Men’s Rights Activists, Anti-Feminists, And Other Misogynists Comment On George Sodini
| August 6th, 2009I’m really hesitant to post this, because it is so ugly and so disturbing. But… here’s a list of some of the worst quotes I’ve seen from (people I think are) MRAs and anti-feminists, commenting on George Sodini, the woman-hating racist who shot 12 women, 3 of whom died, in a health club earlier this week. There’s a bunch of quotes here, but I’m sure I could have found 2 or 3 times as many if I hadn’t gotten sick of reading.
By no means do I suggest that the quotes in this post represent the most common, centrist views in the MRA, anti-feminist and “pick up artist” communities. In most of the forums where I read these quotes, I did see occasional disagreements with the kind of thing I’m quoting — although all too often, not — and of course many condemned Sodini. And, obviously, I’ve cherry-picked the most offensive comments, not the most typical comments.
Nonetheless, most of these views are, in a way, accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted; no one is banned or modded for posting these views; and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all. In other words, the most vilely misogynistic garbage, even to the point of sympathizing with murder, is part of the spectrum of ordinary opinion, within these movements. And that’s both a cause for concern, and illustrates what’s so fucked about about the “men’s rights” movement and community.
MRAs aside, though, I think that George Sodini had a lot in common with attitudes in our society generally. As Amanda says, Sodini’s blog was full of absolutely typical “nice guy ™” bitterness and entitlement. Mass violence is what’s unusual about Sodini, not his sense of entitlement to sex with attractive women, nor his resentful misogyny. That sense of frustrated entitlement, I suspect, motivates most mass shooters like Sodini (which is probably why nearly all of them are white men — no one else in our society feels so entitled).
For more on anti-feminist reactions to Sodini, see Amanda, Elizabitchez, Lisa at PunkAssBlog, and Jezabel.
Quotes under the fold. Trigger warning.
George Sodini is an MRA hero as much a reason to learn game. Finally a mass murderer writes a relatively coherent manifesto. Could be better, but at least it is implied that feminism is to blame and he is taking a last stand. I had been waiting for this (almost thinking I had to do it myself) and I am impressed. Kudos.
Women are treated much better than men in America. This is merely the blowback from feminism.
Women have to accept this incident as a tax on their freeloading. Women get men to buy them drinks, dinners, and bridezilla weddings, all in return for virtually nothing. Once in a while, a few women get shot up. Given the $500 billion a year that women mooch off of men each year, that is a relatively small tax to pay.
Women, particularly the feminazis, have a good deal of introspection to do. Better they do it now before Islam forces them to do it on Islam’s terms.
…he had every reason to lash out at the society that screwed him over and make its denizens feel some of the pain that they had inflicted on him. There are millions, tens of millions of men in this country who have been deceived in a similar fashion, and there are numerous Sodinis amongst their ranks who will react violently and murderously once they uncover the truth.
What amuses me is how the women of this country and the West don’t realize the role they have in creating men like Sodini.
One thing that might help prevent future incidents of this sort is repealing IMBRA, the federal law that essentially put the mail order bride industry out of business.
His last girlfriend was around twenty years ago. After twenty years of rejection by women, he finally had the courage to take his revenge by shooting at members of the sex who rejected him and made him feel like a loser.
I am calling him a hero for being a symbol for the consequences of denying men sex, not for killing those women. Obviously they didn’t personally deserve it. But something like this has to happen, perhaps hundreds of times over again, before feminists get the message. [...]
I know the feminist media will try to emphasize his other issues and downplay the sexual frustration. Even so, his other issues mostly seem to result from an absent father (who was just a “sperm donor” in his words), and that is not supposed to be a problem according to the feminists either. So either way this is good press for the MRA movement.
I think every man DOES deserve to get laid.
For every nerdy, smelly, fat, or otherwise socially undesirable man out there, there is an equally unattractive woman walking around. (more than one actually because there are more women than men on the planet)
The problem is, our feminized society has given every woman the power to hold out for higher quality men than they deserve.
This creates an imbalance that leads to tragedies like the one in PA.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton’s 3rd Law)
If empowered women keep applying pressure, they will create an explosion.
Import ten, twenty million nubile, lithe, young women to America and repeal the prohibition on prostitution and it would go a long way towards eliminating these sort of incidents and the anger brewing inside of millions of men like Sodini, not so much because they could get safe, affordable blow jobs, but it would result in the lowering of the bitch shields of millions of women by orders of magnitude if they had to compete with those millions of nubile, lithe, young women.
A decent looking man who earns a good living and does not abuse women DESERVES to get laid. Period.
The fact that so many do not, is a crime.
And in a just society, all crimes are eventually punished.
Because of feminism, sexual harassment, political correctness, and the MSM, men have become neutered and sterile. [...]
As an aside:
Have you guys noticed a trend in fat women? Some of the ones I have spoken to actually believe they can get alpha cock. They don’t want to hook up with beta men either. This is a troubling development.
If 99% of women weren’t so damn shallow If 99% of women weren’t so damn shallow, shit like this wouldn’t occur.
[And then, in response to that comment:]
Not one single woman is capable of understanding this. This is why women should not vote.
my advice to men in this country after this incident
stock up on ammo, learn the art of being a reloader, and buy you a revolver, a shotgun, a high powered rifle that fires something equivilant to a .308, and an “assault weapon” that fires 7.62’s
the grabbers are gonna jump on this
you are right, the way this story is covered is proof of institutional misandry
A man deserves to get laid, just a a person who walks into Starbucks with $5 deserves a drink.
Men do everything women ask them to do, in pursuit of sex, and when it comes time for women to give it up, they don’t.
So just like that guy with $5, men have followed the rules to create the value that women have demanded in exchange for sex, and after they pay, many of them walk away empty handed.
In any other place in ‘the world’ a crime like this would not be tolerated. But is is perfectly OK in the sexual market to extract value from a man for years and never fuck him. (Hello, paging Lady Raine!)
Women (like LR and others) enjoy love, affection, and devotion of men and then reneg on the sex.
As long as they can afford it, women will go for the best men, and they won’t give up their equality, largely backed by affirmative action, without massive violence perpetrated by the minority of men who are left sexless under feminism.
Therefore I applaud rape and purposeful violence against women where it is made clear that embittered men are hurting and killing them for not putting out. Only then will women hopefully abandon their equality and be forced to settle monogamously by sheer economic necessity.
[Response to the "applaud rape" comment:]
Ok, that I don’t cosign with… but I do find it hilarious!
[The only other response to the "applaud rape" comment:]
While I don’t approve of this, I fully understand that when a person has been so heavily subjugated, abused, and dehumanized, they will root for something, anything, that strikes back.
Urban women today, are sowing the seeds of violence against themselves. From guys that seem harmless today (like Sodini was until last week).
Women simply have to accept this incident as a tax.
Women get men to buy them drinks, dinners, etc. their whole lives. Women have no moral restraints about being moochers while doing nothing for the man in return.
Every now and then, a few women will get shot up by a man. That is the tax on the freebies women gladly accept with no reciprocity.
It is a very minor tax if just 3 women die in return for the $100 billion or whatever than men pay to women each year (if you count divorce court theft, the number is much higher).
Murder is always wrong, but women are not willing to accept their own hand in creating this backlash.
I saw the news today, Jeb, and I knew that those stuck-up B’s at MSNBC would be going on and on about him hating women, when they don’t know the whole story. I first thought about those frigid harpies at the exercise studio who were too up-tight to give a guy a chance on a date. I bet when the lights went out and they felt those warm bullets entering their bodies they wished that they had been a little nicer to the guys out there who just needed a date.
WOMEN need to realize something, beauty is only skin deep and a very flimsy asset. Men are scared, scarred, angry and push agains the wall. A man can not complete in this media drive word of flash, glitz and the right thing to have to impress the right women. A woman in this culture has vary little sense of loyalty and no sense of reasoning towards what a decent man can be. Even the most timid of dogs, when pushed so far will bear thier teeth and strick back. I think that is what happened here. [...]
Women need to wake up and stop being so vindictive, but it is hard to wrest power away from someone, especially when they are granted that power by ill-gotten means.
Again, I understand why this has happened completely.
He is 100% right about the cruelty of women. He should’ve written a book, i guess too many feminazis would’ve protested his book, so he had to use this final method.
August 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am
A few months ago, a similarly deranged man opened fire - on *cops*. See the Wikipedia article here.
Substitute “cops” for any epithet for “women” in the comments.. I doubt the boys (not “men”) who wrote those comments would say the same about police, even though there is a very good argument for police having a privileged place in society.
(Personal note - I just was in Pittsburgh, and the murder scene was about 5 miles from my house. As far as I know, none of the victims were known to me, but it doesn’t make it any better.)
This comment was written by Aaron V..Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Sodini is just the violent extreme of a sentiment that is accepted in the mainstream even outside the MRA/PUA types: all women owe it to all men to accept any man’s advances.
Take the song “How Do You Like Me Now?!” which was a huge hit for Toby Keith a few years ago. It’s about a guy’s resentment toward the pretty, popular valedictorian of his high school for not going out with him (though there’s no indication that he even asked), and his feeling of vindication now that he’s a big music star and she’s been abused and abandoned by her husband whom he says she “married for money.”
I have expressed my puzzlement to a few guys, who do not identify with the MRA/PUA folks, about how that song can be seen as anything other than grossly misogynistic. (Which a song can be without destroying its appeal; one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs is “Under My Thumb.”) They’ve defended “How Do You Like Me Now?!” by saying that it’s really common for guys in high school to feel resentful about being stuck in the role of pursuing and being rejected by women, and that Keith’s music often expresses a sentiment that may not be noble but that resonates with many people (see also “The Angry American”).
ME: And when the resentment is directed at women instead of at whoever “forces” them to be in that role, that’s not misogynistic because… ?
Many women feel socially compelled to starve themselves, get painfully de-haired and devote hours a day to beautification that they’d rather spend on other activities, yet women’s resentment about this is rarely directed at men specifically. (Feminists are usually decrying the influence of advertising, women’s magazines and other media that quite often is put forward by women.) Women who don’t want to carry those burdens date guys who are cool with women who don’t conform to the social expectation for women’s appearances. Sodini, on the other hand, clearly had a concept of what was a “desirable single woman” worthy of his attention, and I doubt that a woman who didn’t conform to the Cosmo standard would have fit into that category.
So in worldview where he is owed access to a “desirable” single woman and yet such women keep saying no to him, his resentment toward women is deemed justified. Some people will say he took it too far by killing a bunch of people, but that’s like saying George Tiller went too far with the idea that abortionists are Hitler-esque murderers wreaking a holocaust. If you really believe it, then the actions are logically consistent with the belief. The widespread acceptance of the belief is the root of the killings.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Amp, as one of the denizens of those blogs, and based on various life experiences, I can tell you that sexual exclusion and ghettoization do exist in America, which any disabled-rights advocate can tell you. I don’t know what to do about the sense of entitlement, which stems from a few fixed ideas about WHAT KIND of partner one has or “deserves”, but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female. For whatever reason, these (possibly depressed?) able-bodied men lack the socialization to execute society’s courting rituals effectively, and they feel it is because they–as men–have been treated largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end. As male sexuality is performative, like masculinity itself, they are right. So much has to change in our society, starting with the fact that a man can quietly go mad in isolation, as long as he is economically productive.
This comment was written by Eurosabra.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Eurosabra, it’s not women that are making those demands, it’s the system of patriarchy that says a man is only a man if he looks, acts, and produces a certain way.
Blame the patriarchy that set up this killer’s expectations such that he rejected the women he did date (in his diary he mentions dating women repeatedly, but only for one date, because it “wouldn’t work out”), and demanded only a particular kind of woman as “good enough” for him.
There is no “unfuckable” caste of men or women - I’ve seen people whom the PUAs and the MRAs would mock for their supposed “unfuckability” get married and have long fulfilling relationships with partners that did not rate themselves or their significant other by patriarchal ideals. The one thing that makes women run a mile is the seething hatred for women that this kind of man shows in every word and action.
But demanding looks alone (perhaps the least important of any attribute in a long-term partner, since even the most beautiful members of society will change with age) instead of the host of other attributes that lead to meaningful and fulfilling relationships means that this killer and all the men who think like him have already dimissed 80% of the women they meet as not worthy of them. When a man regards a woman as a trophy, or a prize, or as anything other than a fully actualized human being, he forfeits the right to complain about how women treat him.
This comment was written by attack_laurel.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female
Again, if there are male and female “unf*ckables,” why aren’t they, well, f*cking each other? I don’t mean that someone who is not conventionally attractive, or who is disabled, or who otherwise doesn’t fit the magazine cover ideal, therefore should feel like s/he has no shot with those who more closely approximate it. But if you look down on the “unf*ckables” and consider them unworthy of your awesome self … well, no sympathy from me if you can’t find anyone. Anyone who wants to be evaluated for more than his appearance owes the same to others. (People who want to live on a mutually superficial plane are welcome to do so, far away from me.)
So much has to change in our society, starting with the fact that a man can quietly go mad in isolation, as long as he is economically productive.
The non-economically productive can “go mad” in isolation too. Ever met people who lost their jobs, became homeless and became isolated from society? Plenty of them suffer from mental illness, and unlike many of the “economically productive” they don’t have insurance that allows them to get treatment. Society doesn’t seem to be doing much about this — hey, if they’re broke, at least we don’t have to worry about their having access to firearms, right?
Sorry, but I call BS on the idea that men have fewer formal resources for their mental health needs than women do. We all get the same insurance, go to the same hospitals and physicians, and have the same job- and income-dependent access to therapy and medication. If certain men regard their problems as something that’s due entirely to external factors and thus nothing that would be helped by their seeking professional assistance, that’s kind of just a Blame Others First mindset that “society” can’t fix for them. If certain men lack informal resources (close family relationships, close friendships), that seems something particular to individuals, not something that can be fixed externally.
they feel it is because they–as men–have been treated largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end. As male sexuality is performative, like masculinity itself, they are right.
Lots of men without jobs or whose jobs pay poorly somehow manage to have girlfriends (or boyfriends, depending on preference). There are plenty of women who don’t regard men “largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end.” However, these tend to be women who (a) also don’t regard themselves largely as decorative objects (performative femininity, you might call it) and thus might not live up to some men’s standards of “desirability”; and (b) expect those men to value women as equals rather than as self-esteem boosters to make the men look and feel good.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
It’s amazing how many of the comments can be summed up as “Women should be sex-dispensers and not people with thoughts and feelings and goals.” Objectification at it’s finest, and yet they wonder why they are rejected?
This comment was written by Simple Truth.I couldn’t be more angry at the entitlement that this represents, and the acceptance it has in our society.
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August 6th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Eurosabra, no.
As a disabled woman who has/is partnered with both disabled and nondisabled men, I can agree that yes, there is a prejudice against and a stereotype that defines disabled people into a class of “unfuckable” or simply asexual. Although this is wrong, it is largely a subset of disablism or even the wider held myths of what constitutes beauty and sexual attractiveness. (i.e., the same thing that happens to fat women, elderly women, etc. Men, too, but arguably not to the same extent.)
Sodini and these MRA guys are a large part of the cause of this problem, not so-much the victims of it. They are looking at women as commodities with which to keep score of their masculinity with, rather than as human beings. The total disconnect between their hatred of women and yet they desire women, but only as sexual objects to inflate their egos, and then don’t understand why they can’t score with women who they claim to hate. They feel women owe them something, not that they are themselves unfuckable.
I am blind, so I do not know what Sodini looked like, but I have read that he was average looking, not ugly. I would guess a lot of these men so frustrated for not getting laid are not ugly. Many, like Sodini, also seem to have decent jobs. So they are not being sexually ghettoized for being ugly, poor and therefore unfuckable. They are likely not getting laid because they are misogynists that treat women like meatpuppets that they are entitled to “have” and not treating women like humans.
Click on my name and go to my website. On the first post is some pictures of me (the pregnant one with dog) and my ex (in wheelchair). We are not gorgeous but we’ll do. There is another family in the picture who are also not beautiful, the woman is “fat”. Somewhere else on the site is probably a picture of my current guy, not a Calvin Klein model either. I suppose by TV standards we are all unfuckable disabled and/or fat people who are “ghettoized.” Fine. But guess what? We are all in happy relationships, all getting our sex on to some extent (see: pregnancy and kids), and are doing fine. Why? Because we look past this patriarchal privilege shit and treat each other as human beings worthy of love, affection and sex. No one is treating anyone else like they are owed sex or are a ’score.’
Is there an element out there who considers some classes of people “unfuckable?” Sure. Do you (or anyone) have to participate in that? No.
This comment was written by Lexie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think there’s definitely a connection between the “lack of socialization to execute society’s courting rituals effectively” and the understanding of sex as a bartering system. All of the above comments, especially the one about the cup of coffee and the shipping prostitutes over, portray a sentiment which, if asked about point blank, most of these men would probably deny, but which most pick up artists must, on some level, accept. And what it comes down to is, on some level, not considering women to be people.
I know, big surprise there. But it jives pretty well. In Sotini’s early blog posts, I really kind of identified with him, almost felt sorry for him, and wondered how such a person could justify killing three people. And it seems to me that one facet of his mental process in coming to this decision was that he had honestly convinced himself that they weren’t people.
Which is really pretty scary when I think about how many people I know with similar frustrations and similar views.
Edit: In the time it took me to write my comment, SimpleTruth summed up my thoughts much more succinctly.
This comment was written by Nathan.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I get the impression we agree on most major issues but are talking past each other on finer points. I am sorry about the broad-brush approach, but I am not doing nuance today. We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation. (He plotted mass murder on a publicly-accessible non-anonymous blog for months and no one ever knew. That means, among other things, that no one from one of the largest law firms in Pennsylvania ever Googled his name.) So much to unpack, beginning with PHMT, and the fact that so many people who are already “off the grid” don’t get housing, physical and mental health care, as has already been pointed out. (Which is a broader social issue.) So most of my answer is, “Yes, of course, of course.”
As for the specific issue of male entitlement, I plead guilty from my own corner of the world, as a chronically-ill man who can occasionally pass as non-disabled, having partnered with all sorts of women at various times. And the natural human desire to be with those who resemble ourselves will, naturally, often prevail. I do not think these men are wrong in their reading of their situation, and yet very few of them are (even potential) killers and rapists. I DO think that somehow I empathize and agree with them in a way others do not, especially here. Of course, that is because I flip-flop back and forth between entitlement and something approaching sanity. The Yes Means Yes blog has far greater resources on deconstructing sexuality-as-commodity anyway.
This comment was written by Eurosabra.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
You really see the comments quoted by Amp as “merely criticizing feminists?” That’s something. Something horrible but, nevertheless, something.
Most of the commenters above have hit on the problem with MRAs & PUAs. To them women are not people. They’re things to acquire. And when women act like people and don’t want to interact with men who view them as things, well, that’s unspeakably horrible and simply cruelty and selfishness on the part of women.
The concept is simple. Women are people. You don’t like everybody who likes you, so why should women (who are people) be required to like you. Why should they be required to submit to your desires? Rejection may be painful but it isn’t cruelty. Just like you have no obligation to have sex with somebody you’re not interested in, nobody has an obligation to have sex with you.
I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
This appalling tragedy should not be used as an excuse for male-bashing.
Male-bashing is bashing people simply for being male. That’s not the nature of the criticism here. Rather, people are criticizing the specific kind of men who regard Sodini as a “hero,” as a person of “courage,” as merely extracting a “tax” on women, etc., and their more polite brethren who accept the idea that men are entitled to sex with whatever “desirable single woman” they want. Ampersand is a man, as are Aaron, Nathan and Jake. They are calling out the bad behavior they’re seeing from some other men, not saying that all men think this way.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Uuuuuh, so this?
…is merely criticizing feminism?
Damned feminists! Thinking they should have a right to decide who is allowed to put his penis in their body and when.
Gah!
This comment was written by Lexie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
“but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female”
I should be considered part of the undate-able, rather than the unf*ckables. I’m like a disabled person who can pass for able-bodied because it isn’t visible. When it’s known, 90% of people want nothing that approaches a long term relationship with me on the basis of being trans alone. Heck, over 50% fear a simple friendship.
I did find a boyfriend who likes me for who I am though, and who doesn’t care one bit about what people would say because he dates me, or heck, even talks to me (since at work, my trans status is known).
I perform feminity to a large extent, though I’m far from stereotypical. I’ll admit this was one of the things that attracted him.
