Put down the crack pipe, Emily Esfahani-Smith.
This is the shit that makes real feminists cry, the ones who believe and cling to feminism’s promise of working for gender equality, the only real basis for real empowerment of women. This article in the Atlantic by Emily Esfahani-Smith is a hot mess of retrograde women’s advocacy on the backs of men, and it does women no favors either. Basically she wants to return to a state of affairs where men looked out for and protected women and laments the passing of that system.
Esfahani-Smith’s formulation really does make feminism into nothing more than one-sided, special-pleading, gender-bigoted plea for pity for one gender at the expense of another. It’s just plain-old male disposability in a gentle, entreating tone of voice. This is how all blood suckers approach their victims. I imagine she sees this as justified because men hold all the power and this is just a re-balancing, the way a beggar is entitled to plead and beg and humiliate himself on the street as a gesture of cosmic justice. How about a gender system where women are as chivalrous to men and men as Esfahani-Smith wants men to be to women?
She starts out:
“This contrast is indicative of a larger trend—the decline of chivalry and the rise of boorish behavior among men. According to a 2010 Harris poll, 80 percent of Americans say that women are treated with less chivalry today than in the past. This is a problem that all women—especially feminists—should push back against. “
This larger trend is indicative of a parallel with a decline in chivalrous behavior among women – a decline in both ladylike behavior and a societal expectation of ladylike behavior expressed in societal condemnation of unladylike behavior. It parallels nearly a hundred years now of celebrating women’s increasingly boorish behavior – some of it a very good development indeed.
Oh, and boorish by whose standards? Women’s? Esfahani-Smith can go sit and twirl on her gynonormativity.
“Historically, the chivalry ideal and the practices that it gave rise to were never about putting women down, as Connelly and other feminists argue. Chivalry, as a social idea, was about respecting and aggrandizing women, and recognizing that their attention was worth seeking, competing for, and holding. If there is a victim of “benevolent sexism,” it is not the career-oriented single college-aged feminist.
Rather, it is unconstrained masculinity. “
“Unconstrained masculinity”? First off, any masculinity that centers around women is not real masculinity. If it takes a woman to make you a man, you’re not much of a man. Women do not and should not have that power over man, and that is Esfahani-Smith is advocating.
Secondly, and this is the historical background to chivalry; chivalry was primarily a code of fair play between warriors on the battlefield. This is where it resembles Bushido. Where it diverges from Bushido is a pagan pedestalization of the feminine in the Celtic West. This had nothing to do with protecting women as weak and needing protection, this had to do with deference to women of the nobility. Noble women, ladies – and by the way, only ladies benefited from the protections of chivalry; the whole culture was classist at its very foundation – had the status of druids and the whole academic class of poets, lawyers and musicians in pagan Celtic societies. Druids and their class were far from powerless. They could kill with a word and the literature reflects this.
So no indeed, chivalry and its practices “were never about putting women down, as Connelly and other feminists argue”, they were about elevating women in value above men and obligating men to sacrifice, sometimes their very lives, for women. And that, not the supposed harms to women, are what makes chivalry unacceptable. It benefits women at the expense of men.
“Chivalry is grounded in a fundamental reality that defines the relationship between the sexes, she explains. Given that most men are physically stronger than most women, men can overpower women at any time to get what they want”
This is the burka mentality in two sentences. Enough said on how this is not a good thing for women or more to the point, for men.
It is also simply wrong on the facts. The actual fundamental reality is that women like other humans are perfectly capable of using weapons that neutralize the size and strength differences between humans and mammoths and that the species has had these weapons for tens of thousands of years. The actual fundamental reality is that women quite often attack men with weapons, sometimes lying in wait until they are asleep. Another fundamental reality is that western societies at least have very strong cultural sanctions on male violence against females with very little countervailing sanction on female violence against men. So no, Esfahani-Smith is quite wrong on what the fundamental realities really are.
“Some women are trying to bring back chivalry. Since 2009, for instance, a group of women at Arizona State University have devoted themselves to resuscitating gentlemanly behavior and chivalry on a campus whose social life is overwhelmingly defined by partying, frat life, and casual sex.”
Not a word about resuscitating ladylike behavior. Not. One. Word. And also not one word about women taking part in the deepr part of chivalry, risking their lives for others.
“The event has spread to campuses nationwide. Its goal is “to encourage mutual respect between the sexes,” Karin Agness tells me in an interview. Agness is the founder and president of the Network of Enlightened Women, the organization that hosts Gentlemen’s Showcases at colleges each spring.
“The current framework is not generating healthy relationships,” Blayne Bennett, the organizer of ASU’s first Gentlemen’s Showcase, has said. “I believe that chivalry provides the positive framework to maximize the overall happiness of men and women.”
Women, she said, “want to be treated like ladies.”
Well, so what? What possible difference does it make that women want this or that? Of course women’s wants and wishes matter, but the question is, why do they matter to men, and why should men sacrifice themselves to conform to them any more than women should pretzel themselves to meet men’s expectations?
More wrong from her:
“Chivalry is about respect. It is about not harming or hurting others”
It is about respect only when it between equals, such as warriors on the field. Otherwise it is about deference, and screw that, deference that turns into contemptuous caretaking sooner or later, as the protectors get stronger and the protected get weaker. Protection and the need for it is at the heart of the feudal relation between a serf and his lord.
Respect between equals – and by the way, that extended to noble women in Celtic societies. Celtic women fought alongside their men, and it scared the shit out of the Roman soldiers facing them. Fifteen hundred years of cultural corrosion due to the creeping, seeping effects of Latin culture have completely undermined and eroded that basis for chivalry towards women, but this is how it used to be.
And as for harm to others, it seems quite harmful enough when chivalry is imposed as an expectation of others. It leads to this kind of indefensible harm to others.
Then there is the whole subject of what’s wrong with the general stereotyping chivalry rests on in the first place. Oliver Burkeman spoke to this issue in today’s Guardian. Basically he points out that even positive stereotypes are bad because people who stereotype positively are also likelier to stereotype negatively, in other words, stereotyping is itself always problematic.
She winds this all up with this celebration of male disposability:
“Through a tragic event that occurred last summer, our nation was jolted into recognizing chivalry’s enduring power. During a screening of the Dark Knight, a deranged gunman opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado, theater, murdering twelve innocent people. Three men, all in their twenties, were in the audience that day with their girlfriends. When the shots rang out across the theater, these men threw themselves over their girlfriends, saving the women’s lives. All three of the men died.
At the time, Hanna Rosin noted that what these men did was “deeper” than chivalry. It was heroic. I agree. But heroism and chivalry share a basic feature in common—the recognition, a transcendent one, that there is something greater than the self worth protecting, and that there is something greater than the self worth sacrificing your own needs, desires, and even life for.”
EDITED: (Clarence has persuaded me to reformulate this next couple of paragraphs.)
This is some very familiar old shit. “Heroic” it cetrtainly was, as was the one woman’s conduct that day. But this is just the same old shit really. This is White Feather coercion on a societal scale. That is the problem, and Esfahani-Smith is advocating for that.
However, “heroic” or not, this was irresponsible and therefore selfish behavior if these young people had prior and more valid obligations they placed at risk by their behavior. That probably never went through their minds in the split second when they realized what was happening and took action, but in other settings those are exactly the reactions and missteps that get second-guessed and scrutinized after the fact, so no, that doesn’t let them off the hook. Did these men have no family obligations, obligations to actual family members which should by any decent standard come first before they risk their ability to fulfill those responsibilities? Their behavior “heroic” or not, it was romantic and therefore selfish and irresponsible. But then, that’s what chivalry is after all – romanticism.
My second objection is that not once in this article does Esfahani-Smith mention how women should be acting in a chivalrous way towards men. She praises men risking their lives for women, but never women risking their lives for men – and this does happen.
And it should happen more, not only because men need it, but because women need it. Why is selfless service to be restricted to men? And this whole article is especially ironic because Esfahani-Smith links her remarks to feminism. What part of “feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings” doe she not understand? Apparently all of it.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
Oh geeze… I just put that article down in disgust a few seconds ago and you’ve already got a whole post up about it, Gingko. Way to stay on top of things lol! The only thing I can say at the moment is that being high on drugs might actually be a reasonable explanation for that drivel.
There’s another more obvious one. Look at her surname. It looks very much like she is importing shit from her culture and assuming it fits with this one. Some of that fainty dainty whimpering about the natural order of the genders is straight out of a madrassa, and she tries to dress it up as feminism.
About heroism. The word “hero” and the word “serve” – and the Latin word servus, “slave” – come from the same Indo-European root, connoting protection. The status of “hero” has always been a fairly inadequate compensation for disposability. Feminists, as ever, want the status without having to make the sacrifices – while insisting that men must continue to make the sacrifice, but lose the status. And they’ve become so spoiled they don’t even try to hide their hypocritical aristocratic pretensions.
“And they’ve become so spoiled they don’t even try to hide their hypocritical aristocratic pretensions.”
The class background of the founding white feminists and the class pretensions of their mmodrn-day descendants are no secret, and it’s no secret they have skewed the focus and development of white feminism.
But it goes deeper. I am working on a post about the way women in many ways in the gender system we have no are regarded as aristocrats while men are the peasants, and I think it has to do with the gender division of inside and outside work. I think the way society degenders working class white women and WOCs reflects this.
“About heroism. The word “hero” and the word “serve” – and the Latin word servus, “slave” – come from the same Indo-European root, connoting protection.”
Which comes full circle in Englisih in the usual modern semantic load of “the service”.
It’s not a bad thing necessarily. Disposability is at the root of being a social species, and see who that has worked for us. (I read recently that the human population is something like 100 times the biomass of any other large species that has ever existed. I doubt it is so little.) Disposability is not a bad thing unless it is unequal and imposed.
I liked your comment at Ally’s on what is wrong with GMP. (I have yet to figure out how to comment there.) he is coming along but he has a long way to go. I am glad to see a reference over at FC by tamen to Jill Filipovic’s efforts to ostracize GMP.
Is it just me or women like here sound a lot like narcissist?
Some of this woman behave like,womens bouns are made of glasse and there skin out of silk(Com to think of it I already know the answer to that). So they need to be constantly protected by men,or God forbid there will break.
Man and woman should protect one another.
In an otherwise good article:
“This is some very familiar old shit. What is so “heroic” about these men risking their lives for girlfriends in the first place? Did these men have no family obligations, obligations to actual family members which should by any decent standard come first before they risk their ability to fulfill those responsibilities? Their behavior wasn’t “heroic”, it was romantic and irresponsible.”
You are in no position to judge what those men did one way or the other.
@Clarence:
Why? Because you say so? What makes you think you’re in a position to tell Gingko what he can and cannot judge?
JDCyran:
He doesn’t pretend to know what those men -who made the ultimate sacrifice- were thinking. He doesn’t know their family situations , he doesn’t know jack.
It really is that simple.
Perhaps he could try shaming men who risk or give their lives to save women. Perhaps he could go even farther and shame men who give their lives to save children.
It’s one thing to say it shouldn’t be EXPECTED – it’s another thing to actually judge, esp when you don’t even have the facts to do so.
first, let’s define some terms….
The Knight’s Code of Chivalry was a moral system that stated all knights should protect others who can not protect themselves, such as widows, children, and elders. All knights needed to have the strength and skills to fight wars in the Middle Ages. Knights not only had to be strong but they were also extremely disciplined and were expected to use their power to protect the weak and defenceless. Knights vowed to be loyal, generous, and “noble bearing”. Knights were required to tell the truth at all times and always respect the honour of women. Knights not only vowed to protect the weak but also vowed to guard the honour of all fellow knights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalry
as far as the concordia, then wouldn’t that mean children first, then the elderly, then everyone else…..
a 20 something womyn doesn’t just get to the front of the line because she is the owner of a vagina….
as far as benevolent sexism….
womyn and gays–you can have the military….
I see absolutely no honor in dying or killing for a fucking barrell of oil….
“It’s one thing to say it shouldn’t be EXPECTED – it’s another thing to actually judge, esp when you don’t even have the facts to do so.”
In agreement with Clarence here…
this is another reason why I don’t throw in for the AVfM crowd…
While I have gone MGTOW, I have no ill will towards a guy who “man’s up” and “marries a slut.”
very interesting post here:
http://whoism3.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/chicken-or-the-egg/
@Clarence:
Your argument seems too simplistic.
And? Are you suggesting you have to know what someone was thinking to judge them based on their actions? That you have to know someone’s family situation to make a determination about whether you think an action performed was correct, reasonable or worthwhile?
Are we required to consider those things when someone steals a car (hey, their family might really need that car or the money from scrapping it), decides to snort unsafe amounts of cocaine (it’s their right to do so, of course, but few would have problems calling it stupid), or drowns in the ocean because they were trying to save their dog, etc.
Quite frankly, people have every right to judge others based on their actions alone, and that’s because we have every right to deem some actions stupid, wrong, etc. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve made the “ultimate sacrifice,” a minor sacrifice, or no sacrifice at all, and it often doesn’t matter what their reasons are.
Perhaps he could try shaming men who risk or give their lives so a random child can have a balloon! Or perhaps he could try shaming a woman who killed her abusive husband in his sleep because she felt that was the only way she could break the cycle of abuse (sure, tell me it’s never acceptable, but you don’t know what she was thinking or what her family situation was)! I’m sure you draw the line somewhere, but it’s no doubt an arbitrary place with hundreds of caveats. The logical extension of this is that no one should ever be judged for anything they choose to do because no one can ever know everything about that person, especially if that includes what they’re thinking. I don’t find that particularly compelling.
In context, he qualified the statement with “Did these men have no family obligations, obligations to actual family members which should by any decent standard come first before they risk their ability to fulfill those responsibilities?”
We rightly judge people all the time without having to know everything about them because actions are a fine thing to judge, and with caveats such as the one above, I don’t think it’s appropriate to say someone shouldn’t or is in no position to make a judgment. That’s what people do, and it’s completely reasonable.
JDC:
I notice you left his last sentence out:
“Their behavior wasn’t “heroic”, it was romantic and irresponsible.”
Based on absolutely no facts whatsoever. And it wasn’t qualified with “perhaps…”, so there goes your argument as well.
SWAB, knights had no grand responsibility to help the defenseless. They had no repsonsibility at all to help peasant or anyone who was not “gentle”. This goes right back to pagan times where ther eis a reference to CuChulainn snufifng a couple fo peasant women who got it the way of something he was dpoing. And he was the epitome of the warrior ethos.
And I happen to think a barrel of oil is worth fighting over, the same as water. It is that essential to life, not just convenience, these days. Unfortunately. I would likewise have exactly no problem with killing people, and lots of them, over water. Water is life. That’s the Californian in me talking. Water is precious, unlike strangers.
Clarence, I specified girlfriends. No facts? – it beggars belief that these men had no parents. Excuse me all to hell, but I happen to Think the duty a son owes his aprents outweighs his feelings for a temporary fuck. Wives are completley different; wives are family. That’s the difference. So yes, I did have the faCts, all the facts that mattered. And by the way, those relevant fatcs do not include the strength or quality of those relationships, as decided by the individuals involved, how those young men felt about htose women. Those feelings do not abolish thier duties. I do not live in the same individualistic world you seem to. I think relationships that link individuals define them rather than vice versa.
I realize this is a philosophic difference between us, and I value and respect your position. It is the basis of the market society that feeds us, after all – which by the way would not exist without the people who operate from my position.
But I do reserve the right to despise people who put their sentiments ahead of their duty.
And on the subject of judgment, I do wonder why not one of those girlfriends threw themsleves over their boyfriends ot protect them. That goes to the whole point of the post
@Clarence:
Curse you, forgotten slash mark! 🙂
JDC:
That last sentence made a statement, it was not an interrogative or anything of the sort.As a statement it needed to be supported with evidence, which the proceeding sentences did not provide. Judgement without evidence was my complaint.
Learn to read in context. Don’t be stupid, or uneducated. Thanks.
Gingko:
Do you know for a fact that all these men’s parents are still alive? Do you know for a fact what those parents felt the “duties” of their sons were? Do you know if any of the men involved already had any kids who might miss or need them?
