A while ago I asked for instances of feminists threatening or actually inflicting violence, and I got some good examples. I asked this because one of the most popular slurs against the men’s movement is that MRAs are all violent and hate women and want to inflict all this violence against them.
The Sly Inversion – If no one making these accusations can point to one instance of this actually happening, all they have to do is mischaracterize things MRAs say or misidentify people who commit violent acts as MRAs. Then they can just lean back and count on gender sterotypes to give their accusations all the credibility they need. That’s the kind of progressive gender warriors they are after all, blasting all those patriarchal gender norms to smithereens.
The physical violence feminists resort to disrupt MHRM events in Toronto and their vandalism against free speech in Vancouver are old news. Here is some new news – dear old Anita Sarkeesian, that trembling victim of internet threats and harassment, is trafficking in violent murder fantasies aginst male “enemy”.
They are not shy about using pressure and physical violence when it comes to policing women either. There’s that bright shining group of idealists, FEMEN, that are currently all the rage in morally fashionable circles. Here they are physically assaulting a stripper because she’s naked for money, which is evil collaboration with the Patriarchy, in contrast to their own high-minded, idealistic public nudity which of course is just a tactic of the revolution.
A few weeks ago I asked for examples of feminists making violent threats or engaging in actual physical violence. I got a quite a haul:
Karl Juhnke on 2013-06-18 at 5:57 pm said:
I remember a female student in South Australia who released an essay on female perpetrators who was threatened and shot at by feminists. I was threatened by feminist lecturers at Murdoch Uni in Perth Western Australia for the same reason. Was also called in several times by one lecturer who warned me that my career would be ruined by feminists as she had been threatened with this for daring to question feminist theories when she was younger.
and:
gwallan on 2013-06-20 at 2:52 am said:
No documentary evidence but I’ve had several incidents relating to admitting victimisation by a woman. As recently as November last year I was threatened with violence because I was overheard talking to a friend about my childhood experience at the hands of my aunt. In the late nineties at a political party meeting I was punched in the face by a woman. The state’s sexual assault laws were being amended at that time partly to allow for the existence of female perpetrated abuse but the feminst element thought it unnecessary. My mention of my aunt’s actions resulted in the woman concerned yelling “women don’t do that” and then lashing out. I wore a bruise on my left cheek for a couple of weeks whilst passing it off as a basketball injury.
gwallan on 2013-06-20 at 2:54 am said:
To add…the incident last year was fifty metres up the street from a white ribbon event.
Of course. Victim cred is a strategic resource and it will be defend at all costs. No menz can ever be victims, and especially not when women’s victimhood is being celebrated.
Patrick on 2013-07-05 at 4:01 am said:
Philip Wylie got lots of death threats for a chapter in his book “Generation of Vipers” mostly due to the chapters on women and momism. He said if he had to do it over he wouldn’t have written the book for the harrassment he and other members of his family received.
Good book that seems lost to the ages.
And Tamen tells us Pelle Billing, as moderate and sane a voice as the gender debate has seen in a long time, has withdrawn due to threats.
And this is not some recent development. This goes back to Lorena Bobbitt ( and the way Glenn Close was lionized for her role in Fatal Attraction).
TheBiboSez on 2013-07-09 at 8:12 pm said:
Oh, come on, we just had the 20th anniversary of the Lorena Bobbitt incident, and no one mentioned this?
“Finally, it was time for Mrs. Bobbitt’s trial for maliciously wounding her husband. Much of the nation, and beyond, watched intently with sympathies split largely along gender lines. In Ecuador, Lorena Bobbitt’s home country, the National Feminist Association called several news organizations to announce that if Mrs. Bobbitt went to prison for mutilating her husband, 100 innocent American men would be castrated (it is not clear if they really meant ‘castration,’ which generally means removal of the testicles, or if they meant they would slice off 100 innocent penises). The organization also staged a large protest outside the U.S. consulate.