Selecting your mate by how their personality suits yours makes a lot more sense in the long term. That’s what I always thought. Nothing against aesthetics. I love long hair, just looking at it. But I’m not going to marry hair, I’m going to possibly marry a person, who has a personality.
I can understand some of the frustration expressed, but not how it is expressed. Life is unfair, I should know. There are more constructive ways of dealing with it than blaming all women, feminism or what have you. I’ll keep blaming society overall for being stupid and celebrating stupidity though. We have a creationism museum on this planet (worth tens of millions), that speaks volumes to me.
This comment was written by Schala.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
The most striking thing to me, is that, like the Virginia tech shooter, is the guy’s complete lack of friends. The focus on his romantic woes, or even his terrifying mysogyny, is misguided. People might now view a life devoid of romantic or sexual satisfaction as highly depressing, and rightfully so. A like without friends though? No one lives like that for multiple years without one’s mental health severely deteriorating. That mras and their ilk latch onto his relationships with women and not his relationships with humanity at large speaks to something being awfully wrong.
This comment was written by Rootless.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Thanks for the linky love, but I think it brought me the kind of douchebag rape apologist commenter who once read a philosophy book and now thinks his brand of patriarchy is biologically sanctioned.
This comment was written by Red Queen.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
“Paolo” isn’t one of our resident right-wingers, as far as I know. But if he did find your blog through my post, then I apologize!
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I agree with what Rootless said. The focus on the lack of sex completely misses out on what this man’s true problem was. I think it was “Handmaid’s Tale” that says “Nobody dies from a lack of sex,” but they can from a lack of love.
This comment was written by Krupskaya.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
To be clear, it isn’t that Sordini’s misogyny or even the vile commenter’s you excerpted aren’t horrible. They clearly are. What is most distressing is that when faced with a person going through something that few people deal with very well (a complete lack of a social network), their response is to hand him a PUA book or mail-0rder-bride brochure. The guy needed a friend more than anything. He may not have been capable of having that, but it is what he needed.
This comment was written by Rootless.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
It’s cool. But dear god rape apologists just make me mad and bored at the same time. It’s amazing that combination is even possible.
This comment was written by Red Queen.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I know this will shock everyone, but Sordini was evidently active in the PUA community, and was jealous of his next-door neighbor because a hot girl kept coming out of his house.
The hot girl was the neighbor’s daughter.
This comment was written by Jeff Fecke.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I’m shocked! You mean that whole alpha/beta, trick hawt chicks into fucking you, dehumanizing women set was unable to help him? Say it ain’t so, Jeff.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
This song also doesn’t really work on alot of levels, I feel. Like, how many people fiddled around with guitars in high school and said they were in a band and were going to make it big? How many of them were kind of not people you’d ever want to be around? What, exactly, about the fact that Toby Keith actually _did_ make it big makes him retroactively such a better catch back then? In fact, you could argue that he’s not particularly desirable to a large subset of people even now.
This comment was written by Kan.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Setting aside everything that is seriously fucked up about you blowing a dude applauding rape and murder of women as “criticizing feminists”…
Why would someone criticize women who believe that their lives do not revolve around what men want them to do?
The only logical answer I can see is that that person thinks womens’ lives SHOULD revolve around what men want them to do.
And that person is often criticizing that woman for acting in a way that indicates that she does not believe her life revolves around what any given man might want her to do.
That’s misogyny. You’re welcome.
This comment was written by Bolt Vanderhuge.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Ya know, the gap between the ostensible tenets of the MRA movement and the opinions expressed by members of that movement is really shocking. My only experience with the movement being a quick overview of its wikipedia page, it sounds like a lot of their points are perfectly in line with the feminist goal of eliminating benevolent sexism: Male-only military conscription, assumed guilt in domestic abuse, higher suicide rates… none of them ring particularly of demanding the right to have sex whenever they want. Even the assholes in that forum complain that men are expected to pay for all the dinners and financially support women, a belief that any feminist would be quick to dispell. And yet a huge portion of the proponents of such reasonable arguments seem to absolutely detest women. I feel like if they really understood what feminism was about, they wouldn’t be such dicks about it.
This comment was written by Robin.Report this comment to the moderators
August 6th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
I feel like if they really understood what feminism was about, they wouldn’t be such dicks about it.
Except they do. And they hate it, because for the MRAs, feminism is a bad thing.
MRAs don’t want equality. They want inequality, in men’s favor. They want the world that existed in the 1890s, when women were handed from father to husband, never free to be themselves. They want a world where women are beholden to their spouses, where divorce is unthinkable because it means penury, where children are a man’s property and a woman’s responsibility. They want a world where marital rape is not a crime, and where acquiescing to sex any time her husband wants it is considered part of a wife’s duties. They want a world where they call the tune, and women dance.
What MRAs object to, in the end, is that women can leave them. That women can reject them. That women can live lives apart from them. It’s too bad, because there are parts of society that would be improved by a true men’s movement, one that focuses on the idea that masculinity is not a single thing, that men have emotions that aren’t rage or lust, that men are capable of changing a diaper, or mopping the floor, or cooking dinner. But that’s not what the MRAs are about — not at all.
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August 6th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I just don’t even have words for how awful this is.
Every time … every single time … I start to think that MRAs are just hurt and bitter, more to be pitied than censured, I’ll just go back and reread this post and thread.
“Merely criticizing feminists.”
Fuuuuck.
—Myca
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August 7th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Ampersand:
Thanks for acknowledging that these comments are not representative of the sentiment of anti-feminists in general. As an anti-feminist myself*, I find these comments contemptible, not only in degree, but also in quality. Women have the right to pursue their own desires. Full stop. If a man can’t find any woman to sleep with him for 20 years, that sucks in a way that few of us can even begin to imagine, but it’s not something that can be legitimately blamed on women. Not every sad story has a villain.
And, of course, there’s no excuse ever to haul off and start shooting innocent people. Except maybe in some highly contrived hypothetical cooked up by a professor of philosophy with too much time on his hands.
Robin:
Think of it this way: In this world, there are certain people of both sexes who are bitter and resentful of members of the oppposite sex for any of a number of reasons. Naturally, these people are going to be attracted to movements based on the tenet that their sex is oppressed by the other sex. Hence the presence of misogynists in the men’s rights movement and misandrists** in the feminist movement. And just as the presence of misandrists does not automatically invalidate feminism, neither does the presence of misogynists automatically invalidate the men’s rights movement.
*I don’t self-identify as an MRA, even though I agree with them on some issues, mostly because I find MRAs in general to be off-puttingly whiny and would prefer not to associate myself with them, but also because of philosophical differences. Also, I’m not much of an activist of any kind.
**Note that I said “presence” and not “dominance.” I’m not asserting, nor do I believe, that all or even most feminists are misandrists.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 1:39 am
Robin, it always appeared to me that when MRAs talk about those issues you describe–men paying for dinner, males in combat, assumed guilt in abuse–it was used to prove incorrectly that feminists were hypocrites. For example, “They want equal pay, sure…but just wait till they find out that this will also mean they have to do combat duty in the military, or they won’t be saved (women and children first) from a sinking ship at the peril of men. Then we’ll see how much equal pay means to them.”
They seem to assume incorrectly, that feminist want both female equality when it is advantageous to us and benevolent sexism when it is advantageous to us and that this hypocrisy illigitimizes our cause.
What they don’t understand is that we are also opposed to benevolent sexism as well, and we understand the fact that the patriarchy harms men, too and in some instances men DO suffer injustices because of their gender, but not because of the ideals of feminism, but because of the patriarchy.
They use these issues as a tool to discredit feminists in inaccurate ways, they never seem to be truly advocating for equality for women. I think most of them would prefer if women stayed out of combat roles in the military, for example.
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August 7th, 2009 at 3:22 am
[...] Sexuality, Women Ampersand, a male feminist (which is like being a Jewish Nazi) blogger, has linked and quoted me as an example of extremist MRA/anti-feminist/pick-up artist views on the George Sodini affair. [...]
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August 7th, 2009 at 7:01 am
I want to echo Brandon to an extent.
This comment was written by MER.I think it’s important to separate the way an ideology (philosophy?) is executed from the it itself.
Feminism, according to general consensus, is a movement for gender equality; however, one does not need to look terribly far to find some generally misandrist sentiment on so called feminist blogs, or even literature. Take the S.C.U.M manifesto (or even the name itself). One can’t be for egalitarianism and gendercide at the same time. You can’t be respectful of all genders and still be cutting one of them up.
I think a small, vocal minority has earned the reputation for what we all like to call ‘MRA’s.
I see a gulf between the blatant misogyny here, and the not-entirely-absurd view that men get the short end of the gender stick.
These people soil the name of a gender-egalitarian movement in the same way that people like Andrea Dworkin and Valerie Solanas have given the radical feminist movement the popular image of being a bunch of hairy legged man haters.
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August 7th, 2009 at 7:30 am
I have this up at my own blog but decided to post it here also in response to all those teeth grinding comments Amp posted.
Dear Het Men,
You are not entitled to my body.
You do not deserve access into my pants.
I am not an object for you to receive or use as status.
If you find me attractive, I do not owe you a date.
If you find me unattractive, I do not owe you my invisibility.
I do not owe you anything, regardless of your feelings about me.
I am not a bitch for not being interested in you.
I am not a slut for dating someone other than you.
I am not your servant, trohpy, or mother if I do date you.
I am not to blame for your issues with women.
Women are not to blame for your issues with women.
We are not responsible for your inability to cope with rejection.
Stop blaming us.
It is not our fault.
We do not force you to do anything, just like you cannot force us.
Hopefully you’ve heard this all before.
But maybe no one’s ever told you. Or you just never listened.
Whichever, hear what I am saying now.
Listen to these words.
Remember them. Memorize them.
Tattoo them on your goddamn forehead.
YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO MY BODY.
Sincerly,
This comment was written by groggette (formerly Ali).A person of the female variety
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August 7th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I think a small, vocal minority has earned the reputation for what we all like to call ‘MRA’s.
I see a gulf between the blatant misogyny here, and the not-entirely-absurd view that men get the short end of the gender stick.
I find feminist excesses more excusable than MRA ones because if you look at the world, there is a lot of oppression targeted at women by men. One thing that 9/11 seems to have made respectable is people suddenly discovering this — so long as it is in a Muslim/non-Western culture. There is just nothing comparable, in ANY culture of which I am aware, to what happens to millions of women: honor killings, legal marital rape, the deliberate mutilation of women to make sex uncomfortable for them, burning down women’s schools to prevent their education, prioritizing women’s “modesty” over their lives, trading women as sexual commodities to avenge feuds — sorry, where is it that any of this happens to men?
Of course, the immediate response is: but Andrea Dworkin didn’t have to fear an honor killing; Dworkin didn’t undergo FGM; so what’s SHE so mad about? And the answer, so far as I know, is that she saw the underlying connection among the various manifestations of sexism and oppression of women. Westerners pat themselves on the back for how much better they are than those unenlightened black and brown people, but how recent are these improvements? The Commonwealth of Virginia still had legal marital rape in 2000. A couple months ago, the Alaska Supreme Court held that whether a woman had had consensual sexual behavior in a prior workplace was relevant to the factual question of her having consented to sexual behavior by a supervisor in her current workplace.
In contrast, the written law isn’t set up against men. There may be individual family court judges who are biased against men with regard to divorce and custody proceedings, but the law is not written to say, “Let’s screw over men.”
And the things like gender inequality in the draft? Feminist organizations have tried to end that inequality. Look at the one case regarding the male-only draft that has gone to the Supreme Court, Rostker v. Goldberg. Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance [i.e. for upholding the lower court's determination that the draft should include women] were filed by Daniel Marcus for Congressman Robert W. Kastenmeier et al.; by Paul Kenney for Men’s Rights, Inc.; by Barbara A. Brown, Thomas J. Hart, Phyllis N. Segal, and Judith I. Avner for the National Organization for Women; and by Judith L. Lichtman for the Women’s Equity Action League Educational and Legal Defense Fund et al.
Where a Men’s Rights group could point to an actual inequality in the written law, two feminist organizations said, “You’re right, we’re with you.”
Most of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s cases before the Supreme Court, when she was chief litigator of the ACLU’s women’s rights project, were actually about either granting more rights and benefits to men, or imposing more duties on women:
Duren v. Missouri (1979): making jury duty mandatory rather than voluntary for women, just as it is for men;
Califano v. Goldfarb (1977): giving widowers the same survivor’s benefit under Social Security that widows get;
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975): giving widowers the same child-in-care benefits under Social Security that widows gets;
Kahn v. Shevin (1974): trying to give widowers the same property tax exemptions that widows get (Ginsburg lost this case);
Frontiero v. Richardson (1973): giving husbands of military members the same dependent status that wives of military members automatically got.
Where do you see men’s rights groups working to ensure that women get more rights and benefits, and men more responsibilities?
The attempts to equate feminists and MRAs are hollow because the two groups are neither similarly situated, nor do they have a history of taking similar actions. Feminist organizations like NOW, the Women’s Equity Action League and the ACLU women’s rights project have recognized that so long as women are given preferences over men in some areas, there can be no true equality — and equality, not preference, is the goal. Where do you see MRA organizations recognizing the same for men?
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 8:02 am
So I guess the big idea here is that women should be treated as men’s equals…
except:
In time of conscription,
When applying for a small business loan,
When being considered for university or graduate school admissions,
When a ship’s going down,
When a door needs to be opened,
When a bill needs to be payed at a bar/restaurant,
When custody is being decided,
etc. etc.
I have no problem with women’s equality, just like I have no inherent problem with the idea that men and women are inherently different. But seriously, no one will take feminists seriously as long as women continue to get this “best of both worlds” treatment.
I think my view is perfectly valid, and if it isn’t, I encourage you to let me know where I’ve made an error. Please think about it first, though.
This comment was written by Wine and Cakes for Gentlemen.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Wow, only an MRA would be such a self-involved whiner that, upon reading a thread talking about reactions to the mass shooting and murder of multiple people, he responds “but men have to open dooooooors!”
Well, gosh, Wine and Cakes, I agree, it is sexist and wrong that men are expected to open doors for women and not vice-versa. I think every feminist I’ve ever spoken to about the subject agrees with me on that. But it’s incredible that you think that’s a relevant issue to bring up here.
It speaks of a level of narcissism that borderlines on the ludicrous. (At best.)
Wine and Cakes, if you want to keep discussing anything other than George Sodini and the MRA reactions to Sodini, then take it to an open thread. Any further off-topic posts by you on this thread will lead to you being banned.
(That includes responding to this comment of mine. If you want to respond to me, do it on the open thread, not here.)
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August 7th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] and Tiger Beatdown and Ampersand and Broadsheet have all gone to the belly of the beast and found responses from “pick-up [...]
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August 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
PG,
I think you’re reading me wrong. I’m not going to play the “suffering Olympics”, and I’m certainly not about to defend the people making these comments in this post.
What I’m trying to say is that people voicing legitimate grievances are being drowned out by a very vocal minority, and labeled.
This is not to say that these people are members of such a group; in fact quite the opposite.
The (very small) men’s movement, in a lot of senses is feminism. It’s just not very popular in some circles not to be gynocetric.
I disagree; I’m not about to give a free pass to hate speech directed at an entire gender. Not only is it invalidating of legitimate grievances, but also directly contradicts the very idea set (feminism) that it’s supposedly coming from. I’m also not going to give a free pass to Solanas for attempted murder; either she was a human with agency, in which case prison was right, or she was schizophrenic, in which case she needed help.
This comment was written by MER.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Wine and Cake-
Is it possible that you missed the comment IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING yours that said that stuff wasn’t okay and that feminists don’t support it? I mean, you posted about 2 minutes apart, it is possible.
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August 7th, 2009 at 11:01 am
MER,
I’m not going to play the “suffering Olympics”, and I’m certainly not about to defend the people making these comments in this post.
It is not playing the “suffering Olympics” to point out that throughout history and throughout the world today, women qua women have less power than men qua men (that is, a particular woman like Sonia Gandhi might have more power than most of the men around her, but it’s because of her last name and in spite of her being a woman). Indeed, dismissing such things as “suffering Olympics” is a nice convenient way for you to dismiss the magnitude of the suffering so you can pretend that losing a custody battle is on par with, say, losing your life in an honor killing.
What I’m trying to say is that people voicing legitimate grievances are being drowned out by a very vocal minority, and labeled.
Which are the men’s rights organizations that you consider to be made up of a majority of people voicing legitimate grievances that are getting drowned out by a very vocal minority? In my comment @32, I was able to name names of feminist organizations and leaders who did positive work for gender equality by putting men and women on an equal legal footing. Can you do the same for MRA organizations and leaders?
The (very small) men’s movement, in a lot of senses is feminism. It’s just not very popular in some circles not to be gynocetric.
Again, specifics?
I’m not about to give a free pass to hate speech directed at an entire gender. Not only is it invalidating of legitimate grievances, but also directly contradicts the very idea set (feminism) that it’s supposedly coming from. I’m also not going to give a free pass to Solanas for attempted murder;
PG @ 32: “I find feminist excesses more excusable than MRA ones”
more excusable =/= free pass. If you understand the distinction, you’ll find what I’m saying much more reasonable than your current interpretation.
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August 7th, 2009 at 11:14 am
We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation.
Please do not throw out this kind of speculation. It is harmful to actual autistic people and their loved ones, 99+% of whom are not going into public places shooting people.
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 11:57 am
There’s something (well, okay, more than a few somethings) I don’t get about their logic. There are about the same number of men and women in the country, right? Slightly more women? Do women not suffer from loneliness like these guys do? Because they must be asserting that either A: there are many rich, handsome pushovers who are capable of satisfying multiple women at once, leaving none for these guys, or B: women are capable of going without affection for their entire lives to a degree that men are not. One of those has to be true to explain the huge excess number of miserable unmatched men. (I guess there’s also C: there is somewhere a huge city of lonely perfect women, being hidden from the unpartnered straight men of America by a vast government program.)
Of course the answer is some combination of their blindness to women as human beings who can suffer just like men, their hilarious standards of appearance and behavior in women, and a heaping helping of conspiracy theory.
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August 7th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
This is what I wasn’t going to do. I’m not going to make an argument that women arn’t oppressed or anything like that. Don’t put me in that group.
Even the idea that society has historically been worse to men is far removed from the the Sodini comments.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I said nothing to that effect.
As for examples, you already did, see 32.
Thinking about it more, the anti-feminist backlash is much larger than the men’s movement. This is a failing.
I haven’t posted here very much, so I can understand your not getting where I stand, I should have been more clear. Still, I don’t understand your hostility; it’s not mutual. I don’t really think we’re disagreeing.
I do. Bad word choice is all.
This comment was written by MER.Report this comment to the moderators
August 7th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
In my comment @32, I gave examples of women and organizations who very clearly identify as feminists, and who have worked for the equality of men and women, in many cases by ensuring that women bear the same responsibilities as men and that men get the same benefits and privileges as women. I think if you ask Justice Ginsburg whether she is a feminist or a MRA, you’ll find she’s not a MRA. I’m not sure how you are managing to be confused on this point. Are you under the impression that groups labeled “National Organization for Women,” “Women’s Equity Action League Educational and Legal Defense Fund,” or “ACLU Women’s Rights Project” are MRA organizations?
You certainly haven’t offered an example of “men’s rights organizations that you consider to be made up of a majority of people voicing legitimate grievances that are getting drowned out by a very vocal minority.” And I haven’t offered such an example; I don’t know of any.
I feel no hostility toward you personally; I don’t know you and you may well be a totally fabulous person. I am hostile toward the argument you’re putting forward, which is that MRAs are just as much of a gender-egalitarian movement as feminism has been. You’ve provided absolutely no specifics to back that assertion, whereas I’ve provided multiple examples of how feminists have indeed worked for gender-egalitarianism even where that would increase women’s legal duties (so long as those duties will be the same as men’s) or increase men’s benefits (so long as those benefits will be the same as women’s).
ETA: As the folks who have commented here for a while can tell you, I don’t have a lot of patience for vague generalizations when someone is making an argument I find dubious, *especially* about the law. I cite statutes and case law, occasionally quoting directly, and expect others to do the same. If you’re basing your claims on a “general sense” of How The World Is, and can’t offer specific examples, feel free to say so and I won’t pursue the point further.
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August 7th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
[...] Also, check out amp’s other blog about the ingrained accepted attitude of sexism condoned in places in our society. Read more at: amptoons.com [...]
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August 7th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I’ve re-read my comments and I can see where they are unclear, and certainly not the magnum opus of my my portfolio.