No, you don’t.
But you feel free to not only take their heroism away from them, but to try and assign bad characteristics to them as well. I think you owe them an apology.
“Basically she wants to return to a state of affairs where men looked out for and protected women and laments the passing of that system.”
Ultimately, it is that form of feminism (“patriarchy hurts men too and therefore the real men should protect and shield women from the creepy losers”) that will prevail. Idiologies often end up sacrificing their principles in order to become dominant and fullproof.
again, I don’t know the mathematics that went through those guys heads before they shielded their girlfriend’s…
It may not have been “I need to sacrifice myself for her….”
It could’ve been, “we’re both out in the open, if I do nothing, we both could get shot, if I shield her, one of us might make it out….”
I do, however, know there is a ton of cultural conditioning towards male disposability….
I saw part of Starship Troopers last night. There is a guy who along with Denise Richardson about to get zapped by a bug, the guy tosses Denise his knife. The guy get’s stabbed in the brain, when the bug goes for Denise, she chops of the stinger thing (with the weapon she was just given) thus killing the bug. I didn’t understand this ’cause if the guy kept the knife and chopped off the zinger, they both would’ve lived. But I’m probably looking at this literally. Figuratively, the message was that the guy’s life had less value and he was supposed to sacrifice himself for the greater good….
(there’s also a message of sacrifice in Top Gun.)
that being said…
I remember some manosphere/MRA guys berating the guys who shielded their GF’s…
You might call false equivalence, but this is how I see it…
Feminists supposedly “fight for womyn’s freedom.”
A womyn says she wants to be a stripper/prostitute.
Feminist’s call her a piece of trash and say we fought so you could be a doctor or lawyer, not to use your body to please filthy, dirty, rotten, scoundrel men….
Wouldn’t feminist’s at least ideologically support a woman who chose her own path even if they personally find it reprehensible?
MRA’s supposedly “fight for men’s freedom.”
(and Ginko, you might see where I’m going, you might call me inconsistent for what I said about the military.)
A man chooses to sacrifice himself so his girlfriend survives…
Wouldn’t an MRA at least ideologically support a man’s right to chose self-sacrifice even if they personally find it reprehensible that they should be obligated to sacrifice themselves?
@Clarence:
The statement was not made independently of the preceding questions, were in the same paragraph, and were obviously related, as his subsequent response confirms. Whether it was interrogative irrelevant.
You’re confusing a statement with a fact. He was quite clearly stating his opinion that it was romantic and irresponsible, and he gave his criterion for believing so.
I’ve already explained why judgement doesn’t require the “evidence” you’re looking for, which included what they were thinking and what their family situations were. Judgement can be based solely, and adequately, on actions, in addition to probabilities.
Again, don’t be stupid. You’re smart enough to figure out how “Did these men have no family obligations…” immediately followed by “they were romantic and irresponsible” tie to each other to suggest that Ginkgo was saying they were irresponsible if they had other family responsibilities, which he finds very likely (as was borne out by his later comment “it beggars belief that these men had no parents,” although I could be mistaken and Ginkgo can correct me on this if he feels like it). Note that’s not to say he wouldn’t still find it irresponsible otherwise for some other reason.
All of these questions are irrelevant. Many acceptable judgments are made on the probability of something being true as concrete knowledge of it. That you’re somehow emotionally attached to the heroism of those people doesn’t change that.
But, you know, just in case you won’t be satisfied with that, at least one of the victims, Matt McQuinn’s, parents are, in fact, alive. As to do the duties felt by the parents, Ginkgo already said, “I think relationships that link individuals define them rather than vice versa.”
At any rate, it sounds a lot more like you’re trying to take a disagreement in judgement (they’re heroes, vs they were irresponsible) and trying to hold a ridiculous moral high ground in telling Ginkgo that he doesn’t have enough knowledge to judge them irresponsible while you simultaneously, somehow, have enough information to judge them to be heroes. That’s a fair bit of special pleading.
“And I happen to think a barrel of oil is worth fighting over, the same as water. It is that essential to life, not just convenience, these days. Unfortunately. I would likewise have exactly no problem with killing people, and lots of them, over water. Water is life. That’s the Californian in me talking. Water is precious, unlike strangers.”
Ginko, I say with great pride that my ideology is irreconcilable with yours….
I’m probably the most unmilitary guy you’ll ever meet…
ironically, it is my mother who teased me that I’d make a great asset to the Army. I have far better than average visual search skills. I enjoy long periods of time alone. I probably have the raw talents to have made a great sniper.
if there is a god and I met It when I die, I may admit that I wasted my one and only life, but I’ll say with great pride that I never shed a single drop of blood for the corrupt US government.
–bear with me, extremely cheesey attempt at humor ahead–
and, yes, Mr. Manboobz, I did call god an It and not a her, I suppose you will have to call me a kyriarchical misogynist of the highest order 😉
JDC:
I never made a statement concerning what I thought about them at all. But if you must know:
All we have is the evidence before us and that evidence seems to suggest “heros” and doesn’t suggest “irresponsible ” or anything else for that matter.
Indeed, it’s possible to be heroic and irresponsible, heroic and romantic (which not everyone considers a character flaw) or many combinations.
But one thing we have evidence for is “heroism”. Rather than admit what we have evidence FOR, Ginkgo attacked dead men’s characters based on no evidence whatsoever.
I find that reprehensible.
I should also ADD, that Gingko specifically STRIPPED them of the one thing we DO have evidence for.
As for your longer critique it might hold up if Ginkgo had adduced any evidence whatsoever as to the men’s lives before he proceeded to characterize them but he did not do so. He made no case for his opinions and its disingenuous for you to claim otherwise.
@stonerwithaboner
I agree with this (that it may not).
I think there’s a decent chance that the situation was a “Holy shit, get down” sort of grab and cover situation, possibly on instinct rather than a heroic or “I have to protect the weak” impulse. As always, I’m hesitant to declare actions “heroic” for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that the word is thrown around almost so much as to be useless (similar to the word “brave”).
That the only people who did so and died doing it were men suggests that there might have been social or biological conditioning that lead to them doing so, and I think that’s something that should be researched (and I think it has, to some degree) and addressed (which it hasn’t and is why men are still the disposable gender).
@Clarence:
When you said, “But you feel free to not only take their heroism away from them, but to try and assign bad characteristics to them as well. I think you owe them an apology,” you indicated what you thought. You saying you think they’re owed an apology for their heroism being “taken away” wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if you didn’t think they had any to begin with. Needless to say, they’re dead, and dead people have a hard time caring about anything, so that leaves the caring about it to you in this particular conversation.
That sounds less like what evidence we have and more like what you’ve interpreted the evidence to suggest. The only hard evidence we have is that some guys are dead. We have soft evidence that witnesses say some guys “heroically” shielded and saved their girlfriends and were killed in the process. We don’t know that the guys’ protection actually saved the girls, got themselves killed by trying to be heroes, if they would have been killed anyway (if the shooter was targeting them for some reason), etc.
Confoundingly, the media is unlikely to have presented (even if they knew) the exact situation and presented it because it’s considered unwholesome to question the dead, and it might hurt living peoples’ feelings, even if they really did get themselves killed unnecessarily (or unreasonably, in the current case). That creates a rather complicated problem in which male disposability can’t be analyzed because questioning the situation and motives of the dead men is taboo. They did what they were supposed to and died, and we’re just supposed to accept that rather than dishonor them by saying they where irresponsible, possibly reckless and/or stupid, just acting on a fatal instinct etc.
Heroic and irresponsible don’t seem to mesh well, with the end difference lying in the result. Generally, irresponsible heroism is called “recklessness.”
Ginkgo attacked dead men’s characters based on no evidence whatsoever. I find that reprehensible.
I think he’s pretty clearly stated his reasoning, and I think it’s fine that you find it reprehensible. However, it is not fine for you to say that it’s not “evidence,” because he has the same evidence that you do and has interpreted it differently (or perhaps he has interpreted it the same way, but still finds the sacrifice in the face of living family members irresponsible), and has explained his reasons for doing so quite clearly. You are in approximately the same position to judge them as heroes as he is to judge them irresponsible. He is not “in no position to judge.”
I should also ADD, that Gingko specifically STRIPPED them of the one thing we DO have evidence for.
I find that a bit hyperbolic. Ginkgo has not single-handedly stripped them of the honor that you or anyone else has given them. He just doesn’t share (or doesn’t share in the same way) your thoughts on the matter.
He did, in having the same evidence you do to characterize them. His opinion was also caveated, as I’ve already quoted and explained where he said “Did these men have no family obligations, obligations to actual family members which should by any decent standard come first before they risk their ability to fulfill those responsibilities,” which suggests that his characterization is (at least partially) contingent on whether they have actual family members (and at least one of them that I know of does), and appears to have been subsequently reinforced with “it beggars belief that these men had no parents” and “I think relationships that link individuals define them rather than vice versa.“
His final opinion was:
Their behavior wasn’t “heroic”, it was romantic and irresponsible.
No caveats given. Romantic? How the FUCK does he know these guys motivations? Irresponsible? Without knowing ANYTHING about these guys lives or philosophies at all?
Until you can point me to HIS OWN WORDS where he specifically GIVES REASONS based on these men’s lives (and not what he speculates about them with no research or evidence whatsoever) then you have not shown he has made an argument (need I point out to you the definition of an argument? Hint: you need to adduce evidence) at all.
By the way :
These guys took bullets because they:
A. Didn’t run away
B. Had their bodies shielding someone else’s.
Shielding someone from harm takes courage whatever else you might think about the wisdom of it.
If you want to fucking “examine male disposibility” then you could do so in better ways other than putting negative spin on actions that are considered heroic and/or brave and asserting things about dead men’s lives and motivations you have not made any pretense to examine. They are not here to explain their thoughts or actions so I guess it’s perfectly appropriate to put thoughts in their head for them and spit on them for those alleged thoughts.
I agree with Clarence. It’s one think to decry women like Emily Esfahani-Smith airily demanding that men lay down their lives for her, quite enother to decry men who, of their own volition, did so for the women in their lives. Sacrificing yourself for someone you love is an admirable thing – expecting others to sacrifice themselves for you is what’s heinous here.
@Clarence:
I don’t recall him stating their motivations. Maybe you should ask him. It looked to me like he was calling their actions romantic (as in the trope: guy dying for girl), not saying they did it because they wanted it to be romantic. After all, he said, “*Their behavior* wasn’t ‘heroic’, it was romantic and irresponsible,” emphasis asterisks mine.
Their philosophies have little to do with whether an action they take is irresponsible. If Ginkgo believes that sacrificing oneself for a girlfriend is irresponsible when there is family in his life who may depend on him, love him, then he can call that irresponsible if he so chooses.
He doesn’t need to. He doesn’t have to know anything about them as people to think that they’re irresponsible based on the criteria he appears to have given because they performed an act he thought was irresponsible.
Go for it. Find and cite every definition of argument on the internet and in every piece of respectable printed material. I won’t accept anything less than all of them, and I don’t just mean the ones you can find at your leisure, so if you’re going to half-ass it with one or a few that you just randomly select or that you cherry pick to fit what you want it to, don’t bother.
I imagine this is in response to my comment to SWB. There are many non-courageous reasons why someone might be found on top of someone else with a bullet in them that had nothing to do with how courageous they were during a massacre. Since humans tend to huddle together out of instinct when terrified, finding someone with a bullet in them on top of another person doesn’t necessarily suggest that the person on top was that way on purpose or that they were specifically trying to protect the person below (nor that they even thought about the arrangement at all, instinct being what it is). It does make a really nice, after the fact, heroic feel-good story, though (or rationalization for why the girlfriend might think she lived instead of her boyfriend). That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but preoccupation with piles of evidence should make you wonder.
That of course, leads to:
That’s a nice, but worthless, appeal to emotion. In many places, and especially in my experiences in the United States, men who have performed their disposable duties, whether they be to die for their country, or die saving their girlfriends, are suddenly heroes to be worshiped and can’t be talked about if it has even the remote possibility of damaging their sacred hero status.
That’s a self-perpetuating problem, and waiting for your approval of when someone else can talk about it isn’t a realistic solution.
If you want to put thoughts in their heads, by all means, feel free. However, in this conversation, Ginkgo stated that their actions were irresponsible as opposed to heroic, but hasn’t mentioned whether he thought they thought they were being “romantic” or whether he said it was romantic because it’s a romantic trope. He hasn’t put thoughts in anyone’s head, and neither have I.
As for spitting on them, you might try cranking the hyperbole down from 11 where you’ve stuck it. Usually, to “spit on someone’s grave” or to spit on someone generally means that you’re either glad their dead (in the case of the grave), think they were/are horrible people, or loathed an action they performed or idea they have/had. Ginkgo really hasn’t done that. Calling a death irresponsible isn’t even remotely in the same ballpark just because you’ve decided that they should be considered heroes.
What do you think the point of the questions he asked prior to that “final opinion” was? To infuriate you, personally? To talk about something completely unrelated to the subsequent sentence in the same paragraph, on the same topic?
Chivalry first had nothing to do with women. Here’s a good critical post on it:
http://lucy83.hubpages.com/hub/Chivalry
@Patrick Brown:
I think sacrificing oneself for a loved one can be admirable. I also think it can be stupid, irresponsible, dangerous, etc., and I tend to lean (just a bit) toward the latter because the number of cases where one person can choose to die specifically to prevent the death of another are likely vanishingly small outside of cinema and birth, so I somewhat cynically think that most of the death in such cases are probably a result of recklessness, lack of understanding, etc. I also think it’s personally reasonable to judge both of those things (admirable vs. not) because I don’t think personal decisions are unassailable.
However, I’m neither agreeing nor disagreeing with whether the men in question were admirable or irresponsible*. I’m disagreeing with Clarence’s assertion that Ginkgo had no right to make his own judgment about their actions, especially while Clarence himself makes his own. Ginkgo has every right to do so, even if he’s not in the moral majority about it.
*My own take on the matter is that I don’t think it’s possible to make a clear distinction about one over the other in this case because the only thing that has ever come out of the story are personal anecdotes by people who survived a traumatic event and medical verification that some people are dead. Traumatized witnesses, if I recall correctly, are notoriously horrible at giving unbiased opinions about their traumatizing events, and the culture of hero worship that seems to pervade the US works in tandem with that to make it difficult to ascertain anything about the event itself. Some questions aren’t asked because people will vilify the person who asked, even if the question is fairly innocuous, and there are no doubt stories created in an effort to make heroes of the dead (and I’m not saying that they would want to lie to hurt and deceive people about it).
I’m going to make an educated guess that no psychologists were on hand to analyze the scene to try to determine the motivations of the victims or their girlfriends in relation to the positions of corpses and survivors, whether they chose to run or hide, and so on. There isn’t much (anything?) in the way of psychological evidence floating around about it, so their actual thoughts will forever be in the dark, as will unbiased stories of their actions. In that way, I think it is equally reasonable for someone to claim heroism or irresponsibility in the deaths.
However, I think that (again, Ginkgo can tell me if I’m wrong), that Ginkgo is not necessarily against the idea of people dying to prevent the death of a loved one, except in the circumstance where the person dying has obligations (familial) that should also be considered. I think his point is more that it is irresponsible that we expect men to die for women, that they willingly choose to do so, perhaps because they’re socialized to do so, and that notion arises from and is a part of male disposability, yet is disguised as romance, and that probably factors in to what he thinks about some of the guys in the massacre.
Incidentally: Ozy Frantz has quit the GMP.
Right, so a bunch of dudes get themselves killed in lockstep fashion according to prevailing social norms and you’ve got an issue because we haven’t stuck a mind probe in their ear to figure out the unique circumstances of their “individual” decisions? In the meantime, how many women gave their lives to shield their boyfriends that night?