Not a recent development, not by any means. It turns out suffragettes, in their social-parasite-useless-for-any-kind-of-physical-labor modes of dress with their ladified airs, were not above the occasional death threat. From the History of Feminism we have this:
Attempted Murder by Suffragettes
It is universally acknowledged by historians that the suffragettes engaged in numerous terrorist acts, including attempted murder. One such case was the attempt on the life of Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, the chief magistrate for Bow Street who had tried Emmeline Pankhurst, as well as other leading feminists, for acts of terrorism such as setting fire to property and assaulting police officers. The story is recounted below by the Montreal Gazette published on June 04, 2013, and also describes the recent burning by suffragettes of Eaton Boats intended for the Royal Henley Regatta.
Clearly when it comes to physical violence, feminsts have form. It almost looks inherent to the movement.
And please offer any more examples you may have.
- 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 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey
Erin Pizzey was a pioneer in setting up shelters for abused women in Britain, and later came to realize men were as likely to suffer domestic violence as women. She paid a serious price for trying to do something about it:
“Pizzey says it was after death threats against her, her children, her grandchildren, and the killing of her dog, all of which she states were perpetrated by militant feminists, that she left England for North America. She returned to London in the 1990s where her insights were sought by politicians and family pressure groups.”
It really annoys me that the suffragettes are so lionized. Inconveniant historical facts, such as the groups’ links with British Fascism, seem to be just ignored by the feminists who praise them.
A leading suffragette was heading the women’s arm of the Fascist party for years ffs. This women shared a cell with Emmeline (whether she was a fascist herself is unknown) and one of Emmeline Pankhurst daughters was a fascist. Yet why is this stuff never brought up?
Harrow, Erin Pizzey is the poster child for feminist violence. And when the issue coems up in comment threads her story always is a huge revelation to everyone who just two comments laterwas telling everyone they really needed to learn more about feminism before demonizing it or whatever.
Adiabat, you really wonder that? You seem to be forgetting that article of patriarchal feminism, “Women are wonderful”. And if you insist on bringing up inconeneint facts like that, you get a bunch of White Lady tears.
I love telling feminists that they “need to go educate themselves about feminism” when they themselves seem so ignorant of feminism. While non-feminists have an excuse for not having a good knowledge of feminism a feminist should ideally be aware of the things that prominant feminists are doing in their name. I really don’t get why people adopt identities without doing some basic research on it.
“Adiabat, you really wonder that?”
I guess not, not after seeing the behaviour of feminists this last few years. But the media do it, as do the government. It seems everyone fawns over them when they were horrible people.
Most feminist violence isn’t committed by feminists. Every man who’s dragged off to jail based on a false rape accusation and beaten up by an inmate is a victim of feminist violence. When a man is attacked by his wife, but the police tackle and handcuff him because the law says men are always the aggressor, that’s feminist violence too.
Having said that, don’t forget Valerie Solanas, who tried to murder several people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Solanas
Adiabat: “A leading suffragette was heading the women’s arm of the Fascist party for years ffs. This women shared a cell with Emmeline (whether she was a fascist herself is unknown) and one of Emmeline Pankhurst daughters was a fascist. Yet why is this stuff never brought up?”
This is Norah Elam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Elam) you mean. I wonder if she’s related to Paul Elam…
Jose, that would be a stretch, since she lived in Ireland and Britain and he goes back a ways in Texas. There is probably some remote relationship, centuries ago. That surname is a toponym, although I can’t find the actual village it refers to. it may not even exist anymore. I don’t think therewere all that many villages with that name, so they may have a common ancestors back severla centuries..
Hi, I’ve read this site for a while but don’t think I’ve ever commented before. Drawn into it because I was thinking about the Suffragettes just today.
One thing that gets me is the commonly trotted out notion that they successfully *forced* the all male parliament to give women the vote. Granted the historiography is not really in agreement on the subject but I’m not aware of any serious historians who have argued that this was the case – if anything the debate is about whether or not they slowed down the process, whether if they’d let the suffragists get on with campaigning in a sensible way, women would have gotten the vote sooner.
Another favourite is that one of their arguments was that it was disgraceful that an upper-class woman could potentially be in a position where her servant could vote but she couldn’t.