This is not the argument I’m trying to make. I want to apologize for the misunderstanding.
This comment was written by MER.Here’s (I think) what I’m trying to say, after this I’ll shut up, I promise.
No matter weather an approach towards egalitarianism proceeds from:
a: men are oppressed and it needs fixing.
or
b. women are oppressed and it needs fixing.
(both legitimate platforms, though not necessarily comparable as more or less oppressed)
There are violent and non violent radicals on both sides, who will spout misogyny and misandry. Solanas advocated gendercide. George Sodini murdered.
Radicals which will cling to words associated with the quest for egalitarianism, yet be anything but.
I was really just trying to add to 27.
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August 7th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Totally agree, and I don’t think anyone here has said anything to the contrary. The question is the extent to which the sentiments that motivated Sodini are widespread in the MRA movement, and the extent to which these MRAs and PUAs vindicated Sodini’s view of women and made him feel that it was not in fact so radical.
Solanas, incidentally, did not go around shooting random men; she shot Andy Warhol over a specific grudge against him. She did not seem to consider all men responsible for her particular gripe against Warhol. I am not sure why you are relating her attempted murder of Warhol to Sodini’s mass murder of women he’d never met. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and stalked Warhol. Insofar as actions and not just words are concerned, her animus was directed at Andy Warhol, not at Men As A Class. She was also very self-consciously and deliberately (one might say pretentiously) a radical.
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August 7th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I think that there are probably more outspoken misogynists than there are well meaning MRAs.
This comment was written by MER.She shot Warhol because (her words) “he had too much control over her” relating to the specific grudge during her period of mental illness.
The SCUM manifesto however is directed at Men As A Class, and if it can be taken as any indication of how she really felt, then she was pretty damn hateful. (given her experiences, I’d probably be hateful too)
The only comparison is that they were both violent(for different reasons), and that they both have expressed hateful sentiments towards each gender, which is decidedly not egalitarian. I’m not trying to make some bizarre eye-for-an-eye justification or say that they’re mirrors of each other. It would just be inaccurate.
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August 7th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
And of course there’s actually a recent study that strongly suggests feminists are less hostile to men than non-feminists.
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August 8th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I’m confused about the implication that the SCUM Manifesto and V. Solanas were ever considered part of any mainstream branch of feminism, past or present.
Neither my Secret Feminist World Domination Handbook nor my weekly update from Feminist World Headquarters mentioned this. I had no idea.
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August 8th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation.
AAAARRRRGH!!!! Could people please get off this? Being autistic does not make you violent. Being autistic does not make you violent. Being autistic does not make you violent. How many times does it have to be said? Being treated like shit all your life for being autistic can certainly make someone a bit stabby, of course, but to anyone’s knowledge he was never even diagnosed with anything, even by himself, so it’s just speculation anyway.
Sorry, but I’m just getting tired of this “he must have been mentally ill or autistic” thing. Charles Manson was/is perfectly neurotypical — he’s just a sick fuck who thinks the world owes him, that’s all, just like Sodini was. Mentally ill and autistic people are a lot more likely to have violence done TO them than actually commit it, and prejudices like this just make us all the more likely to be victimized.
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August 8th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Maybe this discussion should be taken to the open thread?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 8th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Yeah, I agree with that, Meowser. I don’t think there’s been a mod hand on this yet, so I guess I’ll go ahead and provide it — I’m not going to totally ban discussion of mental illness (because I think people have been working some things out in regard to their beliefs about the world and what causes mass-murder), but everyone making further comments about Sodini’s mental health should *really stop and think before posting* to consider whether their statements are really defensible.
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August 10th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Amp, did you want the MRA apologetics on an open thread? I seem to recall you suggesting it move away from derailing the topic about a hate-crime committed against women.
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August 10th, 2009 at 11:47 am
EVERYONE:
PLEASE TAKE ANY FURTHER OFF-TOPIC DISCUSSION TO THE DESIGNATED THREAD.
ANY MORE OFF-TOPIC POSTS ON THIS THREAD WILL BE DELETED.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 10th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
UPDATE:
Okay, I’ve moved about 42 off-topic comments to this new thread. Further MRA vs feminist discussion, that’s not directly about the subject of the original post here, should be taken to that thread, please.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 11th, 2009 at 4:29 am
*sigh* Reading those horrible, horrible comments almost makes me frightened to own a vagina and boobs. So, I’m wronging someone and creating more anger and hatred every time I decline an invitation for dinner or coffee? I’ve given men more ammo to destroy me if I go on a date, but decide I don’t want a second? God, this is scary stuff…and there are people like that walking around!
This comment was written by Mandamoo.Thank God I’ve found a good, good man, otherwise that list of ugliness might convince me that there aren’t any- or its too dangerous to keep looking for one.
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August 11th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I’m right there with you Mandamoo. It’s a good thing I’m fine with being single… although that might just give some men even more ammo since I’m not “owned” by another man and therefore should be open to any advances.
This comment was written by groggette (formerly Ali).Report this comment to the moderators
August 12th, 2009 at 1:53 am
I went to that Roissy site where a lot of the comments originated…I wish I hadn’t. Its so depressing. It also reminded me of a recent experience.
This comment was written by Mandamoo.Last summer I was totally victimized by a man who was into the “Mystery Method”- I had no idea what I was getting into. (I know it was the Mystery Method because the snide SOB sent me the book) I have never been so confused, so hurt…cried so much in my life. Why would anyone want to hurt someone like that? I believed the things he said to me and I only wanted to be happy with him- to make him happy.
Sadly, I guess that’s almost an endorsement- I gave him two months when he didn’t deserve five minutes. But what a waste! Since then I’ve met another, pretter even younger lady he manipulated too.
She’s a lovely, sweet girl- any man would be proud to have her on his arm- and what did he do but crush her feelings? Such an idiot!
What is wrong with these men? Is it only obvious to outsiders that they have no business dealing with women until they get over their anger issues? If they didn’t hate/fear women, they would never resort to these sorts of deceptions and cruelties.
As I’ve said before- I’ve since found a GOOD man, a real one (yes, they do exist) and we share politics and philosophy and have adventures together. Night and Day! Those men who resort to trickery and deception can never hope to have a genuine relationship, they’ll never enjoy the love of equals. I almost feel sorry for them, but I feel sorrier for the women they victimize. UGH.
…I wish I hadn’t gone to that blog. Its like when I was a kid, and you lift up a log- expecting to see beetles, spiders and all sorts of creepy crawlies, but then- even worse, you uncover some festering critter corpse. It was worse than I imagined, and even now I feel vaguely soiled.
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August 12th, 2009 at 4:55 am
What these people wrote horrifies and sickens me to the point of being physically ill. It’s a “tax”? A TAX?! Three women lost their lives! Daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, wives! They DIED! They’re not coming back!
I’m totally in shock. I’m terrified and sad that anyone could think this way!
And don’t think it’s just because I’m a woman… Because if a woman walked into a gym and killed 3 men and other women said “They deserved it. It’s tax for all the ____ we give them!” I’d be just as sickened. And I’m sure there are some sick, twisted women that would say something like that. But it’s wrong!
I need to get breathe and take a moment. I’m in shock.
I wish everyone all the love and kindness in the world. No one deserves to be treated like an object. We must learn to care for each other and not blame others for our troubles. Peace.
Big Smiles,
This comment was written by Lexie Di.Lexie
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August 12th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
[...] it may be hard for some to believe that the lack of outrage is due to the fact that the victims were women, check out what [...]
This comment was written by Connecting the misogynistic dots.Report this comment to the moderators
August 16th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I’d seen a lot of these comments before, having read the posts Ampersand linked to. But they’re no less sick the second time around.
This comment was written by SunlessNick.Report this comment to the moderators
August 19th, 2009 at 3:24 am
[...] to behold. This underlying hate for women is on full display in the comments gathered together here. This collection of men’s comments from the web (all with links to the source) about George [...]
This comment was written by Misogyny Lives « Uprooting Sexism.Report this comment to the moderators
August 21st, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Took me all this time to finally read this thread.
Not sure I shoulda, but I did.
:(
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
October 8th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
As a person of the MRA sector, I’d like to set the matter straight:
George Sodini does not particularly interest me, or sway my political passions one way or the other. As far as I am concerned, he was a just pathological personality who came unglued and committed mass murder. Full stop.
And you know the drill, folks: Shit happens.
Yes, the universe occasionally spawns such people and such occurrences.
‘Nuff said.
If Sodini were still among the living, I would hope to see him correctly processed by the criminal justice system, just like any other person charged with crime. And there I’d make an end of it, and wash my hands of the matter.
I would not waste any time “analyzing” the fault of society, or feminism specifically, in making people like Sodini happen. (i DO believe there is a connection of sorts, but I would not go public with speculations of that nature, since I feel there is politically nothing to be gained by so doing.)
As for the purported “MRAs” who said such wildly inappropriate, impolitic things: I’d really, really, really like to slap some sense into them!
So, to reiterate: it is part of my political stance to not assume any political stance regarding people like George Sodini (or Marc Lepine, or the guy in the Amish schoolhouse, etc, etc. . .). If they are charged with murder, put them on trial. And if they are found guilty, gavel down! Need I say more?
As an MRA, this is the very first public statement I’ve made about George Sodini. And since my particular voice carries considerable weight in MRA land, I reckon it’s time I got off my duff and BLOGGED about this. Which I plan to do in the near future, if for no other reason that to put a counter-spin upon the feminist spin.
Yup. I feel a post comin’ on!
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Concerning the title of the present ‘Alas’ post:
“Men’s Rights Activists, Anti-Feminists, And Other Misogynists Comment On George Sodini”
Note the bold-faced emphasis, which is my own.
Amp, that was really sneaky dude! ;)
But at least you are licensing our side to use similar tactics, so it’s all good I reckon. :)
All’s fair, and all o’ that!
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Fidelbogen: Your side has been using those tactics, and much worse, for as long as I can remember. While I suppose you expect women to feel grateful you don’t approve of guys like Sodini, the fact that the MRA circle attracts such an immense number of misogynists, as demonstrated by Amp’s post, suggests there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. And using the tactics to which you are referring certainly won’t help your cause being taken over by people who view it as a holy war against women as a gender.
This comment was written by Redisca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Thanks for reviving (and thereby reminding me of) this thread, fidelbogen, because it just so happens that I was recently reading this one. Concerning the evidence he would consider sufficient to attribute man-hatred to contemporary feminism, Ampersand said:
Compare that with where he set the bar for attributing misogyny to MRAism. Looks to me like a double-standard.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 11:53 am
From my post:
I’m sure that the typical MRA, when quoting something some alleged feminist said in a college paper somewhere, includes disclaimers exactly like that one. Right?
And I’m sure that Christina Hoff Sommers, the person I was criticizing in the passage of mine you quoted, said in the piece I was criticizing that she wasn’t talking about the most common, centrist views in feminism, and made sure that readers knew that she was cherry-picking quotes. Since otherwise the comparison you just made is point-scoring nonsense.
Do me a favor and quote where she said that in her piece, Daran?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
No, he doesn’t. Neither does the typical blog feminist, when quoting something some alleged MRA said in a blog comment. You of course, are not typical.
Do you not think that I couldn’t “cherry-pick[] the most offensive comments” from feminist blogland, and show that they too are “accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted … and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all”?
And while I agree that feminist blogs are different from MRA ones in that latter do tend to not “mod and ban” as feminist blogs do, I would suggest that 90% of feminist modding and banning is directed at MRAs, not offensive feminists.
Edited to add: You edited your comment to ask additional questions concerning Hoff Sommers which I hadn’t seen when I posted the above. I don’t have time to respond as I’m going out just now, but I don’t want it to be assumed that I silently ignored them.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Daran, you didn’t just accuse “the typical feminist” of having a double-standard. You said I had displayed a double standard, and to do so, you quoted a passage in which I complained about Right-Wing feminists cherry-picking atypical quotes to falsely represent the entire feminist movement.
So the fact that in my post I bent over backwards to avoid doing that is extremely relevant, and shows how wrong your original argument was.
Of course, you now realize that your original argument was dead wrong, so you’re scrambling to move your goalposts.
Now, suddenly, the issue isn’t cherry-picking quotes and saying they represent an entire movement — even though that clearly was the issue you were getting at with the long quote from me in comment #66.
It’s about now something else entirely — is it fair of me to criticize MRA (et al) forums for failing to firmly reject those who seem to think that mass-murdering women is in some way justified?
I think it is fair.
And I assure you, if a feminist did what Sodini did — committed mass-murder against random men (or random women, for that matter) — I would not suggest that her (or his) act was in some way justifiable. Nor would I find it acceptable if justifying that sort of mass-murder were generally accepted as a part of ordinary feminist discourse, on “Alas” or on other significant feminist blogs.
It’s true that I think that mass-murder is more repulsive than other acts, and so hold it to as different — or “double” — standard. But I think that’s a defensible position.
[Edited to desnark.]
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Redisca: If by “Denmark” you mean the entire social ecology in which we ALL embedded—feminist and non-feminist alike—then yes, I would agree that there is something rotten in “Denmark”. And naturally, feminism contributes to the “rot” as much as anything else. . .
I hope that clarifies. :)
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Redisca: You suppose incorrectly.
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Ampersand, could you please answer three questions:
1. Do you think that, applying the cherry-picking standard above, I could find multiple examples of comments from a limited selection of feminist blogs which are every bit as misandrist as those are misogynist, and which “are accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted; no one is banned or modded for posting these views; and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all”?
2. Assuming your answer to 1 is “yes”, do you agree with the following proposition: “the most vilely misandrist garbage, even to the point of sympathizing with attempted murder*, is part of the spectrum of ordinary opinion, within the movements. And that’s both a cause for concern, and illustrates what’s so fucked about about the feminist movement and community”.
*”Valerie, you will always be my personal hero” — Nancy Hulse. The quote is undated, so I don’t know if that was written this century, but Hulse herself has been active within the speaker/seminar/performer circuit within the past five years, which I thing gives her a little more status that random blog commenters. I can’t tell if she’s currently active, because I’m getting mySQL errors on the page that would tell me.
3. Assuming your answer to 2 is “yes”, have you ever expressed that view in a blog post?
If your answer to the third question, or even just the second, is “yes”, then I will happily withdraw the accusation of a double standard.
Here are a few more questions. Do you not think that “typical feminists” should adhere to the standard you set out in the other post, if they are to claim that MRAs are “women-haters” and “misogynists” without acknowledging that their examples are cherry picked and unrepresentative. Do you think that they actually do acknowledge this. Have you ever criticised a feminist for not so doing?
In other words, do you hold feminist generally to the same standard as you do CHS?
I didn’t realise that my argument was wrong at the time of my previous post. I was under the impression that the point of your CHS post was to defend feminism generally from charges of endemic misandry, of which CHS’s critique was but an example. I simply didn’t realise that your concern was about how CHS framed her claim. My bad.
Not at all. It is about double standards, as the questions set out above indicate.
By the way, I think you misrepresent the majority of even your cherry-picked quotes. Most were not saying that murder was justified, but that it was inevitable. “Told you so” rather than “Hell yeah!”
Feminism is a close, but not exact mirror image of MRAism. Feminists express their misandry in subtly different ways. It’s true that justifying a mass murder by a feminist isn’t generally accepted as a part of ordinary feminist discourse, perhaps because there’s never been one**. On the other hand, it is generally accepted as a legitimate feminist view that concern for the male victims of mass gendercidal murder is somehow invalid because you know, women are being victimised too, and some of those men are cads. (See, for example the first comment to this post.
*Let’s not forget that Solanas shot and wounded two men, and only failed to murder a third because her gun pointed at his head jammed.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
The so-called MRA “movement” has been vulnerable to smear attacks in the past largely because it lacks a clearly understood, generally acknowledged manifesto or platform.
You know the drill: if you don’t define yourself, others will define you.
Well, all of this has changed. An MRA group in Italy has composed the needful instrument: it is called the U3000 Platform.
This Platform has now been “nailed to the mast”, so to speak, at Men’s News Daily, no less! So it is gonna become known to thousands and thousands of people very quickly - and far beyond its native land!
http://tinyurl.com/yag4zcj
Go, read, ponder and digest. I defy ANYBODY to find one single crumb of misogyny anywhere in U3000.
U3000 now represents the official editorial position of MND, as you will observe. Mike Lasalle and Paul Elam are both down with it!
I, myself, will personally cosign with U3000, and I know for a fact that a huge number of other MRAs will do likewise.
So, in the future, if anybody wants to know what MRAs are all about, all you must do is shove a copy of U3000 in their face. ;)
Makes life simple, really. . .
Personally, I think the U3000 Platform is a stroke of genius!
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Ampersand:
It’s not fair, in the sense that its not fair for pots in glass houses to throw stones at black kettles, even when the particular pot happens to be one of the shinier ones in the house.
It is fair, in that I agree with your description of MRAim - that there is a spectrum of misogyny, that the most horrendous expressions of woman-hatred are accepted as normal, and that this is “fucked up”. It’s precisely the fucked-upness of it that leads to me eschew the label. I do not accept these things, I publicly disavow these things.
fidelbogen:
See above. You are not going to solve the movement’s problems with a mission statement.
I defy anybody to find one single crumb of substance within the bromide.
Put very simply, just because you say you reject the denigration of women, doesn’t mean that you* actually do reject it. The same criticism applies to the various purported statements of what feminism is, propounded by feminists.
Feminism is what feminists say and do, not what they say they say and do. Exactly the same applies to MRAism.
*I’m not suggesting that you as an individual don’t reject it. I don’t know you well enough to judge.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 1:13 am
True, but that is not the point here. The point here is politics, and politics is played in a certain way.
And publishing a clearly stated manifesto is part of that game.
A move in that game.
It’s a gesture, and gestures ARE important. . . .
And so, my original “challenge”, once again, was for anybody to find a crumb of misogyny in it. Or maybe I should say, in the meaning which it purports.
“Substance” can come later.
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 3:04 am
fidelbogen:
I read the manifesto. It is rooted in an essentialist notion of gender–points 1-3–that, at least in the west, though in other cultures as well, has been deployed to justify and to render misogyny as the natural order of things.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 6:20 am
@RJN: Then, it would appear that the nub of contention, if there is any, is rooted in points 1-3. The question then arises, whether essentialism is “true” in some sense—the old ‘nature v. nurture’ quandary. I realize, of course, that anti-essentialism is virtually dogma in certain quarters, the linchpin of a system without which the system would fail. And yet, the question is very much disputed at present, often to the chagrin of the dogmatists.
That said, the more ‘essential’ question remains, whether U3000 is, in any part, misogynistic palpably and on its face.
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 7:09 am
That an notion has been deployed to justify and render both misogynist and misandist ideas as “natural”, by different and in some cases the same people respectively, does not mean that the idea itself is either 1. necessarily misogynistic and/or misandrist, or 2. false.
I also note that many feminist antiessentialists posit that men are inescapably different from women, (empowered, privileged, etc.), because no man can have had a woman’s experiences in life. The distinction between an inherent difference and an inescapable one doesn’t amount to a great deal of difference.
Having said that, the affirmation at the level of principle of gender-essentialism is one of the rather odd things about this manifesto. I happen to believe that there are essential differences between the sexes which operate as trends or tendencies, which are not inescapable at the individual level, and whose expression at the group level are strongly influenced by cultural forces. I believe this because it is the most parsimonious explanation for the observed data, and I’m willing to revise it in the light of new data. It’s a theory, not a principle.
I also believe that many of the assumed differences between men and women are pure social norms reflecting no biological reality whatsoever.
I am, therefore, an anti-antiessentialist more than I am an essentialist. I reject the dogma of antiessentialism. I certainly wouldn’t want to sign up to a positively essentialist manifesto as this one appears to be. I say appears, because its so badly written, its difficult to be sure exactly what it is intended to mean.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 7:19 am
No it isn’t. Neither is the dictionary definition of “feminism”, or any of dozens of definitions posited by feminist.
These facts do not amount to so much as a hill of beans.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 9:20 am
It’s a huge difference.
I think that men and women raised in the 1500s were pretty much inescapably different from each other, in that they were raised to reproduce the gender norms of the time. However, those gender norms were not inherent, which is why we don’t still live under 1500s gender norms today.
Also, I would say that sexism is “inescapable” in that it is culture-wide; people can change as individuals, but what no person can individually change[*] is that they live as part of a larger culture. In contrast, a strong claim that gender norms are inherent would say that no one can change as an individual.
