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General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: BloodBird on 13 Dec 2013, 19:00
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I used to think so. Well, maybe not *everyone* but most people who care about things like equal rights and responsibilities, fairness and justice for all regardless of gender, genetics, social standing etc.
As a Egalitarian, or Humanist, or whatever I can be refereed to as, for the longest time I was under the belief that, among other things, feminists was on top of things like this. I had heard from several sources that this particular movement seeks equality, fair rights for women and men, and so on. They were also quite entrenched in society as a group so yeah, I was like "it's in good hands then."
However, I never bothered to dig to deeply on the topic, and for years mostly content to keep my contempt for inequality for men and women mostly to myself. I do believe I've on occasion made my disgust for some unjust norms in society regarding what's fair and right for men and other people known here on Backstage for instance, as well as what people expect of children and such, even if that was mostly commentary in light of other topics, such as Skyrim, of all things.
Well, about 2 days ago I was looking over YouTube for random anime and game OST's and/or some other music, and suddenly a video popped up in my 'recommended for you' tab on the right. YT is fond of doing that on occasion and sometimes they link you really strange stuff you just have to wonder, "why would I want to see this, wtf is your problem YT?" I followed the link. I assumed it was at first a feminist explaining or discussing some issue, and as I had the time, I guessed I'd go hear what this was about. I am both a little glad and very sad to have been proven perfectly wrong. It was not a feminist video at all, but a video from Canadian Men's Right's Movement member, Egalitarian and anti-feminist Karen Straughan, (A handle, I'm sure) also known as "Girl Writes What?" (GWW) on the internet.
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YT account can be found here (http://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat), and I would suggest to anyone interested in hearing what she has to say to start with her first video, under videos - oldest first. She primarily blogs however, here (http://owningyourshit.blogspot.no/).
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A word of warning though that I feel I should offer. Personally, I am a fan of checking both sides of a story, and have tried to stick to this by checking up on facts GWW brings up, as well as what those she often responds to have claimed.
Thankfully for me she keeps making it easy to find most of this so it wasn't hard. The thing I've found is, so far I've yet to see her be WRONG. Meaning that my only conclusion so far as that through her intelligent, rational, well articulated and reasonable arguments and statements, there is mostly the truth to be found. And that depresses me. The effectiveness she has displayed deconstructing the fraud I'd call the feminist movement is just out-right depressing, in these days of mid-December and the holidays and so on, I feel nothing but a profound sadness.
I can imagine what Neo felt like after waking up from swallowing his red pill and getting to see what reality is really like. Karen used this metaphor herself to describe what it was like to realize how far this issue actually goes, and I have to say it was pretty fucking apt.
But for those of you who do, you have your links.
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Finally, I would like to state that one of the things that depress me the most is that, for a movement that claims to value equality and things like freedom of speech, people seem happy to target this YT-er and blogger for her message, and still keep a pretty high opinion of themselves. Just go look up urban dictionary and find "Egalitarian" (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egalitarian) second entry, or any entry for "Feminist" (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=feminist). There have been more serious cases as well.
Anyhow, I need sleep, plenty to do tomorrow, I will be gone for a few days with my family come tomorrow afternoon, I simply felt I should share this with you before I forgot. Sorry for the long ramble-like post.
- BB
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So, as with most movements, there is a core message (women being equal to men) and then there is how the movement is co-opted (women over men).
For example, my mother-in-law is a feminist, as in she supports equal opportunity for men and women and attempts to hold them to the same standards and did so in the 1960s and 1970s when a "proper lady" would never have done such things.
However, for some (not my mother-in-law) equal opportunity and standards is entirely insufficient.
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Ohhhhhhhh boy.
Alright, this is just a bit of wisdom:
First, I'm definitely not affiliated with any men's group.
Ok. Second, BB, if I were you, I'd quickly learn the value of not publicly acknowledging any agreement with any "red pill", "MRA" or "MGTOW" set of beliefs, group, blogger, or poster. That is the best way to get blacklisted, fast. I've seen it happen, albeit from the periphery, and it was impressive. Read what you wanna read, think what you wanna think, but for god's sake, don't talk about how you totally agree with a socially unacceptable opinion until you've made damn sure that you don't want to be remembered for that and only that first.
Third, they could be wrong. Probably not a good idea to profess belief off of one blog and youtube channel.
Fourth, even if they're right, so what? Like you're gonna change the tide. What will ruining your reputation do for it? I read a bit of her blog - even if she were right about everything, there's nothing that spreading it would do for you.
Fifth, have you read sites and blogs that contradict these views?
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And now, for a bit of the more personal, as a counterpart to my above post.
I've read both radical feminists and masculinists. I've read both Men's Rights Activists and relatively moderate feminists. I've tried to have an open mind, and I generally find in myself an inherent dislike and distrust of MRAs. But, I must admit, I don't really like either feminists or MRAs that much.
I don't know that women have achieved equality, and I don't really care. I've had to work very hard in my life, physically hard, just to have enough money to eat, and I don't particularly care whether the fact that I was able to manage that successfully came about because of some privilege. If the job I get comes at the expense of a minority or a woman, so much the worse for them. I want to survive - equality means nothing to the dead.
I've read some who say that the expectations on me are the result of the "Patriarchy" - an explanation which seems most notable for its infinite elasticity in its ability to explain. I find it to be fairly unsatisfying, partly for that reason.
Are the more extreme forms of feminism correct?
Well, I grew up with a mother that most people would call abusive, although I did not tend to think of it that way at the time. Not just "emotionally abusive", although that was managed as well, but "trying to brain you with a pewter display tray" abusive. Or, if violence against men doesn't count, as it does not seem to for many, "punching your sisters" abusive. But if you do care about that sort of thing, I saw her abuse my father for years, while he did everything for her. Stayed home from work, paid for practically her every whim, took her where she wanted to go, stayed up until three in the morning to rub her back - I could write pages. In return, she slapped him, hit him, threw glasses at him, spent about 2 hours yelling at him each day, tore him down in front of others, and told him to commit suicide outside the house so he wouldn't make a mess.
I'm reasonably certain that women commit domestic violence.
I could speak of how I was treated, but I'll mostly refrain. To give you a taste, however, I was punished for simply reading as a child, and so harshly that my sister refused to learn how to read a word until she was about 13, because she was afraid of the same treatment. All of us were denied any real schooling. I don't particularly mind the abuse growing up, but I do resent never having been given the opportunity to make something of myself. I'd like to think I've done fairly well as it is. I make pretty decent money, and I educated myself to get there. But my sisters did less well, being less inherently aggressive.
So I'm also reasonably certain that mothers are not always the best parents for their children.
Yet, I was friends with some guys whose father did essentially the same things. So people are people, and power is power. Is it surprising, that when giving the opportunity, women behave as well or as badly as men? Only if one has the perspective that women are always the oppressed gender. If I find that unlikely, perhaps I have reason.
My experience with these sorts of situations in regards to feminists is interesting. Some will simply react with - as it seems to me - nearly melodramatic revulsion. Some will assert that it is an artifact of patriarchy - which, as a single white male, I am apparently a key member and supporter of. And some simply refuse to accept the narratives as offered - to some, it is impossible that a woman could abuse a man without cause. These, among other responses, lead me to think that feminism is less than monolithic - that it is a rather diverse set of individual views. So, to take my own perspective, from the personal to the political, as it were, I can't say that I know that one can simply attack all of feminism as being anti-male.
But if it were, would that be surprising? Feminism started with absolute, certain injustices that it sought to correct. But what group seeks to give up privileges? If women possess some privileges, we would not realistically expect them to seek the loss of those. No one wishes to lose advantages. Or, to put it another way "Rock needs a nerf. Paper is fine. - from: Scissors".
This is natural. We tend to focus on our own problems. If one is an African-American descendant of southern slaves, one is not likely to be overly worried about the thousands or millions of whites enslaved by Barbary slavers. If one is a feminist, one is not likely to be overly focused on the fact that hundred of thousands or even millions of men were drafted to die for their country in Western Europe/the U.S., but not one woman. I'm not sure whether it is reasonable to ask that that be held in mind, but I am sure that it will not be. People do not hold every ill in the world in their hearts, they usually pick one or two and work on those.
So, i suppose, my question is this: what do you want out of this? Feminists, on the whole, aren't going to advocate for equality. They are going to advocate for women, because they see women as being disadvantaged. That's certainly true, in many places. Are you hoping that they'll give up their privileges, assuming they have some? Ha. What group voluntarily does that? Perhaps you can assert rights you think you are denied, but even if you are right and you manage it, that is a thankless task.
But if you are merely alarmed for yourself, there is an easy solution: learn to enjoy living alone. Married people are not, statistically, happier than single people, and in the United States, at least, most marriages end in divorce, which leads to more net unhappiness. Non-divorced singles seem to live a fairly long time, and there's nothing stopping you from using that time as you want. If gender inequalities in domestic relationships troubles you, there's much to be said for the single life. If I might offer some advice, I'd simply note that I've found that staying in shape and keeping the muscle mass up helps you stay happy. So exercise, eat well, and enjoy yourself apart from the gender wars - and you won't have to worry about any of it.
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I'm pretty much with orange on this one. There's a difference between the feminist movement of yesteryear and what we have today - or at least how the general perception of the term is interpreted.
One promotes actual equality based on the common-sense definition of the word.
The other promotes misandry and a switch to the complete opposite of the situation that prompted the original feminist movement in the first place.
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You will always have pitchforks raised when moderate people start to talk about movements like those, that suffer from a terrible image thanks to all the strawmen and misconceptions that run all around.
This person is getting an incredible amount of flak for what she says ? Well, the other side gets the same treatment as well (cf Anita Sarkeesian / Feminist Frequency). It's sad.
However despite the links you provided, i'm unable to find a proper article or YT video where she actually exposes her views...
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Going to go on a little tangent in reply to a quote.
So, as with most movements, there is a core message (women being equal to men) and then there is how the movement is co-opted (women over men).
This. Or perhaps how the movement is interpreted, perceived or labelled. There is a stereotype that's quite pervasive of 'feminazi's' and rabid men-hating that gets (unfairly I think) converged onto the word 'feminism'. This is often unhelped by an inability to separate 'men' (a gender) from 'patriachy' (a system).
I'm also noting something of a distinction between the feminism(s) encountered in critical theory, and the feminism I encounter on the internet; maybe specifically 'tumblr feminists'...which is by no means all of people identifying as such on tumblr, but there does seem to be...perhaps an over-emphasis on language and the doctrine that you have to change the language before you can change meaning which ultimately seems to manifest as policing language choices and comes across as...well...petty. Or largely unnecessary. Or to the point where the meaning is lost or it becomes impossible not to cause offence at some point by not using the prescribed vocabulary.
Sometimes that's valid. But when it's so doggedly enforced or corrected - I don't know. It just seems to place the importance (at times) on the wrong places, or deliberately interpreting something in a way that wasn't intended to the extent that it seems like nitpicking.
Though I wonder if that's perhaps less to do with feminism and more to do with the internet.
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However despite the links you provided, i'm unable to find a proper article or YT video where she actually exposes her views...
I went back in her blog a little bit, though I didn't find any kind of 'about' or neat sum up of her ideas. Though maybe there was a post that specified.
There's this entry, where I think she's positing that it's easier for a woman to be masculine than for a man to be feminine (which in some ways I think is true) http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/gender-bendingno-girlie-men-allowed.html (http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/gender-bendingno-girlie-men-allowed.html) and this entry where she's weighing up the historical pros and cons of the power balance between the sexes http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/can-we-redefine-terms-please.html (http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/can-we-redefine-terms-please.html)
I'll admit to going no further down the rabbit hole than that, though.
I guess my main problem (even while agreeing to an extent) with her first post is it's mainly backed up anecdotally. Not that a blog post needs to be particularly rigorous, and personal is the correct register, just that saying she's had no problem identifying as a masculine woman and finding heterosexual partners and (presumably) finding this all comparatively easy and prejudice free, doesn't mean everybody has had a similar experience - or that it's a general rule.
I think instead of stating For men, gender is much more severely enforced.
it might be fairer to say "for men, gender is differently enforced." I think for both, gender roles can be rigidly enforced, albeit in different ways. (and I think for all, both men and women, that can be fairly detrimental).
Equally, her assertion that indoctrination of masculinity starts from the cradle is equally applicable to both genders; just that femininity is indoctrinated from the cradle to girls. The typical dyad of blue/pink, gendered toys, how gently the kids are played with and so on and so forth.
The second blog post she just frames the debate from power to perhaps obligation. I have heard it more crudely phrased that, before they entered the salaried work-force, women had it better, easier. I think superficially it can seem so, and yes, with power does come responsibilities, obligation. Hard back breaking labour (aside from literal going into labour) was expected from one sex and not the other. I don't think anyone is going to say that men had it easy because they got to be the bread winners. It's just not necessary to denigrate one sex while referring to the other.
But the problem, ultimately, in saying that women had it easy because they weren't required to do back breaking labour, and (often) didn't have responsibilities to society beyond caring for the home and family was that you needed to find a man. You were not your own autonomous person with your own agency, that choice to support yourself and your family, however hard it was for men, was often not available for women. Your worth as a human being was tied to someone else's.
There are obviously inherent problems with this. Reading an (granted, fairly dramatic retelling) account of Mary Eleanor Bowes was particularly chilling. She suffered some fairly horrific physical abuses at the hands of her husband and took the extremely rare and difficult step of successfully divorcing him on that basis. Not to downplay her accomplishments at all, but as hard won as that was, I don't think it would've been possible for someone poor; it probably helped that was one of the richest women in England.
I would certainly agree that gender roles were rigid regardless of which gender that was being applied to. I don't think things were necessarily easy for anyone - though being rich helped (and it's worth noting that, regardless of how stringent gender roles have been enforced historically in society, though I guess I'm mainly thinking British 18th c for whatever reason, there were many individuals who defied them in one way or another).
But yeah. Not sure from at least those 2 posts at least how she defrauds feminism, necessarily. She's just having opinions about stuff on her blog. Which is fine.
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I think I'd go with Kala mostly on this. Please note that this discussion is going to be from the perspective of a guy in the US.
That said, the issue I have with MRA and the perception of modern feminism is that MRA holds up comparatively infrequent instances of abuse of men and paints it as endemic and frequent, while abuse of women does in fact remain endemic and frequent. Consider that the recent spate of recorded high school rape of passed-out girls is frequently responded to with, "What was she thinking?," "She deserved it for going out with guys!," and "They shouldn't have recorded it!" And this is standard thinking. Someone very dear to me was, when younger and naive, given a Long Island Iced Tea by a fellow who was once her teacher in high school, and later sexually assaulted by him-- because she assumed she could trust him and could treat him as a friend, where he assumed that she was a female and thus he could do with her as he pleased, once she was drunk enough to not resist.
All she could get him on was serving alcohol to a minor. Fortunately, this means he won't be in a position of trust any more, but the point stands that this is not uncommon. Consider the proportion of women who will be raped at some point in their lives. Surely, yes, men are raped too -- but what portion of the population? This indicates that the issue is gendered, despite the progress that has been made over the last few decades, over the last century.
Now, speaking generally: the waves of feminism.
First-wave feminism is what we think of as the suffragist movement, about women's political participation and ability to inherit -- basic legal rights necessary to participate in society.
Second-wave feminism is the feminism of the '60s and '70s -- about participation in the job market, about the basic body self-determination (remember that until recently, a married woman could be raped by her husband-- there was a presumption that her body was his to do with as he pleased), and so on.
Third wave feminism-- this is where people are running into issues. Third-wave feminism is about the freedom from gendered social stigma in daily life. Consider what we think of a woman who parties or sleeps around-- she's a dirty slut, to be used and discarded, who can't be raped because clearly she was asking for it. And a man who parties and sleeps around? Odds are, unless he's pretty creepy, we sort of envy him, we give him high-fives.
There is a strong reaction to feminism. Given a chance, reactionaries will happily dismantle this social progress, using a strawman of misandry and man-hating, of women being unable to commit heinous crimes because only men are criminals, and all men are criminals. Surely, the militants aren't ideal-- even if they aren't misandrists, their focus on opaque philosophy of language and social structures that are essentially invisible to participants can confuse or turn off your average person, male or female.
Violence is never acceptable, whether emotional or physical, against man or woman. I'm sorry that you suffered violence, Vikarion; that's a terrible thing to face coming from family. Thank you for being able to share it. I understand, I think; my dad was a verbally abusive alcoholic. I'm still dealing with it.
I'd agree with you that violence is pervasive and human, and that unbalanced people regardless of gender will use it against others. This is not acceptable. I would propose that the efforts of feminism are, at least, to remove the sanction of society from the use of sexual violence against women-- something that is tacitly present whenever we go, "She was asking for it."
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(oh, and forgot an important point-- yes. Equality? We want it. I want people to have the legal autonomy and the social freedom to do as they like with who they like, how they like, so long as all involved are consenting adults; to pursue jobs they are capable of, to be paid according to their ability, without stigma or pay differentials based on gender; to pay taxes or raise kids or serve in the military without being banned from certain roles because, "lols. househusband? does she own your balls?," or "lols. women with guns? what if she has a period in the middle of Fallujah? hurhurhur.")
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I don't know, I've never had a woman accuse me of treating her as a second-class citizen. Maybe in America, it's a little bit much when you hear a woman ranting about men being complete shits and how unequal it is. However, it still does exist, and it's not all men who are to blame for keeping women in the house with the kids. Sometimes, that's just tradition in households and there's not much you can do about it. It's not even really up to us to say that's better or worse as a model of family life.
I guess that, being married and relatively stable, my brushes with extreme feminism are few and far between. I like to think we approach our relationship as equal partners, mostly because I don't feel like paying for everything or being the sole breadwinner for a housewife. She can work and contribute as equally as she wants!
On the other hand, while it's debatable in the western world whether or not feminism goes too far sometimes and whether it's even necessary, outside of our developed world is another story. Feminism still does have a lot of work to do, namely in places where being a woman doesn't just mean having a harder time getting a CEO position, but means your entire worth to your family might be a few goats that can be garnered when you're married to a wealthy carpet salesman who can beat you to within an inch of your life for bothering him. I'm willing to tolerate a little awkward eye-rolls when someone flies off the hinge here to keep the movement credited where it's needed.
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((Soapbox))
I'm sorry for the sense of loss, betrayal and exhaustion you probably feel. If it makes you feel any better though, or opens your eyes a bit, pretty much every Ideal I've ever believed in has turned out to be false...or at least heavily co-opted by interest groups.
I believed in the particular Church I went to when I was young. I came to find out that it felt more like yet another power structure bent on domination and wealth accrual. So I stopped believing.
I believed that the particular Military Service I joined was committed to the defense and betterment of my Nation. Yup, that one fell through as well. It was ran more like a corporation that produced terrible leaders and random tasks that served little to no purpose. So I stopped believing.
I've believed in various public figures or promises of Hope and Change. All of them have fallen far short of any respectable mark. So again, I stopped believing.
And the ones that hurt the most. Just about every promise that has ever been made to me by someone I loved and trusted has been broken. Same as above.
The only ideologies, ideals, goals and beliefs worth having and following are your own. The minute you let them get out of your head and hands, they are co-opted by those who would abuse them for the power they generate. I hope you can find some kind of peace with your beliefs and seek to pursue them for the betterment of all, and not the domination and destruction of them.
((/Soapbox))
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((Soapbox))
I'm sorry for the sense of loss, betrayal and exhaustion you probably feel. If it makes you feel any better though, or opens your eyes a bit, pretty much every Ideal I've ever believed in has turned out to be false...or at least heavily co-opted by interest groups.
I believed in the particular Church I went to when I was young. I came to find out that it felt more like yet another power structure bent on domination and wealth accrual. So I stopped believing.
I believed that the particular Military Service I joined was committed to the defense and betterment of my Nation. Yup, that one fell through as well. It was ran more like a corporation that produced terrible leaders and random tasks that served little to no purpose. So I stopped believing.
I've believed in various public figures or promises of Hope and Change. All of them have fallen far short of any respectable mark. So again, I stopped believing.
And the ones that hurt the most. Just about every promise that has ever been made to me by someone I loved and trusted has been broken. Same as above.