I think the suffrage situation in England is one of the clearest examples of what you folks have been calling the apex fallacy. In popular culture the fact that women couldn’t vote is represented as something men as a class inflicted on women in order to keep them under control. In reality it was something that a small elite of men inflicted on everybody else in the country – male and female alike.
It’s amazing how many of these discrimination memes start to break down when you look at the history. I was reading yesterday about the creation of patriarchy (in the traditional sense of having male heads of households) and how it was initially forced on ordinary folk (along with permanent patronyms) because it would make it easier for states to collect taxes if one person was legally and fiscally responsible for the rest of their household. Of course there probably were men who ran their households in a patriarchal manner (and some women who did the opposite) but as a pervasive social norm it came apart because of state policy rather than being something men as a class inflicted on women as a class.
I think I’m starting to see a pattern here.
HEP, welcome!
Yeah there’s a pattern. Women (of a specific ethnicity and class) must always be deferred to and simultaneously have always to be seen as victims. Anything that contravenese either rule – either it affronts their delicate feelings or disputes thier victimhood – is anathema and must not only be refuted but buried and forgotten.
I feel a post coming on.
I think it’s important to remember that’s only some feminists, in fact in my experience of real life (as opposed to internet) feminists they might well be a minority, the problem is that they unfortunately seem to generally be those who are by far the most visible at the moment.
It’s off topic but I saw a video the other day that may restore some folks around here’s faith that a positive brand of feminism is possible:
http://youtu.be/18uDutylDa4
I clicked on it when it came up in my facebook feed expecting to be annoyed – it’s called ‘Why we have too few women leaders’ – and there are plenty of sections I don’t agree with but overall I found most of it very refreshing stuff to hear.
H. E. Pennypacker: “It’s off topic but I saw a video the other day that may restore some folks around here’s faith that a positive brand of feminism is possible:”
Personally I have no doubt that positive brands of feminism is possible: the generic feminism of your average uninvolved feminist (devoid of the theory and purely about believing with equality) for example. I’m sure there are millions of these people. My problem is that these ‘positive brands’ don’t seem to have any power or influence within feminism. The radical groups we see organising campaigns, spearheading feminist websites and organisations, and influencing government and legislation are the ones who seem to be the most prominent groups. And it is these groups that people think of when they think of feminists. All groups have different ‘factions’ yet it is only the most prominent factions that need be considered when forming an opinion about that group. Otherwise we would still be debating today whether fascism is good or bad.
Even if they disagree with them all that your rank-and-file feminist does is lend credibility and weight to the activism of the prominent groups. If they’re unhappy with this situation then it is up to them to either stop identifying as feminist or do something about those who actually influence what people think of feminism.
A positive brand of feminism is absolutely possible: simply own up to the fact that it’s advocacy for women (regardless of its impact on men, for or against) and get back to promoting a sense of responsibility along with empowerment. Encourage women to stand up for equality, for the sake of other women, not just for their own individual benefit. The message of feminism can (and should) change from “You deserve it” to “We’re all in this together.”
I broadly agree, I guess “possible” was too strong a way of phrasing it, more “quite possibly soon to become much more visible”. That video is about disparity in leadership positions but all about things that women tend to do which harms their chances of advancing and what they can do to change this (rather than “men are sexist and hate the idea of women having any power”).
Hey HEP, you bring up something that has irked me for a long while: That feminists often have a very ahistorical view of the world. That is to say that they tend to wear blinders toward any context that isn’t right-here-right-now.
Look at the dustup over “nerd-culture” and “video games”. Why aren’t there more women making video games? because no one, at all, was encouraged to see video games and “nerd-culture” as a career before it all went mainstream within the last seven years. It takes time and effort to get to the top of an industry, and the people there now are the ones who fought against society thinking of them as oversized children or violent, unbalanced murders-in-waiting. Sure, when it all exploded around 2007-2008 now everyone wants a piece of the pie. But back before then? you were, regardless of identity, looked down upon for voicing that desire.
So we’ll see more women making games, but it will take some time to get them through school and then entry-level and so forth. Give it another decade and everything will look better.