[*] Putting aside extreme scenarios, like living as a survivalist hundreds of miles from any other human being.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 10:25 am
They are inescapable in the short and medium term. I certainly hope that one day that misogyny and misandry - and the acceptence of these things - currently endemic within the feminist and MRA movements will be reversed. Indeed the whole point of criticism is to work to that end.
But this isn’t going to happen over night. I’m not holding my breath.
Individuals are not inescapably sexist. It is impossible (ultrasurvivalism excepted) for individuals o escape from sexism expressed by others.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:03 am
fidelbogen, you’re right, it would be difficult to find even a crumb of overt misogyny in your MRA principles. That’s because much of your manifesto seems to be rather dog whistle-y. The fact that you appear to view your manifesto as a ‘move in a game’ instead of an attempt to clarify and persuade casts a rather unflattering light on your project.
FTR, while I think there’s a lot of validity to some MRA critiques of gynocentric feminism, I personally eschew the label because — in addition to the reasons Daran listed — the overt leadership of the MRA movement appears to have been hijacked by right wingers whose policies are often far more detrimental to the average man than your typical feminist’s.
I also couldn’t help but notice the irony of this clause in your list of things you struggle against, fidelbogen:
… being immediately followed by this other clause of things you struggle against:
Are there no libertarians in the MRA movement, fidelbogen? Is it not a tad autocratic to dictate to others (including men) what is and is not an appropriate motivation for having sex?
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Don’t expect me to post on this thread again today — I’ve got to draw.
It’s telling that you had to go back to a crime that occurred before many of the people on this forum had even been born, to find a feminist doing something even remotely similar to what Sodini did. (And what other women-hating men have done over the years.)
This is an obviously ridiculous standard. That there was one attempted multiple murder by a mentally disturbed feminist decades ago doesn’t mean there’s no difference between feminism and MRA/antifeminism.
So I utterly reject your false equivalence between feminism and MRA/anti-feminism. Yes, both movements have flaws. No, they are not mirror images of each other.
90% of the MRA movement is about bitter resentment and hatred of women/feminists/ex-wives. It is the main thing that drives them, which is why it’s almost impossible to find an MRA who doesn’t read, comment on, and/or troll feminists, or who isn’t misogynistic. The reverse is not at all true.
The movements are also different because feminism has actually done a hell of a lot of good in the world; not just for women, but for men like me. Tell me, Daran, where the hell was your “feminist critics” movement when I was having the crap beaten out of me by people wanting to enforce sexist ideas of masculinity on me? Where was your feminist critics movement when I needed to be told that my way of being was legitimate, and that it was the people who told me otherwise who were screwed up?
And of course, that’s nothing compared to how much help feminism has done for women.
I think having done a huge amount of real good in the world counts for a lot, and merits feminism being judged more kindly than genuinely worthless or even actively harmful movements, such as “feminist critics,” anti-feminism, and MRA.
Do I think you can find the equivalent of the original post on this thread, in recent comments sympathizing with Valerie Solonas? No, I don’t. I think you’d have to travel a lot further, search a lot harder, and use much less recent comments to come up with even a close equivalent in terms of viciousness and numbers. And I think you’d get almost all comments from blogs that aren’t representative of mainstream feminism. That difference reflects real differences in the tone and focus of the two movements.
Do I think that misandry is all-too-commonplace within feminism, and is too commonly accepted? Yes, I do. This tendency is, in my observation, more common and more extreme in radical feminist spaces, but it exists in mainstream feminist spaces too. That sucks, although in some ways it’s also necessary and desirable. (In a better world, it would just suck.)
Do I think that this is equivalent to the all-too-common acceptance of misogyny in the MRA movement? Only if a slap is the same thing as a murder. They’re both wrong and regrettable, and they belong to a similar genre (violent attacks), but the extremity is entirely different. To claim they’re the same is to exhibit moral blindness.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:52 am
This response strikes me as rather disingenuous, Amp. The exact date of the occurrence of the crime isn’t relevant, the existence of sympathy for the criminal in current discourse is the key point Daran was making very clearly. Or, to put it another way, if there were some MRA thread on the interwebs where a few commenters were appearing to express sympathy for the Boston Strangler, would you give them a pass? I suspect not. This completely knocks the legs out from under your assertion that Daran is somehow embracing an “obviously ridiculous double standard.”
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
In addition to what ballgame just pointed out, I would add that Hulse is no mere random blog commenter, but someone with a lengthy record of real-world activism. Although my claim is analogous to that set out by Ampersand in this post - that extreme feminist views are on a spectrum - the level of proof I’m aiming at is the one he set out in the response to Cathy Young. He asked for multiple twenty-first century citations from a “representative variety” of feminists. Hulse is one. Another would be Amanda Marcotte’s libelous remarks about a group of men at a time when anyone but a bigot could have seen that they were most likely actually innocent. She’ll do as a “politically connected” feminist; she was a spokesperson for a Presidential Candidate, A third would be the comment by Rene to my blog I already cited. She’s a blogger, yes, but not just a blogger. She’s a blogger Ampersand has heard of. And she’s not a white feminist.
And how about this view, attributed here to Carolyn McAskie:
This is a libel. The truth is, that on the whole men do not make war. Most men want nothing to do with war. Only a handful of men play any part in the decision to wage war.
We’ll file that one under “award-winning feminists who have been UN special Raporteurs to warzones”.
There you have it: Multiple 21st century citations to very differently situated feminists, not all of them bloggers, none of them mere blog commenters, all expressing extremely bigoted views in respect of men which do amount to the view that men are brutes. And I haven’t even mentioned Mary Daly (still active in 2006) or Julie Bindel.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
@ballgame: There was too much in the comment to cut-n-paste as much as I’d like, but anyhow. . .Short version: I am not seeing the ‘irony’ in question. . . but maybe I’m based on a different understanding.
About the ‘overt leadership’ of the ‘MRA movement’: I find that statement curious given that the so-called “movement” really isn’t .
“Movement” here is alas only a term of convenience, as is, come to think of it. . . MRA.
I know of several distinct “cells” or cliques which move independently of each other (though loosely networked). Also, plenty of “loose sand”. But the idea that there is any ‘leadership’ to the whole shebang, is hard to fathom. . .
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
I am agnostic per the “2 essentialisms”. I “have no dog in that fight”- meaning, no emotional baggage riding on ANY eventual outcome to the controversy. Whatever the truth turns out to be, I’ll roll with it. Science rocks! But in either case, the scenario will have both upsides and downsides, and I would of course expect my fellow humanoids to take the bitter with the sweet, and live consistently within the strictures. (And not to ‘vacillate’ at my expense, naturally!)
Since I mentioned dogs, I’ll continue in a zoological vein: The choice here is like putting your money on the horses. I’ll back the horse called Essentialism—which to me seems a more likely “winner”.
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
here’s another one, advocating a systematic program of lynching men:
We’ll file this one under the “pro-feminist” category.
Then there are the comments to this story, which applaud a purported act of mass male infanticide. I say “purported” because I don’t believe the news item. But none of the commenters question its authenticity. What we see are people excusing, justifying, and applauding it. Are they feminists? They’re certainly invoking feminist tropes.
The category for this one is “bottom of the blog-comment barrel”.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
If you mean that you back the horse which says “gendered behaviour is a result of the complex interaction between essential differences and cultural forces” over the one that says “gendered behaviour is a result of cultural forces. There are no essential differences”, then I agree with you.
If you mean that you back the horse which says “gendered behaviour is a result of essential differences only” then I strongly disagree.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Probably the same place you were at the time: getting beaten up by schoolyard bullies. Daran has written extensively on his site about his own childhood victimization.
This comment was written by Doug S..Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 1:39 am
Ampersand:
I don’t have a movement. I wish I did. All I have is a blog.
But where was your feminist movement in the immediate aftermath…
I’ve just spent ten minutes staring at the screen unable to finish the sentence. I can still barely talk about that time nearly twenty years ago. I was twenty-eight years old. I had been committed to a mental institution (where I was horribly, horribly treated). I lost my job, my home, and my girlfriend, and had been forced by my parents to move from the South of England to the North East of Scotland, in order to be near them, all in the space of three months. It was nothing less than the complete uprooting of what till then had passed as my life.
Where was your movement? It was plastering posters all over town demanding “Zero Tolerence of male violence against women and children”. So according to your movement, when she was punching me as hard as she could, I was not the victim of intolerable violence, rather I was to blame for it.
This poster campaign damaged my mental health. It pushed me toward suicide.
The implication of which statement is that feminism is not actively harmful. Thank you for so authoritatively denying my experience of my own life.
No, Feminist Critics is not worthless. Feminist Critics is powerless and almost voiceless. Big difference. It is feminism which shouts “WE ARE POWERLESS AND SILENCED” so loudly that it echoes around the world. It is feminism which has governments and international organisations dancing to its tune.
I have no power. All I can do is try to speak truth to it.
As for feminism having “done a huge amount of real good in the world”, I don’t deny that. What I don’t agree with, is that the harm it does is in any way necessary for it to do good. To the contrary, it would be even more effective at doing the good it does if it wasn’t so unremittingly hostile to natural allies like me.
I already refuted that, I think, with the comments to the Daily Mail story.
Who appointed you arbiter of what is mainstream in the MRA movement, or for that matter, in the feminist movement? Why isn’t Sacks an example of the mainstream? He won’t have any truck with this kind of women-hating nonsense.
But even if you’re right, “We’re not as bad as the MRA’s” is a really weak defence.
I agree, and thank you for acknowledging it.
I think it just sucks in this world. Why do you think it necessary and desirable in some ways? I understand that you’ve defended the space for it, which is defensible on free-speech grounds - the world is better with speech permitted than with speech suppressed. But here you seem to be seeing value in the speech itself.
I’m not claiming that any act since Solanas’ is comparable to Sodini’s. I’m saying that the two movements are broadly similar in that they both exhibit similar spectra of prejudice toward the other sex. You say that the extremes are more prevalent and more mainstream in MRAism. I’m not convinced. In particular, I think there are “schools” within MRAism similar to those in feminism, including a “radical” form, analogous to radical feminism, where most of the extreme misogyny is concentrated. That you can’t see this is a product of out-group homogeneity bias exacerbated by the lack of generally accepted labels for the various subgroups.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Oh and another thing:
Ampersand:
According to feminists, the word for the experience you have just described is “privilege”. This is a view ubiquitous in feminism, i.e., not limited to just those evil radfems.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Doug S:
Beaten up, yes but that was by no means the worst of it. Worse was the unrelenting taunting and social ostracisation from both girls and boys.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 4:20 am
Supporting quotes and links, please, for your claim that feminists ubiquitously claim that being beaten up for being not masculine enough is a privilege?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Fidelbogen: But you yourself don’t abide by all the principles set forth in U3000, right? Specifically no. 4?
Also, the complaint against “an autocratic imposition of behavioral rules upon the male gender” contradicts virtually everything else in that document.
Is U3000 mysoginistic “palpably and on its face”? On its face, no. But then, the Nuremberg Laws aren’t anti-semitic “palpably and on their face”, either. Nowhere do those laws disparage Jews and Section 4 actually specifically provides that the Nazi state will protect Jews’ right to display their religious symbols. I’m certainly not trying to make an argument “ad nazium” here, only to show that where a set of “principles” is designed to reinforce “essential categories” which have traditionally served as a justification for bigotry and discrimination, it does not matter whether the document embraces that bigotry “on its face”. The statement alone that there are “essential differences” is a traditional justification for denying women the right to vote, access to courts, education and economic opportunity. U3000 is sufficiently vague that one can claim to respect “the value of femininity” within its meaning yet still demand that women stay in the home, take no part in public life, and remain economically and legally dependent on their menfolk.
And vagueness, of course, is yet another problem. I mean, any of those provisions can be fairly interpreted every which way. For instance, what exactly is “legal commercialization of sexual relations and relations based upon affection”? Does that only target prostitution, or are you going against lingerie catalogs too? Chocolate-covered strawberries?
This comment was written by Redisca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 9:30 am
The truth is, that on the whole men do not make war. Most men want nothing to do with war. Only a handful of men play any part in the decision to wage war.
Possibly moving off topic, but do you have any evidence to support the statement that most men want nothing to do with war? It’s my impression that most men AND women rather like the excitement of a war as long as the actual fighting is somewhere else and it’s going well for their side (or at least a loss by their side won’t materially effect their lives.) Why else did people watch the Gulf War on CNN? Or watch war movies? People are excitement loving primates, they get off on the concept. As long as it’s not too real. True, only a few people make the decision to go to war, but in a democracy if the population didn’t want it…I mean REALLY didn’t want it, in the way that they don’t want to run out of food, for example, would it continue? I doubt it.
I’m not going to make any claims about women being more peaceful at this time. Not with Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin presenting obvious counterexamples. Though I do wonder if the average woman in power (whoever she is) is less likely to start a war than the average man in power (whoever he is)? Not sure how you’d even determine it given the number of confounders…
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 9:40 am
And then, the talk about schoolyard bullies. MALE bullies, right?
There is the contradiction, Daran. Men don’t make war?
Who made war on you?
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 11:57 am
There is no contradiction, DaisyDeadhead. The majority of males are not bullies; only a small minority are.
And Amp @ 94, Daran is not suggesting that feminists claim the act of being beaten up by bullies is a male privilege. He is, I believe, saying that feminists will claim that the male victim of bullying is still “privileged,” even though he is getting hammered with no effective intervention from adult authorities, who would (generally) act to protect girls who might be similarly victimized.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I am unaware of any data supporting your assertion about adult authorities protecting bullied girls. Do you have any?
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I thought I’d pointed out @ 45 that Valerie Solanas did not go around murdering random men; she targeted Andy Warhol because of a specific grudge against him. This was of course morally wrong and a crime, but if Warhol hadn’t been famous, the incident wouldn’t have gone down in history.
If Sodini had shot an ex-girlfriend, or some other particular woman of his acquaintance, he would not have made the news because people who know each other kill each other quite often. His crime is characterized as a hate crime or a kind of domestic terrorism because it was committed against strangers for ideological reasons based on their (perceived) membership in a particular despised group.
18 U.S.C. 2331:
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I am unaware of any data supporting your assertion about adult authorities protecting bullied girls. Do you have any?
Particularly if we take seriously Daran’s claim that “Worse was the unrelenting taunting and social ostracisation from both girls and boys.” Maybe things have changed recently, but when I was in school, adults were much more likely to intervene to stop physical violence than they were to do anything about emotional abuse. Kids who went home with bruises and black eyes, even if they lied and said it was from sports or an accident, would incur a certain number of angry phone calls to the school from parents. Kids who went home and cried in their rooms or cut themselves or developed eating disorders in response to being called fat rarely did. I had a horrible time socially from about 4th through 9th grades, and no one ever did anything about it. Kids would taunt me about my religion and ethnicity and appearance, and teachers were conveniently deaf to it. Did anyone here go to a school where teachers intervened to stop the taunting and social ostracism of girls, but not of boys?
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Another girl who suffered school bullying bad enough to develop eating disorders, panic attacks and depression by ages 11-13.
I was lucky enough to have a teacher for 5th and 6th grades who not only failed to defend, but instigated the attacks. She was later fired for doing things like this. However, someone stupidly released her name and the reason she was fired to the media, and so she was able to successfully sue the school district for much more than she would have ever made in salary.
At least she was out of the classroom, though.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I am unaware of any data supporting your assertion about adult authorities protecting bullied girls. Do you have any?
Anecdotally, no adult protected me when I was bullied as a child. As I remember, if I complained, the adults usually told me that a boy bullying me meant that he liked me. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess that a boy being bullied at least was spared that little mind game from the adults. On the other hand, I never got physically beat up as badly as Daran did so maybe it’s a wash.
I don’t really like this comparison anyway. It’s way too Oppression Olympics. It’s bad for a child of any gender to be bullied and its entirely appalling that adults don’t intervene, no matter whether their excuse is that the boy should learn to be tougher or they don’t want to get in the way of the girl finding true love with her abuser.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Jake, partially this is a function of enforced gender segregation. I mean, are you seriously going to contend that when a boy bully starts beating up a girl, authorities are no more likely to intervene than when boys start beating up other boys? When I was growing up — admittedly a while ago — boys hitting boys was just a fact of life, while boys hitting girls was verboten. Though I imagine that’s changed some, I’m skeptical as to how much; I’ve seen stories where adults came down hard on a very young boy for kissing a girl classmate (i.e. it was considered harassment). I suspect that had the boy punched the girl instead, they would not have simply instructed the girl to learn how to defend herself (which was — is? — the standard response for when a boy is victimized).
Now, the question is, what about when girls bully other girls? Girls certainly have their own dominance hierarchies, but they’re far less likely to be violent (for reasons too complicated to get into here). I don’t know to what extent that ‘girls violently abusing other girls’ gets a blind eye from authorities, but girl-on-girl violence is much less likely to occur than boy-on-boy violence.
The whole question of emotional abuse is a valid one, PG & Mandolin*, but such exchanges are extraordinarily more difficult to analyze than violent interactions. At any rate, I’m unaware of any data that would establish that boys are less likely to emotionally abuse other boys than girls are to emotionally abuse other girls (though I think it’s plausible). And, rightly or wrongly, we generally consider violence to be worse than emotional abuse. I mean, I can scarcely imagine a typical feminist approving of a man charged with domestic violence who would say, “It’s true I hit her, your Honor, but it was self defense … she was emotionally abusing me!”
Let me re-emphasize: I’m not saying that emotional abuse isn’t potentially quite serious, only pointing out that we put it in a different category than violence, which is generally considered more serious … whether or not the victims of the abuse (like Daran) consider it to be worse than the violence they’ve experienced. (Of course, in the case of many boy victims, neither the violence nor the emotional abuse will be considered to be “serious” by the relevant authorities.)
*Mandolin, I realize that I’m assuming you were referring to being emotionally bullied (like PG), but if you were talking about being physically bullied, it would be relevant to know the context of that, i.e. were you actually beaten up by a gang of girls (or boys) and the assault ignored by the teachers?
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I don’t really like this comparison anyway. It’s way too Oppression Olympics.
I don’t think it’s meant to be Oppression Olympics; rather, it’s an effort to see if there’s any truth whatsoever to ballgame’s claim @ 98 that
feminists will claim that the male victim of bullying is still “privileged,” even though he is getting hammered with no effective intervention from adult authorities, who would (generally) act to protect girls who might be similarly victimized.
There seems to be a consensus that these adult authorities who would act to protect girls from the the ’similar victimization’ that Daran described as the worst part of his experience, i.e., the social ostracism and taunting, are not residing in the United States of America, whatever may be the practice in other countries.
So ballgame is now saying that “we generally consider violence to be worse than emotional abuse … whether or not the victims of the abuse (like Daran) consider it to be worse than the violence they’ve experienced.”
But then that undercuts the point Daran was making by raising the emotional abuse in the first place, which is that both boys and girls inflicted it on him. If we look only at physical violence, then it’s back to “This is what boys do to other boys,” which is what Daran did not want to be saying.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
PG: As far as whether boys or girls are bullied more, this study suggests that, in general, girls are more likely to be victims of bullying and boys more likely to be bullies than the other way around. (Though one could criticize it on the basis of its being a self-report study and maybe boys are encouraged to deny being bullied.)
As far as how boys and girls are bullied and whether adults intervene, I didn’t find anything directly, but this study found that girls, but not boys, who are bullied are more likely to have serious mental issues later in life, suggesting that the damage being done to girls is worse than the damage being done to boys.
Of course, I didn’t make a systematic study of the issue and would be interested to see if anyone had other data to bring up.
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
A more important criticism would be that my points are confined to life in the U.S. (and to some extent to the rest of the First World, though in many respects the violence issue is worse in the U.S. than in those other countries AFAICT). Studies that look at developing nations wouldn’t be relevant to the points I’m trying to make, Dianne … we might, in fact, be in ‘violent agreement’ about the oppression girls experience in those countries in certain areas of life.
(BTW, your second link appears to be borked.)
I don’t agree at all, PG. Daran appeared to me to be making the point that an assertion that males are ‘universally privileged’ is pretty ludicrous if a subset of males is violently and socially victimized, particularly when that victimization is even (partially) at the hands of the ostensibly “oppressed” group.
While I do appreciate your noting the U.S.-focused nature of my comments, I’m agnostic on whether authorities would be more likely to intervene in the social ostracization of girls than they would be for boys. I think the conceptual difficulties in dealing with this kind of thing make it awkward for authorities to intervene at all, frankly. I do believe (based on my experience and general knowledge) that authorities have been and remain far more likely to intervene to protect girls from violence than boys.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Maybe from actual physical violence, ballgame, but certainly not from emotional abuse.