The only ideologies, ideals, goals and beliefs worth having and following are your own. The minute you let them get out of your head and hands, they are co-opted by those who would abuse them for the power they generate. I hope you can find some kind of peace with your beliefs and seek to pursue them for the betterment of all, and not the domination and destruction of them.
((/Soapbox))
All I can think about is Steven's testimony before the Sanhedrin.
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I'm a bit reminded of the legal maxim of Hard Cases Make Bad Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law) - just that in this case it would be that Extremist Spokespeople don't make a movement - but they might be needed to keep a movement going. I am also reminded of real-time systems control - in order to attain a desired state quickly, you have to over-correct, even if it means that you have to back down a bit afterwards. There is no steady state in society - there will always be movement above and below the state you desire; it's intrinsic to feedback-driven systems.
Sometimes I read posts claiming that Feminism is no longer necessary, because we are now in an age where it is not unheard of that men are domestically abused by women. To which my response usually is that in the majority of cases, it's still women being abused by men; and Feminism won't have reached its goals until the relation is 50/50 (and ideally 0 total). And that without Feminism raising the topic of domestic abuse as such, men wouldn't even dare to acknowledge if they are victims of domestic abuse.
I admit that this comment doesn't have much of a point, just two thoughts. But I wanted to mention them.
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Violence is never acceptable, whether emotional or physical, against man or woman. I'm sorry that you suffered violence, Vikarion; that's a terrible thing to face coming from family. Thank you for being able to share it. I understand, I think; my dad was a verbally abusive alcoholic. I'm still dealing with it.
I appreciate the sympathy, but, understand that I don't really feel bad about being attacked or abused, so it's not really hard to share what I did. My sisters do feel bad, both for themselves and, oddly enough, for me, but I'm fine. My only regret is that I never had the chance to take the SATs, so that I might achieved a higher education.
My point isn't sympathy, it's this: feminism has a large "range" of ideas. Some feminists are just interested in women being treated fairly. I understand that.
But a fairly large range of the ideas I've read seem to attribute the "unfair" actions of society to men, and to assume that society, as it is currently formulated, is designed to favor men. Many advocates of this sort of view seem to also attribute the "bad" actions of women at least in part to this sort of society. And, lastly, it seems to be frequently held that the inherent nature of men upholds and supports this sort of society.
It could be. But it seems to be used to explain too much, too often. I don't actually believe that my actions, or the actions of my father, had anything to do with the way my mother acted. I don't think that my mother's strong religious beliefs were the result of male influence - she was the one who originally chose them (as my father and mother were not originally that religious), and who radicalized them within our home. Or, to put it another way, my mother adopted a radically traditionalist narrative for our home, against the desires of virtually everyone else in it. And she was not the only one - in many of the other families in our little cult, I observed that it was most often the mother who drove the family in that direction.
Why did she do this, if it is an inherently patriarchal man-favoring structure? Because, in many ways, it isn't. The same idea that gives the mother the home as her sphere of influence also gives her authority within that sphere, as historians such as James McPherson have noted. My mother did not want to work. She wanted security, a house, higher social status, the ability to show off her family, and an income. She got that from my dad - who, incidentally, she used to work with, and he would have preferred her to have kept working.
As a note, I'd point out that the image of the dominated housewife is no less real - the fun thing about the "traditional family" is that power in the relationship flows to whoever is more aggressive and less caring.
What relation does this have to the topic? Simply this: I am extraordinarily skeptical of the theory that men have had it all their way up to this point, that women have only been the victims, and that society is biased against women, full stop. One might say that I have a slightly higher opinion of women than to think that they were entirely the oppressed class for the last several thousand years, everywhere in the civilized world.
Probably about 750,000 American soldiers died in the American Civil war. They were, almost to the last one, men. Many of them were encouraged or nigh-forced to go by their wives, especially in the South (again, reference to McPherson) - and this in a society where white women were nearly property in some areas. Millions of soldiers also died in World War One, where the contribution of at least one feminist group was pinning white feathers on men who did not wish to participate in that entirely pointless war. If most CEOs are men, it is also true that a large majority of the homeless are men, too.
This sounds a bit mens-rightish, but I do think it is a reasonable question: if we live in a patriarchy, a society which moves to oppress women, why are the biggest losers often also men? The ones who get dead, diseased, who are provided no help when down, and are otherwise disposable to society tend to be men, especially single men. Is it then a "patriarchal" system, a system for the benefit of men and by the design of men? I don't see how one can conclude that without thus concluding that men are therefore inherently violent, self-destructive, and inferior to women.
Or one can conclude that systems of societal oppression are more complex than can be attributed to such simple drivers as gender, or social constructions, or class. If all of history has not, indeed, been the war of class against class, or race against race, then it probably is an error to conclude that we can construct a model in which men against women is the accurate explanation.
None of this is to say that women should not be equal. But it is difficult to see that women would want to be equal in all areas. Do women really want to be funneled into the military machine as men are? Do single women want to be homeless as often as single men are? Do women want to be equally represented in dangerous and shitty jobs? Do women want to be sentenced exactly the same as men are? Do women want to be the ones who ask men out on dates and pay for the meal (if we want to get petty). I haven't met many men who would be pleased to seek representation for their gender in these areas, and I rather doubt that women would. Having been often treated favorably in these areas, I doubt that many women would want to change that - and it shows.
Now, I think women should be equal, and across the board, at that. But if you don't want to embrace the ugly side of equality, we can put all this talk of feminism being about equality by the boards. What it then becomes is the desire to be equal in all the fun areas - the CEOs, the pay rate, etc. As I've said before, I think that that is a normal reaction. Still, it's not good for a movement that tries to use equality as a calling card.
Of course, there is another response that is taken, and that is the one of portraying women as the victims of whatever happens, and thus deserving of special treatment. You can see examples of this all over the place. Here's one from Hillary Clinton:
Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.
Now, as insensitive as I am, this still seems hilariously stupid. In general, we tend to act as though being dead is probably the worst thing that could happen to us. If grief, or raising children alone, or becoming a refugee was worse, well, then, the logical thing to do would be to off yourself as soon as you lost someone. But aside from that, this sort of thinking completely skips over the cost to the men - to lose their friends, brothers, and buddies, and, also, to lose their life. That's not to say that women have not - especially in more modern wars - been major victims. However, one might suppose that it is a bit more likely that the ones who tend to get dead the most (men, civilian and military), tend to be the biggest victims.
That's just an example, but others can be found upon request. I've seen varieties of it myself - if a women hits a man, she must have had a good reason/he must have provoked her or threatened her. Actually, that was my mom's favorite defense. The irony of the fact that it is also a favorite of male abusers is not lost on me. And this thread stretches both through some forms of feminism and traditionalism. Consider this following article:
http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/ (http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/)
In this article, a woman defends the idea of treating men as potential rapists until proven otherwise, because it is impossible to tell what man might be a rapist - and rape has a high cost for women. It's well-argued, I think, and I actually agreed, until I tried substituting other terms - for example, "black man" and "mugger", or "woman" and "shoplifter". When you realize that placing other nouns into the argument makes it incredibly racist or sexist, one begins to wonder if one isn't accepting a flawed method of thinking.
And I think that that is what really tends to piss some people off. Not the idea that women should be equal, but the idea that the historical position of women justifies placing them in a special class now, a class not subject to the sort of criticism or clear-eyed rationality that we enforce upon others.
All of this, however, does not deny that equality is a rational goal, and that women around the globe are treated very badly indeed in some places. So are many men. So are gays and lesbians, Christians, Hindus, indeed, virtually every creed, color, gender, and unmentioned minority is persecuted somewhere. I think that in reducing this irrational state of things, feminism is a necessary part. But the fact that it is necessary does not mean that it is perfect, or that it is special. And it is possible to, in the pursuit of fairness, wind up maintaining privileges.
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A good lesson from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man." Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, and we don't teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors--not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing--but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. "Feminist": the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
So yes I have neither seen nor read anything convincing as to why equality is not desirable. We raise our children, not simply according to different genders, but according to very, very different roles. It is a gross injustice.
And if you seriously believe that you can change that, or things similar, without thinking in terms of equality, then you simply have no idea of a solution.
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Egalitarian and anti-feminist
As an aside, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I get these are only really basic definitions here for essentially complex ideas (which are going to have more than one definition!), but still...as a basic premise feminism is fundamentally egalitarian in nature.
"feminism: the doctrine — and the political movement based on it — that women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men."
...sooo...women and men should have the same rights.
"egalitarianism: asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life."
...sooo...women and men should have the same rights.
:|
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Tried one video at random, which consisted of a radical feminist piece being read by a funny-voiced vocoder, overlaid with quotes on the "extreme female brain" mirroring the "extreme male brain" speculation on the causes of autism, because, you know, bitch be cray-zee.
The second apparently set up "social rape of men", i.e. false rape accusations, as some kind of balanced counterpoint to, you know, rape.
Altogether not really a life-changing experience so far, I'm sad to say.
Are you sure that red pill wasn't just horse tranquilizer, or http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/ ?
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Tried one video at random, which consisted of a radical feminist piece being read by a funny-voiced vocoder, overlaid with quotes on the "extreme female brain" mirroring the "extreme male brain" speculation on the causes of autism, because, you know, bitch be cray-zee.
The second apparently set up "social rape of men", i.e. false rape accusations, as some kind of balanced counterpoint to, you know, rape.
Altogether not really a life-changing experience so far, I'm sad to say.
Are you sure that red pill wasn't just horse tranquilizer, or http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/ ?
Yes, I'm not very interested in the MRA movement because, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be that much of an atmosphere of reasonable conversation about them. I think that they have data to support some concern for men and boys, at least in American society (graduation rates, child custody, domestic violence, genital mutilation, etc), but half of them seem to think that everything would be better with women "back in the kitchen", and the other half don't seem to want to admit that women's inequalities exist, or, if they do, have any significance. To me, the former is regressive tripe, the latter is the same sin that makes many vocal feminists come off as, well, not worth listening to.
There are definitely reasonable feminists out there, and probably some reasonable MRA-ers. I haven't managed to read many of the latter. Actually, if my memory serves, I haven't read any popular MRA sites that were, well, balanced or reasonable.
As an example, I found out not too long ago about a part (I guess?) of the MRA "movement" called MGTOW, or Men Going Their Own Way. From what I've read, the idea is that relationships with women are unlikely to be successful, and that society penalizes legal involvement with women in favor of the woman (alimony, child support, custody, etc), so it's better not to participate. Well, ok, I can see how someone might conclude that, given the high failure rate of relationships, and some of the things I've seen some guys go through. I don't know that it's systemic, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
I mean, I generally view relationships as a way to get things I want, because, from my point of view, relationships are generally about interests, desires and power. So, if you don't think you're going to get what you want, don't play the game, right?
Heh. Apparently, some cannot simply not play the game, but must stomp on the board, toss the pieces in the air, and declare their opponents to be cheaters. Or, to put it another way, the focus did not seem to be on "how to live an enjoyable life as a single guy", but on more of a "I hate women and everything they do" theme. When I think of MRAs, I can't help but occasionally get a hint of that.
I want to be fair - some complaints do seem warranted. For example, there's this list here: http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2013/11/mens-rights-101.html (http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2013/11/mens-rights-101.html) (EDIT: to be sure, I don't agree with this guy, having just now read a bit of him), which, while it has some bad sources, has some good ones as well (no, I didn't read his blog previous to this, I just found the list). There's my personal experience, which suggests that a view of women as "an oppressed class who are justified in what they do to their oppressors" has some, uh, problems. But I don't think you're going to get very far by adopting a sensationalist style, hyper-aggressive tone, or by trying to make everything look it's wonderful for women.
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Tried one video at random, which consisted of a radical feminist piece being read by a funny-voiced vocoder, overlaid with quotes on the "extreme female brain" mirroring the "extreme male brain" speculation on the causes of autism, because, you know, bitch be cray-zee.
The second apparently set up "social rape of men", i.e. false rape accusations, as some kind of balanced counterpoint to, you know, rape.
Altogether not really a life-changing experience so far, I'm sad to say.
Are you sure that red pill wasn't just horse tranquilizer, or http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/ ?
Yes, I'm not very interested in the MRA movement because, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be that much of an atmosphere of reasonable conversation about them. I think that they have data to support some concern for men and boys, at least in American society (graduation rates, child custody, domestic violence, genital mutilation, etc), but half of them seem to think that everything would be better with women "back in the kitchen", and the other half don't seem to want to admit that women's inequalities exist, or, if they do, have any significance. To me, the former is regressive tripe, the latter is the same sin that makes many vocal feminists come off as, well, not worth listening to.
There are definitely reasonable feminists out there, and probably some reasonable MRA-ers. I haven't managed to read many of the latter. Actually, if my memory serves, I haven't read any popular MRA sites that were, well, balanced or reasonable.
As an example, I found out not too long ago about a part (I guess?) of the MRA "movement" called MGTOW, or Men Going Their Own Way. From what I've read, the idea is that relationships with women are unlikely to be successful, and that society penalizes legal involvement with women in favor of the woman (alimony, child support, custody, etc), so it's better not to participate. Well, ok, I can see how someone might conclude that, given the high failure rate of relationships, and some of the things I've seen some guys go through. I don't know that it's systemic, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
I mean, I generally view relationships as a way to get things I want, because, from my point of view, relationships are generally about interests, desires and power. So, if you don't think you're going to get what you want, don't play the game, right?
Heh. Apparently, some cannot simply not play the game, but must stomp on the board, toss the pieces in the air, and declare their opponents to be cheaters. Or, to put it another way, the focus did not seem to be on "how to live an enjoyable life as a single guy", but on more of a "I hate women and everything they do" theme. When I think of MRAs, I can't help but occasionally get a hint of that.
I want to be fair - some complaints do seem warranted. For example, there's this list here: http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2013/11/mens-rights-101.html (http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2013/11/mens-rights-101.html), which, while it has some bad sources, has some good ones as well (no, I don't read his blog, I just found the list). There's my personal experience, which suggests that a view of women as "an oppressed class who are justified in what they do to their oppressors" has some, uh, problems. But I don't think you're going to get very far by adopting a sensationalist style, hyper-aggressive tone, or by trying to make everything look it's wonderful for women.
I think the problem with that argument runs that men are unfairly victimized by child support, alimony, and more. The problem with it is that the system is mostly unbiased, it's just that the system seems stacked against the man because marriage is stacked against the woman. They usually get more alimony because they usually make less money. When they do, it's often because it's their time that gets sacrificed to raise the kids, hence why they can usually prove they deserve custody. Once you can prove you deserve custody, child support follows.
In cases where stay-at-home dads get divorced from their wives, the courts generally decide in their way. Obviously, that doesn't happen very often just because of how families tend to work in the western world, but it does happen. It's more often that equally invested couples who divorce get split custody and nobody gets alimony.
Also to be fair, I started dating my wife when I was eighteen, and it's been almost 11 years now. The point of getting married is to not get divorced unless something really, really bad happens.
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I think the problem with that argument runs that men are unfairly victimized by child support, alimony, and more. The problem with it is that the system is mostly unbiased, it's just that the system seems stacked against the man because marriage is stacked against the woman. They usually get more alimony because they usually make less money. When they do, it's often because it's their time that gets sacrificed to raise the kids, hence why they can usually prove they deserve custody. Once you can prove you deserve custody, child support follows.
In cases where stay-at-home dads get divorced from their wives, the courts generally decide in their way. Obviously, that doesn't happen very often just because of how families tend to work in the western world, but it does happen. It's more often that equally invested couples who divorce get split custody and nobody gets alimony.
I think this betrays a little bit of bias on your part. I think that, if you consider time spent with the kids to be a "sacrifice", you are probably not viewing child-rearing in the most healthy way. As well, given the fact that the pay gap is not as large as the custody gap, and given the fact that many mothers work, using your explanation doesn't seem to explain this large of a deviation from the theoretical norm. Nor do my anecdotal experiences bear this out: there are at least some mothers who see custody as a means of leverage and manipulation.
That said, I'll be honest: this is a mild academic interest for me, and I don't put much stock in anecdotes. I don't intend to have kids, and I find that I'm far happier (minus the occasional day or two a year) on the average if I'm focused on my own well-being, as opposed to someone else's. I'm more interested by far in dealing with issues like the lack of a social safety net for men and the lack of awareness regarding female domestic violence.
Also to be fair, I started dating my wife when I was eighteen, and it's been almost 11 years now. The point of getting married is to not get divorced unless something really, really bad happens.
Something really, really bad must happen to a lot of people. Like, over half. :P
I think there's a lot of societal pressure on men (I can't speak for women on this) to get married. At least, people have put it on me. I think one of my favorites was being told that I was selfish, as there was some girl out there who needed me in her life, or a partner, or something like that. More common has been the intimation or the outright assertion that my worth is to be found in supporting a wife and children. Or rather infantile bits like this: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448 (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448). Now, despite the fact that I have my own place, I suspect that I am one of the people who the author has a problem with, because I'm not "manning up" to be a good partner. Well, I don't think that this societal pressure is good for the divorce rate, and as for me, I'm far more interested in money than sex, much less marriage.
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((Soapbox))
I'm sorry for the sense of loss, betrayal and exhaustion you probably feel. If it makes you feel any better though, or opens your eyes a bit, pretty much every Ideal I've ever believed in has turned out to be false...or at least heavily co-opted by interest groups.
I believed in the particular Church I went to when I was young. I came to find out that it felt more like yet another power structure bent on domination and wealth accrual. So I stopped believing.
I believed that the particular Military Service I joined was committed to the defense and betterment of my Nation. Yup, that one fell through as well. It was ran more like a corporation that produced terrible leaders and random tasks that served little to no purpose. So I stopped believing.
I've believed in various public figures or promises of Hope and Change. All of them have fallen far short of any respectable mark. So again, I stopped believing.
And the ones that hurt the most. Just about every promise that has ever been made to me by someone I loved and trusted has been broken. Same as above.
The only ideologies, ideals, goals and beliefs worth having and following are your own. The minute you let them get out of your head and hands, they are co-opted by those who would abuse them for the power they generate. I hope you can find some kind of peace with your beliefs and seek to pursue them for the betterment of all, and not the domination and destruction of them.
((/Soapbox))
Shall I introduce you to Friedrich Nietzsche?
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Shall I introduce you to Friedrich Nietzsche?
“Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. "
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I think the problem with that argument runs that men are unfairly victimized by child support, alimony, and more. The problem with it is that the system is mostly unbiased, it's just that the system seems stacked against the man because marriage is stacked against the woman. They usually get more alimony because they usually make less money. When they do, it's often because it's their time that gets sacrificed to raise the kids, hence why they can usually prove they deserve custody. Once you can prove you deserve custody, child support follows.
In cases where stay-at-home dads get divorced from their wives, the courts generally decide in their way. Obviously, that doesn't happen very often just because of how families tend to work in the western world, but it does happen. It's more often that equally invested couples who divorce get split custody and nobody gets alimony.
I think this betrays a little bit of bias on your part. I think that, if you consider time spent with the kids to be a "sacrifice", you are probably not viewing child-rearing in the most healthy way. As well, given the fact that the pay gap is not as large as the custody gap, and given the fact that many mothers work, using your explanation doesn't seem to explain this large of a deviation from the theoretical norm. Nor do my anecdotal experiences bear this out: there are at least some mothers who see custody as a means of leverage and manipulation.
That said, I'll be honest: this is a mild academic interest for me, and I don't put much stock in anecdotes. I don't intend to have kids, and I find that I'm far happier (minus the occasional day or two a year) on the average if I'm focused on my own well-being, as opposed to someone else's. I'm more interested by far in dealing with issues like the lack of a social safety net for men and the lack of awareness regarding female domestic violence.
Also to be fair, I started dating my wife when I was eighteen, and it's been almost 11 years now. The point of getting married is to not get divorced unless something really, really bad happens.
Something really, really bad must happen to a lot of people. Like, over half. :P
I think there's a lot of societal pressure on men (I can't speak for women on this) to get married. At least, people have put it on me. I think one of my favorites was being told that I was selfish, as there was some girl out there who needed me in her life, or a partner, or something like that. More common has been the intimation or the outright assertion that my worth is to be found in supporting a wife and children. Or rather infantile bits like this: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448 (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448). Now, despite the fact that I have my own place, I suspect that I am one of the people who the author has a problem with, because I'm not "manning up" to be a good partner. Well, I don't think that this societal pressure is good for the divorce rate, and as for me, I'm far more interested in money than sex, much less marriage.