Even if you accept chivalry as good and valid even in the context of the modern woman, the operative word here is girlfriend. You know, the person who isn’t legally allowed to ride along with your bleeding ass to the hospital to watch you die and give you that farewell kiss before she walks out and finds the guy who will marry her and be the father of her kids. This is entitlement in the extreme, Clarence. And it’s where we are at as a society. Men have been conditioned to give up their lives for strong independent women who are pursuing their “career” until they finally decide to marry and have kids sometime in their 30’s. And why shouldn’t they, if society already promises them all the greatest benefits of marriage for free – the hero throwing down his life to save hers, the legal obligation of financial support for her children?
Dying for your girlfriend isn’t just hopelessly romantic, it’s fucking stupid. I was a Marine and I’ve seen all sorts of stupid, with guys trying to put girlfriends into their wills right before a deployment or to have their direct deposits go into their girlfriends’ bank accounts. They all had to be taken aside by a commanding officer and have it explained to them that they’re fucking morons and everyone has already seen how it all goes down – we wanted to bring them back alive and with their family jewels firmly attached instead of as a suicidal heartbroken mess with a shit ton of financial troubles. There’s a huge chasm between “girlfriend” and “wife.” When you come back in a box from the war, they’re not going to hand the flag to a woman unless she’s your mother or your wife. And that is perhaps the last semblance of real chivalry we have left in this country.
dungone:
You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
I look forward to applying these new metrics to all acts committed by men wherein they sacrifice their lives for another. Including, (unless you are saying it’s just wrong when men sacrifice themselves to save “bitches” but not “bros”) when men take grenades to save their comrades.
Should be fun.
Patrick Brown:
It was the second rape article that did her in according to a post on HER new blog. I agree the guys an asshole, but I love how none of the women having hissy fits over the publication of it noted that it’s possible he’s not even a rapist.
That plus she was whining she didn’t still have “ban” powers anymore. That’s interesting, I suppose she abused them.
“What do you think the point of the questions he asked prior to that “final opinion” was? To infuriate you, personally? To talk about something completely unrelated to the subsequent sentence in the same paragraph, on the same topic?”
Whatever it was, NONE of his “questions” were researched- they were RHETORICAL and didn’t provide any actual evidence or reasoning for believing his final sentence.
Sort of like me asking a question: Is JDCyran a poopie-head? Is JDCyran is arguing with me?
JDCyran is a poopie-head and beats up small children.
By your own reasoning, my opinion of whether you are a poopie-head who hates and attacks small children is just as valid as Ginko’s opinion of these guys.
Why do you hate small children?
“Excuse me all to hell, but I happen to Think the duty a son owes his aprents outweighs his feelings for a temporary fuck. Wives are completley different; wives are family. That’s the difference”
In Quebec province, Canada, girlfriends and boyfriends are not “temporary fucks”, marriage just lost its meaning, importance, and people woke up to “marriage sucks” without a helping of “sex before marriage is evulllll” or “kids outside marriage are condemned”, because we’re extremely lefty, not righty.
So here, kids are born “out of wedlock” 2/3 of the time. We have defacto relationships recognized “officially” when so announced (ie, put them on your taxes), but the government also like to puts it nose in your business if your status as coupled or not could reduce their obligation to you (welfare, and loans for studying), regardless of you declaring it ‘officially’.
I have trouble recognizing the difference between two brothers or two best friends living together, and a couple living together (where neither is put on the other’s taxes or insurance). In terms of expense it should be very very close (the bulk of expenses is rent followed by utilities). The only difference seems to be bed usage. Not that anything prevents brothers or best friends from using the same bed platonically, or two beds in the same room.
Well, yeah. Ozy’s as bad as anybody involved in the GMP – anyone who demands people refer to them by their own special pronouns is as aristocratically entitled as you can get, and her “Schroedinger’s Rapist” post is pretty much the type specimen of what I was complaining about on All Fogg’s blog – making the right noises about men’s issues to lure in men who are desperate to believe all feminists aren’t like that, then once you’re got them, tell ’em they’re monsters. I’m just schadenfreudically enjoying the Bad Dog Project eating itself.
That’s Ally Fogg’s blog, Heteronormative Patriarchy.
Clarence, this forces me to ask you, then, why you originally took an issue with what Gingko wrote? If you already know all this then I don’t see why you would disagree.
FYI Gingko is also a military veteran so he’s got a similar perspective to mine. I.E.. he’s seen countless immature dudes playing-pretend to be real men as indicated by their single-mothers and female teachers and various other White Feather brigades. So he’s extremely well-qualified to make the sort of call that you’re saying he’s not qualified to make. The military has a full-time job just trying to re-socialize these men to use a modicum of common sense for their own good. Secondly, keep in mind that the part about it being “romantic” is absolutely the driving force behind it, regardless of what these young bucks think of it. It suffices to say that women themselves who grew up on movies like The Notebook and Titanic have a sick perversion where they actually get turned on by the idea of random men getting their killed for them as if each and every one of them were Helen of Troy. It’s the ultimate ego trip. I guess “romantic” doesn’t really describe how perverse it is unless you understand it in the cynical view of romanticism that many of us who can see right through it have come to adopt.
@Clarence:
And they didn’t need to be researched. If he thinks a man giving up his life for his girlfriend is irresponsible because he thinks family relationships and obligations should have taken precedence, and knows full well that the vast, vast majority of young people have living parents (and, surprise, surprise, a little research into the victims of the shooting who were also said to have shielded their girlfriends or a female friend shows that they had living parents, and at least one had children), he doesn’t need any extra evidence for his reasoning.
Well, that certainly has nothing to do with the composition of Ginkgo’s statement or anything to do with mine. But to humor you, here: If you had said, “Does JDCyran beat up small children?” assumed I did, and said, “He’s a jerk,” that might work because of the implied if, such as exists in Ginkgo’s statement, and therefore, “if he doesn’t beat up children, he’s not a jerk” would also be true.
Unfortunately, what my amended example doesn’t have going for it (yours had absolutely nothing going for it) is that, unlike being a young person and having parents or other family, which is extremely frequent in the US, beating up small children isn’t.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Extremely ordinary claims require extremely ordinary evidence, and and are often safe to make assumptions or educated guesses about, which, in the case of the men having living parents or other family members, was correct.
You don’t have to prove the sun exists every time you make an assertion about it. Similarly, it is safe to assume that young people have at least one living family member, the most likely of which is a parent (I don’t know if Ginkgo includes adoptive parents, but if he does, then the chances are even less likely that a random young man wouldn’t have at least one). Only in rare cases will that not be true in the United States. To assume otherwise is to set your standard of evidence unreasonably high.
At any rate, if you wanted to Ginkgo to prove that the people had parents or other family members (because apparently you require people forming their opinions on the internet to have stricter evidentiary requirements than most scientific journals), you could have just asked him to do so, despite being able to just do a Google search for Aurora shooting victims, Jonathan Blunk, Alexander Teves, Matt McQuinn, etc.
But no. Instead you chose to go the emotional tirade route and ignored the very obvious implications of his previous questions (which, again, he later confirmed by saying: “it beggars belief that these men had no parents. Excuse me all to hell, but I happen to Think the duty a son owes his aprents outweighs his feelings for a temporary fuck.”), essentially wringing your hands and relying on the ridiculously small chance that they’re all not only orphans, but also have no brothers, sisters or other family, and also expect people to have to have read their minds to make a negative judgement about them.
Nope.
“If you want to fucking “examine male disposibility” then you could do so in better ways other than putting negative spin on actions that are considered heroic and/or brave and asserting things about dead men’s lives and motivations you have not made any pretense to examine.”
All that White Feather ghoulery was about heroism and cultural expectations of heroism, gendered expectations.
“Dying for your girlfriend isn’t just hopelessly romantic, it’s fucking stupid.”
Dying for a girlfriend is stupid. Dying for a wife or a husband or one’s child is heroic.
Patrick, Ally Fogg – of course – what did I actually write? Can’t be bothered to go dig it up. Anyway, I like his process and his basic outlook. I don’t agree with his every word, but then i don’t agree with my every word either.
So Ozzy is leaving GMP. Good for her. Likewise, as much witless twaddle as she has put out, she has writen some really good stuff too because basically her prinicples are decent, however much she may wander from them now and then. remember what Churchill said about us, that we would finally do the right thing when we had exhausted every other possibility.
SWAB,
“Ginko, I say with great pride that my ideology is irreconcilable with yours….”
Ah SWAB, in fact your ideology is not. You live in an economy predicated on that oil. it is essential to your continued existence. That’s what your actions say, in contradiction to your profession of belief, and actions speak louder than words.
Absolutely. It’s all about reciprocation and collective action.
That’s why if I was in a movie theater full of wives who lived and died with fecund fidelity to the men in their lives, then I would gladly lay down my life to protect what I saw as a good thing for everyone involved. If, on the other hand, I walk into a movie theater full of prissy entitled brats who don’t think they owe anyone a damn thing, then to hell with the lot of them, they can fend for themselves.
Men putting their lives on the line for other men is all about reciprocation. It’s all about safety in numbers. In the military it’s all about a certain level of trust that civilians just have no way of experiencing. In fact, even in the military, a member of the Army really might never get to experience what it really means to have that sense of camaraderie that you’ll find in the Marines. It runs so deep that even when you get shot and are bleeding to death, Marines are less likely to go into shock thinking that they’re about to die and the reason behind it is the faith they have in their fellow Marines to take care of them.
Ginkgo, it was my own mistake I was correcting – I called him “All Fog” in my previous comment, and didn’t link.
Ginko,
so you are saying that everytime I push down the gas pedal, I am voting for Bush and O’bama?
SWAB, yeah – and that applies to me too, and it makes me want to puke. Mens rea only goes so far.
Patrick! That’s hilarious! “All Fogg”. He would howl at that himself, I am pretty sure. What’s next -“The Fogg of War”?
“Absolutely. It’s all about reciprocation and collective action.”
The term I like is “herd immunity” It absolutely does not have to be gendered; it just turns out that way. It’s gendered because even though not many men actually participate in it, most are ready or at least willing by dint of enculturation. Some women will do it too, probably either because of basic good character or because they had other countervailing influences.
“In the military it’s all about a certain level of trust that civilians just have no way of experiencing. In fact, even in the military, a member of the Army really might never get to experience what it really means to have that sense of camaraderie that you’ll find in the Marines.”
It’s a function of experiencing extreme stress and danger, however that is defined, in common. That’s where that bond comes from. Most often it’s combat, but not always. So you find it in the Army in the combat arms, probably not in the Marines in support roles like strategic MI.
Here’s a parallel for you. Back in the bad old days gays had an expression that reflected the same bond – “family” – as in “Do you think he’s family?” or “I hear it’s a family event.” This wasn’t just code talk – obviously anyone else hearing something like that would interpret it quite differently – it also expressed the reliance people had on the community when for the most part they had been thrown out and cut off frorm their birth families and when they needed protection. Were you getting regularly hassled by the cops? Well someone in the fmaily would rememebr which police lieutenant it was who frequented a certian kind of party that never happened, and somehow the pressure would just ease up and go away. Herd immunity.
That was back in the bad old days. A lot of that bond is gone because it isn’t needed so much anymore. People start getting nostalgic unitl they realize it’s a good thing.
JDC:
Dense are we?
The basic point is you don’t make assertions about other people without doing research on those people.
Dungone:
Yes, and a few people out of an audience of presumably a few hundred to a thousand or so (depending on theater size) is just such a big sociological deal that we have to spend time needlessly speculating on their character because they made a sacrifice of their lives, and to fucking try to posthumously police their interactions with their girlfriends without even bothering to do the shittiest or tiniest bit of research as to how long they’ve known those girlfriends, the character of those girlfriends, if they had proposed to those girlfriends, etc.
I’m also learning from you that one shouldn’t sacrifice oneself to protect children – after all , they have no receprocity to save you back, and (some FEW heroic) people on battlefields only jump on grenades because its an advanced version of “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” and not love or loyalty or sentiment of any kind I suppose.
All I see are a few guys who bravely decided to lay their lives on the line when the rest of a huge mass of humans was panicking and running (which I’m not condemning, either, because most didn’t even know where the gunman was at first). It may have been stupid , but it was apparently effective. It may have been many things both good and bad. I see that we have eyewitnesses on the ground, and of course the girlfriends/family of those men to act as character witnesses. In counter to that we have a few grumbling people on an obscure site on the web who haven’t even bothered to do character research before decrying the character of a few dead men.
@Clarence, only a few people out of the audience of thousands actually DIED, of which a good proportion had been guys who gave up their lives for a woman other than their wife. What’s more is that the sociological aspects of this extend into the way in which the event was used in order to socialize even more men into doing the same. That is the fucking biggest deal of all and it’s not us who are randomly writing posts to attack the motives of those men, but mainstream society that constantly tries to co-opt their actions to reinforce sexist gender roles. Regardless, your complaint means shit because you don’t have a single instance of an example of a woman throwing herself in front of a bullet for a man that night. IOW it is statistically significant in the most absolute terms – whenever you have one adult dying for another adult in the civilian world, it’s always a man dying for a woman. Hell, it’s an extreme exception (and likely an unintended, unfortunate accident when it does happen) for a female cop or firefighter to lay down her own life for a member of the public that she’s charged with protecting.
You’re definitely not qualified to make that assertion, then. I’ve been to combat with bullets coming within inches of my head, ridden in vehicles that got blown up, and sat in dirt holes with mortars exploding right beside me on the other side of a sandbag. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it’s got nothing to do with experiencing extreme stress and danger. As a matter of fact if there isn’t something else to hold everyone together, that level of stress and danger will rip right through a unit and have it collapse in on itself as the enemy routes through your position. It’s something else that builds up that trust. Stress and danger only test it.
In other news, Jezebel, that “Bastion of fair and balance in gender issues” says “Fuck You, MRAs”
http://jezebel.com/5967923/fuck-you-mras?utm_source=gawker.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation&post=55194673
Like they haven’t implied it in many of their other “Articles” (and I use the term loosely).
a few years back, I saw a woman get attacked…
the attacker was presumably her boyfriend…
this was in a parking lott in the “bad” part of town. It was a Sat. and they were likely coming from one of the bars as they were too “high class” to be locals….
He pushed her to the concrete then kicked her/stomped her…
I didn’t own a cell phone, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to get involved with the authorities….
I couldn’t run to a pay phone as most in the area had the recievers ripped off the box…
I was smaller than the guy, I probably could’ve gotten the drop on him and levelled 1 or 2 hard blows to the back of his head, then ran….
I felt numb, the whole thing was a bit surreal. Sort of felt like I just smoked some lousy weed. Maybe a bit of a flashback to my parents slapping each other around.
I know what I was *supposed* to do, I was supposed to run in there, puff up my chest. Yell for him to stop hitting her and that he could take a shot at me instead.
I kind of thought about this incident a few times over the years. I realize I was feeling guilt for not “manning up.”
@Clarence:
I think you’ve confused “basic” with “completely irrelevant to he matter at hand.” He was perfectly justified in assuming they had parents or family. No reasonable person would expect him to have to “research” whether they were orphans, whether they breathed oxygen or whether they lived on Earth before making such a statement.
dungone,
“Stress and danger only test it.”
Then where does it come from?
Dungone:
4 out of twelve died due to protecting someone else.
Of those 4, 3 died protecting a woman, one died protecting a fellow man.
Just because idiots seek to co-opt the deaths of these men for their own purposes doesn’t mean we have to be the same way. People deserve more respect than to be remembered solely for whatever is politically convenient.
Here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57478292/at-aurora-massacre-many-victims-died-protecting-others/
There was also a lady who stayed behind in the theater tending to an injured friend. Had the gunman saw her, she almost certainly would have been shot.
But hey, all these people were idiots and slackers and irresponsible for daring to put their lives on the line for others that night, right?
Excuse me, for you know, bringing actual INFORMATION into this hate-the-dead fest.
“All I see are a few guys who bravely decided to lay their lives on the line when the rest of a huge mass of humans was panicking and running…..”
We agree here. Greater love hath no man and all that. So far so honorable.
But that’s a strawman, as is this:
“But hey, all these people were idiots and slackers and irresponsible for daring to put their lives on the line for others that night, right?”
I was talking about the gendered demands on some and not on others. Good for that woman. She definitely exceeded expectations.
