you have to say on your soapbox over there.”
But I haven’t seen such a pitch.
Odd, isn’t it? Kind of makes you wonder about motives.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2005 at 7:59 am
Yeah, 247 is pretty much what I have to say to Jaketk.
This comment was written by ginmar.Report this comment to the moderators