But since it isn’t done and over right now, there must be *demands*.
Sorry don’t know the best place to post this but it made me laugh and thought you’d all like it:
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2013/09/the-thinkers-of-tomorrow.html
It’s that moment when a Master’s Graduate in Women’s Studies finally has to face the real world. 🙂
What about all those terrorists from marxists and anarchist organisations back in the day that also so themselves as feminists? I think it would be possible to find some Nice qoutes from some of them talking about oppression of women being one of their causes.
At the Osho ashram in India there where stories that at some of the workshops women had been aloud to hit men without the men being alowed to hit back because it would be therapeutic for the women to fight back from opression etc. Maybe you can dig something up about it.
Then there was the radfems that in 2011 or so had a long thread about using poison to kill men they where angry at. The antifeminist or counterfeminist found it.
Came across this:
http://radfemterorism.blogspot.no/
A fairly high number of People has used helping women as justification for the war in Afghanistan and continued presence there.
Bader, I’ll take a quick swing at your suggestion, because I think that looking at “Feminism” in the context of more Leftist activism/belief (Socialism & Anarchism, to start) often is able to sidestep the sort of issues that “Social Justice Feminism” or “Internet Feminism” has fallen into.
I’ll give my experience as someone who was very involved in Anarchist activism in the past, and who still does ascribe to many of the philosophic tenets found within.
The big difference (and in my opinion a big problem with “modern Feminism”) is that older forms of Leftist Feminism were 1) Focused on “class” as the base axis of “oppression”, and 2) Held a very symbiotic relationship between addressing issues of “class” and addressing brought forth by “Feminism”.
In practical terms, that means that when faced with a problem, there wasn’t the same sort of knee-jerk reaction to blame everything on “men” and to insist that there exists some secret club where men actively work together to keep women down. When a problem arose, it was seen as predominantly an issue of the “ruling class” screwing over those who were beneath them, and even if you were to look at something like Abortion Rights it was about individual freedom. Often when it came time to point the finger in blame, it went straight to the complexities of extremist religious positions as dictated by the entrenched and wealthy “Christian” black of power within our government.
Essentially, the issue wasn’t a simplistic “men are oppressing women”, but that a large enough portion of powerful and wealthy individuals were attempting to dictate law and practice based on very conservative, anti-freedom-of-person attempts to control the autonomy of others.
At least this was my experience. It also goes to say that when you’re one of 30-40 individuals in an area who are active in any sort of face-to-face activism, you lose the easy privilege of making sweeping generalizations and you’re faced with actually treating those 30-40 other people as , *gasp*, people and not just as stereotypes and strawmen.
Now, to be honest, “Radical Feminism” (which is very damaging) is different. However, even most Anarchist groups I’m still aware of have shifted from employing class as their primary axis and are focused far more on the same problematic “identity politics”. Look at OWS which is the closest we have to an actually organized Radical Leftist movement: it was hijacked by “identity politics” activists and the focus shifted from action against a small, ruling-wealthy class that screwed us all over to an inward-facing activism where minorities and women were given speaking time while the men who has worked very hard right alongside the women were told to sit down and shut up. Inherently, the identity politics became easier because it’s far simpler to gain ground when you can smack around other individuals who lack that wealth-power protection.
And, to be honest, I find that asking “do you really think that gender is more pervasive as a cause than class?” in response to Feminist arguments goes a long way. There’s no clearer evidence than to look at the “wage gap” and “women in the workplace” with even a small focus on the actual history and development of the practice of women working.
What happened? in short form women demanded to be let into the workplace. So far, so good–I see nothing wrong with this. Over the next 30 years women made strides and culture changed. However, our economics (controlled by a wealthy, elite ruling class) changed with it. Instead of a traditional middle-class family requiring a single income for monetary support and a single partner in the “unpaid” domestic role, we ended up by the ’90s in a place where two incomes were necessary ON TOP of the fact that there is still “unpaid domestic labor” to be done. Feminists, via being close-minded to cause and effect, made things worse for everyone.