I respect the men who faced danger to shield others.
Since there were no women who did the same, I don’t respect any of the women. That’s fair, isn’t it?
Ok guys, women DO also sacrifice themselves for others. Our problem is not with the fact that it happens or even that men do it more. Our problem is with the societal (and sometimes legal) expectation from men to do so. Our problem is with the fact that boys are raised to feel that their lives are worth less than women’s and that men have internalized that belief. And our problem is with the consequences of all that: increased risk taking, job deaths, conscription, imbalanced health expenditures, restrictive gender roles, boy crises, suicide and feminism.
Our problem is with male disposability.
Culture and training. Marines actually view themselves as Marines, with everything it entails. But more importantly, they train as a team. It might sound unfair to punish 60 guys when 1 screws up, but that’s what gets instilled from the very beginning. There are no individuals. You go through 3 months of boot camp as a simulated prisoner of war, not being allowed to use the word “me” or “I.” “John Wayne” is a derogatory name for someone who is OFP (own fucking program). By the time they enter combat, they have a high degree of confidence in the guys around them to do the right thing.
She sounds like she’d be right at home with elevatorgate and rape-culture…
So? Why didn’t she jump in front of the bullet for her friend, then? There’s a world of a difference between tending to the injured and being a bullet magnet. It’s the difference between sitting in the trenches and actually jumping on a grenade.
JFC:
Dungone, despite JDCryan’s apparent games with his comments (at least Gingko appears to be engaging respectfully and seriously) this is probably the worst post of the whole thread.
Woman keeps herself in danger and that’s just not good enough for you…
I can’t think of anything that discredits your entire argument more. I’m tempted to just say “fuck off”, because I don’t think you are treating her as you would a man in that situation…
By the way, Dungone, perhaps you could consider her more like a combat medic who is exposing herself to enemy fire on the field of battle whilst tending to the wounded.
But oh – wait. All combat medics are hideous cowards or incompetents because they don’t usually take the bullets meant for their patients. Glad you cleared THAT up. I’m sure she had plenty of time to shield her friend from that supersonic bullet…
My point? If her friend was among the first hit in a surprise attack she’d probably have no time to react to stop a bullet she doesn’t even know is coming.
@Clarence, I tended to the wounded with mortars walking in on me. Wounded Iraqis, no less, who we could have left for dead and no one would have questioned the decision. I had their blood all over my hands trying to stop the bleeding, not knowing whether one of them had tuberculosis or worse. I carried a CPR mask in my car for the next 5 years, or in my pocket on my motorcycle. Sure, it makes you a hero who risked his life to save another, but for fuck’s sake it’s not the same thing as running straight into a hail of bullets to sacrifice yourself for another. It’s. Not. The. Same. It’s especially not the same when you’re talking about it as something that you are programmed to do by the society you live in because of your gender. So I really don’t have the patience for your concern trolling.
Right, so it’s just a coincidence that the men had time to do just that, but the women didn’t? You are very naive.
It’s one thing to try to save someone’s life. It’s ENTIRELY DIFFERENT to make the conscious decision to give up your life right then and there for someone else. Yes, as a matter of fucking fact, if you haven’t already made that decision – that you would do just if it came down to it -before you got out of bed that morning, then you won’t have time to make up your mind faster than a speeding bullet. Which is why no women got killed saving someone else that night or on most any other night.
This is what you’re failing to get. This is why I’m trying to help you understand it. Not to be rude, but you need to open up your eyes. A society that demands that these men be heroes but refuses to reciprocate for their sacrifice is just one big circle jerk. These men should not have sacrificed their lives; they should have been made aware that their sacrifice would end up getting used to set the precedent, to obligate other men to do the same for a society that shits on them.
About feminists who advocate for chivalry:
The problem might be that gender roles are learned and impregnated at a very early age, while world views like feminism are usually encountered significantly later (like college). So before a woman studies feminism, she was daddies little girl, she was being expected to act like a lady and to be treated like one, she has learned the power of a girls tears. To change her understanding of gender roles she would have to reprogram herself, but this is no easy task, especially as we all tend not to see our flaws as flaws.
Dungone:
The attack took place over a period of TIME.
This guy was walking around SPRAYING BULLETS.
Lots of the guys who died WHEN THEY HEARD the shots (omg, took some TIME for the sound to reach their ears) decided to stay and cover their friends/loved ones. This took them – at the minimum- split seconds AFTER they heard the shots. Which means some people were most likely already HIT by the time anyone had time to react.
You weren’t there, and you aren’t aware of whether her friend was hit within a few seconds (remember it was COSTUME night and a world premeire and people at first thought the attack was fake) after the attack started, but you certainly are willing to play Armchair Quarterback.
Your personal service and bravery has nothing to do with this at all, and you discredit yourself (and make me doubt your claims about war service) when you seem to get the facts in a horrid mass shooting mixed up and don’t apparently pick up on the simple fact that you can’t react at all until you know someone is shooting at you, and in a surprise atttack this is ALWAYS after at least some bullets have passed near you or struck their targets.
Enough of this crap. There was one brave woman and at least 4 brave men in that theater.
I don’t allow socialization as more than part of an excuse for bad behavior, and I never allow it to denigrate good or smart or brave behavior. The “socialization” theory sort of goes out the window when you realize 99 percent plus of everyone was running.
“Then where does it come from?
Culture and training. Marines actually view themselves as Marines, with everything it entails.”
Exactly! And where does that culture and training come from? It comes from adapting to stress and danger. But training isi only training; everyone is a green before combat. The personal experience of stress and danger and having to actually trust people around you to get you througuh is what cenements that bond.
Jupp, that comment sums up a feminist’s journey frorm privielged woman to actual principled feminist. Some women never have to make that journey because they never got that kind of coddling, but very, very few – even if they didn’t get it at home from a father, they got it at school and from society at large.
@Clarence, you’re being an evasive numskull and you clearly don’t understand how shit works. You’ve never been in one of these situations and apparently you know nothing about it except what you heard on TV.
Making a conscious decision to give up your life is HARD, especially in the confusion and chaos of a crowded movie theater. Remember, people used to trample each other to death when someone yelled “fire!” even though they must have had plenty of time to look around and realize there was no fire. You think you’er going to make up your mind in 5 seconds to die for your friend? 5 minutes? 5 hours? No – it will take years for you to even get to a point where you come to expect this as something you would do, as who you are. Because when it happens, if your response isn’t already a part of who you are as a person, then you’ll just freeze up and do nothing. Maybe you’ll run. Maybe you’ll go into shock. Maybe you’ll be lucky to even figure out what’s going on before it’s too late to actually act on it – instead of acting on pure instinct. In combat, you train hard so that it becomes muscle memory and you can perform under extreme stress. I’m fucking telling you, it’s impossible to make such an extremely difficult decision with the added stress of being in a room full of screaming, dying people. And that’s why no women had died. It’s exactly what Jupp just said. It takes an entire lifetime to get to that point.
Dungone:
What’s your latest post got to do with you whining about “why didn’t she shield her friend”?
Do tell. Seems like evasion to me. Simple answer to your inane question: she most likely didn’t have time.
The ironic thing is I agree with the article, and I’m certainly not one to think a man (or woman for that matter) has a “duty” to shield or try to protect anyone of either sex unrelated to them by either blood or comradeship.
But the ignorant half-assed judgmental responses given by some of you to the people who stayed behind in a theater when they didn’t have to or otherwise put their lives in danger is disgusting.
You wouldn’t say that to my face, so don’t say it online.
“Simple answer to your inane question: she most likely didn’t have time.”
Stop evading what I’m saying. Read it.
Bloody right she didn’t have time. None of the women had time. They quite fucking literally did not have the time to contemplate major life and death decisions and reflect on the value of their mortality from the time the first bullet was shot to the time it all ended. They didn’t have time. We are 100% in total agreement.
You still have to explain, then, why the fuck the men had all the time in the world. Where 1/3 of the people who died that night had time to decide that they would shield another person and those persons were 100% male. You can’t explain that the women didn’t have time without contradicting yourself.
Dungone:
Shifting the goalposts? So now its the OTHER women and not this particular woman ? And the 99 percent plus of men who fled as well?
It’s obvious to me. This woman’s friend was shot before she even knew what was happening, thus rendering your ridiculous attacks on her (“why didn’t she shield”) moot. More to the point, she stayed when she could have went with the vast herd, abandoned her friend, and fled. That deserves kudos not attacks. The guys might have had more time, if neither THEY nor their significant others had been hit in the initial hail of bullets and if they quickly decided it was real and not fake.
And I wouldn’t say it to your face? I already said I’m starting to doubt your combat record. I’d think you’d have been more upset with that.
Regardless, I’d like you to show me you can argue coherently. I’m totally sober, I’m beginning to wonder if you are drunk.
By the way Dungone:
The problem with your attack on the timing of men versus women besides the fact that the vast majority of both sexes behaved exactly the same way -fled- is that not all victims were hit at the exact same time. It’s not like this guy only got off one burst of shots. Given that some people were hit in later bursts, it’s very easy to see why your argument fails.
Clarence, hope you caught my veterans day post.
Gotta step in here
Clarence. WOW. Chill pill, please. No one is getting hyperbolic in this thread except you. No one slandered these people. No one made “ridiculous attacks”. Ginkgo said the men made an “irresponsible choice”. That is what we commonly refer to as an opinion. It is hardly an attack on their character. And when JDCryan stepped in to try to argue for that position, regardless of his valuation of that position, you then said he was attacking these people. As a disinterested observer, I can strongly confirm neither he nor Ginkgo ever did. And then, when dungone steps in to make an observation about combat, and the fact that the decision to act needs to be made before the combat occurs, you attack him as if he has now pissed on the grave of these guys.
As a matter of fact, the only people that dungone seemed to show disdain for are the women in the audience, because they had never even had to consider the possibility of laying their lives down so that someone else might live.
Clarence, let me tell you something, as someone who has no dog in the fight: you are whiteknighting, and even worse, you are whiteknighting against a strawman. No one insulted the men who shielded their girlfriends. No one said they were stupid. The worst anyone said is that they made an “irresponsible choice”.
This is clearly personal to you somehow. I suggest you put the keyboard down, take a breather, and come back when you have calmed down. Re-read what was said, and divorce yourself from the emotions of it all. And while you are doing that, please try to refrain from ad hominems. Especially about drunk people, since if I recall correctly, that was an issue in your past, and jeez, it wouldn’t feel very good turned around on you, would it?
I forgot to mention, dungone, your Marinepeen (TM) is showing. You must have forgotten you are a part of the Navy, not your own branch.
I kid, I kid. But it’s true. But I’m kidding.
Equilibriumshift:
Read the whole thread, or kindly shut the fuck up.
Dungone has attacked a LIVING WOMAN because apparently she had the temerity to survive the attack while staying on the “field of battle” without running. He moaned and bitched that she didn’t “shield” her friend when the odds are she had no time to do so, and he certainly never bothered to do any research into the facts on that given night.
“White Knighting” for DEAD men?
Go fuck yourself.
And by the way, ES:
You recall incorrectly. I’ve never had an issue with drugs or alcohol. I hardly ever drink (once a year on average, usually wine) and I certainly don’t post drunk.
This is personal because its about respecting dead people esp when you are such a lazy ass that you (and by you, I mean Ginkgo, Dungone, and JDC) don’t even bother to do the skimpiest research into the lives of the men /women you are critiquing and when you don’t even bother to get the facts about the night in question.
Ginkgo is entitled to his opinions about when it is appropriate to sacrifice yourself for another and etc, and in fact I’ve hardly attacked him except for his initial conclusiatory sentence. JDC and esp Dungone are different. But JDC to his/her credit at least hasn’t attacked a living breathing woman for not doing something it may have been impossible for her to do on a night in which the vast majority of people of both sexes were hightailing it out of Dodge.
Equilibrium: because they had never even had to consider the possibility of laying their lives down so that someone else might live.
Childbirth can kill you, even now… and certainly it still does kill women in some parts of the world. I would argue that many women who have had babies, have considered this possibility. It isn’t only men who sacrifice their lives for others. And it is not a bad choice to do so.
Clarence is not ‘white-knighting’ for simply pointing this out.
@Clarence
WTF? What is wrong with you? The only thing I’ve been arguing in this thread is that Ginkgo was entitled to his opinion in this case about when it is appropriate for someone to sacrifice oneself for another because you said he was in no position to make a judgement (otherwise known as forming an opinion). In response, you’ve been hysterically shrieking about how he didn’t have the evidence to form that opinion, filled with ad hominems, invective and insanity, telling people that they’re spitting on the dead. Yet here you are, saying he’s entitled to it, and somehow I’m different?
How completely, utterly and ridiculously stupid. Of all the drama queening bullshit, you have spouted the worst I think I’ve ever seen. You cannot possibly be serious, and if you are serious, you’re insane.
OK,
Clarence, I miss remembered who had issues with alcohol in the past. My mistake.
And I did read the whole thread. And I was trying to help you stop looking like a complete asshat. But by all means, continue your major asshattery. In fact, tell the person who is trying to give you some friendly advice to fuck off. I’m sure you feel better now. You sure told me.
By the way, you totally misinterpreted what dungone was saying. He was saying that it is impossible for anyone, regardless of the details of the combat situation, to make the decision to lay their lives on the line at the time of that situation. That decision needs to be made before the combat ever begins. And he did not, in fact disparage anyone, aside from the women in the audience who had the female privilege of never having had to consider what they would do if the lives of their loved ones were under attack. (FWIW, it is likely that most men hadn’t considered that, either. But the point stands that only men had made that consideration prior to the event). You can understand why he did that, because he not only had to consider it, he had to live it, and then come home to a world of people that never did, and never will, and can never appreciate how difficult it is. (That is, of course, if we believe him. You and Daisy are the only ones who have ever questioned it. If that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does). He wasn’t saying that because the woman who stayed behind to tend to her friend didn’t jump in front of the bullet she is a bad person, he said that there is a difference between staying and tending to someone and taking a bullet for someone, and one requires the active decision to die.
Furthermore, JDC never made any judgments either. He was playing devil’s advocate. you couldn’t see that because your responses have all been irrational and angry childish lash-outs, except the first.
And yes, you are whiteknighting. You are trying to defend people from perceived attacks (that aren’t actually coming) because you think they need defending (they don’t) and they can’t defend themselves (they can’t). You are interpreting everything that is being said as hostile, and projecting bad intentions on people that just aren’t there. In short, you look like a douchebag right now. If you had have addressed the issues with how the original point was argued (there are some)*, you would have looked like you were trying to advance the conversation. Now you just look like you are lashing out and trying to shut down the conversation, which makes other people wish you would go away.
And of course, you are also going to interpret this as an attack, and react in an inflammatory manner. So in advance, I will go fuck off to the corner, and shut the fuck up while I fuck myself.
*Conflating an individual’s response to a specific situation with acceptance of societal norms that damage that individual’s self interest. Criticizing the action of the individual in the face of the societal while failing to emphasize the core issue of the society which likely informed the individual’s behavior.
I’m not only sober, but I have a firm grip on statistics, probability, and critical thinking.
1/3 of the dead were shielding someone and thus had enough time to take that action, all of whom were men. If both men and women were equally apt to shield others at the same rate and everything else being equal, then at least 2/3 of the dead would have been a result of one person shielding another. That would leave just 1/3 of the dead with no one having time or being willing to shield. There is only a 1 in 3 chance that the woman who lived did not have time to shield the person she was caring for.
Shielding someone increases your chances of getting shot. You have to make yourself into a bigger target in order to cover the other person, exposing your vital organs as well as getting the shooter’s attention. It’s no wonder that 1/3 of the dead were shielders and we can speculate that the overall death toll may have been lower if no one was shielding anyone (i.e. less chance of bullets hitting vital organs).