If it's unhealthy to not like kids, then I'm probably pretty sick. Then again, I don't want to have kids because I grew up in a family where my dad definitely didn't want them, he just had them because that's what you did for most people in the 80s. He didn't dislike us, in fact I distinctly remember him sometimes liking it when we were around. But it was later in life that I realized that it really was a sacrifice for him, the same as it would be for me. Kids are either cute or annoying, and for him and me they're annoying. I don't think he really liked consistently talking to me until I was almost in college. Thank God my mother's not like that. She thinks kids are cute. So when my parents split, my mom got custody, my dad got visitation, and that was fine for the both of them. I was a fairly happy kid of divorced parents.
I guess I never worried much about female domestic violence because if a woman ever got violent with me, I might not knock her head off but I would definitely not stay with her. Call me egomaniacal, but I think I'm a damn fine man and I'm worth having. Maybe it's more a result of my upbringing, but I see abused men the same way I see abused women, that they're victims mostly due to low self-confidence and not having anywhere to fall back to. I've never had that problem. My family, though divorced, is pretty tight-knit and I don't have to take anyone's shit. If I ever had to go back to the single-people marketplace, I don't think I'd sit on the shelf that long.
I've got no problem saying that's my opinion and it comes from a very specific place. I tend to react to societal pressure to do anything (drink, smoke, get married, have kids, cut my hair) with a degree of hostility and suspicion. The weird thing is that I didn't want to get married in high school; I thought it was a religious anachronism. However, I think being married is something I can recommend. My relationship is a lot different than someone with a long-term, live-in girlfriend just in terms of how I seem to view my own relationship. That's why I've been to so many gay marriage rallies here in town.
It's one of those things that doesn't seem important until you've been with someone for a while and you know that she's it, you're never going to meet anyone better in all your life. You meet a girl who loves pocket-healing your raids, doesn't mind not having kids, hangs on your every word about the benefits of .30-06 ammunition, enjoys your first date seeing House of 1000 Corpses in theater, graduates summa cum laude, thinks your hairy chest and stomach is sexy, goes with you on a six hour pilgrimage to see Slayer live, refuses to drink because she knows your family history and teetotals with you through college even though she went to hers two hours away, you don't come to an understanding on your living arrangements. You marry that woman and you never look back.
I think the reason the divorce rate is so high is because people don't get married for the above reason (or, you know, whatever's important for people who don't like that stuff). They get married for reasons like they got their fling pregnant or because they went on a few good dates and get impulsive. I'll be frank as well, forever is a long, long time. Lots of men and women get intermittently bored and for some reason single men and women like married men and women a lot (maybe it's because you get attached to someone pretty quick if you're decently good looking and easy to get along with). Even if you know it's a bad idea, that your wife is amazing and you couldn't ask for better, you're going to be tempted because of the sheer volume of flirting that suddenly gets fired your way. Marriage is for people with a lot of discipline that aren't prone to bouts of stupidity. Anytime you spend a lot of time with someone, they'll get on your nerves now and again, and your spouse will always be there with you, will probably want to go to all of your functions, will know all of your friends, will live, sleep, and eat with you every single day for hopefully the rest of your life. Yes, there are times I have to go somewhere and do my own thing for a few hours just because you can't handle any person without a break.
But do I recommend it? Absolutely! I dated my wife all the way through college then moved in with her in Houston for a while before we got the whole wedding planned. That period where everyone said I was supposed to be having wild parties and screwing around, I was attached and I spent it hoping it was going to work out with this one woman. Was it worth it? My anniversary is on FUCKING HALLOWEEN! We had a costume party for a wedding! I guarantee you that no man has ever thought his life would turn out quite so good as that. It's a lot different to be able to say to someone that this woman isn't your girlfriend or your "partner" (which I always hated because it sounds like you're running a small business), but this is your wife and you're planning on being with her, good or bad, until the cholesterol problems that plague your family tree ends up popping your ancient heart like a water balloon.
Coming from someone who thought otherwise, it doesn't just change how your family and friends see your relationship, but how you see it. It kind of gets beyond a joint enterprise of sex and child rearing and becomes more of a life mission statement. Lots of people don't get that until it's too late. Even with everything going on now, when I spend a lot of time with her at her parents' house (her father's not probably going to make it another year) and away from things that maybe make me happy, I know that she's not in this thing for her own pleasure either and she'll be there when I need help. A good wife or husband is the rock you put your back against that handles the other half of the shit that gets flung at you from all directions. It was really nice when I got laid off and her income basically made up for what I lost in unemployment until I got another job. She's also my biggest cheerleader.
Don't get married if your relationship is weak and you think it needs to be stronger, but I can definitely say that once you think you've got "the" woman, do the marriage thing. If you get it wrong, you don't really end up much worse off than when you were single, but if you get it right, your life gets easier on the whole. You get someone that can pick up the slack, especially on things you're not good at, as long as you're willing to specialize a little on the things that you're good at for them. And yes, even as you said, you do get booty on tap.
I guess if you really just don't like other people though, that might be a hassle. Just saying, marriage gets a bad rap from people who make bad decisions, but I figure a 50% rate on something that's usually done in your 20s-30s that lasts until someone dies is a pretty damn good statistic. These days, when being divorced isn't a point of much ostracism anymore and you don't have the widespread puritanical view of ironclad marriage we used to (thank God), 50% means people must be making better decisions than I give them credit for. I'm shocked that many people make it the whole stretch.
... I think I may have posted a lot more about marriage during this little stream-of-consciousness defense of marriage than I wanted to.
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+1 to that stuff.
Re: Vikarion, there's frequently a lot more pressure on women to get married than on men, although it depends on family/culture. I'm from a strange mix of socialy progressive and theologically conservative that resulted in a mixed fear or marriage (my mother being divorced twice didn't help) and determination to get married. My wife, on the other hand, came from an even more conservative background such that she felt deviant and subversive for not really wanting to get married. Having seen her family dynamics, I don't blame her.
... the above really has nothing to do with my point, does it? Bother.
Anyhow, what I meant to say, is that there is frequently/usually/almost always more pressure on women then on men to get married, at least in American culture. While men will certainly get questions from older family members about why they haven't settled down yet, the degree to which our worth is questioned because we're single doesn't even compare. You can be a man and be considered successful and still be single. We have stories, books and movies and such, about men doing big things. It's rare to encounter stories like that about women - usually, if you have a primary female character, her story is going to revolve around relationships or children. You're rarely going to see a woman in a book or a movie who is doing Important Things™ without being somehow romantically involved with another character. [An example that just popped into mind after seeing The Hobbit this past weekend. Peter Jackson added Tauriel, a female elf who spends most of the movie kicking ass. The problem? She's the only meaningful female character, and aside from killing orcs, her only value to the story is in flirting with one of the dwarfs and making Legolas jealous because he has a crush on her. The elf king pulls her aside to talk to her - but only because Legolas likes her. That's what makes her important.]
See enough movies and read enough books where the thing that makes women important is the fact that the men like them, and you start to absorb this whether you really want to or not.
/rant
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I may be wrong but people over here do not really care at all for marriage, even as a purely secular bond... However, they still do it if you are single. It can somehow become shameful, or just that they will do anything to find you someone because otherwise "it's not normal".
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[An example that just popped into mind after seeing The Hobbit this past weekend. Peter Jackson added Tauriel, a female elf who spends most of the movie kicking ass. The problem? She's the only meaningful female character, and aside from killing orcs, her only value to the story is in flirting with one of the dwarfs and making Legolas jealous because he has a crush on her. The elf king pulls her aside to talk to her - but only because Legolas likes her. That's what makes her important.]
I think I know why Peter Jackson has done this. Read The Hobbit, and count the female characters. I honestly can't remember any. I don't even think there are any. Tauriel seems to have been added to give younger, female, Hobbit fans a "role model" as such, of a strong, independent, ass kicking woman.
Of course, as you point out, Jackson seems to have taken one step forward and two back here, as he's made Tauriel only important as part of some inter-sepcies love triangle.
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+1 to that stuff.
Re: Vikarion, there's frequently a lot more pressure on women to get married than on men, although it depends on family/culture. I'm from a strange mix of socialy progressive and theologically conservative that resulted in a mixed fear or marriage (my mother being divorced twice didn't help) and determination to get married. My wife, on the other hand, came from an even more conservative background such that she felt deviant and subversive for not really wanting to get married. Having seen her family dynamics, I don't blame her.
... the above really has nothing to do with my point, does it? Bother.
Anyhow, what I meant to say, is that there is frequently/usually/almost always more pressure on women then on men to get married, at least in American culture. While men will certainly get questions from older family members about why they haven't settled down yet, the degree to which our worth is questioned because we're single doesn't even compare. You can be a man and be considered successful and still be single. We have stories, books and movies and such, about men doing big things. It's rare to encounter stories like that about women - usually, if you have a primary female character, her story is going to revolve around relationships or children. You're rarely going to see a woman in a book or a movie who is doing Important Things™ without being somehow romantically involved with another character. [An example that just popped into mind after seeing The Hobbit this past weekend. Peter Jackson added Tauriel, a female elf who spends most of the movie kicking ass. The problem? She's the only meaningful female character, and aside from killing orcs, her only value to the story is in flirting with one of the dwarfs and making Legolas jealous because he has a crush on her. The elf king pulls her aside to talk to her - but only because Legolas likes her. That's what makes her important.]
See enough movies and read enough books where the thing that makes women important is the fact that the men like them, and you start to absorb this whether you really want to or not.
/rant
I remember writing a really long essay about that in a film studies course in college. The examination wasn't as much on whether it exists or not, but whether it's justifiable. For some reason, of the 10% of female characters that aren't just willowy love interests in stories, almost all of them are essentially compensatory. They make them stand out in such a way that they don't seem like interesting female characters; they make them into male characters with female bits attached. It's almost like female empowerment in media seems to be derived from what we associate as male qualities like physical presence, intimidation, and a domineering personality. You almost never see a movie where a man is portrayed as being stronger because of his feminine qualities, even in movies where a woman takes on that former role.
Maybe it's just because, while it isn't seemly or correct to say women are subservient creatures who exist as pretty trinkets for ubermenschian film heroes, that's what an awful lot of men and women have sort of assumed for years. Even now, when most of us enlightened types know better, there's always a large segment of the population that didn't get the memo. So seeing it portrayed in some other way seems really weird to them. I try not to assume that my opinion isn't a universal one; plenty of men probably still see women as little better than trainable dogs.
And if that's the way most film today is, imagine what it was like back in Tolkein's day. Then, it was considered pretty progressive if you listed your wife as the main beneficiary and executor of your will. He just didn't write in many female characters. Even the ones that Peter Jackson didn't add to the story, that were native to the novels, he gave some pretty expanded roles to. Tolkein's women sort of existed to drive the men through plot elements. You can't really call him a sexist; it's just how things were in literature of that nature.
So maybe we still have a long way to go in making women into real equals in media without simply dumping male traits into them until it seems to even out, but it's better than it was. Ever see the end of McLintock? Where your marital problems can get solved by chasing your wife through town, embarrassing her, then beating her? I watch that ending and it kind of makes my stomach turn. But it's hard to judge it because it was made so long ago. I don't really have a sense of perspective for it.
If they tried to play that off as a comical joke nowadays, I'd be pissed.
Sort of disjointed thoughts there on the subject, so I apologize if it was just jumping around.
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I suppose I tend not to notice the sort of "shy and retiring" females, but then, I don't particularly notice the "quiet and reticent" guys, either.
I don't think that media portrayals are as bad for women as might be made out, these days. Much of our older literature is sexist, yes, although I imagine that Tolkien quailed somewhat at the idea of how to portray a female dwarf. But because many of our movies, tv, and etc., are based on older sources, there's a carry-on effect (Tolkien, James Bond, Spider-man, whatever...we're still making movies from those).
Newer stuff, well, we have Buffy, Starcraft (and don't complain about hyper-sexualization in that, every male character is just as exaggerated), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Game of Thrones, and so on. The portrayal of the female as a shrinking violet is one that receives far less currency lately. I think you may never quite get away from the "male action hero" type, however, unless we come up with a drug to reduce testosterone levels.
Perhaps I'm somewhat jaded, however. Watching True Blood certainly gave me no inclinations to fawn over southern blonds. :P
As for me, I don't tend to think of strength, aggressiveness, or etc. as necessarily masculine qualities. I see them as potential human qualities, qualities which are needed in order to survive in an often cruel and always uncaring world. I happen to know a few women who actually prefer to have their men shield them from that, where possible. I am not a fan of this view, and I am not a fan of the view that thinks that men need to be more "soft". The women I admire, as the men, are often the "not giving a fuck" sort, and invariably, the more determined and self-assured type.
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While men will certainly get questions from older family members about why they haven't settled down yet, the degree to which our worth is questioned because we're single doesn't even compare. You can be a man and be considered successful and still be single.
I can't speak to that in general, and I'm not convinced it's true, at least in my area of the country. I've certainly had questions from older family members - I've also had them from friends, acquaintances, etc. It could also be that, after a particularly unpleasant experience, I decided that I was, for lack of a better expression, less than thrilled about the return on investment in regards to my relationships. Perhaps I decided that a bit early, after only a few relationships, but having spent the last seven years without going on a date, some family and friends have become rather...well, I'm not sure. Sort of a combination of suspicion, discomfort, and perhaps a bit of anger. I've been "accused" of being gay a few times. ;)
But, then, I don't know how much pressure single women get. Work-wise, I used to have to deal with a definite surplus of comments. Fortunately, that lessens once you are in charge, and, honestly, I don't mind teasing now and then.
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TLDR (summary to date): Serious topic discusses serious issues with due seriousness. The One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron and attendant side-topics - hobbits, elves, dismally cliched Hollywood character and plot options superimposed on the original story, etc - then reveals itself and attempts to sway those under his Eye towards derailment. The fate of this thread - and perhaps the entire world - is balanced on a knife's edge. :P
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While men will certainly get questions from older family members about why they haven't settled down yet, the degree to which our worth is questioned because we're single doesn't even compare. You can be a man and be considered successful and still be single.
I can't speak to that in general, and I'm not convinced it's true, at least in my area of the country. I've certainly had questions from older family members - I've also had them from friends, acquaintances, etc. It could also be that, after a particularly unpleasant experience, I decided that I was, for lack of a better expression, less than thrilled about the return on investment in regards to my relationships. Perhaps I decided that a bit early, after only a few relationships, but having spent the last seven years without going on a date, some family and friends have become rather...well, I'm not sure. Sort of a combination of suspicion, discomfort, and perhaps a bit of anger. I've been "accused" of being gay a few times. ;)
But, then, I don't know how much pressure single women get. Work-wise, I used to have to deal with a definite surplus of comments. Fortunately, that lessens once you are in charge, and, honestly, I don't mind teasing now and then.
Believe me, what we get is nothing compared to what women get. Just for the reasons you mentioned, the longevity of all our media and history, women get shit for going outside the "norm" that you wouldn't believe. Men in our stories and lifetimes have been all sorts of things and run the gamut of experience, occupation, and human emotion. We are allowed to have a different lifestyle, even if people don't like it. I mean, just going over the kids issue, nobody really gives me that much shit for not wanting to have kids. It's almost like there's a level of understanding. The most common thing people say to me in that regard is, "Yeah, I didn't want kids either, but it's different when you have them." For the most part, though, me saying, "Oh, we don't really want to have any," tends to elicit a shrug or a nod.
Women? They don't get that. They get, "When are you having kids? When are you getting married?" Not if. Not to whom or with whom. When. That's got to drive them up the wall and pressure them the way we're never going to get pressured. I mean, by the time my mother was asking if we were going to be planning on getting married, my wife's friends and family had already planned out a wedding neither of us would have wanted. That white-dress, black-suit, bland gathering isn't for either one of us. I'll be damned if her side of the family wasn't pissed off at first because she was deviating from the normal wedding procedure.
I've got to say, that damn well bothers me, too. It's almost like women don't necessarily care who their friends/family/acquaintances end up with. Just get married and have kids. Us guys are interchangeable as far as those conversations go. We're like a vessel for seed and money so that women can live out the fantasies that have been pushed on them since they were born. As an outsider, I can only cringe and wonder at what kind of bullshit actually goes on. As much as it's said to be the case that men brainwash women, the truth is that a woman's greatest enemy is womankind.
Men get a somewhat opposite approach. Men get violent at an early age and start immediately competing in some way or another. That's pressed on us very early on. At least that's a more variable expectation, though. Our sports, our recommended activities, the entire culture pushed on boys is one of direct competition in whatever field we figure out we're good at. From what I gather, women don't seem to have that. They have more of a pecking order and their fighting can get dramatic, but women aren't taught from an early age to compete with each other for dominance. They are told to compete with each other for a man. The sad part is that they're usually taught to do it by their friends and family.
My brother and I grew up nerds and gamers, and neither of us is hypercompetitive. We liked playing RPGs and co-op games where we got to work together. In that, I guess my upbringing was a lot different. My parents weren't necessarily very conservative. But my sister? Even my mother was always asking her about her boyfriend and dating more than what she was doing at that particular time. Male culture seems so highly variable compared to that.
I've actually heard it countless times. I'm starting to think that things like the maternal instinct aren't really instincts, but that women are seriously brought up in the most pervasively conservative brainwashing program on the planet. The Hell with them getting dolls and kitchen sets for Christmas, I mean their entire lives are filled with a sort of backlog of pressure that they're expected to conform to. In essence, they never get to be a nerd or a jock or a stoner. They're always a girl first, and then they get to be everything else.
Still, maybe it just looks worse on the outside; I'm not a girl. I just know I've always grown up kind of happy I wasn't born one. I've got a bad track record on fulfilling my dedicated roles in society, and I always felt like I had half as much as any woman. In the end, I almost think that has very little to do with us anymore, I think it's sort of just inter-female gravity. Maybe there are women who can attest or disprove that?
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While men will certainly get questions from older family members about why they haven't settled down yet, the degree to which our worth is questioned because we're single doesn't even compare. You can be a man and be considered successful and still be single.
I can't speak to that in general, and I'm not convinced it's true, at least in my area of the country. I've certainly had questions from older family members - I've also had them from friends, acquaintances, etc. It could also be that, after a particularly unpleasant experience, I decided that I was, for lack of a better expression, less than thrilled about the return on investment in regards to my relationships. Perhaps I decided that a bit early, after only a few relationships, but having spent the last seven years without going on a date, some family and friends have become rather...well, I'm not sure. Sort of a combination of suspicion, discomfort, and perhaps a bit of anger. I've been "accused" of being gay a few times. ;)
But, then, I don't know how much pressure single women get. Work-wise, I used to have to deal with a definite surplus of comments. Fortunately, that lessens once you are in charge, and, honestly, I don't mind teasing now and then.
Believe me, what we get is nothing compared to what women get. Just for the reasons you mentioned, the longevity of all our media and history, women get shit for going outside the "norm" that you wouldn't believe. Men in our stories and lifetimes have been all sorts of things and run the gamut of experience, occupation, and human emotion. We are allowed to have a different lifestyle, even if people don't like it. I mean, just going over the kids issue, nobody really gives me that much shit for not wanting to have kids. It's almost like there's a level of understanding. The most common thing people say to me in that regard is, "Yeah, I didn't want kids either, but it's different when you have them." For the most part, though, me saying, "Oh, we don't really want to have any," tends to elicit a shrug or a nod.
Women? They don't get that. They get, "When are you having kids? When are you getting married?" Not if. Not to whom or with whom. When. That's got to drive them up the wall and pressure them the way we're never going to get pressured. I mean, by the time my mother was asking if we were going to be planning on getting married, my wife's friends and family had already planned out a wedding neither of us would have wanted. That white-dress, black-suit, bland gathering isn't for either one of us. I'll be damned if her side of the family wasn't pissed off at first because she was deviating from the normal wedding procedure.