And not from physical abuse that isn’t necessarily violent in the sense of kicks and punches. For example, I never remember a teacher/authority figure ever intervening when the boys on the playground would form their little raiding parties and charge around pulling girls’ skirts up. Oh no, that was just amusing “boys will be boys” fun. And no adults seemed to be too anxious to intervene later on in junior high, when the boys would start grabbing boobs and asses.
And of course, at all stages, this would be accompanied by overt psychological abuse, often delivered in the classroom, in clear hearing range of the teacher.
Yes, some girls also engaged in verbal abuse, but in my experience that was never really a big problem until junior high. And, also in my experience, girls were far, far more likely to get told off by an adult for making a rude crack about someone than the boys were. That may have been due to time (mid to late 70s) and place (Ohio), though.
And yes, the boys who were bullies didn’t only target girls, they also picked on other boys they considered weak. If anything, I think adults colluded with them in this.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I do believe (based on my experience and general knowledge) that authorities have been and remain far more likely to intervene to protect girls from violence than boys.
I don’t think that’s true either. Girls who “fought like girls” (pinching, slapping, hair-pulling) rarely got into trouble at my schools, because it was not the type of violence that adults in authority found threatening to the maintenance of order. A girl getting pinched by an unknown assailant while she’s in the shower after gym class, or on a nighttime bus trip in the dark, isn’t violence that poses a threat to maintaining the activity that’s supposed to be occurring at the time (getting all the girls showered and dressed in time to return to the classroom; getting the children safely back home after a field trip).
In contrast, girls who “fought like boys” — openly, publicly, drawing a crowd, possibly with weapons — were very heavily penalized, and moreover treated as freakish and abnormal. Girls who participated in a fight that looked like a “boys’ fight” were derogated as not just violent but as “crazy.” Maybe contrary to appearances, the people where I grew up were actually great about gender equality, because boys who fought like boys also got into trouble. I definitely witnessed more examples at school of boys’ getting into trouble for fighting other boys than I did of boys’ getting into trouble for how they treated their girlfriends. Again, the difference was in the threat to order: the boys’ abuse of girls happened quickly, a shove into the lockers when she talked back or bending her arm behind her back if she tried to walk away from an argument.
People in authority mostly care about violence to the extent that it is disruptive of order. This is part of the greater level of enforcement against lower class men early on of laws against domestic violence; their abuse of their wives was more likely to be public, to draw the neighbors’ attention, etc. because they lived more of their lives in public spaces and close quarters, and so authorities cared more about it. We’re seeing schoolteachers venture into policing emotional abuse because it’s starting to be understood as threat to students’ ability to be taught — which means the school may not achieve its mission.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I was surprised by CrysT’s post because it so accurately reflects my experiences of growing up in another country in the 1980’s. Yes, I would say the school authorities were much more likely to protect girls than boys from being punched or kicked. But other forms of violence — cutting off a lock of a girl’s hair, putting chewing gum in her hair, yanking her braid, pulling up her skirt, grabbing her breasts — were dismissed as mere “boys will be boys” behavior. And a girl was far more likely to be punished for physically retaliating against such forms of violence than a boy for perpetrating it in the girls place. Of course, making lewd and filthy comments about girls was par for the course; girls who retaliated with similar language were almost invariably punished. My impression was that bullying was tolerated as long as it was “gender-appropriate”: in other words, if you are a bully and your intended victim is male, you punch or kick him; if your intended victim is female, you pull her hair, grab her breasts. As long as you make those distinctions, you won’t have any trouble with the school.
This comment was written by Redisca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
@Daran: Excellent, I see that we have no appreciable differences here. (Although I might quibble on a few points.)
I think it is patently absurd to say that ALL observed behavior differences between men and women are essentialistically driven. Of COURSE culture plays a role. Duh! But. . how much of a role, remains to be ascertained. So I would say. . . let science sort it out.
But that a lot of critically important areas of behavior per male v. female are biogenetically rooted, is not a claim I would care to dispute.
Essentialism, at its core, is ‘essentially’ correct. IMHO. ;)
The bare existence of these underlying differences is not, IMHO, at issue.
And of course, to pretend that they don’t exist, and make that pretext a driver of law, public policy, or any form of ‘future-sculpting’ . . . would be the height of folly.
This comment was written by fidelbogen.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Of course feminists do not say literally “being beaten up … is a privilege”. It is, however, a logical consequence of what feminists do ubiqutiously say.
When someone posits a dynamic that purportedly victimises or harms men in particular or more than women, or even which particularly harmed an individual man, it is a ubiquitous response of feminists to say “Patriarchy hurts men too” Do you dispute that? Do you really want citations?
Now lets look at a defintion of “Patriarchy”. Here’s one you commended to me:
So, Patriarchal social structures are male-dominated. In other words males dominate. It does not say that males are dominated. Indeed males are noticeably absent from the list of those whom Patriarchy “exert[s] control over”. Now look at the other words and phrase it uses to describe the male condition in a Patriarchy: … most powerful … elevated … highly valued … centered … focus [of] public attention.
I’m not asking about your bullys’ experiences, but about yours. Where you most powerful? Were you elevated? Highly valued? Centered? Do those words describe your experience?
There is nothing in that definition that says Patriarchy hurts men, nothing in it could even lead to men being hurt. The concept of hurting men is entirely absent. Feminists invoke PHMT in one and only one circumstance - whenever there is an inconvenient fact which if treated properly would tend to refute Patriarchy as defined. PHMT does two things. It is a false claim made by feminists, that the inconvenient fact is encompassed by the theoretical framework of Patriarchy. And it serves as a kind of conceptual dustbin into which the inconvenient fact can be stowed. Once that is done, both bin and fact are forgotten.
Taking Patriarchy as defined as our starting point, we can immediately infer universal male privilege. Universal male privilege implies, as a particular instance, Ampersand’s personal privilege.
To summarise: Amp being bullied –> Patriarchy –> Universal male privilege –> Ampersand’s personal privilege.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
That’s what I thought. My anecdotal experience and that of many of my friends differs significantly from yours. Since I don’t have any data to support my anecdotes I make no such claim. I’m willing to say that, IME, the authorities are no more likely to intervene to protect girls from violence than boys. I am not, however, willing to make the claim that this is generally true since I have no studies supporting my position at hand. I would appreciate it if you were to do the same and make clear from the outset that that is merely your opinion and not a statement of fact.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Daisy Deadhead:
God forbid that we should ever focus upon male victims. Quick! Look at something else. Women! Male perpetrators! Anything but the male victim.
No.
Everyone.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I don’t have studies concerning bullying, but I know of another context in which it is a fact that the authorities intervened to protect women from violence even though men were objectively more vulnerable. Early on in the Balkan conflict, a pattern was established that when a town fell, the conquering forces would separate women, girls, young boys and sometimes old men from older boys and men up to middle age. The former would be expelled en mass into neighbouring uncontested territory. The latter would be murdered. All of them.
Despite this factual background, on several occasions, most notable in Srebrenca in 1993, the UN organised evacuations from vulnerable towns. Able-bodied men up to middle age were explicitly excluded. In 1995 Srebrenica fell. As had happened in other towns, most of the remaining women and children were expelled, quite literally bussed out by the Serb attackers. The only men who survived were those who made a three-day journey to safety, on foot, across country, without supplies, many of them without weapons, harried and attacked all the way.
The reasons for the decision to exclude men are complex, and include the attitudes of the belligerents and international players. One significant factor was the gender construction of women as “vulnerable”, contrafactually in the particular situation at hand. It wasn’t that the organisers of the evacuations didn’t know at a factual level, than men were typically targeted for murder, it was that these facts simply didn’t inform their conceptual framework of just who was “vulnerable”.
The UN’s own report into the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre summarised the 1993 actions as an evacuation of “vulnerable” people, without so much as a trace of irony.
Another factor was the construction of men as presumptive combatants, and therefore not entitled to the protections afforded to civilians.
These two notions - of “vulnerable” females and “combatant” males - are universal gender norms. While this doesn’t prove that females are in all cases (such as schoolyard bullying) better protected than males, it would be surprising if it were not the case.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Daran, you explicitly claimed that “According to feminists, the word for” a boy “having the crap beaten out of [him] by people wanting to enforce sexist ideas of masculinity” “is ‘privilege.’” If you didn’t mean that, then maybe you shouldn’t have written it.
But it’s not like this is the first time an anti-feminist — oh, excuse me, a “feminist critic” — has lied about what feminists say.
Surprise surprise, upon being challenged, you rapidly shifted goalposts:
“Logical consequence,” in this case, seems to mean that you can force a chain of associations that doesn’t bear much resemblance to how most actual feminists talk about these things in real life, to support your statement. But it’s bullshit. That kind of chain-of-links thinking works okay if your goal is to act like a high school debator proving that the inevitable outcome of fill-in-the-blank is nuclear war, but as a realistic way of honestly comprehending how people you disagree with think conceive of the world, it’s completely useless.
* * *
I’m going to be going on vacation until the 22nd (to Massachusetts, in the Amherst area), and I expect extremely limited internet access during that time.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
No, no it doesn’t. I’m not sure why you’re certain that there is a connection between warcrimes & the UN and childhood bullying and adult authorities. I find the analogy to be problematic at best. I’d be interested in studies, though, that connect treatment of men and women in war to treatment of men and women who bully and have been bullied.
Although we can discuss the different treatment of men and women in both armed forces and armed conflict and have many agreements and disagreements, I think it detracts from the earlier established conversation about whether or not bullying and protection from bullying are gendered.
I suspect, based on my experience, that bullying and protection from bullying are not generally divided by gender. I’m willing to reconsider that, though, should anybody be able to provide proof beyond their own experiences.
I’m willing to have a conversation about this new subject once we’ve determined that the subject of bullying is closed.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Dianne:
I absolutely think that boys are inhibited from disclosure. I was. In spades. I did everything I could to conceal it from my parents. To admit to it would have been to admit to failing them. I did not protect myself as they had told me to. As an adult, I can see that this was because their advice was counterproductive and harmful, but as a child, I felt nothing but shame.
For a boy to be bullied is also for him to fail masculinity. To admit to it is to admit to failure. To be bullied as a girl doesn’t look from here to be quite the same level of failure at femininity, but I totally concede this might be just the grass looking greener.
As ballgame pointed out, the link is broken, so I can’t comment.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
In school, I can recall quite a few times that a teacher witnessed a boy be violent toward a girl and do nothing about it. If a boy assaulted another boy, then most teacher seemed to intervene only if it seemed like it was becoming a fight. If a kid assaulted another kid, and the victim did not fight back, then the incident was seen as “over” and didn’t need to be dealt with. If the victim did fight back, then both kids got in trouble for fighting. There really was no good way for the victim to respond to the bullying. I never saw a girl fight back, so the bullying that was ignored by authorities was much more likely to have a girl as the victim. The bullying that got the victim in trouble was more likely to have a boy as the victim.
In terms of the actual form that the bullying took, there were specific ways that girls tended to be targeted (sexual violence, targeted for not being “feminine” enough, things that happened more privately) and specific ways that boys tended to be targeted (accused of being gay, bullying designed to humiliate publicly, targeted for not being “masculine” enough) which both grew out of essentialist ideas of gender.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
“According to“:
Only one of those definitions, number 3, is equivalent to “feminists say”, and only the latter part. What I actually meant would be covered by definitions 1 and 2.
So you misunderstood. That’s OK. People misunderstand each other on the internet all the time. It’s a bit arrogant of you, though, to insist that you, rather than I are the authority on what I actually meant. Frankly, it looks like an intellectually desperate attempt to avoid what I did actually mean.
I do not think it unreasonable to say that a logical consequence of certain premises is “in agreement or accord” or “consistent, in conformity” with them.
To be honest, Amp, I think trotting out PHMT whenever there is an inconvenient fact to be fielded is a very accurate description of how most actual feminists talk, but I can see that we’re never going to agree on that. I do agree, however, that feminists make all kinds of statements, but decline to infer the inconvenient conclusions that validly follow from those premises. Their intellectual cowardice, however, doesn’t invalidate those conclusion, nor render them not “in agreement or accord” or “consistent, in conformity” with the premises.
I comprehend how feminists conceive of the world just fine. Feminist conceive of it, more or less, as described in the definition of Patriarchy I cited - a system which unidirectionally empowers, elevates, values and centres men. Feminists are also aware that vast numbers of men are subject to gender forces which disempower, deelevate, devalue and marginalise them. These ideas are mutually contradictory, but feminists believe them both:
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Jake, I’m a little fuzzy about the moderating structure at Alas, both in terms of “who” and “how”. I’ve seen your name pop up often enough at Alas that I can’t help but wonder if you’re one of the co-moderators, even though you don’t appear to be listed as an “author.” Could you clarify? If you’re expressing your own personal preference for how you’ll respond in this thread, that’s one thing, but I don’t want to misunderstand if a moderator here is issuing a Gentle Directive.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Perhaps I can summarise my arguement as follows:
1. Premiss: There are universal gender norms which construe males as presumptively combatant and females as presumptively vulnerable.
2. Conclusion: Gender norms which construe boys as presumptively combatant and girls as presumptively vulnerable apply in the schoolyard.
3. Premiss: Those in authority will protect from violence those deemed non-combatants and vulnerable in preference to those deemed combatant and less vulnerable.
4. Premiss: There are no confounding factors, or, if there are, they are insufficient to invalidate 5.
5. Conclusion: Those in authority will protect from schoolyard violence boys in preference to girls.
UN evacuation policy is more than just an analogy. It provides (weak) inductive support for premisses 1 and 3.
Do you agree that my argument is at least valid, that is to say, that the conclusion follows from the premisses? I would expect you to disagree with the premisses.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
ballgame:
Whether or not girls are or are not more likely to be protected or whether or not women have it worst isn’t the point.
The point is that when you were subject to gender-based violence so severe that it wrecked your life, it just fucking sucks to be told that you’re privileged.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I’m not sure at what point an anti-feminist poster is going beyond reasonable commenting to simply trying to dominate a feminist board, but Daran, you’ve made 5 of the last 10 comments on “Alas.” Please try to slow it down.
If I begin to feel that the character of “Alas” is being changed from a board with some liberals and some conservatives and some feminists and some anti-feminists [*], to a board where the anti-feminists dominate conversation, then I will ban people, either temporarily or permanently.
[*] Whatever term you make up for yourself, your comments here are firmly and unmistakably anti-feminist.
* * *
No, Jake isn’t a moderator, although he is a real swell guy. The currently active moderators are Myself, Mandolin, Myca, Maia (although I think she only reads her own threads — she’s very busy), and sometimes Mharles — I mean, Charles.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 12:19 am
ballgame:
1. Boys beat up other boys.
2. Boys beat up each other.
3. Boys beat up themselves.
I’ve seen all three framings applied to male on male violence of various kinds. It is, I hope, obvious, or at least obvious-when-you-think-about-it, how problematic framings 2 and 3 are.
There’s a much more subtle problem with 1. The perpetrators are “boys”. The victims are “other boys”. The perpetrators are centred and universalised. the victims are “othered”.
Edited to add: Did not see the immediately preceding comment by Ampersand before posting this.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 2:34 am
Daran, you wrote
I would just like to point out that this is a quintessentially feminist statement, that it–at least implicitly, whether you meant it to or not–gets at the quintessentially feminist insight that male on male violence and the definition of men as “violence-objects” (analogous to the way that women are defined as sexual objects) are inherent to patriarchy, are the infrastructure of patriarchy. I agree with you that PHMT is too often used dismissively–especially when talking about ways in which men are victimized by by violence, sexual and otherwise, regardless of who perpetrates the violence–but it is, for example, quintessentially patriarchal to see women and children as vulnerable in all situations and men as correspondingly not-vulnerable (I am pulling from your example of Srebrenica.) The whole “save-the-women-and-children-first” mentality is also part of the infrastructure of patriarchy, as feminists understand it, and it sure as hell does hurt men, in all kinds of ways.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Speaking for myself, Richard, I agree with a great deal of what you just wrote. It’s one of the reasons why I’m a feminist, and why allegations that I’m “anti-feminist” fall so wide of the mark. (I believe they are also inaccurately applied to Daran as well, although he doesn’t embrace the feminist label.)
The problem is that much of gynocentric feminism — at least as I’ve seen it expressed in the blogs I read — actually encourages the preservation of patriarchal attitudes. Hugo Schwyzer’s endlessly repeated and highly misleading ‘myth of male weakness’ meme reinforces the patriarchal value of male stoicism, it doesn’t challenge it. The nearly ubiquitous assertion that men (as a group) are responsible for the anti-female misdeeds of a minority of males plays to the patriarchal values of chivalry and gender segregation. And the vilification of feminist critics is not infrequently done in highly patriarchal terms (i.e. that they’re sexually inadequate losers, etc.).
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Admittedly, I haven’t read much of Hugo’s posts on this subject. But Mandolin recently pointed this post out to me. (You commented on the post, so presumably you read it. :-P ) The post contains this passage:
Unless you think the only alternative to “men are not knuckle-dragging, simple-minded thugs” is “men must be stoic,” I don’t see how “the myth of male weakness,” as Hugo describes it above, reinforces male stoicism. Saying that men are capable of controlling ourselves and not raping every pretty woman we see, is not saying that we must repress emotion in every situation.
(I do disagree with Hugo’s phrase “the real victims,” since — as the rest of the passage explains — this creates badness for both women and men, so saying that either sex is “the” real victim seems misplaced.)
Yes, because if there’s one value feminism embodies, it’s the value of women sitting around and doing nothing for social justice, while men take over the fight completely. (Insert rolling eyes here.)
It’s true, of course, that feminists want men more involved with stopping rape. (I’m guessing that’s the issue you’re referring to; hard to tell for sure.) This is because many feminists believe (rightly or wrongly) that men can be more effective anti-rape advocates than women, because those boys and men who are most likely to commit rape, also have attitudes that make them more likely to listen to men than to women.
It’s also out of an absolutely true belief that anti-rape work up until now has been overwhelmingly done by women, and it would be therefore be fairer if men did a share too.
This is true, alas.
It’s also true that “not infrequently,” other feminists object to the sexism of that.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 5:35 am
A more important criticism would be that my points are confined to life in the U.S.
Isn’t Daran British? If you’re confining your data to events in the US then you really shouldn’t consider his experience either.
Second try at the link: Does this work?
This comment was written by Dianne.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 5:52 am
By the way, as far as I can tell the term “gyrocentric feminism” is a made-up term used entirely by people who are strongly focused on what’s good for men, but who don’t call themselves “androcentric.”
The point of the term is, as I understand it, is to contrast the allegedly “egalitarian” views of feminists like you with the allegedly “gyrocentric” views of feminists like me. (Since iirc you’ve referred to me as a “gyrocentric feminist,” I’m comfortable referring to myself as an example.)
However, if we are to accept that Feminist Critics is “egalitarian,” then “egalitarian” must mean “focused far more on harms to men than on harms to women.” You hardly ever post to object to women being harmed, but you’ve posted multiple times against men being harmed.
There’s nothing wrong with that; having a focus on men is fine. Just because you very rarely post against harms to women doesn’t mean that you’re not against harming women. (I know you know that, but for obvious reasons I wanted to be clear).
But I’ve posted against sexism against men far more often than you’ve posted against sexism against women. So in what reasonable sense can you claim that you are “egalitarian” whereas I am “gynocentric”? As far as I can tell, if we must play the “more egalitarian than thou” game — and I think we shouldn’t, but you’re insisting — I could certainly argue that I’m a lot more egalitarian than you are.
I think that “gynocentric feminism” is, much like Christina Hoff Sommers’ term “gender feminism,” a faux-academic term made up to smear mainstream feminism. The fact that you don’t describe yourself as an “androcentric feminist” is telling; it makes it clear that your terminology doesn’t describe positions fairly, but instead marks mainstream feminists as non-egalitarian, and male-focused feminists as egalitarian.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Amp, thanks for giving me the opportunity to clear up what I’m guessing is probably a common misconception about the terms, “gynocentric feminist” and “egalitarian feminist.” The terms are not intended as descriptions of the particular feminist’s focus of discussion or activism. A woman could be focused entirely on preserving women’s right to access abortion … and be an egalitarian feminist. A man could be focused on male bonding a la Robert Bly and yet still be a gynocentric feminist.