This is one of the reasons why the military is hesitant of allowing women in combat. They’re afraid that the men would shield the women. Anytime one person shields another, the shielder is enfilade. This is what happens to troops in enfilade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-291-1230-13,_Dieppe,_Landungsversuch,_tote_alliierte_Soldaten.jpg
But that’s neither here nor there. Just another reason why shielding your girlfriend isn’t smart. No one said it wasn’t brave. It’s very brave, but not smart. It’s stupid and I did say that. The most important thing is for the least amount of people to die, not the least number of women to die. But it’s also stupid on the social level, as I said earlier in this thread. It’s brave, but stupid.
JDC:
You continually said “YES HE DID!!!!” when he didn’t.
That counts as dishonesty in my book. Rhetorical questions ARE NOT EVIDENCE.
EquilibriumShift:
Quoting Dungone: “So? Why didn’t she jump in front of the bullet for her friend, then? There’s a world of a difference between tending to the injured and being a bullet magnet. It’s the difference between sitting in the trenches and actually jumping on a grenade.”
Explain that. And by the way, NO ONE made a conscious decision to DIE for another that night. They made conscious decisions to RISK THEIR LIVES for others. There is nothing fucking wrong or “unheroic” about that. Indeed, that’s what rubbed me the wrong way about Gingko’s initial post: he took their heroism away from them without any fucking evidence, merely a bunch of rhetorical questions. He as much as spit on their graves. And it seems that’s what you are doing too.
@EquilibriumShift:
^That. I even explained in a response to Patrick Brown that I decided not to make a judgment one way or the other because of the various circumstances of the event, among other things. I wasn’t advocating for Ginkgo’s position, just his reasonable right to have formed and held it. Had Ginkgo argued that Clarence was in no position to judge them as heroes, I would have been arguing for Clarence instead.
Ugh.
And see, FINALLY, dungone makes an argument, though its not against my argument, as I never argued that women were “equally likely” to shield, merely that
A. A very small number of people displayed bravery or heroism in this incident of either sex, though of course men came out better on the ‘heroism’ scale
B. The one particular woman who CHOSE to remain IN DANGER while tending to her friend (whom, if her friend was shot right away she’d have no possibility of “shielding”) was exhibiting bravery and putting her life in danger and does not need tarred and feathered with “cowardice” or “female privilege” simply because the rest of her sex made like bananas and split. She deserves to be judged on her own merits and that is NOT done by critiquing her for not “shielding” her friend when you don’t even know when her friend was shot and hence how much warning she had.
By all means call out the rest of the women who fled (though I suppose its a good excuse if you had small children with you you needed to protect ) but be sure to call out the men too, since IIRC only one man (who had a family) was actively shamed over “not protecting” them in this incident.
Daisy:
About childbirth, I agree with you.
No, in civilized countries its not as dangerous (in terms of mortality) as a battlefield or even an automobile but it’s still more danger than sitting on your couch eating bonbons, and there’s an increased chance of complications and damage to a woman the more babies she has. And of course in some countries women are not afforded the luxury of birth in sanitized hospitals or even of midwives, so your argument rings even truer there.
I might be willing to say that overall – even in the bad old days before modern medicine- that child birth wasn’t quite as deadly for women as warfare and hunting were for men, but it was never a walk in the park, and in a few societies that didn’t have constant warfare, I’m sure mortality for mothers exceeded that for men in general, despite men otherwise being the disposible class.
That’s the one thing that gender ideologues never get about history: its complicated and really doesn’t totes fit into any kind of conspiracy theory.
Equilibrium: You and Daisy are the only ones who have ever questioned it. If that doesn’t tell you something, I don’t know what does.
Um, we are FAR from the only people who have ever questioned it… perhaps the only people *you* have heard from, which is totally different.
What does it “tell you”? That we openly say out loud what other people will only email/gossip/whisper in private?
@Clarence:
That counts as dishonesty in my book. Rhetorical questions ARE NOT EVIDENCE.
Bullshit. I argued that the rhetorical questions were qualifiers with an implied if, which they were, or he would not have asked them and that he confirmed in his next post. For you to argue otherwise is to argue with yourself, with something you made up in your head about what he said.
As for evidence, I have, since you brought it up, continually explained his “evidence” was the knowledge that the vast majority of young people have living family members. He clearly, reasonably assumed it, and he was correct (alternately, he remembered reading about it, and that makes your position even worse). Unless you can somehow prove that it was an unwarranted assumption (and believe me, you can’t), your assertion that he didn’t have evidence because he didn’t explicitly state that he went out and researched the status of their surviving family or claimed to make a reasonable assumption about them is stupid. Dumb. Moronic. Insipid.
No doubt you have since gone to any of the various, easily accessible website and seen that Jonathan Blunk has children, Maximus and Hailey, that Alexander Teves’s father, Tom Teves, said that day his son died was was the worst day of his life, while other members of his family were interviewed for various papers showering praise upon him while grieving horribly, that Matt McQuinn was mourned by members of his family, including his parents, one of whom was his mother, Jeri Jackson, who flew to Colorado after his death to gather information about what happened. You know, family, like the beyond vast majority of the population of young men has, where the likelihood of all or even one of the men having no living family was astronomically low, well below the 5% p-value that any statistician would identify as reasonable. Which you don’t accept, of course, because you are completely unreasonable.
My dishonesty? No. Way.
The only person being dishonest here is you, Clarence, in clearly misrepresenting what I wrote and in your acidic, worthless insinuations about others. I’m not even sure why you think your argument has merit aside from pedantic assholery, and even then, you’re wrong, so the pedantic part just falls off. You’re also being a colossal, verbally abusive asshole. Your arguments thus far have had no redeeming quality, no validity, nothing. The only thing you’ve done with relation to my arguments besides be a huge dick by making randomly abusive potshots at whatever straw man stupidity you made up and associated with me is to try to erase or ignore the existence of the family members, or the reasonable assumption of their existence, so you could pretend that Ginkgo wasn’t being reasonable enough in his opinion (which you now, of course, you say he has a right to, though you still seem to think he has no justification for… and the only way you’re able to hold those positions simultaneously is because you’re either immune to cognitive dissonance -or basic cognition, really- or because you’re a duplicitous, disingenuous troll), attempting to enable yourself to hold some ridiculous high ground from which you could proclaim the men heroes and tell anyone who didn’t, or didn’t form an opinion one way or the other, that they were reprehensible people, spitting on the dead and other infantile assertions.
Go look in the mirror. There you’ll see a reprehensible, dishonest asshole. And that is the last thing I will ever say to you, and I will not read anything you vomit onto the internet again, because, as Jennifer Wright so succinctly said here*, “I have found as a life rule – for men and women – it is best to avoid getting mired in conversations with mentally unstable people.” You, Clarence. Not me in some petty way you could try to turn that around.
You.
*And that is an article others might like to read here at Genderratic, titled Men Who Disagree With You Are Not Evidence Of Misogyny (Or Trolls), in which Wright, a self proclaimed feminist over at The Gloss, rips apart an article Sarah Jaffe wrote for Jezebel. It’s fairly amusing and actually goes into some limited discussion about gender roles and how they have changed (or are changing and should probably be received by some women).
Daisy:
*I* never questioned it until this thread when he didn’t seem to understand that surprise attacks with semiautomatics (well, hell, surprise attacks with guns in general as bullets travel faster than sound) don’t give you advance warning, and often don’t kill everyone at the same time. This attack took place over a period of minutes while various survivors either hid, attempted to flee, attempted to shield others, or *in the one woman’s case* tended to wounded friends.
JDC:
I’ve been here longer than you, I’ve commented on blogs (here and Feminist Critics) with Ginkgo and Typhonblue (and Typhonblue at the blog Stand Your Ground in the early to mid 2000’s) -hell, I’ll rely on the owners of this blog including Gingko himself to tell you I am not a troll.
Seriously, I don’t need this shit from you, or anyone else.
Ginkgo could GUESS all he fucking wanted, and he could even be right about what he guessed but without both doing the research himself (which I’m sure he’ll be honest and tell you he did not do so) and without making a LOGICAL ARGUMENT to how his evidence ties into his characterizations he has proven nothing, nor made an argument about nothing. He specifically said they were NOT heros, you little dishonest shit, and he didn’t make a case for that.
Regardless, I didn’t continue criticizing him in part because his later post at least gave an idea of where he was coming from, and he also treated me and my concerns with respect. Unlike you.
Dungone went one farther (though he has apparently backed off as he has apparently shown enough character in the past to do) and attacked a living breathing woman whose circumstances that day he did not know as being , I suppose cowardish, or having to atone for the sins and privilege of most women because she didn’t shield her friend before the bullet hit but instead merely risked her life to stay and help rather than making a run for it.
I haven’t called you insane or attacked the tone of most of your posts, but I will say that somehow I don’t feel I’ll be missing out if I never have to respond to you again.
To dumb this down somewhat (which means even JDC can understand it):
All the fucking “qualifiers” in the world do not qualify a declarative sentence. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
As long as yall are here: turn on CNN and watch Damien Echols upcoming interview with Piers Morgan. Thank you.
“I have found as a life rule – for men and women – it is best to avoid getting mired in conversations with mentally unstable people.”
Those who believe they are somehow superior to disabled people (and also assert that mental disability is tantamount to immorality), are best to avoid also.
Yes, JD has also proclaimed that I am not good enough to reply to (I see Clarence has just been consigned to that same outer darkness along with me)… but I am simply making this notation about his post:
JDC: in which Wright, a self proclaimed feminist over at The Gloss, rips apart an article Sarah Jaffe wrote for Jezebel. It’s fairly amusing and actually goes into some limited discussion about gender roles and how they have changed (or are changing and should probably be received by some women).
And yet we see that Sarah wrote a long piece today about the security workers striking at JFK airport. This is only a fraction of the worker-oriented journalism she does. (Do you think those workers are predominantly male or female?) I guess I looked beyond Wright’s snit and looked at the whole conversation at issue: Jaffe was defending the workers in that discussion, while Wright is defending some reactionary who voted for Romney. The second example was a self-proclaimed member of the 1% who attacks the Occupy movement and is particularly obnoxious about it. These are the men Wright defends? (Talk about apexuals!) Hilarious, but speaks volumes as the example you offer.
What has Wright done for male workers? Is she supposed to be pro-male simply for writing some hit-piece attacking someone who does a LOT and has for MANY YEARS? Is she to be taken seriously as someone DEFENDING THE MALE MEMBERS OF THE 1% against mean socialist Sarah Jaffe? Really?
((goes off to sing another verse of the Internationale))
@Clarence, last response, since the amount of strawmanning and red herrings here is beyond redemption. As an aside, it’s apparent that you have an ideological dog in this fight. If your values framework falls apart when you apply reason and logic, then hell, why don’t you let it? It’ll be good for you.
Worse yet, you’ve actually been equivocating two entirely different things as if they were the same, trying to convince us that taking care of the wounded and consciously giving up your life are merely slightly different actions and that it was only mere coincidence that no women were killed shielding a man – not just in this event but countless others just like it. You are in absolute denial that only men died shielding other adults. Plus… you’re strawmanning left and right.
Yes, they fucking did. If they didn’t know what the fuck would happen then they were just a bunch of stupid fucks. Hand me a box of crocodile tissues, I’ve got Darwin Awards to hand out! /s You’re calling them heroes yet here you’re saying that they didn’t intend to die.
Get it through to your head that this is the central point that people disagree with you on. Heroism and bravery are not the same thing. The shielders’ actions weren’t heroic, they were merely chivalrous and fulfilled a mindless duty that they had been indoctrinated into by their society. I explained to you how their actions more than likely only raised the body count, rather than saved lives. I explained to you that the social expectation that men put down their lives for girlfriends and strange women is an unearned privilege that they don’t deserve – the men’s lives were not worth any less than the women’s – they should have never been socialized into thinking that this was the right and honorable thing to do. There’s nothing heroic about blindly trading one life for another. In fact it’s fucking stupid at face value – but it’s taboo to even talk about it because our culture is still “women and children first.” Many others in this thread have tried to explain this to you as well, but you refuse to so much as acknowledge that this is what we are saying to you.
This entire statement is a giant strawman. Nobody has ever said that she wasn’t brave. In fact, if you weren’t being so unreasonable to begin with, you would have learned that this woman is the only person who I would hand out actual hero points to.
You’re equivocating bravery with heroism and you’re trying to win by shaming anyone who disagrees with your view. You’re equivocating this woman’s actions to protect someone with the men who died for no good reason. Human bullet magnet or combat medic, what’s the difference right?? You see, if you had suggested that the men could have done what this woman did – protect themselves but then take care of someone around them who got hurt – then I would have agreed with you. Because that was the smart thing to do and it had the greatest chance of actually saving lives. Newsflash: you don’t save lives by dying yourself; you’re just trading one life for another. Your reluctance to admit to this, and the fact that it’s a completely sexist thing that doesn’t actually do anybody any good, is the heart of this disagreement.
Dungone:
What a bunch of self-serving bullshit you just posted.
Here’s what you said: “So? Why didn’t she jump in front of the bullet for her friend, then? There’s a world of a difference between tending to the injured and being a bullet magnet. It’s the difference between sitting in the trenches and actually jumping on a grenade.”
Own your fucking own words. It’s true that later you criticized people for being stupid and trying to shield others, but here you dare to put a fucking moral critique on a woman for not doing what you later decry!
Most of these people used their bodies as shields thus taking the risk they would die.
You know in this whole thread (up until your very last post) only Gingko – the guy I originally criticized- managed to say a single good word for this woman. He said she exceeded expectations, and I fully agree.
You, on the other hand, have done nothing but move the goalposts, rather than admit the fact that maybe you didn’t have enough information to judge people’s choices or actions in that attack. You’ve claimed to know all the thoughts and motivations of the men who died, you’ve declared their girlfriends as unworthy of any sacrifice without knowing shit about the length/strength of any relationships, what kind of people these women were, etc. You’ve studiously avoided criticizing the guy who laid down his life saving another guy, probably because it disrupts a narrative you hate, but its just as probable he was acting irresponsibly, unheroic ally, etc, as any of the others, and you took a long piss on a woman for not doing enough, even as her friend was probably hit before she could have done anything about it and after you’ve made a longish post about how stupid it always is to try and shield someone else.
Sorry, but not impressive. Part of this could have been avoided had both you and JDC (and probably Gingko) admitted that what all these five people did was BRAVE (as I was using brave as a synonym for heroic) but instead the focus was on how they were all either stupid, or selfish, or irresponsible, or (based on your attack on the woman I quoted above) cowardly. JDC simply seems to misunderstand grammar, and couldn’t understand why I would get so upset about a declaratory sentence unmodified by caveats or an argument that led to the conclusion.
Anyway, as usual, Ginkgo is the rational one here and has reformulated his statement into something I can respect and mostly support.
@Gingko, I had this in mind throughout this derail and wanted to comment on it:
This sounds very likely and it wouldn’t be the first time. Christian women do the same exact thing as well. Hell, there’s the WCTU. But it doesn’t really matter what their background is. Recently, we’ve had a torrent of atheist feminists blaming atheist men for the fact that there are so few female atheists in a blatant attempt to shore up privileges and status for themselves. It doesn’t really matter what their background is because they’re just using whatever they know to play the victim and vie for as many perks as their golden uteruses can earn them.
“Own your fucking own words. It’s true that later you criticized people for being stupid and trying to shield others, but here you dare to put a fucking moral critique on a woman for not doing what you later decry!”
Okay, you see I never made a “moral critique” of that woman. That was all in your head, since you were the ones who was so hell bent on treating the male shielders as first class heroes beyond reproach. I never agreed with that. I did not say that consciously giving up your life for no reason made you a hero. You did. I said that taking care of the wounded and giving up your life are drastically different and require drastically different decision making processes and, specifically, that the decision to give up your life simply can’t be made on the spot.
Thank you, Ginkgo.
I shall now get off this thread for awhile. If, when I come back, there’s any posts that actually deal with the subject you wrote about and don’t call me insane or accuse me of trolling or otherwise insult me, I promise to stick to the subject of the post, which except for that last declaratory sentence I did regard as excellent and a worthy topic of discussion.
Here’s a real hero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Lewis_(lighthouse_keeper)
Daisy:
“Jaffe was defending the workers in that discussion, while Wright is defending some reactionary who voted for Romney.”