I've got to say, that damn well bothers me, too. It's almost like women don't necessarily care who their friends/family/acquaintances end up with. Just get married and have kids. Us guys are interchangeable as far as those conversations go. We're like a vessel for seed and money so that women can live out the fantasies that have been pushed on them since they were born. As an outsider, I can only cringe and wonder at what kind of bullshit actually goes on. As much as it's said to be the case that men brainwash women, the truth is that a woman's greatest enemy is womankind.
Men get a somewhat opposite approach. Men get violent at an early age and start immediately competing in some way or another. That's pressed on us very early on. At least that's a more variable expectation, though. Our sports, our recommended activities, the entire culture pushed on boys is one of direct competition in whatever field we figure out we're good at. From what I gather, women don't seem to have that. They have more of a pecking order and their fighting can get dramatic, but women aren't taught from an early age to compete with each other for dominance. They are told to compete with each other for a man. The sad part is that they're usually taught to do it by their friends and family.
My brother and I grew up nerds and gamers, and neither of us is hypercompetitive. We liked playing RPGs and co-op games where we got to work together. In that, I guess my upbringing was a lot different. My parents weren't necessarily very conservative. But my sister? Even my mother was always asking her about her boyfriend and dating more than what she was doing at that particular time. Male culture seems so highly variable compared to that.
I've actually heard it countless times. I'm starting to think that things like the maternal instinct aren't really instincts, but that women are seriously brought up in the most pervasively conservative brainwashing program on the planet. The Hell with them getting dolls and kitchen sets for Christmas, I mean their entire lives are filled with a sort of backlog of pressure that they're expected to conform to. In essence, they never get to be a nerd or a jock or a stoner. They're always a girl first, and then they get to be everything else.
Still, maybe it just looks worse on the outside; I'm not a girl. I just know I've always grown up kind of happy I wasn't born one. I've got a bad track record on fulfilling my dedicated roles in society, and I always felt like I had half as much as any woman. In the end, I almost think that has very little to do with us anymore, I think it's sort of just inter-female gravity. Maybe there are women who can attest or disprove that?
Thinking about it, you are right. While society chants slogans about equality, the way children of either genders are brought up hadn't been equal. As you said, boys are raised to pursue sports and other competitive activities, girls are encouraged to play with their dollhouses. Inequality had been driven into them since they were kids. Considering what the girls had been put through, it's no wonder some of them lash out and demand female 'superiority', disguised as 'equality'.
If we really want equality, we had to start from when they were kids. Boys and girls treated the same way, given the same thing, encouraged to chase the same ideals. The daughter wishes to be an engineer? By all means, go for it. The son wishes to be a househusband? Why the hell not? Society will definitely give the parents who raise their children that way a big 'WTF' but it has to start somewhere, and that somewhere, reckon, would be parents, followed by rest of family.
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snip
Thats really true.
That comes from - at least partly - power through demographics. Not long ago - a century at best - there was still the need for a nation to produce as many children as possible.
It is less and less true for modern western world, but tradition continues...
Also, there have been some new experiments done in creches where children no matter their gender are given all the toys they can access to. Apparently both genders tend to use equaly so called female or male toys... They just don't care. That separation is taught and only exists in our upbringing...
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The One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron and attendant side-topics - hobbits, elves, dismally cliched Hollywood character and plot options superimposed on the original story, etc - then reveals itself and attempts to sway those under his Eye towards derailment.
In the films, the Eye of Sauron looks like an angry vagina, if that's any help.
http://thebloggess.com/2013/01/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-mordor-and-see-an-angry-vagina/ (http://thebloggess.com/2013/01/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-mordor-and-see-an-angry-vagina/)
If that's not female representation, I don't know what is!
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The One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron and attendant side-topics - hobbits, elves, dismally cliched Hollywood character and plot options superimposed on the original story, etc - then reveals itself and attempts to sway those under his Eye towards derailment.
In the films, the Eye of Sauron looks like an angry vagina, if that's any help.
http://thebloggess.com/2013/01/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-mordor-and-see-an-angry-vagina/ (http://thebloggess.com/2013/01/one-does-not-simply-walk-into-mordor-and-see-an-angry-vagina/)
If that's not female representation, I don't know what is!
If he liked it he should've kept the One Ring on it.
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I've let this subject be long enough, I feel. Still digging and looking around but I'll go respond to some posts here.
So, as with most movements, there is a core message (women being equal to men) and then there is how the movement is co-opted (women over men).
For example, my mother-in-law is a feminist, as in she supports equal opportunity for men and women and attempts to hold them to the same standards and did so in the 1960s and 1970s when a "proper lady" would never have done such things.
However, for some (not my mother-in-law) equal opportunity and standards is entirely insufficient.
Thing I've found is, the movement that most people in the know seem to reference as "first wave" feminism mostly had the stated goal in mind. That is, they sought to gain equality for women equal to men. For the most part it seems they achieved this, some would say unfairly, because, as an example, the women's right to vote did not come with the typical responsibilities, like having to go to war when called on to do so. Regardless, this was the part of feminism that managed ot stick to the rules they set and achieve most of their goals.
I don't recall where exactly most consider there to be a split, but at some point the first wave ended and eventually a "second wave" kicked off and it's mostly in the post-feminist end of this one we find ourselves today. It would appear that most of the more aggressive and radical of the firsts wave feminists was a big part of the second one, to the point where it often seems hard to tell radical feminism apart from the rest of an admittedly huge multinational movement. There are millions of "every day" feminists and people that at least mentally support the movement, and these people seem mostly ignorant of the full length and breath of what feminism actually is. I used to be one of these people that supported feminism in the back of my own head, as stated above in my first post, mostly out of ignorance.
Because I'm not done digging and looking around on the available sources for arguments and counter arguments I'm being careful not to be overly "final" on ideas here. I don't want to state for sure that "this is how it is" on any one matter like this, but for now my views on feminism remains majorly negative due mostly available information.
Orange, when you say that equal opportunities and standards are entirely insufficient for some, I know exactly what you mean.
Ohhhhhhhh boy.
Alright, this is just a bit of wisdom:
First, I'm definitely not affiliated with any men's group.
Seems like a wise statement given some of the things I've seen examples of. Many feminists don't seem to impressed with freedom of speech if you speak against them or from unfavorable viewpoints.
Ok. Second, BB, if I were you, I'd quickly learn the value of not publicly acknowledging any agreement with any "red pill", "MRA" or "MGTOW" set of beliefs, group, blogger, or poster. That is the best way to get blacklisted, fast. I've seen it happen, albeit from the periphery, and it was impressive. Read what you wanna read, think what you wanna think, but for god's sake, don't talk about how you totally agree with a socially unacceptable opinion until you've made damn sure that you don't want to be remembered for that and only that first.
Like I said, I've seen a few examples so far. Having said that, I've yet to say that I totally agree with anything. I have however said that given the weight of evidence so far, I'm leaning in strong favor of the one's opposing feminism's negative traits and the outcomes those traits have lead to. I'm still digging and looking, and have seen some annoying bullshit from the anti-feminism camp as well.
Besides, it would be foolish of me to call myself something I'm not. I know what MGTOW supposedly is, and can state that I'm not one, I know what most Men's Right's Activists seem to want, and have yet to find any Norwegian MRA groups - mostly because I've not gone around looking yet. If/when I find one I'll make up my mind on what to do. If anything.
Until then I'll keep looking around. I though the "red pill" analogy was very apt, very fitting, as it nicely explained my feelings in the matter after my first few days of digging.
Third, they could be wrong. Probably not a good idea to profess belief off of one blog and youtube channel.
Fourth, even if they're right, so what? Like you're gonna change the tide. What will ruining your reputation do for it? I read a bit of her blog - even if she were right about everything, there's nothing that spreading it would do for you.
Fifth, have you read sites and blogs that contradict these views?
It's not just one blog/channel so far. I've checked out dozens of YT channels and have had little time for blogs so far. I'm running on limited time here, so mostly an hour or two every day on average, at best, to go looking around. And like I said, I've not professed much 'belief' in anything specific said so far. It's simply that if half the things feminism is responsible for is true - and I've seen for myself IRL that a good fat bunch of it is most likely is true - then I'll have to say again, that red pill analogy was really fucking apt.
If they are right, if I eventually get to the conclusion that A) There is a major problem that want likely be solved by others any time soon and B) there is something I can do to help out, then I'm likely going to see what I can actually do to help out and then do that. Likely all I will be able to do is support a local, national group of some sort.
I'm way to inept at required skills, like good articulation and communication to go, say, start some YT series or whatever to express my views. I've barely avoided permanently fucking up on these very forums, making a fool of myself on YT or elsewhere? Fuck that.
As for if I've read anything that contradicts the statements of the people I've read so far, yes, I've read some of that. So far some of the more absurd and easily refuted claims by MRA's and alleged MRA's (Feminists seem fond of calling and MRA as anyone that says anything against them, especially the more extreme ones, even if the supposed MRA's themselves don't ID as ones, so knowing who is and whi is not supposedly one is not always easy) have been, well, easily refuted. For the majority of the time however the feminists I've read have been the unhinged illogical ones, and the MRA's the ones with solid counter-arguments. This may be how it is most of the time, but not all. As I've said though, my digging continues.
As for your second post, in spite of my opinion on you due unrelated issues in the past, I'm sorry to hear of your misfortunes throughout life. Thanks for sharing, at any rate.
You will always have pitchforks raised when moderate people start to talk about movements like those, that suffer from a terrible image thanks to all the strawmen and misconceptions that run all around.
This person is getting an incredible amount of flak for what she says ? Well, the other side gets the same treatment as well (cf Anita Sarkeesian / Feminist Frequency). It's sad.
However despite the links you provided, i'm unable to find a proper article or YT video where she actually exposes her views...
Firstly, in regards to Sarkeesian - the issue with her are two-fold.
To begin with, Anita Sarkeesian is a con-artist and her whole feminist frequency setup is a scam. Given the available evidence I can say this almost completely ensure that I'm right. She is either a feminist out to promote her ideology and frankly absurd claims regarding games on the behalf of her ideology and herself, or she is not even a feminist and ride the professional victim-hood trend and feminism as a crude, but admittedly very effective tool to get what she want.
The second issue with her is that in reprisal to her actions the biggest volume of opposition she get's are of the crude, blunt and offensively non-constructive sort. This helps to enforce her victim-hood and assists her in being believed on her bullshit. This also helps render all the constructive and serious opposition to her as merely more misogyny and woman-hating - when Sarkeesian does something and says something about gaming, it's all true because she is a woman and she said so, but when people oppose her it's all just more opposition to her on the grounds that she's a woman, and the serious counter-arguments against her goes mostly unheeded thanks to Sarkeesian's poisoning the well with impunity.
Sarkeesian is not a legitimate example of an oppressed woman that get's bullshit on the net for being a woman, it's an example of a scammer pulling off a very good scam and making most people buy into it, and blocking any and all opposition to her actions based on the fact that she's a woman and a perceived victim.
Secondly, on the topic of Karen Straughan and a summary of her opinions and beliefs. Simply put, there is no one location to find this, as far as I know. Her YT video's makes her beliefs crystal clear as she makes them, this is one of the reasons I said people with any interest in the subject should go see her videos from oldest to newest. Well, perhaps not 'see' them, as it's not much to see, but turn them on and listen in at least. If you need audio for nothing else letting this go on in the background of what your doing is not hard. Hell, I spent most of these overseeing solo-mining in high-sec just to have something to do. That and house-hold work near my PC, but you get my point.
I think I'd go with Kala mostly on this. Please note that this discussion is going to be from the perspective of a guy in the US.
That said, the issue I have with MRA and the perception of modern feminism is that MRA holds up comparatively infrequent instances of abuse of men and paints it as endemic and frequent, while abuse of women does in fact remain endemic and frequent.
If you are going to seriously claim this, you will have to offer some backing for your argument. I've heard the same from feminists so far, and most that dismiss MRA's and claim that violence almost only or only affect women cite statistics that have been proven to have been poorly made. Most MRA's that claim that abuse is a genderless issue that affects men and women in equal numbers, and on occasion as something that affects men a tad more, well most of them manage to cite sources that are at least, somewhat respectable and trusted.
Consider that the recent spate of recorded high school rape of passed-out girls is frequently responded to with, "What was she thinking?," "She deserved it for going out with guys!," and "They shouldn't have recorded it!" And this is standard thinking.
I've heard about this too. Mostly from feminists, and again, most of the sources they cite are not entirely trustworthy and some numbers they cite are just absurd. Lots of anti-feminists spend time refuting the claims that supposedly exaggerate how bad high school and campus rape rates are. Feminists have claimed as much as "1 in 4 will be raped" and in some cases far higher, this has for the most part been refuted in very solid ways. As I've said, I'm trying to keep an open mind, but in this case, to me, it seems to me you are viewing this issue through the arguments of feminists, whom like I said, often exaggerate wildly on the issue of rape.
Someone very dear to me was, when younger and naive, given a Long Island Iced Tea by a fellow who was once her teacher in high school, and later sexually assaulted by him-- because she assumed she could trust him and could treat him as a friend, where he assumed that she was a female and thus he could do with her as he pleased, once she was drunk enough to not resist.
All she could get him on was serving alcohol to a minor. Fortunately, this means he won't be in a position of trust any more, but the point stands that this is not uncommon.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear about this, believe that or not. However in the context of the topic at hand here this is anecdotal evidence, and at best one case. To assume there is a huge pandemic of rape in schools over one issue is like saying there is a murder pandemic because someone shot JFK.
Consider the proportion of women who will be raped at some point in their lives. Surely, yes, men are raped too -- but what portion of the population? This indicates that the issue is gendered, despite the progress that has been made over the last few decades, over the last century.
What portion of the population? well, the vast US male prisoner population comes to mind with ease. The issue of rape is not gendered, but men are often not very eager to report their rapes to the authorities, and often when they do, they get laughed out of the building or treated as someone lying, delivering a false report. This is ironic, considering how often women have been reported to use false reporting of rape as weapons against men.
...remember that until recently, a married woman could be raped by her husband-- there was a presumption that her body was his to do with as he pleased...
Until recently? How recently are we talking about here? I suppose again, that you have sources of this? Because the sources I've seen would indicate that there was never been a time when rape was okay, or violence against one's wife for that matter.
Third wave feminism-- this is where people are running into issues. Third-wave feminism is about the freedom from gendered social stigma in daily life. Consider what we think of a woman who parties or sleeps around-- she's a dirty slut, to be used and discarded, who can't be raped because clearly she was asking for it. And a man who parties and sleeps around? Odds are, unless he's pretty creepy, we sort of envy him, we give him high-fives.
I'm not sure there is a recognized "third wave" in feminism, but ultimately it don't mean much what we term it. As for the social stigma, social stigmas are a real bitch. The one you refer to is unfortunate, but so are the myriad of social stigmas that plague people of both genders. Interestingly, feminism has done little to nothing to debunk stigmas against men, but in fact helped to enforce many and make new ones.
There is a strong reaction to feminism. Given a chance, reactionaries will happily dismantle this social progress, using a strawman of misandry and man-hating, of women being unable to commit heinous crimes because only men are criminals, and all men are criminals. Surely, the militants aren't ideal-- even if they aren't misandrists, their focus on opaque philosophy of language and social structures that are essentially invisible to participants can confuse or turn off your average person, male or female.
...
I'd agree with you that violence is pervasive and human, and that unbalanced people regardless of gender will use it against others. This is not acceptable. I would propose that the efforts of feminism are, at least, to remove the sanction of society from the use of sexual violence against women-- something that is tacitly present whenever we go, "She was asking for it."
The strawman you speak of is in most case when it pops up not a strawman at all, it's quite real. To claim the feminism in general is "just misrepresented by reactionaries."
I agree violence is never okay, but it seems to me most feminists don't care so long as the violence is not directed towards women. In fact, many would seem to be happy with violence towards men as a "normal thing". Regardless of how many feminists really believe this or not, the majority of the feminists in the world seem perfectly unable or unwilling to self-police their own extremists, and in ignoring them, they are silently endorsing them, by allowing them to go on undisturbed. Obviously this needs to stop, if we are have any hope of getting a society even remotely equal between genders and genetics.
(oh, and forgot an important point-- yes. Equality? We want it. I want people to have the legal autonomy and the social freedom to do as they like with who they like, how they like, so long as all involved are consenting adults; to pursue jobs they are capable of, to be paid according to their ability, without stigma or pay differentials based on gender; to pay taxes or raise kids or serve in the military without being banned from certain roles because, "lols. househusband? does she own your balls?," or "lols. women with guns? what if she has a period in the middle of Fallujah? hurhurhur.")
I am glad to see we are on the same page on this topic, as both seek equality of options, at least. We seem to mostly have equality of pay so far, so let's see if not the following decades get's us equality in other areas, then.
...The only ideologies, ideals, goals and beliefs worth having and following are your own. The minute you let them get out of your head and hands, they are co-opted by those who would abuse them for the power they generate. I hope you can find some kind of peace with your beliefs and seek to pursue them for the betterment of all, and not the domination and destruction of them.
And this is why I am here, sharing.
Regardless, I would disagree with you on the military, but then I don't know what military you speak of compared to my own, and your sharing personal belief and experience anyhow, so it matters little.
I'm a bit reminded of the legal maxim of Hard Cases Make Bad Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law) - just that in this case it would be that Extremist Spokespeople don't make a movement - but they might be needed to keep a movement going. I am also reminded of real-time systems control - in order to attain a desired state quickly, you have to over-correct, even if it means that you have to back down a bit afterwards. There is no steady state in society - there will always be movement above and below the state you desire; it's intrinsic to feedback-driven systems.
Sometimes I read posts claiming that Feminism is no longer necessary, because we are now in an age where it is not unheard of that men are domestically abused by women. To which my response usually is that in the majority of cases, it's still women being abused by men; and Feminism won't have reached its goals until the relation is 50/50 (and ideally 0 total). And that without Feminism raising the topic of domestic abuse as such, men wouldn't even dare to acknowledge if they are victims of domestic abuse.
I admit that this comment doesn't have much of a point, just two thoughts. But I wanted to mention them.
I'm not sure I follow your logic at all, but thanks for sharing at least. There might even be something in what you say. After all, how many men were reporting their own abuse in relationships until feminism was a major thing? I'm pretty sure mutual domestic abuse was a thing long before feminism, after all, so some good may have come from this movement on tihs front, at least.
Anyhow, again, thanks for sharing :3
A good lesson from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:
"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man." Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, and we don't teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors--not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing--but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. "Feminist": the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
So yes I have neither seen nor read anything convincing as to why equality is not desirable. We raise our children, not simply according to different genders, but according to very, very different roles. It is a gross injustice.
And if you seriously believe that you can change that, or things similar, without thinking in terms of equality, then you simply have no idea of a solution.
I have a counter to this monologue you have quoted. Made by me, just now, 04.02.2014 06:10
May have been made by others elsewhere and at other times, I would not know:
"We teach boys to make themselves better. We say to boys, "you must have ambition and drive, and lots of it. You must aim to be successful, and very successful, otherwise you will not be good enough for the woman." Because I am male, I am expected to aspire towards self-sacrifice and be supportive. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that supporting and defending a female is the most important. Now, the role of supporter can be a source of joy and love and mutual respect, but why do we teach boys to aspire to be the supporters and defenders, and we don't teach girls the same? We raise boys to see each others as competitors--for jobs, social positions and resources, these are good things--they get you the attention of women. We teach boys that they can not be human beings in the way that girls are--girls are human beings, they are human doings. "Egalitarian": the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."
Equality of options regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or any other aspect of the self that is beyond your control, is what I believe in an want. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything less is indeed a gross injustice, thus why I will likely end up opposing feminism on the grounds that it has forgotten it's own stated purpose.
***
In closing for this post, I'd like to point anyone interested in knowing about the issues between the male/female divide in society to check out the works and speeches of Doctor Warren Farrell, especially his book "The myth of male power" and his speech on the supposed pay-gap and other topics. The man used to be a feminist throughout the 60 etc. until he eventually came to realize the issues with men, as well as women, in society and has spent a lot of time working on the topic.