The terms actually get at the principles of the feminist in question. If a feminist believes that men are universally privileged by gender and women are not, or that women have inherently superior insights into questions of gender than men, or that women are entitled to define the terms of gender discussions and that men must ‘check their privilege’ before entering into those discussions (and women don’t have to check theirs), or believes that men oppressing other men is an example of men ‘oppressing themselves’ (or other similar ‘men are Borg’ type notions), or has a habit of vilifying reasonable and respectful critics of feminist misandry, then that person is a gynocentric feminist.
If, on the other hand, a feminist believes that both men and women are oppressed by gender, and believes that everyone struggling against gender oppression deserves respect (regardless of which gender’s oppression they’re working against), then that person would more likely be an egalitarian feminist. (I say “more likely” because I’m tired and I suspect my ‘egalitarian’ definition here is probably pretty incomplete.)
I’ll address your question about the ‘myth of male weakness’ meme when I’ve had time to recharge.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 7:12 am
ballgame:
I have edited this for clarity: In addition to what Amp has said in his two recent comments, I would add this: There is a big difference between critiquing feminists and representing, in your critique, those individuals as embodying the entirety of even one kind of the feminisms that there are. (By the way, I also find the term “gynocentric feminism” problematic. That there are feminisms–Mary Daly, for example–which posit a gynocentric analysis as the only way of getting at the root of patriarchy and of empowering women is, of course, true.) It’s not just the obvious point that feminism is not monolithic; it’s the intellectual dishonesty of setting feminism, even just one kind of feminism, up as if it were one, unified, whole thing in order to discredit it using, frankly–if bloggers are your primary exposure to feminist theory–a very narrow sampling of what feminists actually have to say about the topics you are discussing.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 8:22 am
ballgame,
As Amp has already said, I am not a moderator. I was expressing what I was willing to discuss and not giving you or Daran a directive with respect to your comments on Alas.
Daran,
I think that your premises are faulty and, therefore, so are your conclusions. Unless I have a different definition of “universal, ” I cannot agree with your first premise.
I also find myself unable to accept the conclusion at 2 - even if I were to accept that the premise at 1 is true. My own experiences, experiences of others who have commented here and who I know IRL contradict the conclusion at 2. Without any non-anecdotal data to go by I am forced to go with what my experiences tell me. As a result, even if the premise at 1 were true, the conclusion at 2 is not. On rereading it, your conclusion at 2 seems like it is a premise and not a conclusion. I don’t see how premise 1 logically leads to 2 as a conclusion.
Premise 3 seems far from universal. Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it isn’t.
As to your premise at 4, if we’re doing a simple logic puzzle rather than attempting to describe the real world, sure. By it’s own definition it makes the conclusion at 5 valid. I find myself unable to accept premise 4 as valid, though.
To summarize:
This comment was written by Jake Squid.I disagree with the premises at 1, 2 (which you label a conclusion) and 3. I find the premise at 4 to not be a useful one. Therefore I disagree with the conclusion at 5.
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October 13th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Universal - applicable in every subculture of every culture in every situation where human interactions construed as “violent” are prevalent. That’s a very strong claim, and clearly a much weaker one could also suffice.
The rule of inference that leads from 1 to 2 is that universalities may be particularised, so long as the particular lies within the scope of the universality. All men are mortal. Therefore Socrates the man is mortal.
You are correct that 2, the conclusion inferred from 1 is also premiss which together with 3 and 4, lead to 5.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 9:35 am
The standard response to this objection is that there doesn’t appear to be any objection to representing positive claims as embodying the entirety of feminism. for example, your assertion that:
Which of the many feminisms is this quintessential too? It doesn’t appear to be quintessential to Allan G. Johnson’s feminism, whose definition of Patriarchy I quoted earlier, which makes no reference at all to males in any other role that of dominator. Men are notably not included in the list of those whom Patriarchy “exert[s] control over”.
Patriarchy is not monolithic. MRAs are not monolithic. Men are not monolithic. That feminists, make broadbrush critiques of these things if they were unified whole things in order to discredit them, and then demand that we not treat feminism the same way is special pleading.
I agree that blog feminism is unlikely to be statistically representative of all feminism. I would consider it an extraordinary claim, demanding extraordinary evidence that there are any significant substantive positions within non-blog feminism not also manifested in blog-feminism, and vice versa.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Daran:
I don’t have much time and so I’m going to respond only quickly to a couple of things.
I don’t have any problems with accurate negative claims about feminism in its entirety, i.e., To the degree that feminism places women’s subjectivity at its center, it cannot accurately–or adequately–represent men’s subjectivity, even within a feminist analysis.
Item #1 from that definition (my emphasis added):
There is a hell of a lot of room in what I have put in boldface for the kind of understanding that I called quintessentially feminist.
I wish I had time to write more, but I have a student at my door. I will try to come back later.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
It sure does.
“Intersectionality” is the term that’s relevant here, and yes, it’s very hard to sit with the idea that one can be simultaneously privileged and marginalized when one is much more familiar with (painfully familiar with) the ways one is marginalized.
But discussions like this will go nowhere unless all parties are willing to acknowledge that privilege/marginalization is not an either/or thing. What I hear the MRA/”feminist critic” types advocating is that they had experiences of marginalization, ergo, they cannot possibly have privilege. Which just makes me tired and I wonder “why bother?” because at that point it’s like arguing with a brick wall.
This comment was written by Elusis.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Elusis,
In fairness to Daran’s particular plaint, I think intersectionality isn’t obviously relevant because it’s superficially more about how different kinds of privilege and oppression play off each other: e.g., I’m somewhat oppressed due to my sex, race and religion (and these overlap in how I am Othered and my existence ignored), but I’m also very privileged due to my class, non-disabled, hetero and cis-gender statuses (which also overlap in how I am treated as “normal” and worthy of full participation in our society). What he’s saying is that the exact thing that is supposed to privilege him, his sex, was actually a site of oppression: he’s convinced that he wouldn’t have been treated this way if he hadn’t been male, or that it would have been stopped or cared about more if he’d been female.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Yeah, cos he would’ve LOVED being surrounded on the playground by a gang of girls who forcibly pulled his trousers down.
Or, when he got older– say about 10 or 11–being accosted by adult women strangers who made aggressive sexual comments to him. Or waved their naked vulvas at him. Or, a couple of years after that, having his balls and ass grabbed by the popular girls when he walked down the hall at school, knowing that there was absolutely no one he could tell who would make it stop.
Yeah, being female is sooooooo fantastic: I’ve EVERY MINUTE of the past 46 years, in which I’ve been told at least once a day (and often more than once) that I am a subhuman piece of shit. That I am worthless. That my human value totals zero.
Yeah, Daran’s a fucking genius.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
PG wrote:
I hope it is clear that I do not agree with Daran’s analysis, but I do want to say that, in my own experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, this statement is true, and I would not be surprised if it is true, in general, for boys who experienced physical and other kinds of non-sexual abuse as well. I also want to be clear that I do not mean this as an attempt to invalidate Crys T @139.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Yes. Thank you.
I don’t know what would have happened to me if I’d not been male, or if I’d been female. All I know is that what did happen would not have happened.
I’m not even convinced that we can meaningfully talk about what would have happened. Is there some definite hypothetical world we’re talking about here? Or are there multiple worlds in quantum superposition? And how could we say anything definite about it/them, other than “not what really did happen”?
All I’m saying is that, for me, being male has been one long unmitigated source of suck. I haven’t been empowered. I haven’t been elevated, valued, centred, or the focus of any kind of attention that anyone would want to have.
Crys T:
If you’re going to criticise me, criticise me for what I have said, not for something someone else has said, however sympathic to me they may be.
I’m sorry you’ve suffered what you did. It really is not clear to me, though, in what way your life experiences are relevent to what I was talking about, which was quite clearly about my own.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
It’s not entirely clear what straw man position you’re attributing to me here.
If you’re saying that I don’t acknowledge unidirectional, society-wide white, het, cis, able-bodied, English-speaking, western, country-with-a-health-care-system-which-doesn’t-suck-as-much-as-yours privilege, then you are simply wrong. I absolutely do acknowledge that I enjoy these privileges and others.
If by “male privilege” you mean that there is society-wide suck that women have to put up with, and men don’t, and which men are often oblivious to, then yeah, I’ll happily acknowledge that too, just as soon as you acknowledge as “female privilege” the society-wide suck that men have to put up with and women don’t, and which women are often oblivious to.
But that’s not what I understand feminists to mean when they say “male privilege”. It seems to me that they are claiming that men are privileged and simultaneously that women are not. That gender privilege unidirectionally favours males, that I individually have unidirectionally benefited from it.
This is no less than a demand that I acknowledge that my life as I experienced it never happened.
You mentioned intersectionality. Sure there’s been intersectionality. I am an aspie, and that has had a big part to play in why I got targeted in the first place, and why I can’t work now*. But if you’re going to try to argue that it was Aspieness, not masculinity that crushed me (and you wouldn’t be the first feminist to argue this), then 1. That’s not how I experienced it, and 2. Who the hell gave you the authority to interpret my life?
*I don’t believe that healthy Aspieness would not stop or hinder me from doing suitable work for an employer who granted me accommodations comparable to the accommodations neurotypical people automatically get, or even if they didn’t. I am a damaged Aspie, which manifests as an inability to control or direct my hyperfocus. Coping with a worker who cannot focus on the job at hand is an accommodation too far for most employers.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 12:01 am
You’ve not addressed my point about “special pleading”. It’s not as though feminisms negative claims about patriarchy, men, the Patriarchy, etc., are accurate in their entirety.
I really don’t think room for itis enough for it to be deemed quintessential. I think it actually has to be there.
It’s not as though its even a particularly good fit to the room. A more natural interpretation of the part you boldfaced is that it acknowledges that factors other than gender (including possibly random chance) also play a part, positive or negative, in determining how empowered any particular man is. The idea that gender itself may operate to disempower men, is not only completely absent from that definition, but goes against the whole thrust of it.
Yes, you could ram your square peg into that round hole, but it doesn’t appear to be a quintessentially good fit.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Daran,
We will, as usual, have to agree to disagree. The fact is that I find in feminism precisely what you don’t: a way of talking about how men are effected, shaped, othered, rendered invisible, killed (in the sense that the current gender system makes men the more appropriate object of violence in a patriarchal culture) etc.–all of it to our detriment by gender. I don’t call it oppression–and I’m really not interested in getting once again into the debate about the definition of oppression–because I don’t think there is a systematic, systemic oppression of men, a point about which I think we will, again, have to agree to disagree. Two points, though (and I will confess not have followed your special pleadings link, because I just don’t have the time right now):
Seems to me that the negative example I gave is precisely to the point of
though what I wrote would have to be revised to include patriarchy. (Since you were arguing with what I wrote, I am limiting myself to the nature of what I wrote. I have neither the time nor the inclination to get into the question of whether any feminist anywhere engages in whatever you meant by “special pleading.”)
And what you call ramming a square peg into a round hole, is to me a “natural” interpretation, especially given the context of the reading in feminism, and in critiques of feminism, from various perspectives both within and without feminism, I have been doing for the past nearly 30 years. Hence, my conclusion that we will have to agree to disagree.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I think fundamentally what Daran’s getting at here is this:
There exists female privilege.
Now, without getting into “oppression Olympics” about its scale compared to male privilege or white privilege, or each of us airing our own grievances… I don’t think that should be controversial. Fundamentally, that’s what PHMT gets at, an idea that has some consensus on this blog.
Most of the details after that are semantics, arguing over definitions of feminism as they relate to feminist organizations, and whether the feminist movement itself helps or hinders any problems related to “The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too”.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 8:55 am
That patriarchy hurts men is not an argument for female privilege. White privilege hurts white people, too (for evidence of how this assertion plays out, just read any of the slave memoirs, all of which make moral arguments about how slavery twists white people. No one could be bothered to care about how slavery hurt black people, but how it hurt white people? That’s important.) — that doesn’t mean that people of color are privileged over white people. It means white people are hurting themselves or other white people.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Every word of that describes me, Ballgame. But I’m not an “egalitarian feminist” in your view.
I think the final clause of your description of the term “gyrocentric feminist” is the most telling: any harsh criticism of your or Daran’s anti-feminist views makes someone non-egalitarian, in your view. An “egalitarian feminist” is ones whose views march lockstep with your own; a “gynocentric feminist” is any feminist who disagrees with you. That’s all the terms mean, the way you’re using them.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am
The concept of female privilege is sociologically incoherent. It suggests a lack of understanding of the concept of privilege, and a confusion of the sociological term with the vernacular.
If women are privileged because, say, they are considered safe around small children when men aren’t (because of assumptions about women as mothers, women as passive entities, women as inherently incapable of violence, women as associated with children themselves), then one should be equally able to argue that gay men are privileged over heterosexual men because they’re seen as being able to dress better.
That doesn’t mean that the assumption that men aren’t safe to care for small children doesn’t hurt some men. It does, and that’s bad, and it should be addressed. But referring to the flip side of it as privilege is reductive and inaccurate.
People wishing to make these arguments might do better to look at the intersection of sexism and homophobia. Men are often targeted as substitutes for the feminine under the auspices of misogyny or of homophobia.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I think the constant wrangling over “privilege” and “oppression” comes down to the question of, can men be oppressed as men?
I don’t actually care much about the answer; it seems to me to be a question entirely of definitions, with very little connection to real-world policies or questions that might help change things.
To reuse an example, I’ve seen plenty of MRAs who will be the first to say that men are oppressed as men, but who also strongly oppose many real-world policies that would do the most to help men, and support policies which do great harm to men. (For instance, opposing reforms to make workplace injuries less likely, while supporting policies that lead to more men in prison.) In general, if I want to find someone who supports policies that will greatly improve the lot of men, I’m a lot better off looking among feminists than I am looking among MRAs.
I think that the advantage of saying “both men and women are hurt by sexism, but women are oppressed” is that it highlights how our society as a whole is systematically predisposed to make sure that those who rule the system are male. That strikes me as a good and useful thing to highlight.
I think the advantage of saying “both men and women are oppressed by sexism” is that it highlights how society systematically harms both sexes. That strikes me as a good and useful thing to highlight.
I frankly don’t see the distinction, in and of itself, as an issue of high importance. To me, this seems like a fairly semantic argument. I don’t have time for MRAs not because they think men are oppressed, but because they by and large support policies that I think are incredibly hurtful to men and to women, and are hostile to policies that are helpful. (There are other reasons, as well.)
I’m a feminist because feminists believe in policies that I think are helpful (by and large). I don’t agree with the mainstream feminist hostility to ever referring to men as “oppressed” as men, but despite that disagreement, the more important agreement to me is that on policies — including policies about fighting the many ways that sexism and cultural “masculinity” harms men — mainstream feminists are overwhelmingly anti-sexism.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 10:44 am
I believe that completely. However, if that’s the way you feel, you might consider then supporting those people who are trying to dismantle the system that has made your life so miserable. Instead, you choose to complain and demonise feminism and feminists every time you comment.
We aren’t the ones who made your life an unmitigated source of suck, anti-feminist ideas of gender/sex/sexuality/etc. are. If anything, we’re trying to help.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Mandolin:
That doesn’t mean that the assumption that men aren’t safe to care for small children doesn’t hurt some men.
But what it does do is favor women. Not free of dark sides but it does favor women.
The thing about the various privileges is that often times there is a dark side that hurts the people that are supposely being benefitted by the privielge in question. In regards to women being considered safe around children you mentioned:
(because of assumptions about women as mothers, women as passive entities, women as inherently incapable of violence, women as associated with children themselves)
meaning that women are assumed to be safe around children because women are not supposed to be violent and so forth.
Same thing with some male privileges. When it comes to men being favored over women in the workforce a part of that favor comes from the assumption that men are assumed to be external providers (providing with sources from outside the home whereas women are assumed to be internal providers i.e. stay at home moms). The assumptions and favors don’t cancel each other out but they do both exist.
This comment was written by Danny.Report this comment to the moderators
October 14th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
A review of a book that is, at least tangentially, related to this discussion: Review: ‘Spots of a Leopard: on being a man in Africa’.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 3:11 am
While I acknowledge that you speak out more against the harms of anti-male sexism than most other major feminist bloggers, Amp, I don’t agree that every word of the above describes you, from what I’ve seen. In all of the comments I can recall where you’ve talked about whether men are oppressed by gender, you’ve equivocated (just as you do here on this thread in comment #149). You’ve said men were “harmed” by gender or used some other word or pretended it’s a ‘non-issue’ … but you’ve consistently balked at acknowledging that men are oppressed as men:
This equivocation is significant, because it allows you to sidestep the confrontation with feminist orthodoxy, which espouses — as Mandolin does in 146 and 148 — the ridiculous notions that male privilege is as unidirectional as white privilege, or that female privilege doesn’t exist.
There’s a big difference between criticizing someone’s views — however harshly — and vilifying the person. You don’t treat everyone who struggles against gender oppression with respect. People who speak out against feminist sexism against males are often, at best, “anti-feminists”; more typically they’re “misogynists” (or MRAs, a label taken in this environment to mean much the same thing). Such labels ‘poison the well’ of whatever legitimate criticism of feminism they try to express. Why listen to them? They are Other, they are Evil, they are not on “our team.” (And once again, FTR, I’m no more “anti-feminist” than the folks who pushed for Ned Lamont were “anti-Democrat” … and your strawman reinterpretation of my terminology can hardly be called ‘respectful.’)
Here I tend to agree. (Gynocentric) feminists, as a group, tend to more progressive than non-feminists AFAICT — at least outside of the gender arena. Inside that arena, their record is a bit more mixed. (And there do exist a subset of feminists of the “vote for Palin because she has a vagina” ilk, or — even weirder — think that Reagan was a “great” president.)
Unfortunately, if gynocentric feminists had their way, the right wing-dominated MRA culture would be the only significant arena where critiques of feminist misandry would get a hearing. Driving potentially progressive males who are concerned with anti-male sexism into the arms of right wingers seems to be an acceptable risk for many of them, as long as that allows those gynocentric feminists to maintain their monopoly on gender discourse.
This comment was written by ballgame.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Crys T (Quoting me)
Thank you.
Feminists are a part of that system. Feminists are working to dismantle parts of it, and that’s good. Feminists are reinforcing other parts, and that’s not good.
You (not you individually, of course, you feminists) are among those who have made my life suck. Go read comment #91 again, particularly the bit about the poster campaign.
If you (plural) would position yourself as an ally, stop telling me what my experience is. Stop telling me that being male is a privilege. Stop telling me that I’m not oppressed, or that if I am, it’s not because of my gender. As long as you continue to do this, you are not my ally, you’re a source of suck. If you as an individual want to position yourself as an ally - and I’d really appreciate that - in addition to not doing these things, stop defending the movement that does these things.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t call yourself a feminist. Nor am I saying that you shouldn’t defend the feminist movement on other grounds. I’m certainly not telling you to stop focusing on your own issues, and focus upon mine instead. The primary task of an ally is to not harm the legitimate interests of those you purports to ally with. To do that, you must be willing to listen to them when they say “This is hurting us, and here’s how”.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 6:42 am
The problem I have with MRAs’ conception of “female privilege” is that it is viewed as a counterweight against “male privilege” and believed to somehow balance out in favor of equality. In other words, for example, the female “privilege” in being considered more competent to perform menial domestic tasks is thought to cancel out the male privilege in being thought the only gender fit to participate in public life. This is, of course, nonsense. What MRA’s describe as “female privilege” is more accurately dubbed “benevolent sexism” by some feminists — and no way does it level the playing field against male privilege. In fact, the benefits that women receive under the so-called “female privilege” have invariably been invoked (and some continue to be invoked today) as a justification for depriving women of liberty, agency and autonomy to the extent much greater than the benefit conferred.
This comment was written by Redisca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 8:00 am
What ballgame said re “gynocentric”. Also I don’t agree that discourse which operates to centre some real-world problems while marginalising others has little or no connection to whether appropriate policies directed at those problems will be formulated or prioritised.
Here’s a policy which would greatly improve the lot of male survivors of sexual assult or domestic violence: Include them in the discourse. Make them visible. Don’t anomalise them.
Do MRAs advocate such a policy? I don’t know. Perhaps not. MRAs suck after all. But observing that MRAs suck doesn’t alter the fact that feminists anomalise these victims. Associating me with a major source of suck by pinning the antifeminist/MRA labels on me will not help to bring about this policy. To the contrary, it just undermines my efforts.
As a matter of interest, would consider defensible the following statement in the context of Occupied Europe during the Second World War?
“Both Germans and Non Germans were hurt by Nazism, but only Non Germans were oppressed.”