To a certain extent, that’s irrelevant, Daisy. Just because you disagree with someone (or just because they are wrong) does not give you permission to butt into a conversation with a total stranger that you are not a part of and then proceed to belittle that person. In this particular instance (I won’t comment on the others because frankly I’m not entirely certain what happened in either of them) Jaffe behind like a boorish, self-entitled smug jackass and then had the gall to scream “But I’m a woman!” after she got the exact same treatment a man who had done what she did would have gotten.
Gingko: “I liked your comment at Ally’s on what is wrong with GMP. (I have yet to figure out how to comment there.) he is coming along but he has a long way to go. I am glad to see a reference over at FC by tamen to Jill Filipovic’s efforts to ostracize GMP.”
Do you have a link to that blogpost of Ally’s? I’ve been kinda watching in fascination (that similar to watching a burning car) as GMP is seeming to cave in on itself.
GL Piggy had a link to this paper…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1767508
it relates to chivalry and the death penalty, should be an interesting read…
Are you guys and girls happy arguing quite so much? I wouldn’t want to interfere so if you all like it, great! Personally I think it would get me annoyed.
Don’t know if this has been raised already (probably it has). I agree that women risk their lives for (their own) children and I think men do too (again primarily for their own children). But isn’t it more one-sided when we talk about risking your life for an adult? I think few men and fewer women would risk their life for a man, in comparison to when a woman was in danger. And that there are social expectations that the gender roles ought to be this way.
Ally’s done two blog posts on the GMP rape story, the first one on Alyssa Royse and her rapit friend, and the second about the second one about the post by the unrepentant rapist. My comment that Ginkgo refers to is on the second one.
@Daisy
Yes, you are the only two people here who ever questioned his combat record. You got me, oh no.
I made the point, Daisy, because your argument style tends to start out very reasoned, but can get a little emotional/defensive. And Clarence was being very emotional. You aren’t some kind of pariah, but everyone has their weakness of argument styles, and yours and Clarence’s seem to be the same. And since you and he have had some fairly titanic arguments in the past, I thought that making that clear to him might be a bit of cold water to the face, like “look at the monster you have become!” /hyperbole
Clarence,
“Anyway, as usual, Ginkgo is the rational one here and has reformulated his statement into something I can respect and mostly support.”
That has taken nearly sixty years of grueling effort. It is gratifying to see that someone sees some result form all that. Thank you.
” ….admitted that what all these five people did was BRAVE (as I was using brave as a synonym for heroic) but instead the focus was on how they were all either stupid, or selfish, or irresponsible, …”
BRAVE! Yes!! Why didn’t I think of that earlier? That resolves it. Brave is only partially synonomous with heroic. You can be very brave and still quite stupid. That’s what we call foolhardy.
Note to thread – the next time you hear someone sneer at “semantics”, this is why they are wrong. This right here. That sneer “semantics” usually means paying attention to nuance and detail of meanaing, and dismissing “semantics” is trivial is clueless – language is either about communicating meaning or it is about nothing.
Daisy,
“Childbirth can kill you, even now… and certainly it still does kill women in some parts of the world. ”
Childbirth is uniquely dangerous for humans. It’s really a horrible evolutionary deadeend, because we are cught between fetus with huge heads for huge brains and pelvises narrow enough to enable upright posture and walking. It’s an evolutionary nutcracker.
Years ago there was an interesting book on pre-Conquest Mexican religion and mentality called “Burning Water”. http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Water-Thought-Religion-Ancient/dp/0394732766
The author’s theoery was that all of Mexican religion was about feeding the universe with human energy, blood, to keep it in balance, and that if you wanted something from the gods, you had to pay for it with pain. I see a lot of this attitude in modern Mexican culture too.
Anyway, the way that worked out for men was that they were expected to go to war and capture sacrificial victims. The exception was merchants, whose commercial travel was dangerous enough to be considered warfare. For women the equivalent was childbirth. That was considered as dangerous as warfare too.
Ginkgo:
I didn’t want to imply that all women, grow up with “entitled princess syndrom”, obviously there are emancipated women like “girl writes what”. Strangely feminist don’t see her as a positive example, although from what I have read and heard from her, she doesn’t ask men (or demand from them) to be equal, she just acts as an equal; and this might be a reason why feminism, the movement for the equality of women, doesn’t have much appeal to her.
But why should they make this journey? This particular kind of chivalry constitues a privilege for women and why should a person want to lose a privilege they have? Surely, some people feel guilty because of their undeserved advantages, but most people are selfish.
Also “damseling” seems to be a part of character, feminism on the other hand is ideology and “character precedes ideology” usually. This means, people will choose or adjust their ideology to fit their character and usually not vice versa. And in cases of conflict character trumps idelogy most of the time, for an example look at many of the feminist “nice guy” or “creep” discussions.
And finally why do women become feminists? There will be many reasons and somebody from the inside will be better at determining which reasons are how common, but as far as I know plenty of feminists have been abused or fear abuse. If you fear abuse you seek protection and not necessarily a just society and a different role. For protection a white knight in shining armor looks better than the gender egalitarian men offering you lessons in Karate.
“But why should they make this journey? This particular kind of chivalry constitues a privilege for women and why should a person want to lose a privilege they have? ”
Reddit Mensrights has lots of self-identifying feminists who come on asking for some introduction into the MRM and most are surprised, or else they come on saying they wanat to be allies. It’s these feminists I’m thinking of.
Possible reasons:
1) They actually believe and wnat to see realized feminism’s stated goals of gender equality. Principled people really do exist.
2) They don’t see the privilege you refer to as desirable.
3) They have men in their lives and they care about them – sons, brothers, even husbands sometimes. They have a wake up moment and they get angry. Half the time the reason they got involved in feminism in the first place was empathy. When that empathy gets turned on their men, they start to ask uncomfortable questions, and that very often leads them to examine and reject the privilege you are referring to.
Paul: To a certain extent, that’s irrelevant, Daisy. Just because you disagree with someone (or just because they are wrong) does not give you permission to butt into a conversation with a total stranger that you are not a part of and then proceed to belittle that person. In this particular instance (I won’t comment on the others because frankly I’m not entirely certain what happened in either of them) Jaffe behind like a boorish, self-entitled smug jackass and then had the gall to scream “But I’m a woman!” after she got the exact same treatment a man who had done what she did would have gotten.
My point was actually something totally different, and my apologies for not making it very clear. Its something that has lately been bugging me… lots of men’s rights activists criticize women like me or Jaffe (and note, I am not talking about *all* feminists, but ones with a proven activist track-record) and it recently occurred to me, that I have very likely done far more for the rights of individual men, then they have. References available upon request; I have an activist resume, as Jaffe does. I have done a lot for men who have been forgotten in prisons and tried to stop executions (etc).. doesn’t that kind of thing make a difference? Sarah Jaffe does good work, and I find it reactionary to attack her. (Specifically: it is reactionary to inhibit activists and try to make us second-guess what we do.) At the least, I will ask the person who 1) initially attacked her (Wright) and 2) applauds the attack (JDC), to tell me what THEY have done, in their lives, for the rights of individual men, in comparison to all I know Jaffe has done.
If they have to stop and think about that, maybe some humility and distance is in order, not criticism. Talk is cheap.
Its the same argument I make against some of the atheists who criticize missionaries: well, what have YOU done? Being vaccinated is a good thing, and until the atheists can organize as well as groups like Lutheran World Services, Catholic Charities or Jesuit Refugee Services, who vaccinate, feed and clothe millions of refugees and homeless people throughout the world, maybe they should be a little humble… or at least get busy and do something themselves. So far, I know of no atheist organization that has fed war refugees or done mass-vaccinations, but I remain ever-hopeful.
I am tired of these predominantly-online ethical values (on both the left and the right, feminist and MRM, atheists and believers, etc etc etc), that having the right language, the cool trendy buzzwords or the right theory (etc) makes you the best. What you actually DO in your LIFE, matters. Being effective matters. And I am tired of a simple word (feminist, in this case) being enough to denigrate a person, when that person has often done far more than the person sitting on their butt behind a computer, pontificating and judging.
I’m old school. In my book, Jaffe has earned the right to do whatever she wants. I would ask if Wright has earned the right to criticize her, but I already know the answer to that. I simply don’t take political dilettantes seriously, despite whatever hip opinions they have. Hip opinions come and go, but ACTIONS are crucial.
I care more about the results.
Equilibrium: I made the point, Daisy, because your argument style tends to start out very reasoned, but can get a little emotional/defensive. And Clarence was being very emotional. You aren’t some kind of pariah, but everyone has their weakness of argument styles, and yours and Clarence’s seem to be the same. And since you and he have had some fairly titanic arguments in the past, I thought that making that clear to him might be a bit of cold water to the face, like “look at the monster you have become!” /hyperbole
Deciding to play schoolmaster/gatekeeper and call people out for supposed moral infractions, could also be taken as a “weakness in argument style”… or as we say where I come from, Who died and left you Pope? Is there some reason you are called on to judge me or Clarence? Why is this necessary?
I find it really peculiar when people do this–I used to think it was confined to feminist blogs (and women unable to refrain from playing mommy/nurse/nun/schoolmarm), but I now see I was mistaken. It’s almost as bad here.
It simply isn’t your job to go around morally judging people and deciding who is good enough to speak up. I guess I find that stuff as offensive as anything else in this thread.
Patrick, your comment on the blog: They’ve now gone to the depths (and I only know this from reading your blog) of presenting us with a couple of unrepentant rapists, and telling us, with a carefully simulated caring tone, “that’s you, that is.” The GMP is nothing more than Julie Bindel by stealth. Get out of there.
I don’t think it was carefully simulated; it was real. That’s what alarmed everyone. She repeatedly reminded us that this guy is nice nice nice… so it was weird. Just plain weird. If I didn’t know better (and I don’t), I’d say she actually admired the guy or sympathized with his perspective. Perhaps she likes “bad boys” and seeks to understand them, and she thinks this is somehow the way to do that?
This is why she doesn’t understand what she’s done wrong.
“She repeatedly reminded us that this guy is nice nice nice… so it was weird. Just plain weird”
Weird is the word for it. I can’t understand why she would go to such lengths to present such a bizarre case.
Daisy, I didn’t morally judge anyone, or tell anyone not to speak up. I was attempting to get it back to a conversation, rather than one person talking and one person screaming and yelling. Why? Because a conversation is better for everyone involved. And if you are honest with yourself, you will remember a few situations where you were in “heated arguments”. I don’t know if you noticed, because you were obviously worked up about the topic, but the couple times I have seen it happen, it shut everyone up except you and dungone. I tend to view something like that the same way I view cutting in line, its not very considerate. If you don’t care about being considerate (and there are legitimate times when you don’t need to, or indeed, shouldn’t) then its fine. But if you do (and I do here, and hope that others do as well, since I tend to view this as a discussion space), then it can be helpful to have someone tap you on the shoulder and say, “hey, maybe you don’t want to do that.”
You will also notice that I didn’t ever say anything to you earlier, because I wasn’t yet sure whether this really was a discussion space or a shouting space. (I consider AVfM a shouting space, which is one reason I don’t contribute there). I thought twice about phrasing my comment the way I did because I was afraid it was going to come off as an attack on you, and I think it did. I’m sorry about that.
I don’t know what it looks like from the outside, but I think sometimes I write a lot and don’t say much. I would consider that a weakness in my rhetorical style.
And lastly, no one made me Pope. If you disagree with my view, it is as ignorable as any.
Equilibrium: I don’t know if you noticed, because you were obviously worked up about the topic, but the couple times I have seen it happen, it shut everyone up except you and dungone.
Well that is interesting. As the outsider here, I have viewed that situation very differently: Everyone “shut up” because they endorsed Dungone’s opinions and authorized him to speak for them. Therefore, when he addressed me, he spoke for the MRM (and no one challenged his authority to do so). He gave the “official MRM line” and I assumed he spoke for most of you, except those few of you who are very careful to make their specific positions known, such as Gingko. If you disagreed, you’d say so. (People sure don’t hesitate to tell ME I’m wrong, now do they?)
If you don’t care about being considerate (and there are legitimate times when you don’t need to, or indeed, shouldn’t) then its fine. But if you do (and I do here, and hope that others do as well, since I tend to view this as a discussion space), then it can be helpful to have someone tap you on the shoulder and say, “hey, maybe you don’t want to do that.”
If you consider yourself an outsider, though, then that becomes, “Back off, missy! Lay off our fabulous spokesperson!” … and I tend to experience it that way. (My positions ARE the minority positions here, so that is not entirely unfounded.)
Yes, you sounded mean, but no biggie. I happen to agree with Clarence in this discussion, though. I confess to being as shocked as he was. He correctly spoke my thoughts aloud.
When these conflicts happen, I am more interested in the differences of values that are projected and the possible reasons for them. For instance, Clarence and Dungone agree on much, yet in this matter they have different moral positions. I am interested in some of the possible cultural and/or political reasons for those differences. I tend to ask questions or make statements that speak to that interest, rather than the “majority” interest.
Hope that made some sense.
Aside: Hope at least one person got to see Damien Echols’ interview last night on CNN, he was awesome. Again, he was careful to talk about who is actually on Death Row vs the “Hannibal Lecter” stereotypes. I once again heartily recommend his book (Life After Death) and the movie coming out about the case, West of Memphis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Memphis
When that empathy gets turned on their men, they start to ask uncomfortable questions, and that very often leads them to examine and reject the privilege you are referring to.
Very good, Gingko.
In the above comment, I mentioned Echols…when he was charged with murder, it is interesting that his girlfriend’s Wiccan diary was used against *him*. She was the one into Wicca* –not him– and yet there was this idea that as a heavy metal kid, he must have somehow “put her up to it”… she was never posited as a suspect in a supposedly “satanic” crime, despite the diary. They waved the diary at Damien during their interrogation, as if he had written it himself!
That kind of thing really does stand out, and one can see it immediately for what it is**.
*I am not saying Wiccans are into satanic murders.. I am saying they used this diary along with heavy metal as an excuse to call him a satanist. This was during the early 90s witch hunt about the ‘satanic ritual abuse’–which was all bullshit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
**On my radio show, I was careful to lay blame on Ms Magazine (then being edited by Robin Morgan) for propagating such crap as “Michelle Remembers”–but you will notice the Wikipedia article does not blame any news media specifically.
Three teenage girls would *never* have been charged with this crime in a southern state.. although one woman, Kelly Michaels, spent 7 years in prison over a similar made-up case in NJ. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/michaelsevil.html There were several female perps in these cases, but none charged with actual murder.
hope this ain’t too far off topic, but I had to write about TGMP….
http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/tgmp-can-suck-my-fucking-dick/
“Well that is interesting. As the outsider here, I have viewed that situation very differently: Everyone “shut up” because they endorsed Dungone’s opinions and authorized him to speak for them. Therefore, when he addressed me, he spoke for the MRM (and no one challenged his authority to do so). He gave the “official MRM line” and I assumed he spoke for most of you, except those few of you who are very careful to make their specific positions known, such as Gingko. If you disagreed, you’d say so. (People sure don’t hesitate to tell ME I’m wrong, now do they?)”
I only take responsibility for MY comments and MY blog…
as a man of mixed race I can see both neo-nazi white nationalists and black panthers as hate movements….
I have specifically stated that I’m not an MRA and am ideologically different than Paul Elam…
you are being dishonest if you group my views as “the same” as Clarence’s or dungone’s…
I dropped a few comments here, then layed out…
I wrote this article because of this thread of something I saw a while back…
http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/witnessed-an-assault/
Yeah, Daisy, let me categorically say that silence does not imply agreement. It can certainly feel that way, especially as an outsider. And silence (or inaction) in the face of violence is in itself a form of violence. But in terms of discussions, I can guarantee you that my silence is not always a form of agreement. Sometimes I am just too busy at work to respond. “Too busy” becomes very very likely when the talk changes from a discussion in good faith to an argumentative/emotional scream fest in which everyone is talking past each other (or echo chambering). In essence, the chance that I respond to a given post is proportional to my interest in the topic, but inversely proportional to the level of appeals to emotion or ad hominems or whatever. In fact, I considered replying to Clarence’s first post, since I saw where it was going (he’s done it before with age of consent issues). I waited so long because I didn’t feel like kicking that hornet’s nest, but eventually you just got to do it.