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.........)o)
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If you are happy in your ignorance, much like I was 3 days ago, you may not want to go see Karen's videos
Wow. Heed The Word or you're willfully ignorant. Haven't heard that sentiment outside of a church or political rally.
Let the others here debate your points, but your newly minted Throne Upon Which To Peer Upon the Unclean can go in the usual pile.
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I'm not going to touch most of this, because it's subjective and I don't think it's worth trying to argue with you about. But there are a couple of objective issues here that happen to matter a great deal to me.
Disclaimer: This is written from the perspective of a WASP male in the United States (otherwise known as life on easy mode).
I've let this subject be long enough, I feel. Still digging and looking around but I'll go respond to some posts here.
Consider that the recent spate of recorded high school rape of passed-out girls is frequently responded to with, "What was she thinking?," "She deserved it for going out with guys!," and "They shouldn't have recorded it!" And this is standard thinking.
I've heard about this too. Mostly from feminists, and again, most of the sources they cite are not entirely trustworthy and some numbers they cite are just absurd. Lots of anti-feminists spend time refuting the claims that supposedly exaggerate how bad high school and campus rape rates are. Feminists have claimed as much as "1 in 4 will be raped" and in some cases far higher, this has for the most part been refuted in very solid ways. As I've said, I'm trying to keep an open mind, but in this case, to me, it seems to me you are viewing this issue through the arguments of feminists, whom like I said, often exaggerate wildly on the issue of rape.
Someone very dear to me was, when younger and naive, given a Long Island Iced Tea by a fellow who was once her teacher in high school, and later sexually assaulted by him-- because she assumed she could trust him and could treat him as a friend, where he assumed that she was a female and thus he could do with her as he pleased, once she was drunk enough to not resist.
All she could get him on was serving alcohol to a minor. Fortunately, this means he won't be in a position of trust any more, but the point stands that this is not uncommon.
I'm genuinely sorry to hear about this, believe that or not. However in the context of the topic at hand here this is anecdotal evidence, and at best one case. To assume there is a huge pandemic of rape in schools over one issue is like saying there is a murder pandemic because someone shot JFK.
Consider the proportion of women who will be raped at some point in their lives. Surely, yes, men are raped too -- but what portion of the population? This indicates that the issue is gendered, despite the progress that has been made over the last few decades, over the last century.
What portion of the population? well, the vast US male prisoner population comes to mind with ease. The issue of rape is not gendered, but men are often not very eager to report their rapes to the authorities, and often when they do, they get laughed out of the building or treated as someone lying, delivering a false report.
You've talked a lot about dismissing statistics and then decided to throw out some vague "how often" stuff without numbers to back it up. So here's a few for the US, sourced here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States):
Even a study using narrower definitions of rape (avoiding things like having sex while too drunk to give consent, even though that's supposed to be considered rape) found that 0.2% of women and 0.01% of men were in the US were raped in 2010. That's around 300,000 women compared to 15,000 men. In addition, women are raped almost exclusively by men. Men are also raped primarily by other men, although instances of women raping men (having sex without consent) do occur. Put together, roughtly 99% of rapists are men.
The issue of rape is not gendered, but men are often not very eager to report their rapes to the authorities, and often when they do, they get laughed out of the building or treated as someone lying, delivering a false report. This is ironic, considering how often women have been reported to use false reporting of rape as weapons against men.
and this started well and then went - off the rails, let's say.
It is certainly true that men don't like to report rape, because it's embarassing, emasculating, something that happens to weaklings and women, etc, and they'll likely be treated like shit. On the other hand, women frequently fail to report rape because they're treated pretty much the same way. Turns out society treats rape victims really terribly, who knew.
You just provided perfect evidence of this, although you phrased it in such a way that you can still deny actually believing it's true. Because it isn't: False reports of rape occur at approximately the same rate as false reports of other crimes: 2%-5%. And yet there is a perception, driven by low rates of arrest and conviction, that half or more of all rape reports by women are false.
as for your end quote...
yes, it sucks that society pushes men and women to do things and be things they might not be naturally driven toward. On the other hand, that does not automatically put them on the same level. A society which tells me that I should be motivated to be successful because I'm male and my wife should be subservient because she's female sucks for both of us - but it sucks tremendously more for her.
Imagine two people in the emergency room. One of them has a migraine and is in tremendous pain. The other has a gunshot wound. The doctors are focusing on the one with the gunshot wound, because that's the worse injury.
In my opinion, the anti-feminist movements are like the guy with the migraine claiming that the guy with the gunshot is exaggerating. That the guy with the gunshot is somehow denying the existance of the other guy's pain. That the fact that they are both in pain means that there condition is equal and that the gunshot doesn't deserve special attention.
But the truth is, neither of these injuries negates the other. The fact that one guy has a gunshot wound and is dying doesn't minimize the pain experienced by the guy with the migraine. But neither does the pain of the man with the migraine make gunshot wound less serious. They're both bad, but one is much worse.
Society sends both genders a lot of fucked up messages about who and how we should be, but anyone trying to make it seem like the fucked up messages society sends me as a man are as bad as the fucked up messages society sends my wife as a woman is full of shit.
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If you are happy in your ignorance, much like I was 3 days ago, you may not want to go see Karen's videos
That is usually the red flag that allows you to completely ignore what someone is saying, regardless of their point. Radical conversions never lead to discussions worth having.
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some would say unfairly, because, as an example, the women's right to vote did not come with the typical responsibilities, like having to go to war when called on to do so.
Hm.
Well, everyone's responsibilities are different, in various ways. They should still be able to vote and have a say on things that will effect their lives.
A right to vote tied to conscription seems...limiting.
Additionally, it isn't just women who were denied the vote; it was a class issue also - before women it was labourers who couldn't vote. Probably similar sorts of arguments used - "they had to do what they were told anyway, so who's in charge doesn't effect them."
Likewise, there's no point giving women the vote because they have to do what their husbands tell them, who already have the vote.
In a way, with regards to rights and voting, it's far less to do with women and the lower classes and far more to do with the people in power and their efforts to preserve it.
it often seems hard to tell radical feminism apart from the rest of an admittedly huge multinational movement.
Depends very much on your definition of radical and if you see it as a positive or a negative. For example, some people would use radical feminists and trans-exclusionary feminists as interachangeable terms (I don't think that's necessarily the case, and with the latter I think it's largely a case of theory being taken in a literal sense).
Feminism being so broad it's almost more accurate to say Feminism(s). Be wary of anyone claiming to speak for the whole.
Many feminists don't seem to impressed with freedom of speech if you speak against them or from unfavorable viewpoints.
:P
Most *people* are like that.
While I think echo-chambers and group-think are unhelpful and unhealthy, and personally I totally go for the "I disagree with what you're saying but I support your right to say it" - of course I'm going to be unimpressed with certain outlooks and opinions. (Especially the ones I think are stupid).
That's...pretty normal, isn't it?
To begin with, Anita Sarkeesian is a con-artist and her whole feminist frequency setup is a scam. Given the available evidence I can say this almost completely ensure that I'm right.
...What evidence is that? I've been following the Sarkeesian thing fairly closely since her kickstarter and I'm seeing no evidence it was a scam.
The kickstarter was to raise funds for a series of videos to study games; specifically the damsel in distress trope. It's perfectly legitimate to ask people to contribute to the project, and if it's something they want to see, it's perfectly legitimate for people to fund it.
If she then proceeded to take the money and run, I'd agree with you it's a scam - but there's 4 videos so far to the contrary.
Otherwise I'm unsure what you mean. I'm pretty sure she sets to do out exactly what her kickstarter and website outline - feminist media criticism. I've read her dissertation (it wasn't very good imo; I found the analysis shallow) and it's on representations of women in sci-fi. Given that's an obvious interest for her, it's unsurprising to me that she then went on to look at representations of women in games.
She is either a feminist out to promote her ideology and frankly absurd claims regarding games on the behalf of her ideology and herself [...]
Um. Yes, she's a feminist out to promote her ideology. Of course she is...That's self-evident, isn't it?
It's media criticism through a feminist lens. Which is...no different from literary criticism, where you can read things (re: interpret) from a variety of different perspectives and schools of thought. One of which is feminist, but it could just have easily have been Marxist or post-structural or whatever else.
As far as I can see she's actively legitimizing gaming as a medium, considering it culturally equal to that of literature, by approaching analysis in the same way.
The point of criticism and theory isn't to be the final argument; it's to approach things from different points of view and hopefully finding new ways of looking at things.
What absurd claims are you referring to?
[...]or she is not even a feminist and ride the professional victim-hood trend and feminism as a crude, but admittedly very effective tool to get what she want.
Professional victim-hood trend? Eeeeh...
She set out to do something entirely reasonable and the backlash against her was immense and unjustified.
What is it you think she wants? It seemed like she simply wanted to make some videos. For a broader mission statement, it seems as if she found feminist theory too dry and academic and wanted to approach things in a more popularist way. It isn't a criminal act.
when Sarkeesian does something and says something about gaming, it's all true because she is a woman and she said so, but when people oppose her it's all just more opposition to her on the grounds that she's a woman, and the serious counter-arguments against her goes mostly unheeded thanks to Sarkeesian's poisoning the well with impunity.
*blinks*
It is a shame that, if in all the shit flinging, some reasonable counter-arguments are lost. As I've said earlier, the thing about analysis and criticism is that it's fundementally a discussion. If someone wants to contest her interpretations (civilly) - or start their own project from a different perspective - that's all to the good in furthering the conversation.
If that is the case though, it isn't her "poisoning the well" that's making the 'opposition' look bad. It's the level of diatribe directed against her. To blame her for that is...I don't even know what that is.
The issue of rape is not gendered, but men are often not very eager to report their rapes to the authorities, and often when they do, they get laughed out of the building or treated as someone lying, delivering a false report.
It's absolutely gendered - I'm going to agree with Victoria Stecker's response here:
It is certainly true that men don't like to report rape, because it's embarassing, emasculating, something that happens to weaklings and women, etc, and they'll likely be treated like shit.
The reason they don't want to report it or will be laughed at, is because it's seen as weak and submissive, being a victim - i.e 'feminine'; the opposite of what men are supposed to be; 'masculine', strong and dominant.
Because the sources I've seen would indicate that there was never been a time when rape was okay, or violence against one's wife for that matter.
Interesting. Yeah, it only became law here in recent times that raping your wife is a criminal offence. It was just assumed that - because your wife has consented in terms of marriage contract (and in many different senses wives have been considered property) - it didn't count as rape.
Here's the wiki-page (I'm aware wikipedia is not the best source ever, but there's plenty of links on there to more verifiable sources) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape
We're only talking recent history here - 1960s and 1970s. Where many social outlooks changed in the western world, including no longer classifying homosexuality as a mental illness.
This point is particularly pertinent I thinK:
Most of the Western World has been (and still is to a certain degree, especially the US) strongly influenced by Christianity. The Christian religion teaches that sexual relations before marriage ('fornication') as well as sexual relations by a married person with someone other than their spouse ('adultery') are sins, while sex within marriage is a duty. This concept of 'conjugal sexual rights' has the purpose to prevent sin (in the form of adultery and temptation) as well as to enable procreation. The Bible at 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 states that:[6]
"The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.".
The above is interpreted by some religious figures as to render marital rape an impossibility.[7] [8]However, not all religious figures hold this view.[9]
Interestingly, feminism has done little to nothing to debunk stigmas against men, but in fact helped to enforce many and make new ones.
Has it?
Because "gendered social stigma" includes men. Expecting women to be feminine and men to be masculine is unhelpful to both sexes if the either of those people don't conform to the traits we, as a society, decide to gender.
The strawman you speak of is in most case when it pops up not a strawman at all, it's quite real.
I can see why you'd think it by the people you may encounter online; particularly in the echo-chamber group-think scenarios.
But what we're talking about here is vocal minorities.
Regarding extremists - I don't really see it as my place to police anyone else, to be honest. However wrong they may be.
(I'll disagree and challenge things I don't agree with, sure, but I don't see that as policing)
"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, "You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man." Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support, but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, and we don't teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors--not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing--but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. "Feminist": the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
"We teach boys to make themselves better. We say to boys, "you must have ambition and drive, and lots of it. You must aim to be successful, and very successful, otherwise you will not be good enough for the woman." Because I am male, I am expected to aspire towards self-sacrifice and be supportive. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that supporting and defending a female is the most important. Now, the role of supporter can be a source of joy and love and mutual respect, but why do we teach boys to aspire to be the supporters and defenders, and we don't teach girls the same? We raise boys to see each others as competitors--for jobs, social positions and resources, these are good things--they get you the attention of women. We teach boys that they can not be human beings in the way that girls are--girls are human beings, they are human doings. "Egalitarian": the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."
Yes to both.
While it's incredibly broad and divergent on many things, largely Feminism is about challenging those preconceptions and sees rigid gender roles - that we are indoctrinated to perform since birth - as harmful. It is fundamentally egalitarian in this sense.
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I've actually heard it countless times. I'm starting to think that things like the maternal instinct aren't really instincts, but that women are seriously brought up in the most pervasively conservative brainwashing program on the planet. The Hell with them getting dolls and kitchen sets for Christmas, I mean their entire lives are filled with a sort of backlog of pressure that they're expected to conform to. In essence, they never get to be a nerd or a jock or a stoner. They're always a girl first, and then they get to be everything else.
Still, maybe it just looks worse on the outside; I'm not a girl. I just know I've always grown up kind of happy I wasn't born one.
Oh, I missed this the first time round, but yeah. I think that's probably true. When I was a child/pre-teen I was introduced by a friends older sister as "this is Kala, she hates girls." I didn't; I resented the pressure to conform I encountered at school and that's how it translated itself (unfortunately).
I didn't really have the vocabulary or critical faculties to identify that at the time, though. So as far as I was concerned, that pressure represented what girls were supposed to be, and I wasn't one of them.
I identify pretty strongly with Jenn Frank's I Was a Teenage Sexist (http://www.unwinnable.com/2012/07/13/i-was-a-teenage-sexist/#.UvFuYvnV-HM) because of that (albeit a bit earlier in my development - I was a pre-teen sexist! - but got over it by my teens). She also discusses Feminism and the Anita Sarkeesian thing here.
On another note, a link that I just remembered that might be tangentially relevant is Jackson Katz's Violence against women—it's a men's issue (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElJxUVJ8blw), for another perspective.
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You know I had a lengthy post typed out in response, but I was a little emotionally charged at the time, and more to the point I found a picture that illustrates the point better than I ever could.
(http://www.leftycartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/men1.png)
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If you are happy in your ignorance, much like I was 3 days ago, you may not want to go see Karen's videos
Wow. Heed The Word or you're willfully ignorant. Haven't heard that sentiment outside of a church or political rally.
Let the others here debate your points, but your newly minted Throne Upon Which To Peer Upon the Unclean can go in the usual pile.
Good point, this is another notch to my stick of poorly chosen words and fucked-up ways of delivering a message. Guess that's what I get for posting when I'm emotionally in turmoil. What else is new, i wonder :roll:
It's not the impression I wanted to get across, so I'll go edit that out. And it's gone.
That is usually the red flag that allows you to completely ignore what someone is saying, regardless of their point. Radical conversions never lead to discussions worth having.
What a nice sentiment. If you don't like the tone of the messenger, just ignore the message out of hand.
For the record however, the impression offered by that line is not what I intended. If it was, I'd still leave it up. Consider that.
I'm not going to touch most of this, because it's subjective and I don't think it's worth trying to argue with you about. But there are a couple of objective issues here that happen to matter a great deal to me.
Disclaimer: This is written from the perspective of a WASP male in the United States (otherwise known as life on easy mode).
To start with, you will have to explain to me what a WASP male is, the term is new to me. Also, how is this life on "easy mode"? The idea confuses me, sorry :s
You've talked a lot about dismissing statistics and then decided to throw out some vague "how often" stuff without numbers to back it up. So here's a few for the US, sourced here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States):
Even a study using narrower definitions of rape (avoiding things like having sex while too drunk to give consent, even though that's supposed to be considered rape) found that 0.2% of women and 0.01% of men were in the US were raped in 2010. That's around 300,000 women compared to 15,000 men. In addition, women are raped almost exclusively by men. Men are also raped primarily by other men, although instances of women raping men (having sex without consent) do occur. Put together, roughtly 99% of rapists are men.
Even if this is true, (it conflicts a bit with other sources I've seen, though those again conflict with others. Sorry, trying to keep and open mind here) my point and issue is that feminists may care for the 300K women, but don't seem even able to acknowledge that the 15K yearly male victims even exist. Why is this, and why can't both be dealt with? Claiming to stand for equality and only dealing with, let alone only acknowledging the female victims is dishonest, in my view.
The issue of rape is not gendered, but men are often not very eager to report their rapes to the authorities, and often when they do, they get laughed out of the building or treated as someone lying, delivering a false report. This is ironic, considering how often women have been reported to use false reporting of rape as weapons against men.
and this started well and then went - off the rails, let's say.
It is certainly true that men don't like to report rape, because it's embarassing, emasculating, something that happens to weaklings and women, etc, and they'll likely be treated like shit. On the other hand, women frequently fail to report rape because they're treated pretty much the same way. Turns out society treats rape victims really terribly, who knew.
You just provided perfect evidence of this, although you phrased it in such a way that you can still deny actually believing it's true. Because it isn't: False reports of rape occur at approximately the same rate as false reports of other crimes: 2%-5%. And yet there is a perception, driven by low rates of arrest and conviction, that half or more of all rape reports by women are false.
I don't "believe" anything regarding this topic, I try to keep and open mind and information on this is often contradictory. For all the sources I've seen that down-play false rape accusations as 5% or less of all cases, many others claim numbers around 10-40% or even 50% in some cases, though most are at least honest about the not-bullet-proof means of tallying cases, making it hard to be accurate, even if they try to be as fair as possible. I therefor lean more towards number around 10-20% at most, but even tihs personal guess/estimate by me is somewhat irrelevant to my issue with this anyway.
False rape accusations happen. When they do, the vast majority of reported cases don't hold any penalty at all for the accuser, who is almost always a woman accusing a man. For the man though, the accusation itself is often very damaging, it can easily create life-long social stigma. He's been accused, so many will believe there is something to it, even if he was proven innocent.
My issue with all this is the usual. There are issues affecting both genders, but the undisputed biggest movement for "equality" that has the best PR department and the best pull on governments - Feminism - don't seem to give a shit about half of the issues - namely those that effect men. Your own points here in your reply seem to me to hold much the same viewpoints. There are load's of crap that effect women, and many that effect men. But apparently because the ones that affect women are in your view worse than the rest, they are more important. I'll reply more specifically to each point.
as for your end quote...
yes, it sucks that society pushes men and women to do things and be things they might not be naturally driven toward. On the other hand, that does not automatically put them on the same level. A society which tells me that I should be motivated to be successful because I'm male and my wife should be subservient because she's female sucks for both of us - but it sucks tremendously more for her.
I don't care about them being on the same level or not. I modified that quote made by a feminist to highlight issues that face women, to create a near identical one that face men. The point was that pre-set social expectations affects men to, ergo it's a problem for both genders. I don't care who has it worse, I care that we agree with both issues and deal with both. Because overwhelmingly caring for the issue facing women and ignoring the men, or the other way around, is meaningless if your trying to gain equality. Feminism don't seem to do that, least not to me. but I do. Thus the whole point of this tread on Backstage about raising the issue and starting off this debate on equality.
Thank you for participating, by the way.
Imagine two people in the emergency room. One of them has a migraine and is in tremendous pain. The other has a gunshot wound. The doctors are focusing on the one with the gunshot wound, because that's the worse injury.
In my opinion, the anti-feminist movements are like the guy with the migraine claiming that the guy with the gunshot is exaggerating. That the guy with the gunshot is somehow denying the existance of the other guy's pain. That the fact that they are both in pain means that there condition is equal and that the gunshot doesn't deserve special attention.
Nice analogy. Problem with the analogy is that who is the gun-shot victim and who is the migraine sufferer depends on what particular issue we speak of. In some case it's the woman who has been shot and an insensitive man bitches that he's not treated in her stead, in some cases the roles are reversed. Either way, they both have issues and both suffer from problems that should and can be dealt with. Why does it have to be one over the other? In the case of your example, why can't the one with the gun-shot wound be taken to the operating table while the migraine victim get's the needed treatment at the same time?