(I realise that you did not say “only”, but I think the “only” version is orthodox within feminism:
It is a good an useful thing to highlight. I don’t however agree that saying “both men and women are hurt by sexism, but women are oppressed” is a good way to highlight this. You could do a much better job of highlighting it by saying “our society as a whole is systematically predisposed to make sure that those who rule the system are male”.
Claiming that women are oppressed, while denying that men are operates to erase the gender-dimensionality of important harmful social dynamics, such as the schools-to-prison conveyor. I think this is a bad thing to erase.
Many feminists treat (presumed) male voices as though they were inherently less authoritative than women on the subject of gender-oppression, predicated on the notion that the men are privileged while they themselves are oppressed. This too is a bad thing.
I don’t think that claiming that both men and women are oppressed really erases the systematic predisposition to make our rulers male, because I don’t think that claiming that only women are oppressed really highlights it. I do, however, think that a poor, uneducated black person’s additional struggle as a man to make it alive to middle age is rather more deserving of being called “oppression” than is a rich, educated, white person’s additional struggle as a women to become President by middle age. For that matter, I think the poor, uneducated black woman’s struggle to obtain childcare is more oppressive than the rich woman’s struggle to be President. Your defence of the “women only” model of oppression focuses the concept at the wrong end of the social spectrum.
It’s a framing issue. You surely understand that how issues are framed has an enormous influence upon how they are perceived and analysed. Feminist framing is prejudicial.
I don’t agree that they are overwhelmingly so. I think they are anti- some kinds of sexim, including some kinds of misandry. I think they are largely blind to other types, including the types they perpetrate, and are extraordinarily resistant to listening to criticism and the kind of introspection required to recognise this.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Redisca:
I can’t address the subject of ‘MRAs’ conception of “female privilege”‘. The only people here, other than feminists who have been talking about “female privilege” are ballgame and myself, and neither of us are MRAs. I will continue on the basis that you are talking about our conception.
ballgame and I agree that race, class, sexuality, gender-identity etc., are one-way streets as far as privilege is concerned, but that gender is a two-way street. There are two ways one could describe this. One way would be to say that the northbound carriageway is “male privilege”, while the southbound carriageway is “female privilege”. That is the position taken by ballgame in #153. Another is to take the view that privilege is by definition a one-way street, and that it is therefore inappropriate to refer to gender-privilege at all. These two views do not differ in their understanding how how the world works, but upon how best to describe it. Which position is best to take depends very much upon the nature of the discussion at hand. For the sake of discussing this with you, I will adopt the same position as in #153: there is both male privilege and female privilege.
It is not clear what view you are attributing to us. Our position is
1. The traffic on the two carriageways are qualitatively different, buses and trucks headed north, bicycles and private cars headed south.
2. It is wrong to systematically disregard the traffic on one carriageway.
To justify claims that there is more traffic headed in one or the other direction, or conversely that the traffic in both direction is equal would require two things: 1. A careful and complete survey of all the traffic headed in both directions, and 2 a basis for comparing different kinds of traffic. (Are 7 trucks more or less than 23 bicycles?)
Feminists have never undertaken such a careful and complete survey of both male and female privilege. Rather female privilege is generally denied. Nor has any basis for comparing different forms of gender privilege been articulated. For these reasons we reject the idea that men are more privileged than women, but we do not positively assert either that women are more privileged, or that both sexes are equally privileged. The two traffic flows are incomparable.
Actually female privilege is, in many circumstances a case of not being dead, or in prison, or forced into battle.
Male privilege is also benevolent sexism. Feminists’ favourable view of women is benevolent sexism, as is their advocacy of favourable treatment for women.
This is an appeal to consequences. That women’s benefits have been used for these purposes in no way bears upon whether they have these benefits or whether they should be analysed under the “privilege” framework. Further, I would argue that those who used women’s benefits for these purposes will do so, whether or not we analyse them under this framework.
And just to make it clear, we do not advocate depriving women of liberty, agency and autonomy. Quite the opposite.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 11:04 am
fidelbogen, I have to agree with ballgame about this:
Whether you consider those who buy sex (overwhelmingly men) or those who sell sex (mostly, but not overwhelmingly women) to be exploited, you only compound their problems by criminalizing them (or even just criminalizing the other party thus driving their activity underground and making it more dangerous). To prohibit men from buying sex, even for “their own good” is an example of ” an autocratic imposition of behavioral rules upon the male gender,” just as prohibiting women from selling sex is an autocratic imposition of behavioral rules upon the female gender.”
Still I do agree with most of the rest of the document and would say it seems to be rooted in basic principles of fairness. I don’t know if it defines “what MRAs are all about,” but it is a good start. Kind of an MRA equivalent to “Feminism 101.”
This comment was written by Meadester.Report this comment to the moderators
October 15th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Daran reminds me a bit of me. When I was at school I was considered a freak because I had excessively pale skin, and I was relentlessly denigrated for this trait for the entire time of my schooling. I was also very skinny, and I was almost daily told by my peers that my thinness, coupled with my white skin, made my orifices very uninviting to the opposite sex. Being a member of the sex class, this instilled in me a sense of utter failure and resulted in a total lack of self-esteem with long-reaching personal consequences.
This comment was written by Hedgepig.On leaving school and entering the real world, I became aware that being thin and white was actually supposed to ensure one certain privileges. And yet I had never experienced those privileges to which I was told repeatedly by society I was entitled as a white, thin person.
After that point, I part company with Daran. I decided that even though my personal experience of being white and thin had not been rewarding, this did not mean that being white and thin were characteristics that did not attract privilege.
I decided that a) I might have been a statistically rare case and b) I may have had certain privileges all along that I didn’t notice because privilege is a bit like housework: you only tend to notice it when it stops happening.
Also, unlike Daran, I didn’t decide to blame the fat people and the brown-skinned people for the fact that I did not experience the privilege I felt I was entitled to by being thin and white-skinned.
I also don’t hang about on black people’s blogs and fat people’s blogs demanding that they acknowledge how privileged they are and how lacking in privilege I am for being white and thin.
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October 16th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Also, unlike Daran, I didn’t decide to blame the fat people and the brown-skinned people for the fact that I did not experience the privilege I felt I was entitled to by being thin and white-skinned.
This comment was written by Danny.Is Daran blaming the people that tormented him because he didn’t experience the privilege you think he thinks was entitled to or does he blame them simply because they tormented him? Or is being free of torment classified as a privilege instead of something that everyone should have?
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October 16th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Hedgepig:
I’m sorry you were given such a horrible time at school, and for the long-reaching personal consequences. I cannot compare your experiences with mine; I don’t know you well enough. What I can do is compare your description with my experience.
“Relentlessly denigrated … for the entire time of my schooling”. Yes, that covers that element of it rather well. On top of that I got the occasional thumping, not to mention the ongoing terror day-in, day-out, that another beating could be around any corner.
“I was almost daily told by my peers that [I was] very uninviting to the opposite sex. Being a member of the sex class, this instilled in me a sense of utter failure and resulted in a total lack of self-esteem”. Yes I got that too, though obviously not the “orifices” bit. The taunting I got was along the lines of demands to “prove that you’re male”. It’s not clear why you link your status as “a member of the sex class” to its effect upon your sense of self-worth, because I assure you it had the same on mine. In particular, initiation of intimacy any kind, however innocuous, felt like I was assaulting the woman. As a member of the pursuer-of-sex class, this made that aspect of the performance of masculinity impossible.
“Long-reaching personal consequences.” See below.
What do you mean by “real world”? The adult world of work and responsibility and adult relationships? I never properly entered it. For a dozen years or so from the age of about fifteen onward, I was, quite literally, mad. A raving lunatic, except that the raving aspect of it was entirely inside my head. I kept it together, somewhat, as far as the outside world was concerned, more or less, by which I mean sometimes more, often less. By about 30, I guess, I had started the long, slow climb out of the pit. I’ve made huge progress since then, and much of that in the last year. For the first time in my life, I’ve achieved a level of intimacy with a member-of-the-preferred sex that most people achieve in their late teens or early twenties, but which that I had given up hoping for. I still can’t work. At 45 years of age, I have one foot in the adult world at best.
You’re mixing up two things.
Firstly I reject the idea of unidirectional male privilege, not because my personal experience of being male has not been rewarding, but because, when I look at the world through the lens of gender, I see various dynamics operating in both directions, which I do not see when I look at the world through through the lens of race.
Secondly the “Check your privilege” trope is inappropriate and offensive Bulverism, often coming from people who have made no attempt to find out anything about me, and who themselves appear to be dripping with unexamined gender privilege.
Well, you might have been. Then again you might not. Do you have any idea whether your experiences are statistically rare or not?
Did it ever occur to you that you might have certain privileges all along associated with being female? Or do you simply assume that you have none, and reject the idea that you may have some out of hand?
This is a double straw man.
Firstly I do not “blame women”. I hold personally responsible those individuals, men and women, who could and should have done something about it. Beyond that, I think we’re all responsible, men and women, for the society in which we live because I attribute agency to women coequal to that of men. (Quick! Stop that man. He’s attributing agency to women!)
Secondly what is this “feeling of entitlement” you attribute to me? I feel I was entitled to be free from bullying and persecution. To the extent that a just and liberal society should recognise and attend to the needs of its members, I feel entitled to have my needs recognised and attended to on a basis equal to that of others. Do you not agree that I am entitled to these things?
And what, exactly, do you feel less entitled to? If you had chosen to talk about these experiences, framed more appropriately in terms of your inability to perform femininity, then you would get nothing but sympathy from a feminist audience, who would be only too eager to attribute your problems to Male Privilege or the Patriarchy, i.e., to the claim that everything in society suits men.
Yet when a man points out that his similar experiences, don’t fit the “everything in society suits men” model, he’s told that “Patriarchy hurts men too”, i.e., that everything in society suits men and this is what hurt him. And when he responds that this makes no sense whatsoever, he’s accused of whining entitlement.
Entitlement is one of many Bulveristic discourses which operate to suppress challenges to feminist theory.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 16th, 2009 at 10:10 am
The last comment was already too long, so I’m spinning this off. Hedgepig:
We’ve encountered each to my recollection in just two places, here on Alas and at Hoyden About Town.
Alas belongs to a white man. This thread is about MRAs, a label I reject but which feminists often pin onto me
I posted to HAT for the sole purpose of giving my perspective on an aspect of FCB moderation policy which has been cited by tigtog as something that HAT might want to adopt. At no point did I introduce any of my ideas on gender into the discussion. It was Lauredhel, one of the bloggers there, then later Linda Radfem, who first did that, referring to a some of the content of FCB which was off-topic to the discussion on Hoyden. I responded with brief explanations of some of these ideas with links to fuller explanations elsewhere, one of them here.
In both places I have read the moderating policies, and do my best to abide by them, and to follow instructions from the moderators. That you who are not a moderator or blogger in either place should fault me for responding in one of those places to comments about my blog strikes me as quite extraordinary entitlement on your part.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 16th, 2009 at 10:12 am
http://hoydenabouttown.com/20090828.6385/on-avoiding-pile-ons/comment-page-1/#comment-136488
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 16th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
“When I look at the world through the lense of gender, I see various dynamics operating in both directions, which I do not see when I look at the world through the lense of race.”
Your vision is coloured by the fact that men and women are integrated, rather than segregated as are the races. I’m sure when white men lived with black men (i.e. owned them as slaves and lived on the same property with them), they also saw various dynamics operating in both directions. Unfortunately, the fact that men have significant others that are female seems to make it harder for them to see how unequal gender relations are.
You say you’re not going to compare our school situations, but then you reiterate how you experienced physical abuse on top of the verbal bullying. The reason I brought up my experience at school was not to compete in the suffering stakes but because I saw an analogy between your experiencing torment as a result of your gender and my experiencing torment as a result of my skin colour and size. In both our cases those characteristics that attracted abuse are not in the wider society characteristics that convey disadvantage, but more often privilege.
“Did it ever occur to me that you might have certain privileges all along associated with being female?”
Few of us are born feminists. In our society, girls are told repeatedly how lucky they are and how they get things easier than boys and how they have to look after boys’ feelings and needs. Only later do some of us realise we are being groomed as servants.
As commenters further up the thread have said, much of what you say about how shitty it is to be male is in fact in agreement with the feminist stance. You don’t seem content to have feminists concede that your suffering as a man under patriarchy is a result of patriarchy, but rather you seem to want feminists to focus on the suffering of men who do not reap the benefits of maleness. Your resentment of the domestic violence billboards that you mention up thread is very telling, as it shows that you felt you were more deserving of help and attention than the abused women the campaign was targeting.
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October 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Danny, my point is that Daran does not blame the people who tormented him, i.e. other males. He seems to be holding feminists accountable for his past and present suffering because we don’t focus enough energy and attention on the plight of men with his experiences of maleness.
This comment was written by Hedgepig.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2009 at 5:07 am
I understood your argument. I didn’t address it because my reply was going to be long enough anyway. That was a mistake. I should have addressed your argument first and dealt with other matters later.
I do not agree that your analogies are in fact analogous. If, by unidirectional “white privilege” we meant that paler skin per se is unilaterally privileged over darker skin, then your experience would certainly challenge that notion. But that is not what is meant by “white privilege”. What that expression means is that people who are members of the socially constructed white race are unidirectionally privileged over people who are not. There is no claim that within the socially constructed white race, higher hued individuals are privileged over darker. In fact in many areas, tanned skin is preferred.
You were given grief because of your pale skin. You were not given grief because of your status as a white person. At least, that’s my understanding of what you said. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Turning to size, I understand the privilege to accrue to those who body size/shape is a good fit to the “normal” ideal, which for a women is shapely with some fat but not too much. (There is actually quite a lot of difference between the magazine model ideal and the what-men-actually-like ideal). The closer you are to the ideal, the more physically attractive you deemed to be and the less crap you get.
In summary I don’t agree that your counter-experiences of “pale” and “skinny” oppression really do go counter to the prevailing theories of “white” and “thin” privilege. They don’t go counter to “white privilege” at all, because this refers to race and not merely skin hue. To the extent that they go counter to “thin privilege”, they do to naive one-dimensional versions of the theory which are, quite simply, wrong, as your experiences shows.
I’ll respond to your other points in a follow-up comment.
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October 18th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Hedgepig
This is pure Bulverism. You’ve not shown that I’m wrong. You’ve not engaged with my arguments at all. Instead, you’ve just assumed without discussion that I’m wrong and then attempted to distract my and everyone else’s attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how I became so silly.
I’m not easily distractible.
Nor did I. I compared my school experience and its aftermath, with your description of yours. My experience was similar to your description in some respects, and much, much worse in others. But in saying that, I am explicitly not assuming that “worse than your description” implies “worse than your experience”. I am not assuming that your description captured the full horror of your experience.
Nor was it mine. But you did say that I remind you of you, then proceed with a description of your school years. That implies a comparison on your part - that what I went through was like your description of yours. In some ways it was; in others it wasn’t. My response was not intended to compete with you or anyone else, but to better convey my experience to you and other readers: Here, as best I can describe it, is the shit I had to go through and am still going through. I make no judgment as to whether it it worse than, about the same as, or not as bad as, anyone else’s shit.
Addressed in the preceding comment.
(”Quoting me”):
And now, feminists tell men repeatedly how privileged they are, and how they get things easier than women, and how they should look after women’s interests and needs:
The fact that something is said repeatedly has no logical bearing, one way or the other, upon whether or not it is true.
The word for that is “domesticity”. Men are also groomed to be servants to women. It’s called “chivalry”. Interestingly, despite domesticity and chivalry being mirror image dynamics, both are construed by feminists to privilege men and subordinate women. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, they are always deemed to fit the theory. And if another set of facts present themselves, diametrically opposed to the previous set, they also fit the theory. No matter what the shape of the factual peg, it always fits into the theoretical hole.
There’s another thing that men are groomed for - to be dispensable, disposable cannon-fodder.
As I further up the thread have said, to the extent that this is true, it is because some of the ideas that are part of “the feminist stance” contradict other ideas within that stance.
That’s because it make no sense to say that society hurt me by empowering, elevating, valuing, centering, and focusing on me. It hurt me by doing the opposite of those things.
I’m not content when feminists falsely claim that my experience fits into their conceptual framework, a framework which actually erases and denies that experience.
No I don’t. In fact it is feminists who want me to focus on the suffering of women, as previously linked post exemplifies. I’m quite happy for feminists to focus on their interests. I want them to stop harming mine. Specifically, I want them to stop promulgating into society a false social theory of gender (Patriarchy) which harms my interest by erasing and denying the gendered social dynamics that harm men.
This is a straw man. I resent the billboard campaign because it harmed me. It damaged, or rather, further damaged my mental health by presenting domestic violence which I had suffered as 1. tolerable when done to me, and 2. my fault.
Go check what I actually said about this. It’s exactly what I just wrote. What you wrote doesn’t follow from it in any way. Why do you make up false positions that I have never said, and attribute them to me?
I do not feel I was more deserving of help and attention that abused women. I feel I was deserving of some consideration as a man, particularly as the campaign was state funded. That you consider it objectionable for a male victim of domestic abuse to ask for any consideration at all from society is very telling, as it shows just how entitled you feel women are to society’s exclusive focus on this topic.
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October 18th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Hedgepig:
It’s not true that the people who tormented me were just males. As I already said, everyone, boys and girls alike were involved. That probably isn’t literally true, but those who weren’t, weren’t particularly high on my radar. In any case, it wasn’t just boys.
I don’t really blame them for it. They were children, after all. The blame lies with the adult carers of both sexes who abrogated their responsiblity to protect me.
Again, not true. I blame feminists for promulgating into society a false social theory of gender which harms my interest. But in truth, casting blame isn’t high on my agenda. I want to get you to stop by persuading you that you are wrong.
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October 18th, 2009 at 6:58 am
I can’t find the comment on this thread where Daran described the billboard campaign. Does anyone know what comment number it is?
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October 18th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I linked to it, three comments back:
And what I said at the link:
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October 18th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Ballgame wrote:
A good example of how your focus is much more on terminology than on substance. It doesn’t matter to you what views I advocate; because I don’t agree with your terminology, in your view I can’t be “egalitarian.”
(And for the record, I’m not a major feminist blogger. I was at one time — but that’s when there were many fewer feminist bloggers than there are today.)
I think some men are oppressed as men. I also think people can say, with validity, that men are never oppressed as men. I think it depends on which definition you use.
I tend towards the former definition, but I don’t say so in an unhedged fashion because if I do, I might seem to be allying myself with the misogynists who make up most of the anti-feminist movement. I also don’t emphasize this difference between me and most other mainstream feminists because most people I respect and who have decent views on gender, and who are doing valuable work, disagree with me. That makes me think that there’s a strong possibility I’m mistaken.
I don’t respect the line of argument that says that nuance and uncertainty are the same as dishonesty and hypocrisy, which is the direction you seem to be headed in.
Mandolin is both smarter and better informed than you are, so don’t call her statements “ridiculous.” Plus, you’re acting like a jerk, so please stop that.
Mandolin denies that such a thing as “female privilege” exists. This is not a ridiculous statement; it’s a matter of how one defines “privilege.” It is a little similar, in my understanding (which may be wrong), to how many anti-racist activists define racism as “power plus privilege,” so that while either whites or non-whites can be prejudiced, only whites can be racist.
The definition of “privilege” isn’t a fact beyond debate, that one is ridiculous to disagree with; it’s a theoretical definition. Just because most mainstream feminists don’t share your definition of “privilege” doesn’t make their views ridiculous.
[Whoops -- misread "male" as "female" in your statement, and so wrote a paragraph that made no sense at all, which I've now deleted.]
Mandolin didn’t say that “that male privilege is as unidirectional as white privilege.” That implies that Mandolin thinks it makes sense to talk about degrees of “unidirection” and that they are equal, neither of which are reasonable things to infer from what she wrote. If I understood correctly, what she was saying is that the existence of white suffering, and harms to whites due to racism, doesn’t make racism a system of white privileges and black privileges; likewise, sexism is not a system of male privileges and female privileges.
Whether or not you agree with that view, it is not a “ridiculous” view. It is the mainstream feminist view. You may find mainstream feminism ridiculous, but I disagree, and you’re not welcome on this forum if that’s the kind of criticism you’re offering.
I know how this game goes. I’m supposed to reply “I’ve never vilified you or Daran as a person.” That then opens the door for you and Daran to put on your “prosecutor” hats and put me on trial for all of the times you think my behavior has been less than perfect. Then I’ll have the choice of following all the stupid links and trying to painstakingly reconstruct what was happening six months or a year or four years ago, or letting the accusations stand without rebuttal.