In fact, you can view my agreement very much like consent. If we are not face to face, and body language does not apply, then in order to have my agreement, it needs to be expressed enthusiastically and verbally (Ginkgo, as a linguist, what is the word I am searching for here? The latin-based equivalent to verbally, but in written form. I wanted to use scripturally, but I think that word has a different meaning, or lost the meaning I am searching for).
Actually, speaking of Wiccans tangentially related to crimes, I have a story to tell. Its pretty sad no matter how you interpret the events.
The sad story of Jenson Hankins and John Jasmer
Jenson was a friend of mine from middle school. He was a pretty cool guy, we were both in honors classes, both loved stirring shit up, both were at WTO (ages: 13), both felt strongly about social justice issues. We were both white kids that grew up in very safe, lower middle class neighborhoods. We both loved rap and punk rock. In short, we had a lot in common.
We also both had trouble controlling our anger.
In the 3 or 4 times I went over to Jenson’s house before we graduated middle school, I never once met his parents. They were never once there. I have no idea about any details regarding his father. His mother was a wiccan/2nd waver (hence tangential relation to previous comment), I don’t really know anything else about her. The only reason I know that is her wiccan bible (no idea what it’s called) and 2nd wave literature filling their bookcases.
Anyhow, me and Jenson went to different High Schools, so I lost contact with him. The next thing I heard about Jenson was that he had been arrested on suspicion of 1st degree murder.
THE FACTS:
Jenson had 2 very close friends at school, John and Josh. Jenson also had a girlfriend whose name is lost to the aether. We know that at a party, John had some form of sexual intercourse with the girlfriend. We know that she reported that she had been raped to the police. We know that very shortly, she recanted her accusation. We know that Jenson and Josh lured John to a small city away from town by claiming to have a deal to score cheap pot. We know Josh’s father was the sheriff in that town. We know that John was hit in the head with the claw end of a hammer, and then stabbed 29 times and buried in a shallow grave. And we know Jenson and Josh are going to be in jail for a long time.
THE SPECULATION:
Was the sex consensual? Did the girlfriend get raped? Did she report the rape to the police before or after Jenson found out about the sex? Did she tell him, or did he hear it from someone else? Did he talk to John about it before he planned on killing him? Did he talk to her about it? Why did she recant her accusation so quickly (1-2 days if I recall correctly, but that too has been lost to the aether).
THE TRAGEDY:
The tragedy is that one young man is dead, two are in jail, and countless lives were damaged, and that possibly a young woman was raped.
If it was consensual sex, and the girlfriend lied, the tragedy is that she let everything get so far out of hand and felt like she needed to hide her own agency by blaming a young man for a heinous crime.
If it was rape, the tragedy is that the justice system couldn’t carry out justice. And that two young men felt that they needed to enact vigilante justice in the ultimate form of whiteknighting.
Plenty of blame to go around, no matter what the truth of it is.
Fairly good wrap up of the story here: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20041218&slug=jasmer18m
Hmm, it seems I got one thing wrong. She recanted her accusation to the police, but not in general. She still claimed she was raped at the murder trial. Not sure that it changes anything, really.
ES:
Actually, I wish you’d have said nothing at all.
You didn’t help then, and some of what you are saying now seems to me to be revisionism.
Gingko was the one who actually solved this issue by noticing my point and modifying the post to comport with it.
None of the “big 3” who criticized me has even bothered to acknowledge that, in the end, I had a point. Instead one just basically called me crazy, you continue to think that I was angry in all my posts (in fact I didn’t get pissed off at anyone in that thread until about 1/3 of the way through it), and dungone seemed to keep changing his argument. He could point out where I was wrong, for instance (he almost claims to be Mr. Combat) when I talked about how not all the people would be hit at once or how bullets travel faster than sound. Instead he dropped that argument, and immediately started another.
And thus it went. Listening to you, one would almost think that at least 3 other people on this thread didn’t agree with me to a greater or lesser extent.
That last part should be:
“Listening to you, one would almost forget that at least 3 other people on this thread didn’t agree with me to a greater or lesser extent.”
In regards to this post in general, even the most open to men’s issues like Ozy Franz still have their blind spots when it comes to these issues. There’s still the special pleading for special treatment in some subjects though not others. For instance, sexual assault HAS to be seen through a certain type of feminist lens or its apparently not tolerable. Apparently “ladies” shouldn’t have to listen to certain types of skepticism or be exposed to the opinions of the wrong people (esp rapists) when it comes to these issues.
At an even greater level, I was at a feminist site yesterday and it was specifically stated by some of the posters (and not contradicted by the blogger) that men’s place for men’s issues within feminism was to gather together to talk about their problems on their own, their problems being strictly defined as various aspects of male privilege. In short this movement for sexual equality was “all about the womyn!”, and men were to play the supplicating knights ever flogging themselves more and more to try and beat away their sins so that they might help the fair ladies in their quests against male oppression.
@SWB:
Based on your silence? People often argue that feminists who don’t decry the actions of some of the more radical feminists (to those feminists, not to others) are complicit in the overall direction, goals, etc. of feminism. I think there’s some merit to that. However, analogously, if one is a frequent participant in conversations on a board, in a forum, at a local group, etc., and seem to lean to one “side” (whether one actually does or not, just how he or she appear to the other participant(s) in the conversation), it can sometimes seem like one agrees with the other side’s argument if he or she doesn’t explicitly say otherwise. It may not necessarily be dishonest if someone sees that…
However, in the case of ad hominems, heated discussion, etc., I agree with Equilibrium_Shift in that it drives people away from conversations, and I’d say that’s primarily because they don’t want to see it happening to someone (because many people find it painful to watch others be insulted), don’t want to hear it (because it’s a sign that the conversation is no longer about the issue, but now about the emotions of the people involved and has usually become about defending oneself rather than anything about the argument; to people outside the argument, it often becomes a waste of time for that reason), and/or they don’t want to be the target of that kind of vitriol (who does? Well, some people do, but most probably don’t. Stepping into a firefight gets you shot, and it’s often not worth it).
And with that, I have to say that my last post to Clarence was an example. I don’t know if some people read it and decided not to post because of it (especially after what happened previously in this thread. People who didn’t want to get involved in a firefight probably decided not to post or just avoided the heated discussion portion altogether prior to it), but it is the kind that might make some people do that.
And, because of that, I regret having made it and potentially driven people away from the original topic, which I think is important to talk about. I tried to maintain my composure as long as I could, and I should really know better by now than to engage in that kind of conversation.
Anyway, having said that, I think the article I linked earlier, in its first example, explores the above quite well (in addition to its discussion about the way public discourse changes when people treat you like you matter). Sarah Jaffe no doubt viewed her position as righteous, enough so that she though she could ignore someone’s personal boundaries and begin a conversation with a complete stranger using insulting, belittling language and then snorting derisively at the responses to those questions. And she clearly thought she should be able to do so without an receiving an in-kind response or anger.
Obviously, she was wrong. If her goal was to have a conversation with someone, get him to think about his opinion or, against all odds, change it, she failed. Miserably. I think it’s an extremely safe bet to say that he didn’t go home and have an epiphany about how terrible it is that he agreed with Romney’s position on teacher’s unions, but likely had his opinion cemented because he’d had a visceral, in person confirmation of who he probably considers holds the opposite opinion. If her goal was to enrage someone by being rude, condescending and pompous without accomplishing anything else, then she succeeded marvelously (but it’s clear from her post-argument shaking and feeling of victimization that it wasn’t, at least not consciously).
So why is there no mention of anyone backing her up in the argument? Why didn’t anyone “support” her in her actual argument as opposed to just trying to calm him down or comfort her later? Because that kind of argument style ejects people from itself and is actually mentally damaging to engage in. Does anyone know who in the audience supported who? Of course not. Their silence during the argument didn’t say anything about the topic of the argument because the silence, as in almost all cases in which there are ad hominems and more serious forms of verbal abuse, undoubtedly directly related to the desire to avoid the anger. The only voices heard not from the two were people who were trying to stop, and later remove, one of them (the story doesn’t indicate how she behaved in the ensuing fight).
Too many people believe they are the Sarah Jaffe in that encounter, that the antagonistic, ad hominem style of argumentation is not only acceptable, but effective. Acceptable? Well, it probably shouldn’t be (because of how well it doesn’t work and what it does to people), but that’s for the participants and/or moderators in discussions or different environments to determine. Effective, however, it clearly is not. The Sarah Jaffe’s of the world, behaving like she did in that conversation, kill discussion, cement opposing opposition and very often hurt whatever cause they’re trying to fight for, but still feel vindicated (“This is why I’m a feminist!”) because they let someone have it.
And, of course, that’s not to say they don’t do effective, good (as decided by the person judging) work in other ways that may outweigh the results of their predilection for nastiness in debates, but it’s probably good to be cognizant of all aspects of one’s effectiveness. Making people who would otherwise be persuaded disengage or making them look to the opposition for more tolerable options isn’t a bonus, and neither is cementing the opposition in their decisions.
@Equilibrium_Shift
I don’t for the same reason (though, obviously, I have my moments, and I’m sorry that I contributed a post of that nature here), which is also true for most online feminist spaces and MRA. I think some of the people at AVfM have done some good things, that there’s some potential in what the organizers and some of the contributors do, but too often the forums and comments are filled with people who are just lobbing out insults and invective.
And the sad thing, is, many of them, just like Sarah Jaffe, think that’s effective. They think that helps their cause, when mostly what it does is provides ammunition to their opposition (though it’s important to realize, and I think everyone here already does, and I’m only stating it because I’m loquacious like that, that the opposition, especially feminist like those at Free Thought Blogs and certain MRAs will misconstrue anything, even lack of expressing an opinion, into ammunition. The point is that it doesn’t help to provide real, in context invective that people can use for emotional appeals, as fallacious as they are).
Even worse is that it’s self reinforcing if the movement they’re in is successful or if the idea they support catches on. I’ve seen some people take personal pride in how they “help the movement” when their “contribution” is being a jerk to people online because
“other people deserve it.”
Daisy:
The “simulated caring tone” I referred to is the one directed by the magazine to male readers, not by the writer towards her friend, which may well indeed be genuine. I don’t know why she wrote it, but I do know why the GMP published it, and then quickly followed it by an article apparently written by a rapist. It’s about demonstrating the existence of “rape culture” by claiming that this sort of behaviour is normal and commonplace among men.
Feminists hate me, according to Kate Hardings post on Jezebel. Harding:
I believe that “abusers, rapists and deadbeat dads” should have rights, I believe that lynch justice is wrong and I believe that standing up for basic human rights is noble.
Obviously I am a misogynistic asshole, although, as I don’t think that your gender should grant you any rights, I am opposed to “men’s rights” as much as to “women’s rights”.
I wonder what Harding idea of a good man is. Maybe “Dirty Harry”?
“abusers, rapists and deadbeat dads”
Patrick, this exact sequence has been showing up in unrelated places. I saw ths sam sequence in a Reddit thread. it’s a meme.
“Your feminist enemies don’t hate men; we only hate men who proudly stand up for the rights of abusers, rapists, and deadbeat dads.”
Well this is quite selective, isn’t it? Does she have the same hatred for women who stand up for abusers – the ones who always blame the male victim of abuse by saying he must have done something, the ones who always find some way to excuse those vile cowards who abuse children; the ones who either deny women can rpae men or else defne rape so that it can hardly ever apply to women; and the ones who can never seem to condemn deadbeat mothers, the oens who interfere with their children’s father’s attempts to parent them?
Clarence,
I’m sure you wish I had said nothing at all. I could say the same about you. In fact, for all the good it did, I might even agree with you.
Let me make something clear. I never, ever addressed the content of your arguments, only the form. You weren’t responding to what the person was trying to say. No one is perfect at getting their point across, so if we want to advance the discussion, we need to do our best to help them out by trying to understand what they meant with their words. And what you were doing degenerated into a series of gotcha’s and several appeals to emotion. you even accused me of attacking these people with some very angry language. I NEVER FUCKING MENTIONED THE PEOPLE IN THE STORY, BRO. You were acting like you “win” if other people concede your point, when the truth is, everyone wins when we understand both sides of an argument better after the conversation than we did before.
ES:
Kindly just drop it.
All you’ve focused on is my alleged misbehavior and alleged mental state (which you were actually wrong about until sometime just before your first post in the thread) without noting poor argumentation and misbehavior from the other comm enters, AND your post clarified nothing about my argument for them. In short, all you did was add fuel to a fire. If you had devoted yourself to trying to decipher what I was actually arguing rather than about how you felt I was arguing it, you might have done some good. Hell, you could have asked me some questions. But that is not what you did. I make no apologies for attacking you because in my opinion you attacked me first.
” So far, I know of no atheist organization that has fed war refugees or done mass-vaccinations, but I remain ever-hopeful.”
Any organization that doesn’t identify as specifically religious is, to me, atheist.
http://gma.yahoo.com/shooting-victims-hero-teacher-principal-20-kids-122309290–abc-news-topstories.html
Here:
Borrowed this from a link at Chuck Ross’s Gucci Little Piggy blog.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1767508
Chivalry is apparently live and well when considering death sentences.
hehehe,
Clarence, I beat you to it…
stonerwithaboner on December 14, 2012 at 12:49 am said:
GL Piggy had a link to this paper…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1767508
it relates to chivalry and the death penalty, should be an interesting read…
and the video was funny too…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=imZ52DHBtug
Ginkgo:
Why only the same hatred? Kate Harding says:
One should note the significant difference between the group of people you describe and the group of people she claims feminists hate. Standing up for the rights, is not the same as standing up for the people, which is not the same as standing up for the offense they have committed.
What rights is she talking about, that might be in peril for an “abuser, rapist or deadbeat dad”?
Right to live? Haven’t alleged rapist ever been lynched?
Right not to be tortured, raped or mutilated?
Right to a fair trial? Heve we ever heard people attack the presumption of innocence?
Right to be treated as a human being?
Any man who believes in basic civil and human rights, is a man that feminists hate, according to Harding. The question is in which society one wants to live in. I like human and civil rights, Kate Harding obviously wants a different society.
To me Hardings piece sounds like a parody, even her very unfavorable view of MRAs as some kind of abuser-lobby, lead her to the exclamation I quoted, which describes feminism as a hate movement, hostile to what I would call a civilised society.
Anyone who thinks that Clarence and I agree on a lot of points must be incapable of anything but the most black and white thinking possible. I don’t agree with Clarence on the vast majority of the things he believes in. In some cases, I believe that believes the right thing but for the wrong reasons, in other cases I believe that he recognizes the right problems but comes up with really bad solutions, and in most cases I believe him to be blinded through an ideology that he refuses to give up in spite of all the evidence in the world that he is flat out wrong. But most of all, I think that he embodies what I think is typical of uneducated individuals who engage passionately in intellectual debates without having the critical thinking faculties to know their head from their ass.
It’s not really complicated. Clarence is conservative and errs on the side of white supremacy. I am a social democrat who has done all the things in life that someone like Clarence believes are moral virtues espoused by his ideology, but hasn’t actually done himself. So it makes for some very comical flame wars when Clarence tries to use emotional arguments and silencing tactics that are so typical of right wingers, but yet every time he does so I can pull something from my personal experience that trumps his ability to use shame against me.
Clarence often disagrees with me for no reason other than to score points – he often sides with someone like Daisy just because she’s arguing with me and he doesn’t like me, even though the positions he takes on are hypocritical as a result and bite him in the ass when he himself gets into it with Daisy. He and Daisy have very similar argumentative styles, they’re practically a male and female version of one another. Daisy does the same thing, siding with Clarence when Clarence is arguing with me, even though when she does it, she is taking up a right-wing conservative position and she herself is a commie.