But the truth is, neither of these injuries negates the other. The fact that one guy has a gunshot wound and is dying doesn't minimize the pain experienced by the guy with the migraine. But neither does the pain of the man with the migraine make gunshot wound less serious. They're both bad, but one is much worse.
Society sends both genders a lot of fucked up messages about who and how we should be, but anyone trying to make it seem like the fucked up messages society sends me as a man are as bad as the fucked up messages society sends my wife as a woman is full of shit.
You are completely right, one issue is worse than the other. And yet, both are still issues. Can we please agree to deal with both and stop acting like it's all or nothing, only one of them get's treated ever? Because in that case the gun-shot always get's treatment no matter what, on the grounds that it's more serious an issue, but this still won't help the person with the migraine at all.
As for your opinion on who has it worse off between you and your wife, I won't be able to comment on your two specifically, I don't know either of you :) But I would think a more fair and just society don't just tell your wife how her issue can be resolved and fixed, it would tell you how you can fix yours too. At least I'd hope so...
@Nmaro Makari
Very nice. Now reverse the genders in that comic and you have the problem seen form the other side. Ergo, my point. You won't fix the issue or solve anything if you only focus on one out of two sides of said issue. I had hoped you would respond with your own opinion on this instead of telling me what a comic high-lighting the issue says, but I can't exactly force you, can I? :P
@Kala
I'm sorry, my time for tonight is up. I'll respond to your excellent post tomorrow, or as soon as I can.
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That is usually the red flag that allows you to completely ignore what someone is saying, regardless of their point. Radical conversions never lead to discussions worth having.
What a nice sentiment. If you don't like the tone of the messenger, just ignore the message out of hand.
For the record however, the impression offered by that line is not what I intended. If it was, I'd still leave it up. Consider that.
It has nothing to do with the message itself, it is just an easy predictor that trying to have a discussion with the person won't bear any fruit. That being said, this is largely true regarding these topics on the internet anyway - hence why I, for the most part, left my contribution to answering the questionnaire in the other thread and only a couple of other posts. It is easy to tell when a discussion will be utterly pointless.
But for those who would like to know why some people bow out of these kinds of discussions, it can be helpful to mention why. Hence me mentioning your sentence that you later removed.
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I often judge the merits of a belief based on the type of person/mindset that it appeals to.
Zealotry reeks, no matter the flavor.
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I often judge the merits of a belief based on the type of person/mindset that it appeals to.
Zealotry reeks, no matter the flavor.
Except for unicorn zealots.
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I'm not going to touch most of this, because it's subjective and I don't think it's worth trying to argue with you about. But there are a couple of objective issues here that happen to matter a great deal to me.
Disclaimer: This is written from the perspective of a WASP male in the United States (otherwise known as life on easy mode).
To start with, you will have to explain to me what a WASP male is, the term is new to me. Also, how is this life on "easy mode"? The idea confuses me, sorry :s
The acronym means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. In the modern US it tends to be used as a catch-all term for anyone of European descent (excluding first generation immigrants). It is really no longer confined to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant faith.
It is considered easy-mode because Anglo-Saxon Protestant men built the system in which everyone else lives. Historically, all the rights and privileges are afforded to WASP men. In the case of other Protestant northern Europeans, integration into that society was straightforward. Catholics (first Irish then Italians) took at little more time, but were largely integrated by the mid-20th Century.
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Bear in mind that some of my response is colored by my experiences with anti-feminists here and the fact that you're quoting similar sources and using similar arguments, though you may be coming to slightly different conclusions.
The arguments here follow a patern like this:
1) Feminist points out how bad things are for women.
2) Anti-feminist points out that things aren't great for men.
3) Anti-feminist uses the feminist's failure to point this out say feminist is biased against men and clearly not actually looking for equality after all.
4) Anti-feminist then uses this to excuse doing nothing about how bad things are for women.
Your post (in my reading) hit (2) and (3) and I assumed (4). From the sounds of your post since, you seem to still be hitting (2) and (3) but not (4), which is better, but I think (3) is still garbage.
Feminist naturally implies that they are focused on addressing the ways in which society hurts women - this doesn't mean that they don't care about the ways society hurts men, too. It simply means that isn't their focus. Some of them may lack sympathy for the ways men like me suffer (more on that later), but that doesn't mean they're denying that it happens.
Even if this is true, (it conflicts a bit with other sources I've seen, though those again conflict with others. Sorry, trying to keep and open mind here) my point and issue is that feminists may care for the 300K women, but don't seem even able to acknowledge that the 15K yearly male victims even exist. Why is this, and why can't both be dealt with? Claiming to stand for equality and only dealing with, let alone only acknowledging the female victims is dishonest, in my view.
Well, there are a couple reasons for this. The biggest is that when you talk about ending rape, you don't do it by talking about the victims. You do it by talking about the rapists. And the rapists? They're all men1. Rape is a problem because men commit rape, and it will continue to be a problem until men stop committing rape. This applies whether the victims are male or female.
So I guess it depends on how you read it when feminist talk about all the female victims of rape and don't mention the 4-5% of victims that are male. In general, when the victim statistics are brought up, the purpose is to highlight that this is a BIG ISSUE and needs to be addressed. For that purpose, the statistics for women are much more horrifying and much more effective.
1Not quite, they're 99% male.
False rape accusations happen. When they do, the vast majority of reported cases don't hold any penalty at all for the accuser, who is almost always a woman accusing a man. For the man though, the accusation itself is often very damaging, it can easily create life-long social stigma. He's been accused, so many will believe there is something to it, even if he was proven innocent.
I suspect this is cultural (iirc you're from northern europe?) because it's a very different situation here in the US1. Women who come forward as victims can expect to be called liars and sluts and treated like utter garbage, especially if their accusation doesn't lead to an arrest or conviction. This also helps keep the number of false accusations down - why would a woman put herself through the shitstorm that comes with a rape accusation if it wasn't true? Many of them aren't willing to deal with it even if it is.
1The exception to this is child molestation. If an adult (male or female) is accused of raping a child, their life is instantly destroyed, even if it turns out not to be true. We really fucking hate child molesters. Ordinary rapists, on the other hand, we're not quite as bothered by.
My issue with all this is the usual. There are issues affecting both genders, but the undisputed biggest movement for "equality" that has the best PR department and the best pull on governments - Feminism - don't seem to give a shit about half of the issues - namely those that effect men. Your own points here in your reply seem to me to hold much the same viewpoints.
That last line actually made me laugh - which is tough when talking about this subject. It seems like we are reading in each other's words things we're used to seeing that aren't necessarily there (see what I wrote above). I do care about issues that effect men - they impact me quite directly. That feminists aren't worried about them isn't all that shocking - they are focused on issues that effect women.
To make another doctor analogy, saying an oncologist doesn't care about heart disease because he chose to focus his efforts elsewhere doesn't make much sense. No one can do everything - people choose to focus on certain things. Feminists have chosen to focus on women's issues.
Why shouldn't feminists worry about issues that impact men? Because in general, men created these systems. If men are suffering, they are suffering under burdens they created for themselves. If women are suffering, they are suffering under burdens men created for them. This may lead to reduced sympathy for the men.
I don't care about them being on the same level or not. I modified that quote made by a feminist to highlight issues that face women, to create a near identical one that face men. The point was that pre-set social expectations affects men to, ergo it's a problem for both genders. I don't care who has it worse, I care that we agree with both issues and deal with both. Because overwhelmingly caring for the issue facing women and ignoring the men, or the other way around, is meaningless if your trying to gain equality. Feminism don't seem to do that, least not to me. but I do. Thus the whole point of this tread on Backstage about raising the issue and starting off this debate on equality.
Thank you for participating, by the way.
Here we're going to have to disagree. I don't think we have to focus on one issue to the exclusion of the other. But if equality is the goal, then you get there by taking the situation which is worse and focusing on improving it. If things are worse for women than they are for men, then you work on improving things for women.
Now, I'm not suggesting that we should ignore men's issues. I think we should address them as well, especially since many of the issues which effect men end up having a negative impact on women as well. What I'm saying is that you can ignore men's issues in favor of women's while still making a credible claim to the goal of equality.
If you're after utopia, you have to fix both. If you're after equality, you just have to fix the women's situation until it only sucks as much as the men's, and no worse.
Emergency room analogy stuff:
[spoiler]
Imagine two people in the emergency room. One of them has a migraine and is in tremendous pain. The other has a gunshot wound. The doctors are focusing on the one with the gunshot wound, because that's the worse injury.
In my opinion, the anti-feminist movements are like the guy with the migraine claiming that the guy with the gunshot is exaggerating. That the guy with the gunshot is somehow denying the existance of the other guy's pain. That the fact that they are both in pain means that there condition is equal and that the gunshot doesn't deserve special attention.
Nice analogy. Problem with the analogy is that who is the gun-shot victim and who is the migraine sufferer depends on what particular issue we speak of. In some case it's the woman who has been shot and an insensitive man bitches that he's not treated in her stead, in some cases the roles are reversed. Either way, they both have issues and both suffer from problems that should and can be dealt with. Why does it have to be one over the other? In the case of your example, why can't the one with the gun-shot wound be taken to the operating table while the migraine victim get's the needed treatment at the same time?
But the truth is, neither of these injuries negates the other. The fact that one guy has a gunshot wound and is dying doesn't minimize the pain experienced by the guy with the migraine. But neither does the pain of the man with the migraine make gunshot wound less serious. They're both bad, but one is much worse.
Society sends both genders a lot of fucked up messages about who and how we should be, but anyone trying to make it seem like the fucked up messages society sends me as a man are as bad as the fucked up messages society sends my wife as a woman is full of shit.
You are completely right, one issue is worse than the other. And yet, both are still issues. Can we please agree to deal with both and stop acting like it's all or nothing, only one of them get's treated ever? Because in that case the gun-shot always get's treatment no matter what, on the grounds that it's more serious an issue, but this still won't help the person with the migraine at all.
As for your opinion on who has it worse off between you and your wife, I won't be able to comment on your two specifically, I don't know either of you :) But I would think a more fair and just society don't just tell your wife how her issue can be resolved and fixed, it would tell you how you can fix yours too. At least I'd hope so...
[/spoiler]
You and I are saying the same thing. I'm not saying that the guy with the migraine doesn't get treated, I said repeatedly that the presence of a worse injury doesn't invalidate his lesser one at all.
They are, however, treated by different doctors. I don't have a problem with feminists focusing on the bigger injury.
I have a problem with people saying that feminist arguments are somehow invalid or that feminists aren't truly interested in equality because they are focusing primarily on women's issues. They aren't generally denying that men's issues exist (though they do get offended if you try to say they are just as bad, because they aren't), that simply isn't what they are focusing their efforts on correcting.
If someone wishes to focus on the way society makes life suck for men, there's no problem with that, and I would fully support it. A movement that worked in parallel to feminism to correct the ways our culture hurts men would be awesome. Demanding that feminists be the ones to do this is silly.
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Going to make a nebulous rambling point because it occurred to me and I want to. I think it's still relevant to the themes of the thread, but feel free to pluck it if it's not.
One of my vested interests in this thread is because I identify (cautiously, I know it's a contentious term) as a feminist. (Not solely, I identify as a lot of things - a gamer being one, I won't go into the others) So there is a kind of...knee-jerk to when people say "this is what the feminists say" "this is what the feminists think" because I'm there thinking...hey! no I don't! :s
The reason I identify with feminism is due to the egalitarian aspect of equality. It's an ideal that is important to me. There is an argument that feminism is purely devoted to furthering women's interests, but I see it more as identifying (and one day perhaps dismantling) power structures and hierarchy. This intersects with not just issues of gender, but also race, class and sexuality - it's the same mechanism. It's how power functions, how dominant ideology becomes normalized which is why it's invisible - not because it doesn't exist, but because it's difficult to challenge norms that are ingrained. I.e to see things from the outside when you're inside.
Feminism calls dominant ideology patriarchy (focusing on gender). Marxism would call it cultural hegemony (focusing on class). To me, it really doesn't matter what you call it, what matters is being able to identify power, authority and influence. So I also see feminism as a way of challenging a certain kind of assumed authority.
A more personal reason (that I stated elsewhere) is the presupposition of some feminist thinking that gender is bollocks. Well, that's not entirely fair - that gender exists, but it only exists because it's socially conditioned, therefore it's not fixed and you do not have to submit to someone else's definition of you. I.e 'gender' is 'masculine' and 'feminine' - masculine is a catch-all term for various personality traits that we gender, such as active, strong, outgoing, achieving, and feminine the same but inverted. People are infinitely more complex than catch-all terms and are, in all likelihood, going to be comprised of differing degrees of things considered 'masculine' and 'feminine'.
As such, we are all the kwisatz haderach :P
'Masculine' and 'feminine' has very little to do, in any real sense, with 'man' 'woman' or 'male' 'female' - it's just we've been conditioned to think in these terms and so we do. And so we are. But that makes it restrictive when a man wants to show his feelings, or a woman wants to achieve. (It also gives me a vocabulary and methodology to examine things I instinctively knew as a kid but had no frame of reference)
So that's feminism, in a nutshell, for me. I know there's (many) different types and schools, and while I obviously recognize that men and women are different, I subscribe less to the feminism of celebrating our difference and unique experience of womanhood (French feminism?). I'd rather celebrate our differences and unique experiences of being people.
That said...
/rant on
Feminism on the internet, or tumblr feminism, as a kind of group-think, will destroy itself.
From that I don't mean all feminists who happen to be on the internet (like me!) or on tumblr, but there does seem to be a specific group who identify online as feminists and are willing to rip eachother to shreds at the drop of a hat.
They seem to be wielding inclusivity as a weapon which is...not what inclusivity is supposed to be. If you aren't inclusive enough, if you don't use the right words, denounce the right people, you're a bad feminist, you betray the sisterhood and you cannot enter the club-house.
There is a policing, and it's extreme. People are tripping over themselves to call out privilege wherever they see it, and define themselves by opposition. There's a patting themselves on the back for pointing out "bad behaviour" and moral outrages in others that is sanctimonious.
In one corner of the internet, feminists are tearing apart self-proclaimed feminist Caitlin Moran, because she got the cast of Sherlock to read out slash fanfiction for the lolz. How horrible! How demeaning to the fan-fiction writer, and because it's slash and Moran finds it funny, she's obviously being derogatory and homophobic by making light of an oppressed minority. That's not my feminism. It's also upsetting Benedict Cumberbatch and I love Ben, and Moran is a bad feminist.
Some time later, in another corner of the internet, feminists are tearing apart Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch for being a rich white privileged male whose privilege is compounded by the fact his ancestors got rich on the backs of slaves (sugar, I think). So...I don't think I can love Ben anymore - he's classist and given his privilege comes from race hate, in a round about way he has the taint of racism too. He should apologise. For stuff his ancestors did before he was born.
(A lot of this, it has to be said, comes from Jezebel which proports itself as a kind of feminist gossip mag. And what's the main component of a gossip mag? To bitch. Particularly about other women. It also has an area called 'group-think' which I think is only too appropriate and pertinent, as it's another kind of echo-chamber which are always harmful).
I don't feel this kind of policing is progressive; if anything it's stifling.
I can understand how people with no interest or fore-knowledge of feminist theory, would see people being so...collectively petty while calling themselves feminists, and thinking - nope. Feminism is not for me. It's possible to both identify as a feminist and be fairly...jaded by feminism in another sense. It's so broad! But I think in the latter sense what I'm encountering is a) a vocal minority amplified by the internet and b) the internet. It's erroneous to ascribe that thinking to Feminism as a movement or a whole.
(and the internet is where you can also find this http://www.returnofkings.com/ :ugh: )
tl;dr - feminism seems a good thing to adopt. some feminists don't seem good. because they're people. some people suck.
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(and the internet is where you can also find this http://www.returnofkings.com/ :ugh: )
oh god that shit was hilarious. I'm used to idiots, but usually they aren't so articulate while being so wrong.
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I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally.
But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)
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I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally.
But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)
Teh internets is srsbsns. Anon says so.
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I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally.
But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)
Oh no, you're absolutely right. The fact that people can seriously believe the shit they're writing on the site is horrifying.
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I'm sorry, my time for tonight is up. I'll respond to your excellent post tomorrow, or as soon as I can.
Yeah so clearly this did not happen. I'd like to offer an apology to the participants of this topic, I've been busy, and on top of that had very little eagerness to engage in this topic at this time. Take from that what you want, I guess...
I'll return to this tread to respond whenever time and desire allow me, it's not like it will go away anytime soon.
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I do not have much to contribute at present as I am a little rushed (hotel internet), but I thought you guys might like this article that seems at least generally relevant.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/13/transgender-facebook-expands-gender-options (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/13/transgender-facebook-expands-gender-options)
The right to self-identify and express in multimedia is coming, slowly but surely. That's a little step towards equality of expression at the very least.
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I noticed that, and found it interesting. Fascinating confluence of engineering, user interface design, social issues, and capitalism.
The people to which it applies seem to be pretty happy about it, although I noticed a little push-back centered on the idea that they're not something "Custom." Which I can understand -- although I can also see the concerns and limitations on Facebook's side. I'm actually kind of impressed that they already dodged a bullet by not labeling it "Other."
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A
saw this, was interesting
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A
saw this, was interesting
Interesting, indeed. A few odd choices regarding his mannerisms, but worth a watch.
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I'm up writing this a bit late, since I'm not feeling too well. All below is my opinion.
I suppose my perspective is a bit colored. I don't know how to write to the general experience of humanity, or of people in the west. I've spent a bit more time reading everything from skepchick to return of kings to feministing, to...well, jezebel, unfortunately. I've watched plenty of youtube videos, browsed forums, and generally tried to extract what I could from the arguments and personalities.
This has filled me with the most impressive internal edifice of apathetic disgust I have ever constructed.
The manosphere:
[PUA]
When it comes to the Pick-Up Artist community, they give me the same feeling as a multi-level marketing company. All the buzzwords, all the hype, all the condemnation of people who don't follow the system. Many of them are constantly insisting that men measuring their worth by the approval of women is pathetic, yet also condemn "betas" for not getting sex from women by following the rules for attracting them. Many of them strike me as being very masculine, as thinking of themselves as very "badass". Alright. That's nothing to me.
The ideal for many seems to be the utilization of women for sex. They criticize "betas" and "omegas" for trying to "nice" their way into a woman's bed. It does not seem to occur to them that some men might want an emotionally intimate long-term relationship. Or perhaps it merely disgusts them. If so, why is it not a weakness to desire sex so much that you will construct lifestyles around bedding women? These people strike me as immensely driven to seek women, and as such, immensely vulnerable to them in many ways. It's pathetic and disgusting to see people - in my estimation - so weak and thinking themselves so strong and capable.
[MRA]
As for the issue-based MRAs, eh, they have some factual points. If you go by a recent CDC study, domestic violence against men, while lower than that against women, is still around the one-in-seven to one-in-ten range. False rape accusations, while not higher than false reports of other crimes, probably do average around 5%. And so on.
Yet, though I try, I cannot bring myself to really care about these things as issues. If false rape reports happen, I can limit my exposure by making sure I'm never alone with a woman, or by having an audio or video record if I ever am. I can prevent most opportunities for domestic violence by avoiding marriage or cohabitation. I can prevent child support and custody issues by either being celibate or using multiple layers of protection. These are not difficult propositions, and I probably will invest some attention in being aware of potentially dangerous situations for me. To the extent that I have been made aware of this, I suppose I should be grateful.
But if bad women or bad things happen to other men, well, what did they expect? Did they really think that women were nicer, kinder, or more loving than men? Did they really think that they could rely on being treated more fairly or decently by women? If so, their foolishness, not mine. I figured this out largely by age 12 or so. And I cannot get a consist answer on what they want to do about it. Some want "pure equality", where, I suppose, every battle must have a casualty count of exactly 50/50 and men don't get to have urinals anymore. Or something. Some want to return to "traditional values", which, as far as I am concerned, can go to hell, as I have no intention of being obligated to support a stay-at-home mother and a number of children only limited by her capacity to have them. And some just seem to hate the status quo.