It’s bullshit I’ve gone through more than once on Feminist Critics; it’s a major reason I can’t stand your blog, and in fact find it a hateful environment; and it’s not something I’m going to allow you and Daran to do here.
It’s neat how you’ve depoliticized the
contemptconcept of “egalitarian” here. Suddenly it’s no longer about thinking that the sexes should be equal, or equal treatment, or anything like that; “egalitarian” is now defined according to whether or not I’ve ever “vilified” you or Daran personally. (That many female posters likewise think I’ve treated them unjustly over the years isn’t a consideration to you, since that would get back to treating the sexes equally, which isn’t in your definition of “egalitarian.”)I entirely reject a line of discussion which leads to you and Daran presenting “evidence” about how much I suck.
Many, many genuine anti-feminists and MRAs, even horribly misogynistic ones, consider themselves to be struggling against gender oppression. Am I required to treat them with respect in order to qualify as “egalitarian,” in your view?
:shrug: I think that you and Daran are anti-feminists. I don’t think Daran is an MRA, and I’m not sure if you are or not. (If you were an MRA, I think that would vastly improve MRAism, and I don’t consider you a misogynist). I don’t intend either of these terms as insults, nor do I think they make you “evil.”
I appreciate that you and Daran prefer not to be called anti-feminists or MRAs, and have made a sincere and conscious effort to avoid calling you by those terms, except when it’s not reasonably avoidable. I’m sure I slip up now and then, but whatever. I’ve tried. I am now officially done trying.
That said, I do think that anti-feminism refers to a real spectrum of views which should be named and criticized. As an anti-feminist, I can see why you’d prefer that your views not be named and criticized for what they are, but it’s not my obligation to assist you in that desire. The term is no more an insult than “Republican” or “conservative” is an insult. It just describes a particular constellation of political views; in your case, it describes someone who strongly dislikes mainstream feminism, devotes most of his (or her) energy regarding feminism to attacking and opposing mainstream feminism, and whose political position towards virtually all forms of feminism can be accurately summed up as “opposition.”
You really remind me of anti-gay activists who insist that the word “homophobia” should never be used because it’s an “insult,” or conservatives who think it’s unfair to use the word “racist” in debate, because the word poisons the well. By trying to make the word unacceptable in conversation, they are attempting to forclose reasonable consideration of whether or not their views are, in fact, homophobic or racist. Similarly, you’re trying to forclose discussion of whether or not your views amount to anti-feminism. I don’t think that’s reasonable of you, and not discussing anti-feminism so that anti-feminists can feel more comfortable or avoid criticism of their views, isn’t what I want to do.
ETA: Finally, by your own terms, isn’t using the term “feminist” on “Feminist Critics” comments — where the overwhelming majority of comment-writers have only contempt and disdain for feminism — a form of “poisoning the well”?
The leaders of the Lamont movement were longtime Democrats who had real records of supporting and defending the views of the Democratic party, even though they were opposing then-Democrat Lieberman. And when the real election came about, they were actively supporting the Democrat (who was by that time Lamont).
In other words, they had earned respect as Democrats by working as, with, and for Democrats. You, in contrast, are overwhelmingly against mainstream feminism in your posts (although you’re usually polite about it, which I admire), while you link to an anti-feminist (Robert at Glennsacks.com) with praise (you did critique some stats he got wrong, but you avoided criticizing his anti-feminism in any way). This is behavior that more describes a smart, respectful anti-feminist than it describes a feminist.
Nor do I think my reinterpretation of your terminology has been a strawman. You’ve gone again and again away from any usual definition of “egalitarian” to mean someone who sees the sexes as equal and deserving equal treatment, and have instead argued that it means that I’ve “vilified” someone — I think in context it’s clear you meant you and/or Daran — personally, and that makes me not egalitarian. I don’t think that criticizing what you actually wrote qualifies as attacking a strawman.
Shorter Ballgame: “Men aren’t responsible for their own actions and choices; if men become conservatives, that’s the fault of feminists for being too mean.”
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Amp, this is just to say: Well said and well done!
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I’m not really interested in arguing with Daran, which is why I came in responding to Silenced is Foo, and wandered off again when he did. But I did want to say about the subject:
Barry and I had a fairly major fight on IM about whether or not men are oppressed as men a couple months ago. It was inspired by this thread, actually, because I was (and am) appalled that Daran’s major excuse for men’s oppression is something that exists because of a framework that oppresses women — i.e. that we’re not considered competent to be included in the draft, a responsibility which (while obviously odious for those whose political standpoint includes being a dove) is also considered to be the hallmark of full citizenship.
When I say fairly major “fight,” I obviously mean in the political sense. Barry and I are good friends and while I suppose it would be possible for something political to throw a wrench in that, absent him suddenly reversing position on whether or not women are fully human, it’s not likely to happen.
But in any case, it was a long, passionate, heated disagreement. And in the end we’re both still working here and our feelings about each other’s activisms haven’t changed. So it’s not like there’s no room for “disagreement with the gynocentric feminist orthodoxy” or whatever asinine terminology soup has been proposed. There’s plenty of room for disagreement — as long as the actions add up, and they do. Both Amp and I are passionate about making room for men and women who don’t fit gender binaries. It’s been a major theme of my writing and artwork for years, if not a major theme of my blogging (I’m a fucking lazy blogger, so I don’t exactly blog much — though I do note that feminist critic’s most whackaloon participant totally freaked out when I criticized male circumcision as being a disgusting and mutilatory practice because, ew, I’m a girl, and girl feminists aren’t supposed to “steal our subject,” but I’m sure he’s totally egalitarian). It *is* a major theme of Amp’s blogging. And of Myca’s blogging and of RJN’s blogging. Which is one reason why I find it a pleasure to work with them.
Alas, I am still not particularly interested in a dialog on this subject with Daran, so I’ll probably be wandering off again. I just wanted to say: Alas, a Blog; several different viewpoints; everyone still respects each other. Except about porn, obviously. If you disagree with me about that, then fuck you. :-P*
*Yes, that’s a joke.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
“But that is not what is meant by “white privilege”. What that expression means is that people who are members of the socially constructed white race are unidirectionally privileged over people who are not. There is no claim that within the socially constructed white race, higher hued individuals are privileged over darker. In fact in many areas, tanned skin is preferred.”
Exactly. But at the time my personal experience told me that my white skin afforded me no privilege, but rather actual disadvantage. I think this is analagous to your experience of being male. To paraphrase your statement quoted above, the expression “male privilege” means that people who are members of the socially constructed male gender are unidirectionally privileged over people who are not. This does not mean that within the socially constructed male gender, some males are not privileged over other males.
“When I look at the world through the lense of gender, I see various dynamics operating in both directions, which I do not see when I look at the world through the lense of race.”
This is not an argument. This is a description of how you see things through the lenses of gender and race. Obviously, I see things differently through those lenses. My response was to hazard a guess at why you might see things the way you do.
“I resent the billboard campaign because it harmed me. It damaged, or rather, further damaged my mental health by presenting domestic violence which I had suffered as 1. tolerable when done to me, and 2. my fault”
The billboard campaign called for “Zero tolerance of male violence against women and children”. Your interpretation of this was: “So according to your movement, when she was punching me as hard as she could, I was not the victim of intolerable violence, rather I was to blame for it.” There is nothing in the words “zero tolerance of male violence against women and children” that implies “If a woman is violent towards a man, the man is to blame”. It also doesn’t mean violence against men is tolerable. To presume that because a campaign is not geared towards victims who fit your description, that means the campaign is blaming those victims it does not target for their own victimization is a somewhat paranoid interpretation. Similarly, the belief that this campaign “harmed” you by not focussing on your particular experience of domestic violence is delusional.
This comment was written by Hedgepig.I understand that you were not mentally healthy at the time. That you still consider your response to that campaign to have been rational is worrying.
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:18 am
[...] operationalises this idea in his definition of gynocentric feminism as follows1: “[G]ynocentric feminist” [is] not intended as [a] description[] of the particular [...]
This comment was written by ballgame’s Definition of “Gynocentric” Feminism (RP) | Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2009 at 6:19 am
[...] operationalises this idea in his definition of gynocentric feminism as follows1: “[G]ynocentric feminist” [is] not intended as [a] description[] of the particular [...]
This comment was written by ballgame’s Definition of “Gynocentric” Feminism (NoH) | Feminist Critics.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Ampersand,
The above pingbacks, by the way, are to my critique of ballgame’s definition, which is perhaps not what you’d expect. Out of several specific criticisms, two bear upon his labeling of you as “gynocentric”. Firstly I suggest that ballgame’s “vilification” criterion should be replaced by one that says “views the criticism of feminist misandry as presumptively invalid, illegitimate, or suspect”. I think that does describe you, though you might not agree. Secondly I argue that gynocentrism should be viewed as a spectrum. The mere commission of a single sin from the list should not be regarded as condemning a feminist to gynocentric hell.
Applying the above to your positively expressed views, I should not class you as a gynocentric feminist. But then we have your “equivocation” on matters which you frame as “terminology”, but which are actually matters of significant substance. Are men forcibly conscripted and sent to watch their comrades being slaughtered before getting their own brains blown out oppressed, as I would argue? Or are the real victims here the women left at home, who are not deemed so
disposablecompetent, (oh the horror!), as Mandolin argues.And we also have your stance as a staunch apologist for gynocentric feminism, which raises the question: to what extent does apology for a particular point of view equate to its positive advocacy?
I agree that “anti-feminist” is not per se an insult*. It is insulting when applied to us. More importantly it is prejudicial. The similarities you call a “constellation of political views” are quite superficial, while the differences between us and most others you call “anti-feminist” are profound and much more significant than our differences with feminism, and in some cases more significant than feminists’ differences with antifeminists.
*Neither is “gynocentric” an insult.
It’s as though you were to call “anti-socialist” such individuals as Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, Rush Limbaugh…, and George Orwell. “Anti-socialist” is not per se an insult, but it certainly is an insult to Orwell to associate him with those other three and their ilk. Moreover it is prejudicial. Orwell had at least as strong a claim to the word “socialist” as any of those he criticised, and his critique of the practice of socialism was profoundly different in kind from those who opposed it in principle.
I find it astounding that you should even raise the issue of whether it is prejudicial for us to use a label embraced by feminists themselves. The simple answer, of course, is no. We are not prejudicing feminists by associating them with feminism. Nor are we prejudicing gynocentric feminists or their apologists by associating them with gynocentric feminism. Any prejudice that arises from such association is self-inflicted. The aforementioned considerations simply do not apply.
There is another source of potential prejudice to feminists that I, probably more than anyone else on FCB, am quite mindful of. We may mistakenly label as feminist, someone who isn’t. As you yourself pointed out in the above link, it can be quite difficult to distinguish between some feminists and some traditionalists, and this is by no means limited to their views on trans people. Where it is not obvious, I make a point of checking to see if an individual whom I might wish to cite as a feminist, or who has been so cited by others, really is recognised as a feminist by other feminists, or if indications in either direction are lacking, whether they have expressed a range of views that satisfy me that they would be so recognised.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Daran:
To avoid being banned, you have two choices:
1) Show me, with a direct, linked quote, Mandolin expressly saying something that is fairly summed up as “women are the real victims” — a phrase that strongly implies that she has said she believes men are never victims.
(Note that the one prior time the term “real victims” came up in this thread, it was when I quoted Hugo — and I pointed out that the phrase was objectionable, for that precise reason.)
(For that matter, I very much doubt Mandolin would say that men who are forcibly conscripted and shot are not oppressed; she’d say they’re not oppressed as men. I’m positive she wouldn’t deny that they’ve been victimized.)
Note that your usual style of lying about what feminists say — which can be summed up as “the billboard referred to female victims of male abusers, therefore feminists said that violence against me was tolerable and my own fault” — isn’t an acceptable response in this instance. If you come up with some bullshit rationalization like that for why your lie wasn’t a lie, then you’re banned.
2) Retract and apologize.
Your choice.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Hedgepig (”quoting me”):
It’s not analogous. You are equivocating between two different meanings to the phrase “white skin”, which can refer to both “skin hue” and “socially constructed race”.
Specifically you are saying that your pale skin hue was a site of what you experienced as oppression. But nobody claims that pale skin hue is something which is supposed to privilege you. Rather the claim is that your socially constructed status as member of the white race which privileges you. But your race isn’t that which was a site of oppression for you.
It is the lack of congruency between that which is “supposed to privilege you” and the “site of oppression” you experienced, to use PG’s perspicuous phrasing, which renders your situation non-analogous to mine.
Yes, I understand what the theory says. I don’t agree with it.
Another error you appear to be labouring under is your apparent assumption that my personal experience is a significant or sole basis for my disagreement with the theory. It isn’t. My personal experience is the basis for my disagreement with anyone stating or implying that I am personally privileged. Privilege as a social dynamic is a whole different matter.
Not entirely. Presumably we see things the same way through the lens of race, or at least, not so differently that we dispute each other’s characterisation of what we see to any significant degree.
A better response would have been to try to find out in more detail what I see, and how I interpret it.
Let’s take Mandolin’s example: conscription. I say that the gender-selective conscription of men is an example of the gender-oppression of men, and women’s immunity to it is an example of female privilege, or alternatively, contradicts the notion of unidirectional male privilege. Mandolin disagrees, but I’m interested in your view. What say you?
Another example: the school to prison pipeline is a recognised social system with race, class, age, and gender components and probably others as well. It primarily affects black people, the lower class, the young, and males. Overwhelmingly it effects young, black, lower-class males.
Viewed through the lens of race, nobody here would disagree that it oppresses black people as black people, and that white people’s relative freedom from it is a privilege. The same reasoning (applied to mostly the same set of victims!) would seem to mandate that, viewed through the lens of gender, it oppresses males as males, and that females’ relative freedom from it is a privilege. Again, what say you?
These are by no means my only examples, nor is this the limit of my analysis, but it’ll do for a start. I’ll respond to the remainder of your comment separately.
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October 19th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
The draft: proof of homosexual privilege.
Homosexuals must be exempted from the draft because society doesn’t consider homosexuals disposable.
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October 19th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Ampersand,
I must confess to some puzzlement here, since on the one hand you are demanding that I prove my point or retract, while on the other, you concede it:
Which is the beginning and the end of my claim about her position. Here’s the full statement, including the crucial context you omitted but which I here emphasise:
“Equivocation” here refers to ballgame’s statement again with my emphasis:
That this is what “equivocation” here refers to is confirmed by the reference to your statement about “terminology”, which was a direct reply to the above quoted remark.
The crucial issue here is “whether men are oppressed by gender … [whether] men are oppressed as men”. In was in that clearly invoked context that I characterised Mandolin’s view on whether men are oppressed*. For you to simply disregard it implies… Well, the most charitable interpretation I can think of is that you were so enraged by what you initially thought I meant, that your cognitive abilities were temporarily impaired.
*That by “oppressed” I meant “oppressed by gender” is further confirmed by the characterisation of Mandolin’s position in my response to hedgepig, which I posted before I saw your comment. I said merely that Mandolin disagreed with the proposition that “gender-selective conscription of men is an example of the gender-oppression of men”.
The other point you raise was the phrasing “women are the real victims”. Again the context of gender oppression applies. If it is her view that women are oppressed as women, and men are not oppressed as men, then I cannot see how it can fail to be her view that women are the real victims of gender oppression.
* * * * *
To summarise. My claim about Mandolin’s position is no more or less than what you conceded it to be. (I presume you are not asking me to prove what you already concede). I do apologise for any misunderstanding of what I wrote, however caused, but I make no retraction, having nothing to retract.
Your remarks concerning my interpretation of the billboard postsers I leave to another comment, assuming I am permitted to post again.
I hope this will suffice.
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October 19th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
For that matter, the draft could also be seen in that way as an example of disabled privilege.
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October 19th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
And we certainly don’t see disabled people as disposable.
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
My analogy has completely failed in its purpose. I thought that by comparing our school experiences of being low-status individuals within high status groups, my argument (that when one is a low status individual it is easy to make the mistake of thinking one’s whole group is actually not privileged) would be clarified through illustration. Obviously, it did not succeed.
I think that gender-specific conscription is an example of rich old men happily organising to kill off a lot of younger, poorer men. This is very common under patriarchy. But if I were to concede that to be considered unsuitable as cannon-fodder is an example of female privilege, I still could not agree that in peace-time society that privilege translates into anything concrete in gender relations. To use Mandolin’s example above, it’s like saying homosexual males are privileged over heterosexual males in our culture because they have been excluded from the draft.
Actually, you know what I think is our problem in attempting to argue these things? Even if we each concede the other’s gender has privileges, what it will eventually come down to is how important each of us thinks certain privileges are, and how many we each think the other has. You place a great deal of weight on the threat of conscription; I would say this is a relatively rare occurrence that doesn’t impact much on the relative advantage being male confers on an individual in society. I place great weight on the threat of rape, forced pregnancy, intimate violence etc that women experience as members of the sex caste, which is an ongoing state of affairs. You, I suspect, would say that men experience much of this kind of thing too and therefore that negates feminists’ claim that women are particularly disadvantaged by these experiences. There doesn’t seem a lot of point to this sort of debate.
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
I meant, even if we each concede our own gender has privileges.
(I tried to use the edit function but it keeps scrolling and I can’t get the cursor to stay on one spot.)
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October 19th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I believe that this quote was what Daran was objecting to.
This comment was written by Doug S..Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2009 at 1:07 am
[...] tend to join the “opposition”. By “opposition” I mean folks like “Men’s Rights Activists” (on the Internet we call them MRAs). MRAs — at least according to my stereotype of them — are conscious of social and legal [...]
This comment was written by Questions I Want to Ask Entitled Cis Het Men, Part 2: Men’s Rights « Clarisse Thorn.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Doug, I understood that’s what Daran was most likely referring to. Nowhere in that passage does Mandolin say that women are the only true victims of the draft.
* * *
Daran:
So here’s what you’re saying:
1) When you described Mandolin as arguing that “the real victims [of military conscription are] the women left at home,” you meant this to mean that “women are the real victims of gender oppression,” even though you didn’t say that in your comment, or indeed use the phrase “gender oppression” anywhere in the comment.
2) But I should have understood that’s how you meant it, because you used the word “equivocation” in a reference to a separate comment by Ballgame, and Ballgame did use the phrase gender oppression in that comment.
3) That I didn’t understand this shows that my “cognitive abilities were temporarily impaired.” (Nice one!)
4) That you referred to Mandolin’s views somewhat more accurately in a different comment entirely somehow means there’s no call for you to apologize for or retract lying about her views in this comment.
This is pretty similar, really, to your claim that when you said “according to feminists,” being beaten is an example of male privilege, you weren’t suggesting that any feminist had ever actually said such a thing. You meant “according to feminists” in the same sense as “according to the terms of the contract.” Gosh, how could I ever have interpreted it any other way?
In both cases, what you’re doing is lying about what feminists say, in a most unkind and prejudicial manner. And when you’re called on it, your response is, in effect, “oh, no, I didn’t mean what I plainly said; I meant something else entirely, and if you didn’t see that it’s only because you’re being unfair and/or an idiot.”
I genuinely don’t know if you’re saying these things in bad faith, or if you just have such a bizarre usage of English that you don’t understand what your words mean. (Although if it is true that you don’t understand what your words mean, isn’t it odd that the unintended meaning of your words is so often to slander feminists?)
In either case, I’m sick of seeing it on this blog. You are banned from “Alas” until May of 2010.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
[...] She started self-harming and became anorexic. She almost died.We live in a culture where rape and violence against women are often seen as acceptable and I don’t want to detract from the gravity of the issue, but [...]
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October 24th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] something that makes me nervous, because I worry that people are going to stick me in the “asshole MRA” box. Don’t get me wrong: I certainly don’t think that women have it better, [...]
This comment was written by Questions I Want to Ask Entitled Cis Het Men, Part 3: Space for Men « Clarisse Thorn.Report this comment to the moderators
October 28th, 2009 at 12:59 am
[...] tend to join the “opposition”. By “opposition” I mean folks like “Men’s Rights Activists” (on the Internet we call them MRAs). MRAs — at least according to my stereotype of them — are conscious of social and legal [...]
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October 30th, 2009 at 12:06 am
[...] something that makes me nervous, because I worry that people are going to stick me in the “asshole MRA” box. Don’t get me wrong: I certainly don’t think that women have it better, [...]
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