If we want to see more women in positions of power within the middle-class workplace, give men a choice by moving our economics closer to 1960. Right now men have no choice; women have no choice; everyone loses.
I’ll maintain that “Radical Leftists” whose focus is on class (as opposed to “Patriarchy” or “Rape Culture”, etc.) represent the proper and successful aspect of Feminism which is, frankly, pretty indistinguishable from what we see today.
And just for the record, nothing is perfect!
BM, welciome, first off, and that link was really something. It reminds me of one Schala left about similar shit on an atheist site.
@ Crow
I agree about the radical left-wing politics. The thing I always think about intersectionality is that if you’re going to use it (I’m not that keen on it myself) you’d have to accept that class far outweighs everything else. A non-white, lesbian woman
who comes from a very well-off family is much more privileged than a white, heterosexual man who grew up below the poverty line.
HEP that is so obvious that it explains the staunch resistance to it. That kind of thinking is demonized as misogynist and we all know what a damning accsuation that is.
This insistence on white female victimhood – which BTW is the core threat narrative in traidtionalist patriarchal Anglophone culture – is one of WOCs core objections to white feminism. And white feminists are resolutely unwilling to renounce it because it underpins their entire memeplex.
H.E Pennypacker: “I think it’s important to remember that’s only some feminists, in fact in my experience of real life (as opposed to internet) feminists they might well be a minority, the problem is that they unfortunately seem to generally be those who are by far the most visible at the moment.”
Yeah, and what about Andrea Dworkin and Marlyn French? Those two weren’t internet feminists, not by a long shot.
Your forget that these minority feminists were allowed a place in the tent, their articles and books published, misandry supported, while the “Good Feminists” did FUCK ALL FOR DECADES AGAINST THEM! NOT A SINGLE PEEP!
And these “minority” feminists were the ones who dismissed the harm girls and women did to me by invoking my “White Male Privilege” and calling it all an anomaly. So pardon me for reacting with scorn whenever someone continues to lend credence to this “Minority feminism” crap.
Sorry, it’s just I had been triggered recently by two stories:
http://www.blogher.com/i-weep-girls
http://np.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/1m8snz/9_yr_old_son_was_punched_in_the_testicles_at/?limit=500
The fact that these misandric bigots in the feminist movement commandeered the general consciousness is leading to stories like this where one mom calls kicking a boy in the balls “Girl Power” (yeah, he was harassing her but that’s no fucking excuse. I might as well sock a women in the jaw if she harassed me if we’re going to apply those standards).
And the 9-year old girl kicking a boy, unprovoked, in the testicles? What angers me the most is earlier responses of indifference to it at the school. You know why that indifference exists? You can thank those bigoted misandrists and their revered work.
Eagle, I saw that thread and commented there. the incident was disgusting, that a girl actually thought that kind of thing was acceptable. But the school’s reaction or lack of reaction was even worse.
This isn’t quite on topic, but the bit about those topless feminists assaulting topless sex workers reminded me of my pet theory about why BDSM is so hated among feminists. Or, more specifically, why feminists who hate BDSM hate it so much.
It seems to me that feminists are doing very similar things to a female submissive in a heterosexual BDSM relationship. Both position themselves as powerless and at the mercy of men or a man, despite having at least an equal share in the power. The sticking point is that everybody knows BDSM is not ‘real’ violence, but feminists want everyone to believe that their game is actually serious, that their powerlessness is neither consensual nor pretend. Women who enjoy being submissive threaten to expose feminists’ ruse.
I’m not into BDSM, and perhaps the reason is that it brings The Patriarchy into the bedroom, making it more real there than it is anywhere else. That it is still not real at all doesn’t help.
“The sticking point is that everybody knows BDSM is not ‘real’ violence, but feminists want everyone to believe that their game is actually serious, that their powerlessness is neither consensual nor pretend. Women who enjoy being submissive threaten to expose feminists’ ruse.”
That’s very plausible, actually. It’s a rebuttal to their damseling.
And not only that, the existence of voluntary female submissives, women who seek it out, invalidates a lot of feminsts’ rape narratives.