[MGTOW]
I think I have the most understanding for Men Going Their Own Way. There is one guy with a story about waking up with his girlfriend trying to strangle him with a cord. I think that this might tend to put one off the idea, if you will. On the other hand, many of them seem some of the most bitter, disappointed people I've ever read or listened to. What did they expect, again? Nor am I a fan of the "eventually the world will crumble without us" attitude some have. The world neither notices nor cares when an individual bows out, either in death or alienation from society. To assume that one matters in the grand scheme of society is almost always to appropriate far too much importance to one's own being. They will not be missed.
I do find it interesting that some women seem to find this group exceptionally unpleasant or frustrating. Perhaps it's the air of "taking their toys and going home" - to wit, no sooner are women achieving equality in some areas more than a few men decide to stop interacting with them any more than they have to.
If I fall into any group, it's this one, but I'm not sure I like the company. Assign the label to me, if you like, but I don't care about MGTOW or other men.
The Feminist side:
I cannot label feminists so easily. There does not seem to be a monolithic feminism, but rather, quite a lot of them. Or, rather, quite a lot of feminists, each with their own definition of it. This creates difficulty in labeling.
I am a single white man, and I therefore, according to various feminists, am a victim or a perpetrator of the patriarchy, am and am not a proponent of rape culture, am and am not a slut-shamer, a potential rapist, a creep, a biological mistake, a victim of class warfare, a sexist, and so on and so forth.
I cannot get a definitive set of rules out of this sphere, and I am tired of trying. One thing I am abundantly clear on, and that is that while the definition of feminism might be the belief that the sexes ought to be equal, it never means only this in practice to practically anyone. I cannot even get a definitive answer as to whether a male could be a feminist.
I find the sensitivity and concern in many feminist circles to be both odd and absurd. To me, the phrase "trigger warning" is self-parody. And I'm not too thrilled with the advice they seem to enjoy coming up with, like "Why you should date a single mother", or how I should be examining my life for evidence of bias and privilege, or how my suppressed feelings lead to anger and violence. And so forth. Not just from online, but even from my feminist friends, some of whom have asserted that I would be quite a catch for a single mother. This did not induce in me the mentality that I believe they intended, however.
There also seems to be a belief that being a victim somehow gives them moral sanction or moral superiority. This is puzzling to me. So you were victimized. So what? The fact that someone hurt you gives you no claim on me, unless I did it. It may be that women are raped, abused, cheated, and otherwise harmed by men. I won't claim otherwise, but it's not something I personally have ever considered, much less participated in. Claims, then, that address a sense of communal responsibility are completely insensible to me.
As well, I find the dichotomy between what I perceive as really problematic and what is often talked about to be jarring. I once watched a video of an Iranian girl shot in the heart in a protest against the oppressive and misogynistic leadership of her country. If I were a feminist, I don't think you could get me to ever stop talking about that. Instead, just before writing this, I had the misfortune of encountering a two or three page article on how men who wear fedoras are awful and creepy. Well then.
To end...
I will take the unpopular and possibly amoral step of saying once again that I'm not too interested in equality. If I were, as Peter Singer has noted, I should be sending all my disposable income to third world countries. This, if I have any say in the matter, will not be happening. If the only way I can live in a comfortable dwelling with food and water is to be a single white male with privilege, then, as far as I am concerned, privilege it shall be. Hopefully this is not the case.
I am slightly suspicious, too, about how convenient I appear to be to some of these people I know personally. When my friends and acquaintances were having fun, going to parties, getting laid, and sometimes having kids - often out of wedlock - I was working. I have kept working, as they've drifted away, or had their crises, or broken up and gotten together with new people. Now that I have my own business, now that I can afford to simply walk onto a lot and buy a car with cash, now that I want to buy a house...well, now I am a good catch, a great guy, someone who is mature and responsible, and someone who would make a great partner. Uh huh, sure. I do not want to have a relationship with a woman, and I hope I never do. As such, why do I need to concern myself with how I interact with them on anything but a professional level?
There has been an enormous amount of time and energy deployed by those concerned with gender issues to the creation of extremes of artistic rhetoric, and I must confess that, after imbibing on only a small amount of it, I wish to be un-involved. If the goal is to make me have respect for others by dint of them being male or female human beings, I find it unconvincing. If the desire is to make me care for them, they are actively discouraging. After reading and listening to this incredible contradictory, conflict-ridden, and manipulative body of works, I am convinced that I'd be wiser to stick my hand in a garbage disposal than to attempt to develop any interests in the area of relationships.
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This has filled me with the most impressive internal edifice of apathetic disgust I have ever constructed.
I can understand that. Though, if I'm completely honest, spending too much time on the internets ingesting vast swathes of stupidity produces more despair and despondency in me than apathy. I start going, oh god, what a world, what's the point, HUMANITY YOU ARE DOOMED, I might as well give up now.
(does it stop me looking at youtube comments? no, it does not. Fuck, it doesn't even stop me replying to youtube comments and becoming Part of the Problem :()
I am a single white man, and I therefore, according to various feminists, am a victim or a perpetrator of the patriarchy, am and am not a proponent of rape culture, am and am not a slut-shamer, a potential rapist, a creep, a biological mistake, a victim of class warfare, a sexist, and so on and so forth.
Not me, if that's any help. :P I would have to know you personally to apply any of those labels to you. (though potential rapist is probably not inaccurate - *everyone's* a potential rapist, aren't they? I'm a potential rapist! I mean, I wouldn't, but I have that potential. Granted, given I'm female and 5'2, it's a potential less likely to be ascribed to me by others...)
I cannot even get a definitive answer as to whether a male could be a feminist.
Yes. A man is a feminist if he believes in equality between the sexes. Forming a distinction between that and egalitarianism in that context is semantics - or unwillingness to be associated with a group that negative connotations, as far as I can see. (Which is fair enough).
Painting men as the enemy is unhelpful, as is anyone who does so.
To me, the phrase "trigger warning" is self-parody.
Mm. I'm of two minds, here. When it's something frivilous that could upset someone, it's seen as being considerate or polite. And that's fine. I do not think it should be socially mandated though, and when it gets to the extent of this:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/11/wellesley-college-creepy-man-statue-debate?CMP=twt_gu (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/11/wellesley-college-creepy-man-statue-debate?CMP=twt_gu)
it really gets ridiculous. There's a lot of things in that article I agree with -
+1 for
Do women have the right to live free of the intentional infliction of emotional and psychological violence? Yes. Do we have the right to move through public space without being harassed or assaulted? Yes. Do we have the right to move through public space without having our PTSD triggered by a source with no intention of triggering us? No, we don't. That's an impossible standard, and a dangerous one.
Theoretically, I agree - particularly when so many people seem hell bent on disavowing intention entirely as irrelevant. Though I'm uncomfortably aware I say this from the perspective of someone who has never been raped or suffered PTSD. I don't know for sure if I would retain the same stance if I had.
But I'm on much firmer ground with this:
Our schools would be poorer if all potentially triggering material – hell, if all offensive, sexist, blatantly feminist unapproved material – were removed from them, and if students could not engage with troubling material.
I don't know where places like tumblr or jezebel are getting the idea that "problematic" or "troubling" automatically equals "wrong". That's just...no. That approach would only work if there was only one interpretation to everything, ever. Someone taking offence from a peice of art should not override all other considerations; it's no more or less valid than someone else taking joy or seeing beauty in it.
"Problematic" or "troubling" means you can see 'problems' in it if interpreted a certain way - usually an issue that's complicated to be unpicked, or an underlying concept, such as "this troubles the narrative". It doesn't mean anything is inherently evil or bad. E.g Heart of Darkness has problematic representations of race in a colonial narrative. Doesn't neccesarily mean the book or Conrad is racist (though that interpretation is definitely there).
Pointing out something is problematic and stating why in a reasoned argument? Fantastic.
Stating something is problematic so should be avoided, removed or banned? ...Less so.
I do get all ranty at the prospect of someone taking offence being seen as the most important thing. a) being offended doesn't automatically make you right and b) Wanoah's signature.
Sure, let's be considerate. But don't get to the point where it's stifling.
how my suppressed feelings lead to anger and violence.
Uh. Moving away from gender politics entirely - isn't that kind of how suppressed feelings work, though? You try to control something hard enough and push it down over a period of time and it will eventually come out uncontrolled if there's no method to vent it?
(Not saying you personally, but as a general principle?)
I will take the unpopular and possibly amoral step of saying once again that I'm not too interested in equality. If I were, as Peter Singer has noted, I should be sending all my disposable income to third world countries.
Heh :) Well, yes.
As an armchair activist, there are a lot of ideals I hold extremely dear...provided they don't inconvenience me in any way and require very little effort. ¬.¬
I don't think it's hypocritical though; it's simultaneously possible to want equality but not want to give up your own privilege in the process. Or to put it another way, to want others not to experience hardship and injustice, while also wanting to remain free of those things yourself.
edit:
as an aside, singledom and self-reliance is absolutely a valid lifestyle choice and I have no interest in attempting to convince or convert otherwise. but something I have to keep reminding myself when I'm inured in the first part of my post, is that not everyone is a shit. I'm sure you already know that, it's just that extreme viewpoints on the interwebs making you feel like you'd be wiser to stick your hand in a garbage disposal than develop a relationship, sounds a bit like something I'd think (cept mine is more like, kill myself or become a complete misanthrope and remove myself from society entirely. BECAUSE IDIOTS).
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Two things come to mind here after reading all that.
1. I strongly recommend people go out and donate their time to help causes even if you don't have the money to ship to foreign countries. I don't usually want to put on my stainless steel crucifix and tell people that it's important to help out, and I think people here are more charitable than they probably let on here, but it's that man-on-the-beach-with-the-starfish-story scenario. Maybe taking a day to help out at a local shelter, working one night a week at a desk in a free clinic, or taking a week in a foreign country to help build modular shelters doesn't seem like much, but it can make a lot of difference.
I guess I'm still something of a socialist at heart if I have some evil conservative leanings. I do ship off a bit of money to help fund a free clinic here and I'm probably buying a condo instead of a single-family home because I think the suburbs are a horrible waste of space and money that definitely doesn't need my money (I can, and have, written essays on it). But even if you don't have any extra money laying around, there's a lot you can do to help the standard of living of the less fortunate. There's only so much you can do for the homeless and even less you can do, due to distance, for the poor of Haiti, but even us penniless armchair warriors can do our bit.
Just my 2 cents there.
2. I wouldn't be so quick to discount the idea of relationships; women aren't like swimming pools that come with a set of standard benefits and maintenance chores. They're all different. Hell, people wonder where the Hell I got mine. I don't often have to deal with the standard relationship bullshit with her, and I've been with her for 10 years. I met her at work and started dating her when I was eighteen. She's a lot different than the women I dated before her (I think the only woman that came close to being as awesome as she is was a French foreign exchange student I dated for a few months).
The upshot of all that being that I didn't have MUCH time to be in bad relationships and I seized the opportunity early, but I had a few. I especially liked the girl who, after I broke up with her after a year-long relationship, told her mother I'd talked her into sex in the last week and then left her, so her mom came to my house and tried to chew out my mom (at which point my mom reminded her that we had stayed in a motel room overnight after prom and that she was on a depo shot, both of which her mother knew). Also the one that decided to track me down on my friend's phone and yell at me because my phone battery died.
Just saying, having bad relationships doesn't mean relationships are bad, especially other people having bad relationships. You can afford to be picky; last count there were over three billion women around. I highly recommend a good relationship, though. A bad relationship can make your life harder, but a good one makes everything you'll ever go through easier.
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Heh. I was being a bit facetious - I do actually volunteer with a couple of things I believe in (though no one has to; I claim no morality tokens) but I am also, genuinely, a very lazy coach potato -.-;
There is a wide, wide chasm between how idealistic I am and how much I am actually, personally willing to do. (Though I would be willing to put my money where my mouth is if I had any; but it's quite easy to click a button, allocate spare funds and then feel better about things).
Was talking politics with a friend the other day. I was all apathetic about the situation my country is in and somewhat grumbly and despairing (it's a theme). And he was like, wtf. You have democracy. Not trying to change things using the democratic system is an insult to countries with people who are under dictatorships and being oppressed. And I'm like, meh...politicians are all liars, no one represents me, we're essentially reduced to a 2 party system that resemble eachother so whatevs, I'll vote but it's between the lesser of two evils which shouldn't be how it is...and he was all, you could do more than you do, you could make a difference, intelligent people being apathetic is what allows corruption, GET OUT THERE AND CHANGE THINGS!
He was all fired up, but rather than feeling inspired it just made me feel tired. Because I do not have it in me to engage with others to that extent and to try that hard. Just thinking about it left me feeling drained. Which then made me sad. Lol.
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There's a sadness about the political system. One of the times when Constantin's rhetoric about democracy was kind of my own. Democracy, in theory, should create the best decisions because well educated people are selecting the best of professionals for any particular job. In practice, pig-ignorant asshats can issue-vote for people who are only professional about getting elected by politicizing minor issues.
I'm not breaking new ground with that assessment. It's better than an authoritarian government in practice, but only marginally, and only because putting one guy in power for two decades only seems to work if you've got natural resources for your peons to plumb.
However, our countries really aren't built on the strength of our governments, they're built on the strength of communities. People living in sub-saharan Africa can't count on their government for anything, but they can count on each other. And until our governments can actually step in and make good decision on behalf of all of us to keep people from falling through the cracks, they are sort of outsourcing that job to us.
People do more than they think they do. Being the friend that convinces another friend not to try meth is a million times better than the system trying to deal with someone that's already descended into addiction. I know I've always been appalled at the state of American health care, so I donate money to my nearest hospital and I volunteer at the free clinic doing whatever non-medical people can do (mostly pulling records and dealing with whatever insurance is available; most of our patients aren't uninsured, it's just that their insurance doesn't even cover the basic costs of care). I did a free study at college in which I designed a plan for quick-erected modular housing that costs less than 100 dollars a shelter.
I mean, I know I can't change the world. That's not in question; the problems are too big. But I've made a difference to a few people, at least, and that means a lot to them.
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I'm going to regret posting this in the morning, but I shall, I tell you, post nonetheless. :P
First, I think that some MRAs and some feminists are pretty much congruent in their goals: actual equality for all. When I listen to some things they say, if taken at face value, I could implement what they both advocate and make both sides happy.
But I'm not coming up with my objections to being called a feminist out of thin air. It isn't just radfems who argue that men can't be feminists - it seems that, for some feminists, men can support, but, as Churchill referenced regarding himself and the church, must buttress only from the exterior. If feminism was about strict equality in all areas, I could be convinced to call myself one, but as I argued before, feminism, as with MRAs and every other advocacy group, focuses on a particular section of the body politic.
Is this an unjust interpretation? Perhaps. But I think that the MRAs have points about male disposability. As I've said, I don't really harbor a lot of hang-ups about my mother abusing me. I can tend to fairly logical, even sociopathic levels of detachment, and viewing myself from the outside, I can understand that what happened (to my family) is merely the result of a mentally ill person (my mother) inflicting harm on another in search of validation. I get that. What I don't get is that apparently I deserve it until I tell someone that she also did it to my sisters, and then, suddenly, because my sisters are female, that makes such abuse indefensible. If it was me, well, toughen up and carry on, you privileged pig. But the instant my sisters are harmed, that's intolerable.
Again, all I have is my own experience. And, again, I don't care. From my perspective, all I care about is the fact that I "won". I got my sisters out, my dad out, I protected those who I felt possessive and caring for. My mom ended up alone, deprived of victims. Understand, then, that I need no sympathy.
What I find interesting, then, is that "feminists" seem interested in only implicating men as abusers. I use quotes because I've met some who don't. But, for the majority of people, if I wish to speak of personal abuse, I am best off by pointing out that my mother attacked my sisters physically. It doesn't matter that I was abused by more people than my mother, or that I was abused much more than my sisters, physically, with striking, with objects - only when violence was inflicted against a woman does it become real to the hearer.
Why is this, if society values men over women uniformly? I have always considered myself to be typical, non-special, ordinary. Usually a safe assumption. I have to ask myself: if men truly do have all the privilege, if men are really all that's wrong with the world, why is my experience so out-of-phase? Why are the experiences of others I know so different from the feminist narrative?
Who is a feminist, as at least one has claimed, to tell me that they will determine whether I was at fault or not?
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Allow me to approach my incredulity from another angle: I'll be blunt. My mother threw a pewter platter at my face - just to pick one of the heavier day-to-day objects. My parents hit me. Quite a lot, in the face. I was whipped with deer brush switches to raise welts because I was "talking back" - because the regular spankings with wood paddles weren't enough. My hands were paddled for less important infractions. I was punished for reading, I was grounded for trying to learn. I was told that they were going to send me to prison or military school for being "rebellious" and reading instead of doing chores. I was put to work for hours in the sun clearing land and doing roadwork as early as eight, and every bit of schooling above fourth grade I had to conduct myself. All of this was primarily, if not totally, at my mother's instigation.
Today, I make well over 50K, own my own business, and work like a demon to do this. I'm planning to buy a house, I have a circle of friends I have chosen, and enough money in the bank to pay cash for practically any item I might care to buy. Just tonight, before coming home, I was tasting scotch with a retired United Airlines mechanic executive who paid me five grand for restoring his maple kitchen to its original glory. Yes, I am fucking awesome, thank you very much. Also, turns out that I really like Mallacan 21-year-old. :P
I got here by an extraordinary amount of pain and will. I worked as much as 106 hours over eight days. I worked clearing land as an amateur lumberjack to keep my apartment when the 2008 recession hit. I've worked with a cold in 30 degree weather, I've scaled scaffolding while taking Vicodin/Norco to recover from a surgery I paid for without assistance. I've injured myself and worked for weeks while limping from spot to spot. I've come home and thrown up from toxic paints, I've sobbed chlorine tears after bleaching houses, had my skin bleached and burned by oxalic acid, and slept overnight for three or four hours on a few dropcloths in my shop to get a project done.
Then I read an article like that "debate about some statue" one. What do you think someone like me is going to feel, going to think, about something so pathetically superficial, so grandly unimportant as that? Well, I can tell you what I think. I think that some rather silly and self-involved people have way too much time on their hands.
And how do you suspect I will feel when one of these academic writers, blissfully untainted by actual time among the plebes, deigns to tell me that everything I am, everything I have, is only and undeservedly mine because I am a white male, that I belong to an oppressing class, that I have wittingly or unwittingly contributed to systems to keep minorities and women down? That I am the victimizer, that I am the destroyer, that I am the incarnation of macho pride? These are not merely emotional impressions derived from feminist works, they are often the works themselves in printed word.
Well, if you wish, believe that too.
When I was a child, even when I was a teen, I had a fantasy that there might be someone out there who would care about me, as me. Someone who I could be weak around, someone who would want to be around me just because they liked the person that I was. I hate that I ever had that idea, and I am ashamed of it. That's not why I try to help some people. I don't care if they're cute, I'm not looking for a date. If my motivation is male sexuality, it is remarkably well-hidden.
I care about oppressed women and I give to them on Kiva and other sites because I know what it is to have to struggle, to not have a net beneath you, to have no option but to work and to fight for survival. I don't give to women because I care about them as an oppressed minority without privilege, I give to them because I recognize a fellow struggler. I want them to beat the system, even just a little bit. I want my tribe to win, just a little. And my tribe, as I see it, is all those who just wanted to live a life without hunger, without persecution, without too much pain, and were willing to work as hard as they could if they could just have a taste of that. We of the dirty hands, and leathery faces, you might say.
I find much of the MRA movement to be without compassion or perspective. I get not caring. I don't care about anyone, even myself, all that much. But I don't get not wanting to help anyone of a gender. I don't understand making that mistake, from either the feminist or the manosphere side. What is it to me if a hardworking person has a penis or a vagina? It is their struggle, their will to survive, that I find worthy. I come first, in my mind. But why not others, if I can spare a hundred here and there?
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This response is mostly to the subject of feminism, because that is what was essentially responded to. Again, all I have is my own experience. But that experience doesn't seem to count. Look how, in this thread, however bad I've had it concerning marriage-shaming, well, that's not important compared to how bad women have it.