Daisy – what can I say about her? She is just an awful fucking pig. She couldn’t argue herself out of a paper bag without lying about what the paper bag is made out of. I really think that she has some of the worst qualities of unreasonable uneducated assholes. She makes incredibly nasty personal attacks on other people, yet she takes it upon herself to try to get them to doxx themselves – she takes it to an obsessive, nasty level. It would be absolutely ridiculous for me to tell an obnoxious oaf who wants to smear me in every way she possibly can who I am. I am afraid that I would start getting harassing phone calls and hear my name on her little community radio show or whatever she does as a hobby. Her Veteran’s Day post about me was among the most vile, despicable shit I have ever heard from anyone in my life, and that includes a fucker who told me he didn’t want to talk to me because his daddy was in the KKK. She swore up and down that she would stop harassing me if I stopped responding to her, yet she goes out and pulls shit like that out of her ass.
Dungone:
I cannot seriously believe you have me mixed up as a racist Republican when I mostly hang out here or at Feminist Critics.
I also have hardly ever sided with Daisy on here in ANY fight against you. I almost always stay out of it (maybe ONE exception if that) because if it hasn’t crawled into your head yet – me and Daisy do not get along, and sometimes struggle to say a civil word to each other. I haven’t thought alot of her rhetorical tactics in the past, to say the least. You might also remember one or two whole threads on this blog that were literally just me and Daisy going at it like cats and dogs and not in a “playful” manner. Then you might remember that I’ve commented on here for over a month at a time without talking to her. Me and her are “slightly” reconciled, at least as far as I am concerned. She doesn’t attack me, and I don’t attack her.
Seriously, I think you are getting me mixed up with someone else. If I’ve had two big fights with you in the past year (not counting mere disagreement as a fight) I certainly don’t remember them. I think our largest “disagreement” was when you were talking about how women should be as able to equally initiate *this was at Feminist Critics* as men and I disagreed and said I thought part of the difference was innate. But even that disagreement was civil and I left some suggestion as to how to improve the rate of women approaching men.
Now unless you have another identity that I don’t know about, I’m rather sure that your characterization of your interactions with me is severely flawed to say the least.
By the way, buddy boyo, I do have a degree in Biology. It might only be an undergraduate degree, but it’s in a science, and I doubt you have as much
I realize that most of what I said would have gone over your head, Clarence. I’ll grant you that you could have a college degree and it was wrong of me to have used the term “uneducated” as a pejorative. I should have used “unenlightened” to avoid the confusion, even though I believe it is an educational shortcoming all the same. You have sided with Daisy on various occasions, and she with you, when it came to point scoring. The fact that you disagree is what makes it all the more funny to see.
Dungone:
Then it should be easy for you to provide examples.
Ginkgo, I hereby give you permission to dig up my old posts if you or another blogger has the power. Let Dungone look to his hearts content.
Clarence: At an even greater level, I was at a feminist site yesterday and it was specifically stated by some of the posters (and not contradicted by the blogger) that men’s place for men’s issues within feminism was to gather together to talk about their problems on their own, their problems being strictly defined as various aspects of male privilege.
The early women’s movement started with specific examples from real women’s lives. I think discussion of men’s lives would similarly be the starting point. “Male privilege” is just a concept, but pointing it out in reality is how feminism grew. Likewise, my example from Damien’s life, above, about being held accountable for his girlfriend’s diary; the assumption he somehow corrupted a good girl, which was not true at all. But that rang true to me; I’ve heard that stuff before many times. THIS is a real example we can talk about; this is a useful example. When we come up with examples, we can make progress. As long as discussion remains all theoretical and hypothetical, it simply goes nowhere, since everyone is free to make all manner of outlandish and false claims.
Equilibrium, that is a harrowing tale. 🙁
SWAB: Note that JD makes a good point: I keep hearing that feminists stay silent and therefore are complicit in blahblahblah–I think I have even heard YOU say this, haven’t I? And yet, your silence doesn’t mean agreement? So, lay off the feminists who choose not to participate in some of the nastier, anti-male threads. (I choose not to, for instance, since I don’t usually like the people participating and I know it will get *really* unpleasant.) I will no longer brawl with the transphobes, for instance, since they are often very obsessive and bizarrely crackpot in their hatred. They have focused on trans people to a weirdly-excessive, sick degree… and I feel sick when I argue with them.
Patrick: Well… wow. If you are right, keep in mind, the objections from Feministe and other feminists is based on the fact that they do not believe MOST men are like that at all, and are therefore pretty freaked out about the posts. They have therefore fallen back on the idea that GMP must have known and liked the guy personally… but I still adhere to my “bad boys” theory. Thinking it over in light of your comment, I believe you and I both might well be right: she believes MOST (all?) men are “bad boys”… (I don’t).
And finally, the star of our show… all the world’s a stage, as some famous white man once said.
Dungone: Daisy – what can I say about her? She is just an awful fucking pig.
Awwww, I love you too man! Merry Christmas, Mr Scrooge. (Bob Cratchit voice: But it’s only ONCE A YEAR SIR!)
Dungeon (the real genesis of his name): Her Veteran’s Day post about me was among the most vile, despicable shit I have ever heard from anyone in my life
Once again, the world revolves around “dungeon”… uh huh. Dungeon, it wasn’t ALL ABOUT YOU… you are merely one of many… faking war heroism has been going on a loooong time and constitutes a whole noxious syndrome, as I said.
At least I’m who I say I am. I don’t know what the fuck you are. Probably a teenage girl stirring up the shit, since at this point, I can practically track your PMS. I guess I would be upset if I believed you were who you said you are… wait, no I wouldn’t. A proud amoral assassin with big bad muscles who has drank coffee next to piles of corpses without pause (that really is my favorite story so far!), or a teenage girl sitting in her bedroom staring at Justin Bieber wallpaper, furiously Googling war stats and details? Which is worse? Probably a toss-up.
One hint, if you are going to make up shit about your life, watch that timeline. I have been clocking your ass since NSWATM, and for you to accomplish all you claim, like L Ron Hubbard, you’d have to be about 95 years old. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you don’t claim to be 95, so there IS that.) You are one of the most amusing fakers I have run across.
By all means, carry on… I like the entertainment as much as the next person. God rest ye merry gentlemen and peace out.
Dungeon: He and Daisy have very similar argumentative styles, they’re practically a male and female version of one another.
Pretty incredible and outlandish. You and Clarence are both (you claim) single white American middle class heterosexual males, MRM sympathizers and atheists, and you think you have nothing in common and Clarence is more like ME? ROFL. Priceless! Hilarious!
As I said, teenage girl… they only know who they dislike, and don’t really read much detail or remember specifics. Remember, its ALL ABOUT THEM. Drama, drama, drama… I raised one, remember? Deja Vu all over again.
Dungeon means: he argues with Clarence and he argues with me, and we both best him easily in arguments, so we are therefore alike, even though we are nothing alike.
Either that, or we are back to what I have said before: absolutely NO reading comprehension, as he claims multiple college degrees in record time.
Whatever dungeon. Keep the greatest hits coming. 🙂 I have started forwarding your posts to my friends, who have become big fans. I hope I similarly amuse YOUR friends, if you have any.
PS: As a vegetarian, I love pigs and don’t eat them. They are very smart animals, so thank you for the compliment. At least pigs don’t claim to drink coffee next to piles of pig corpses, unfazed. They might be nicer than we are… or at least SOME of us.
Daisy,
you (sort of) have a point, and yes I do think I’ve asked feminist’s to basically say “this isn’t MY feminism” in regards to Marcotte’s Nice Guys ™ and other things….
In fact I was pretty happy to see someone called Feminist Whore tear Marcotte a new one…
However-
I have specifically said I’m not an MRA. I may argue just as aggressively against feminists as one but for a multitude of reasons (including as Elam’s at a rape trial acquit) I don’t throw in with those guys….
So my position is this, as I haven’t labelled myself an MRA, if you or anyone else tries to do so, they are being dishonest.
The analogy would be this, if a woman who was interested in one or two woman’s issues in the 60’s or 70’s such as being able to have a career in a certain field but read a book like The Female Eunich or the SCUM manefesto and declared that although she was interested in a few woman’s issues, she didn’t identify as a feminist and found some/many of those ideas reprehensible. (Did the sisterhood throw someone like that under the bus in those days?)
Or maybe it’s easier to talk using a music analogy….
Someone who loves heavy metal hears the difference between Anthrax, Metallica and
Slayer….
Surely you can see difference’s in my view point’s, Clarance’s and dungone’s…
Or to compare it to bands you could relate to better-surely there is a difference between Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy (hahaha-I was gonna put Deep Purple but I know that some of those guys played in Sabbath and Dio sang in Sabbath and then Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.)
For you to say that Clarence, dungone and I have the same views at this point is like saying all those bands sound exactly the same after professing you’ve got an ear for music.
Morever-feminists as a group are disparraging MRA’s by taking the worst things they say and attacking that (often out of context.) Examples being the Manboobz blog, Kate Harding’s Jezzabel article and now Jill F of Feministe decrying the GMP as “rape apoligsts” MRA, “Misogynist” scumbags when many men have long distanced themselves from that steaming pile of crap. The bigger picture is that “they” are trying to own the moral high ground and shut down anyone who disagree’s with them. (Yes, I am smart enough if not educated enough to *get* the bigger picture and understand the tactical strategy.)
so to be more specific, the new breed of feminists won’t engage in logical arguments, they will just silence their oppenents by calling them “misogynists” and “MRA’s”–the SPLC and white knights will run to their rescue without bothering to look for a deeper truth…
If you think I’m making this shit up, I can drop more links than you can read. (And no, that wasn’t an insult to your reading comprehension or intelligence, just a note of how many articles you’d have to wade through.)
Daisy,
here is a nice place to start:
http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2012/12/14/the-kerfuffle-part-i-rp/
but you’ll have to do plenty of background reading to get the bigger picture, a Dan Savage article, a few Feministe articles, also Toy Soldiers offered a few great critiques. Then trot over to the horrid “Good” man project if you can stomach it and read a few articles there….
and, yes Daisy, upon re-reading the thread, I’m aware that you’ve read at least some of the articles I am speaking about….
(there’s 3 conversations going on at the same time and I got it a little confused.)
SWAB, I have PTSD over Ronnie James Dio… the biker ex husband loved him. (screams)
I certainly see the difference in all yall (as we say around here)… but I was addressing Equilibrium, who brought up Dungone first (I did not, but notice how Dungone can’t wait to say I did?). (sigh) He said when me and Dungone argue, we shut everyone else up. This is the first time I knew that; I assumed people thought “Dungone is doing fine without me”… or just didn’t care about the specific thread or topic in question.
When it comes to something very particular–I have no way to know your opinion about a certain situation or political issue, unless you tell me what it is. That isn’t to say I see you all alike. But I have been surprised many times, what people’s take on something unexpected turns out to be.
Thanks for the link, very interesting.
See, I have a different attitude… when Jill says GMP is an MRA friendly space, I am inclined to ask, what’s wrong with that? One thing I dislike is when a blog is all feminist or all men’s rights, since it degenerates into a rather annoying echo chamber. It causes a certain ideological lockstep, so no new ideas are really being posited or challenged. I wish MRAs could post at Feministe (they will ban them) and feminists could post at AVFM (without being called hags, bitches, etc) . I would really like to mix it up, but I seem to be in the minority about that. But of all the blogs and boards I like best, the ones that stand out tend to be the ones that ain’t skeered… and the Christians who allow the atheists and vice versa… the Republicans who allow the liberals and vice versa… some of that stuff can lead to amazing conversations. I have learned a lot here that I wouldn’t have elsewhere. I see nothing wrong with “MRA friendly space” or “feminist friendly space” as long as everyone remains civil, of course… and yes, admittedly that DOES seem rather difficult. 😉
Ahhh, Too funny, almost like a bar fight……………drunken f….
unfortunately, it is too polarized right now, if a feminist say the sky is blue an MRA disagree’s just to disagree…
same as if an MRA says the sky is blue. feminist’s disagree just to disagree…
Go over to manboobz and look at what they said about Typhon Blue’s theory….
You may not agree w/ Typhon Blue but look how they intentionally misread what she said and further twisted things…
Tit, have you ever been in a real bar fight? Not hardly.
SWAB, this discussion inspired some of my post about GMP: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/12/your-latest-progressive-blogdonia-brawl.html
…so thank you! 🙂
I would say Feminist Critics tries to be that kind of space, and my test of a feminist (if she has some real egalitarian leanings, and can have her mind changed about some things and conduct a respectful dialogue) is if she manages to stay over a month and returns of her own free will and leaves mostly *doesn’t have to be perfect * comments. The door there is open for clean dialogue with the rules slightly tilted to the feminist.
This is another space that can take dialogue from both sides, but the floor is open for clean fighting and there’s little or no favoratism , and that can drive some away.
“He said when me and Dungone argue, we shut everyone else up. ”
The beauty of commentimg on a blog is that you don’t really need to wait for others to stop talking if you want to get a word in edgewise. That’s not whay the rest of us aren’t commenting if we aren’t – it’s just that the dogfight si so much fun to watch.
interesting article…
one thing you maybe should have included was that Feministe had an article about a woman who “may” have raped her boyfriend and the commenters seemed to have a very different conclusion–
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/
See especially Amanda Marcotte’s comments….
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/#comment-526368
Now as far as the GMP article where the guy penetrated a sleeping woman, I agree with the feminist’s and say she couldn’t have consented. (There is no indication that there was a discussion beforehand where she said she likes to be fucked while asleep and they mutually agreed to do this.) What follows-this is rape….
Back to the sleeping man and his girlfriend….
Marcotte’s comments strike me as rape apologia-in fact I believe if the genders were changed and a manosphere blogger said what she said, they would skewer him….
alright, there “may” be a few differences of why the two stories are not an apple’s to apples comparison….
Perhaps the woman honestly thought he was awake and able to imply consent by acting in a way he had many times before. Jill called this a latin legal term called mens rae…
See this exchange between Dan and Jill
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/12/08/what-in-holy-hell-is-this/#comment-558236
alright, now there are allot of facts we seem to be in the dark about…
From my point of view, perhaps the woman is not responsible if his eyes were open-a sign many of us would interpret as being awake and also if she had no prior knowledge that he was a sleep walker. If she knew he was a sleep walker, then she would be obligated to figure out if he was awake and able to consent….
now, with all this said, there is still part of me that thinks the feminist’s went through a bunch of mental gymnastics to clear a woman that they wouldn’t do to clear a man. It is up to each individual to decide who is arguing in good faith…
@Daisy
A real bar fight, hmm, one that I started or one that I joined in? Unfortunately on both counts, too many to recall. 😉
SWAB,
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, I have had similar experiences to that dude. I can unequivocally say that anyone paying any attention can tell you are not in your right mind when you are sleep walking/sleep fucking. That includes whether or not you are engaging in behavior that sort of follows typical patterns you might engage in, because they are done differently than normal.
Not a lot of people have experience with sleeping next to a sleepfucker, so it can catch you off guard, especially the first time. But I can almost guarantee you that there were signs that he wasn’t operating in his normal state.
anyways, as far as my comment above–I wrote a whole article…
https://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/rape-apologia/
Equilibrium, I quoted your above comment, thanks!
Cool! glad to provide some perspective.
Not sure if TMI, but one example is that I once got up to go to the bathroom while fully asleep. Fairly normal so far, right? Except in order to take my midnight pee, I stripped completely nude (do I need to mention that this is not my SOP?). My wife asked me what I was doing, I said, “PEEING, WHAT DO YOU THINK?” (read that in Napoleon Dynamite’s voice for maximum effect).
Small differences.
Check this blog out for hilarity: http://sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/. The same kind of hilarity that one might derive from, say, Tourette’s.
As I was reading the part about the Aurora shooting, I kept thinking “Why should the men be the ones jumping in front of gunfire? Because we have slightly more mass, we make better bulletsponges? Because of that, we get to be the meatshield?”. Then I remembered the WhoNeedsFeminism poster saying she didn’t want to be the de facto party healer, and I thought, “If you don’t want to be stereotyped as the healer, don’t stereotype me as the tank!”
Not sure if that’s too dependent on MMORPG terminology or not, but I think that could make a good poster.