I've been told that I'm selfish, that I'm a sinner, for not finding a woman to support, for not being, essentially, a workhorse, a walking wallet. This, from a couple, when I was helping a couple move from one house to another. Does this experience count? How bad do I have to have it before it's worth considering? It's not that I think it needs to be considered - I consider it frivolous. Why is it, however, that it is automatically frivolous, while any encouragement to marry directed towards the generic woman is assumed important? Why is the experience a concrete male has to be compared to the generic marriage pressure directed towards "all women" and then discounted as not being serious enough, that no matter how bad it is, someone else has it worse elsewhere, rendering it moot?
I don't know. Admittedly, I don't know in an apathetic yet argumentative - heh :-P - sense. It seems to me that women should toughen up, even if I'm correct. I certainly don't intend to start caring about C's comments about my selfish single lifestyle. If people want to just see me as a tool for their needs, that's fine, so long as they pay me in cash for services rendered.
In conclusion, well, there is no conclusion. I can come up with as many reasons, if not more, to avoid being an MRA. I'd say that I wished to live a simple life and be left alone, but there are so many reasons that that doesn't even connect to my situation that I won't bother.
So let me put it this way: when I say I don't care about equality, I mean that I don't care about enforcing equality. I'd rather spend spare money on some produce grower in Ecuador, who I can lend to. It's simpler, for me. The world might be a better place if some rather entitled people whining about statues had the same idea.
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If you write a book, I will read it.
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To be fair, it's hard to enforce equality, and there truly are limits to what we can do. One of the more interesting discussions I had was with a former law student I knew from my WoW RP days. We'll say she was a bit of a radical feminist at the time and we had a really long discussion, once, about the nature of equality.
The situation I posited was based around a debate on abortion. If women can choose not to have a baby, then by any measure of equality, men should also be able to choose not to have a baby. It's hard enough as it is, with women essentially being able to decide the abortion issue on their own and men still being held to the standard women were in the early 1900s (if you had sex, and a woman's pregnant, it's your fault and you'd better get ready to raise it).
But consider, just implementing that, the natural biology and unequal footing of the original condition of our species is going to make that essentially impossible. I mean, if both parents want to keep or abort a baby, that's fine, but men can't decide the issue of abortion just from a sheer practical standpoint. If they want to abort a child, and the mother wants to keep it, I suppose we can install a legal framework where the father can completely absolve himself of legal responsibility (essentially meaning he never had a child). But what about the other way, if a man wants to keep a child and a woman wants to abort it? It's her body; you can't force her to be pregnant nine months and deliver for someone else's sake because it tramples her right to her body. But that does mean that a father has an unequal say in that matter.
There's also the question of whether we can have equality when there are two sexes (and a lot more genders). I can say all I want that I treat all people exactly the same as me, but that's not true for anyone. In the most basic sense, I'm a heterosexual man, and all the perspective I can ever have is from that position. Will I seriously treat a woman exactly the way I treat a man? It's impossible to say yes to that; how can I? I find women attractive, and that's made me do things for them I wouldn't normally do for men. It's made me behave differently around them.
I remember high school. No matter how much you try to avoid it sometimes, it's seriously a bunch of men and women competing for each others' attention. The only thing that's changed now is that I know how vicious women can be towards each other. I kind of thought it was just us guys having those primal issues. Anyway, the point to all of this is that we can try, and that's it. That's all we can do. We can treat women as financial and social equals as best we can, but some things are just inherently tied to our gender.
With that said...
Income isn't what it used to be. When my wife and I graduated in 2008, she immediately got a VERY well paid teaching job in Houston, and I ended up graduating right around the recession when having an architecture degree was about as useful as have an extra roll of toilet paper. I had to work in retail for around 15-18k/yr for about four years. I was something of a drain on my wife's resources; I could only pay my half of the rent and that was it. In the meantime, though, I certified in Revit and kept looking.
When we came back to Ohio, it was because I'd gotten a job in a background checking company. She gave up her job (the reason they paid her so much was because her school was dead smack in the middle of Hell, oh the stories we could tell) and came back with me to work in a day care. Our pay was about equal then, though less than what we made collectively. In short order, though, I started working at an architecture firm, and suddenly I was making more than she was. Since, I've gotten a MUCH better architecture job and my wife is now teaching at a charter school, which pays better (and she tutors on the side). While she has a lot more debt than I do (my education money was enshrined in the divorce decree), she covers her own bills with some to spare and I've never been in much debt.
Point being, I've been very lucky to be married, because with all those shifts in dynamics, we've never had a fight about money in the ten years we've been together, and since graduating, even in the worst of times for me and when we were extricating her from a bad situation, we never made less than a collective 65k/yr. We paid taxes on about 85k last year between the two of us.
Just saying, we may not always be treated equally, but in a relationship, don't get a drain on resources, get yourself a partner that will always be working to better your collective situation. It makes life a whole helluva lot more pleasant when you and your partner are standing on the same patch of level ground.
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But I'm not coming up with my objections to being called a feminist out of thin air. It isn't just radfems who argue that men can't be feminists - it seems that, for some feminists, men can support, but, as Churchill referenced regarding himself and the church, must buttress only from the exterior. If feminism was about strict equality in all areas, I could be convinced to call myself one, but as I argued before, feminism, as with MRAs and every other advocacy group, focuses on a particular section of the body politic.
No - I'm not calling you a liar here, I'm sure there are people out there who will identify as feminists, radfems or otherwise, and say men can't be - either because they aren't allowed in the club by default or they don't share the same experiences. I'm just saying they're wrong.
What I don't get is that apparently I deserve it until I tell someone that she also did it to my sisters, and then, suddenly, because my sisters are female, that makes such abuse indefensible. If it was me, well, toughen up and carry on, you privileged pig. But the instant my sisters are harmed, that's intolerable.
Again, in my humble opinion, people having that view are wrong, whether they identify as feminists or not. In fact, it's doubly ironic if they identify as feminists and say something like that - because if they're telling you as a sufferer of abuse to toughen up and carry on because you're male, but harming your sisters is intolerable by comparison, they are also perpetuating damaging gender norms/stereotypes. (that men having suffered should "toughen up" because they need to be stoic, strong and silent, not have feelings etc) Precisely the sort of thing feminism is about deconstructing.
What I find interesting, then, is that "feminists" seem interested in only implicating men as abusers. I use quotes because I've met some who don't. But, for the majority of people, if I wish to speak of personal abuse, I am best off by pointing out that my mother attacked my sisters physically. It doesn't matter that I was abused by more people than my mother, or that I was abused much more than my sisters, physically, with striking, with objects - only when violence was inflicted against a woman does it become real to the hearer.
Why is this, if society values men over women uniformly? I have always considered myself to be typical, non-special, ordinary. Usually a safe assumption. I have to ask myself: if men truly do have all the privilege, if men are really all that's wrong with the world, why is my experience so out-of-phase? Why are the experiences of others I know so different from the feminist narrative?
Again, one answer is how men and women are differently gendered. Women traditionally seen as 'feminine' - weak, helpless victims. Men as strong, aggressors, perpetrators. Gender roles do no one any good. I wouldn't have said society values men over women uniformly; I'd say they're valued in different ways which are differently weighted and largely depend on these gender roles (and adherence to them). I'd say that traditionally men are the ones with positions of power in the hierarchy, and there are many vestiges left over from this. Men are not what's wrong with the world - I don't think that's the feminist narrative (if there is one). Again, I'd contend that people saying that are simply wrong (at the very least, extremely blinkered).
Who is a feminist, as at least one has claimed, to tell me that they will determine whether I was at fault or not?
No one, though I'd certainly extend that to say, who is anyone to determine whether you were at fault or not?
They can't, as they haven't walked in your shoes and been through what you have.
Then I read an article like that "debate about some statue" one. What do you think someone like me is going to feel, going to think, about something so pathetically superficial, so grandly unimportant as that? Well, I can tell you what I think. I think that some rather silly and self-involved people have way too much time on their hands.
Well, I have a lot less money than you and a lot more free time on my hands, and I think it's fucking stupid as well if that's any help :P
Though in retrospect, it was probably not helpful of me to go off and find another apathy-causing example; however on-topic it may of seemed.
I hate that I ever had that idea, and I am ashamed of it.
...Why? Regardless of who it is, wanting acceptance and an authentic connection with someone is completely valid.
I don't give to women because I care about them as an oppressed minority without privilege, I give to them because I recognize a fellow struggler.
But I don't get not wanting to help anyone of a gender. I don't understand making that mistake, from either the feminist or the manosphere side. What is it to me if a hardworking person has a penis or a vagina?
Precisely this.
Your unwillingness to differentiate between biological sex as a determinate criteria is a cornerstone of (at least one) school of feminism...You don't treat them differently; what matters to you seems to be a different set of criteria re: hardworking and legitimate struggle because you empathise with those traits yourself. Neither biological sex (nor the gender roles we impose on the sexes) are relevant.
I think you're seeing the manosphere for men and the feminists for women here. And I think a lot of people would agree with those definitions. I used to.
But if I thought feminist meant "for women" or "for women over men" I wouldn't identify as one. Likewise if I thought jezebel or tumblr were any kind of representatives of feminism (because they're fucking terrible).
I genuinely believe that undermining adherence to rigid gender roles (and sexuality) is helpful to both men and women; and that they should be judged on their individual merits rather than their possession of a penis or a vagina and the social expectations that seems to dictate.
Why is the experience a concrete male has to be compared to the generic marriage pressure directed towards "all women" and then discounted as not being serious enough, that no matter how bad it is, someone else has it worse elsewhere, rendering it moot?
I think this happens a lot, on many different subjects, and is also wrong.
I've heard the phrase first world problems and it's annoying - while sometimes it's genuinely pointing out frivolous grievances (like that statue) a lot of the time it's setting up a false equivalence that suggests because someone somewhere in the world is starving your issue, by comparison, is of no consequence.
Which is profoundly unhelpful, largely because someone, somewhere in the world being starving doesn't actually help. That someone else's problem is worse does not in any way make your problem better. (In fact, it's surely just heaping on more misery).
Heard the same sort of thing with depression. Cheer up! Other people have it much worse than you! Get some perspective!
Ok, but other people suffering is not particularly cheery.
But what about the other way, if a man wants to keep a child and a woman wants to abort it? It's her body; you can't force her to be pregnant nine months and deliver for someone else's sake because it tramples her right to her body. But that does mean that a father has an unequal say in that matter.
No, the father doesn't have an equal say in the matter - but it's not an equally weighted issue. It did take two to make the baby; it's her egg and his sperm. So it's about 50/50 there. But as you prefaced that example, it all takes place in her body - and all the associated discomfort and risk that comes with that. If that wasn't the case, and it all occurred externally (somehow) he should absolutely have an equal say.
There's also the question of whether we can have equality when there are two sexes (and a lot more genders).
Yeah, I think we can. Equality doesn't mean sameness. We can have equal respect and equal rights for people, as individuals, rather than the two sexes and a lot more genders. It just requires treating them as such.
There's also a fear to offend, and a right to be offended - tip toeing around subjects doesn't help. Less fear, less offence, more calm discussion.
Largely, I think, the solution involves empathy and education to combat intolerance and fear of difference.
Of course, never gonna happen...
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If you write a book, I will read it.
That's very kind of you. :)
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Alright, I have a moment again. I've done some more thinking, and hopefully this won't bore anyone.
First, let me apologize for writing from a personal standpoint on the domestic violence matter. I only do so because it seems, to me, to be somewhat of an anecdotal argument for the reality of domestic violence not being simply the fault of men. I recommend the CDC study here for a more statistical argument: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf I must caution readers of the study slightly - the CDC appears not to consider any sexual assault that does not involve forced penetration of a woman as "rape". This is not considered the only definition by some other legal bodies.
The study reveals that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience severe physical violence from a partner. If we expand abuse to any sort of physical violence, the numbers become 1 in 3 for women and 1 in 4 for men. That this is not merely at the hands of male perpetrators can be established by referring to another CDC study, analyzing the rates of violence and assault within sexual orientations. It is interesting to note that the rate of severe physical assault reported by lesbians, at 29.4% weighted, is nearly double that of gay men, at 16.4. This would suggest that domestic violence is not solely a masculine problem.
I bring this up not because it is necessarily disagreed with, but because I would not have you think that I speak entirely without wider implication from my own experience. I also think that this is where MRA's are strongest: when they have actual facts. It's very worrisome when bringing things like this up is responded to with, essentially, dismissal by some feminists. If the ratios for violence are so nearly similar (1:4 to 1:7), then where are all the shelters for men?
I just find that MRA's don't tend to stop there. They keep going, right out over the edge of reality much of the time. While I agree with them that women don't have everything worse than men (hey, the majority of homeless are men, there's one thing), I can't go on from there to agree with the idea that men, as a class, have it worse than women. We don't live in a gynocracy or whatever eyebrow-lifting term they've come up with for the idea recently.
But then, going too far with the ideological walk is the problem I have with feminism, too, and the problem I have with calling myself a feminist. If feminism really was just "the radical idea that women are people too", then I'd have to call myself one. Unfortunately, it isn't, not to most people, not even to most feminists who write about it - and language is not just a dictionary. Acceptance of the label is not just the acceptance of the idea of equality, it is the acceptance, more or less, of many other attached ideas, such as patriarchy, or of objectification, or any number of other things.
I have trouble with many of these things. Take "patriarchy". Any definition I can acquire either doesn't do enough to be useful, or becomes utterly nebulous and unfalsifiable. At its narrowest, it's descriptive: the idea that men are the first and foremost leaders and most capable actors in society. Well, that's bad for women, if they want to be a knight or a president (depending on era), but possibly pretty good if they don't want to be Peasant Conscript 40,212 in bloody conflict 528 over nameless patch of ground 312. It's also true that this sort of ideal is by no means universal in all eras and locations, and certainly isn't much more than a descriptive term - it's an attribute of society, not the driving force, not the organizing system. And in this sense, "The Patriarchy", as a proper noun, doesn't exist, only a set of attributes exist, some or all of which can be changed.
And then you have the wider, more interesting definitions, where patriarchy is an established system in which all men oppress all women, in which - and I can link feminists claiming this - it becomes the instigator for racism, classism, war, and etc. Now this sort of all-encompassing system is quite another thing to be swallowing, and I frankly cannot, because this is essentially creationism for social science. Is there an ill? It is men. This explains everything, and nothing could possibly disprove it - a state of theory-crafting similar to, as I said, a certain sort of theology. Things get even more worrisome when you start having books published with questions like "Is logic masculine?"
Let's hope not.
But you see the difficulty. Aligning oneself with the term "feminist" may convey a desire for equality, or it may convey an agreement with things that I would hope are evidently irrational to those not blinded by the lure of them. Similarly, since the term "MRA" encapsulates more within it for most people than simply "correcting the areas of society where men are suffering", I will not adopt that. I have been a imbiber in similar theologies, if you will, and that sort of drink always tends to leave one with a headache.
As for holding in one's feelings, I don't think that not being expressive necessarily leads one to violence. I think that learning a bit of self-denial, especially in regards to anger, is a necessary recipe for internal peace. But that's me, and as I've noted before, I'm not a psychologist.
In conclusion, I cannot say that I disagree with anything you have said concretely on the subject of equality, Kala, at least in substance. I do have a thought, if you will, that might be illustrative of how I think in general on these things.
When the Soviets took over Russia and the Ukraine, they thought in terms of Marxist classes, and class oppression. It turns out that, looking back over history, that it seems that this is not a very good way in which to be thinking. It's not just the idea of who is in what class that causes problems, but in the very structure of their methodology of thinking - that classes oppress, that one can address these classes as fundamental building blocks of society.
It's not that the concept can't be useful, it's that, taken as operative, as a real thing, it tends to result in a lot of blood and injustice. Because classes are just a construct, like the term "Heavy Attack Cruisers", in Eve. It addresses a arbitrarily defined selection of individuals - but those individuals are not the class, and addressing them first and foremost as members of a class, as acting to do something because they fit within a defined class, is to deny their individuality, their humanity.
This sort of thinking is how you can easily justify concepts like the ultra-expansive definition of patriarchy, and how you can justify maltreatment of men. Men are a class, they oppress women (the oppressed class) and therefore any action against men is justified - or justified at least as long as it is in the service of the oppressed class. What of the individual kulak in the Soviet Union? Well, too bad. He/she was a member of the oppressing class. Never mind that most particular kulaks weren't doing much oppressing, even by Marxist-Leninist standards. They were members of the class that oppressed.
Now, one can go all sorts of places with this, and try to talk about the differences between class of economic station and class of gender, or how we shouldn't go that far with class methodologies, or whatever. But I have a simpler paradigm, and I think it is better, as well as one with which I suspect you have already agreed: people are individuals, whose capabilities and character should be assessed independently of factors which might have affected those attributes. That is to say, when hiring someone for a job that requires heavy lifting, it doesn't matter if more men than women have more upper body strength - all that should matter is whether this particular woman can lift what is necessary. When deciding an abuse case, or providing shelter for the abused, it shouldn't matter that more women are abused, or fewer gay men abuse. All that should matter is who actually did abuse whom, in the particular case addressed.
In short, an individualist method, both personally and publicly, seems to me to be a far better endeavor than lining up behind ideologies which often attach to themselves the undiscriminating methodology of class and gender war.
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I hate that I ever had that idea, and I am ashamed of it.
...Why? Regardless of who it is, wanting acceptance and an authentic connection with someone is completely valid.
This deserved a response all its own. I'm a bit sorry for referencing it, I think that it was too much of an aside for the post.
I am not necessarily using the right word - if I am ashamed, it would be better to say that I am angry at my naivety, of my immaturity, of my lying to myself.
This universe is a hostile and cruel place. We are born dying, so to speak, and every moment brings us closer to a painful and undignified end. In the meantime, the only constant we can be assured of is suffering, while pleasure is optional at best.
In regards to love, it is at least inaccurate in regards to its object. With love, we feel in ourselves an internal reaction to our perception of another. Can we truly perceive that person, and love that? Not entirely, at best, not even accurately, at worst.
In this perspective, one realizes that one lives and dies in an ultimately alone state, shielded forever from the true persons of others by one's own inability to truly perceive. Think of when someone you cared for turned out to be a different person than you expected. This is, unfortunately, in some way always true. Nor can you truly be known by another.
But what is it to be a true and upright person in this universe? I do not mean "righteous". I mean "upright", and even "honest", perhaps also "stoic and facing reality". First of all, I mean honest with one's own self.
If, as I think seems true, the heavens are empty and we are born of dust and destined to return to it, then life is without purpose or meaning. We may establish our own meanings, but these are arbitrarily established meanings. At its core, the universe has the attributes we expect from a system that operates without reference to human welfare. One's own fate, and the fate of all he or she accomplishes and hopes for, all one's loves and dreams, everything one ever values, will die. One's own self is ultimately of no worth, even in one's own eyes, given a certain time-frame. Only in subjective experience is worth found, but devalued once referenced to rational consideration.
When I thought of love back then, I thought of having someone to find worth in, someone who would be an end for me - not my sole end, but someone to live for, at least in part. Someone whose good would be my higher good. As well, someone who would validate worth in me, someone who might find in me something for which to live. This is, upon consideration, also devalued, also dust in the wind. Sometimes I wonder if this desire for a higher person to live for is the reason there are so many gods.
Then, I will live alone, unknown, and die, unknown, never truly known, never truly knowing, with having come from nothing and going nowhere, without value, and with nothing to find lasting value in.
I think that everyone who faces this existential meaninglessness must establish their reason to continue to exist. As for me, I found that a sort of joyous hatred was a response. If this universe is so hostile, so pitiless, so anathema to life and meaning, then every breath is a boot on its face. Every life saved is spitting in the face of certain annihilation. Every joy taken and fully absorbed is to thumb one's nose in the face of extinction. A quote from poor fiction to illustrate: "Pride, and defiant hate. Spite, and harsh oblivion. Let the great jeweled knot of the cosmos unravel in the dust".
In this context, why do I care about being loved? Now, to love, this I find is the celebration of another's defiance of death and the universe. To aid them, to find worth in the various ways in which they also love life and hate death, this is good to me. But if they love me? That is their business. Who am I to say that I should deserve or want the love or attention of another?