MISANDRY – “Men’s Rights Are Human Rights” Is Controversial in Vancouver

“male disposability” doesn’t seem to be one most of society wants to touch…

what happens when the gov’t can’t get human cattle, erm, soldiers to fight their oil wars, erm operation more freedom for the rich, erm just operation freedom….

anyways it’s pretty terrible how someone like Futrelle is allowed to get away with a bunch of lies and misquoting by taking part of something someone said, then something THEY DID NOT SAY then putting a flashing sarcasm button to create plausible deniability….

@ Daisy

‘Slinking around like a guilty dog?’ Have you watched the video of the confrontation in question? I think that is a very mild rebuke considering the video’s of a a mob of people confronting a man who was terrified. Not to mention their incoherent justifications for their censorship and intimidation tactics.

They should be slinking around like guilty dogs. Because they are.

Do you ever hold feminists to the same standard here? They can spew a constant stream of invective at men–as a group–starting with the word that they use to refer to all evil in the world (PATRIarchy) but should one person use a simile in response to deplorable behaviour on the part of feminists…

Stoner, these are the things my mother and I helped accomplish:

http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2008/05/thank-second-wave-old-feminist.html

I am proud of them.

I wrote that as a response to young women closing ME out of the gender debate, and as a reminder of the way it was before us old dogs decided to fight for our rights.

TB, of course not. I got off that page as soon as possible, why would I watch a video by such a person, who calls me a dog?

Hey, if you think its okay to call me a dog, you wouldn’t understand. Simply put: I am NOT a fucking dog. And when you say “feminists”, you mean every single one going all the way back to Susan fucking B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Sontag, Condoleeza Rice and every goddamn one in between. We are all dogs. I call that hate speech, a stereotype and WRONG.

Do you ever hold feminists to the same standard here?

Have you been reading any of my own posts here? On your own blog? I guess not.

Not worthy of a response.

I am talking about that graphic. He said it was his own blog, so he stands by that graphic. If I put a graphic of men on my blog with a DOG on it, you would hang me by the neck until I was dead. I doubt I would be taken seriously here.

Are you defending that graphic too? Just getting a head count.

For the third time, NO, I am not a goddamn dog. That is not cool.

But the more you defend that stuff, the worse it makes YOU look… you do understand that, don’t you?

Sorry I messed up the italics.

Daisy, why are you even bringing up this “counterfem” guy? As far as I know he has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the posters (nor does anything he says)

@ Daisy

Saying ‘I hope feminists slink around like guilty dogs’ is not calling feminists dogs. He’s saying he hopes they slink around like a dog who’s just pooped on the carpet. It’s a metaphor. And he said that in response to how feminists behaved towards the posters and the postering campaign. The posters and postering campaign are completely separate from this person’s response to how feminists behaved towards the posters and postering campaign.

Finally, you obviously haven’t read Paul Elam’s article on jury nullification. If you had you would understand the greater implications of the government’s little experiment in removing due process.

They’ll start with the people society is least likely to defend (men accused of rape) and work their way on up.

Aych, well, that used to be true. They didn’t used to let women into Harvard and Yale AT ALL. Really. I know, you are SHOCKED. They still won’t ordain women and there has never been a female president of the USA. Really!

I once said there was “no feminist bookstore” in town… in a bookstore I was working in, my co-worker said “there’s no men’s bookstore” and I told him we were standing in one. He challenged me and we went through and counted. It was like 85-90% male authors. I officially won the argument! But that was about 25 yrs ago. I think now, it would be close to equal. Maybe more women than men, since self-help has exploded since that time…

Old feminist responses that have not been updated.

My bugaboo is, WHO made that possible? Who helped publicize the injustices in publishing and pointed out that yeah, women like to read too!

If you are still whining, you can’t see progress, much less WHO made that progress possible. And my problem is that women refuse to honor their elders, as the Civil Rights Movement honors theirs… I used to think this was just the fact that women are unable to honor other women. BUT NOW since participation on this blog and others, I think its the psychological phenomenon that they do not want to admit there has been progress.. you have to admit progress to honor elders, and none of the feminists employed in the gender industry can afford to make such an admission now, or they could lose their gigs.

TB: They’ll start with the people society is least likely to defend (men accused of rape) and work their way on up.

I just dealt with a feminist troll who picked a fight with me about Julian Assange, and no, I won’t play. NO NO NO, I crown Julian fucking POPE. But I have been blacklisted for taking this stand, so no offense, but I don’t need you to preach to me. Really I don’t.

Further, I have been organizing for prisoner’s rights since I first met Bobby Seale, okay? I live in a death penalty state and I am part of the NCADP, and have been since I moved here 25 yrs ago. Have you been organizing for prisoners rights that long? PLEASE do not preach to someone who has. Its the whole reason I dislike so many of the contemporary feminists… they patronize me and act like I arrived in feminism last Wednesday. No, I been here awhile… and I mean THE LEFT in general. I have worked for “men’s rights”, in the form of workers, unions, prisoners, activists and minorities.

Ain’t they men too? In my observation, MOST are.

Paul: Daisy, why are you even bringing up this “counterfem” guy? As far as I know he has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the posters (nor does anything he says)

His link on the event, went to that site. That’s what set me off.

SWAB: There should be a male pill…

Something Gloria Steinem first said in TIME magazine (if memory serves) and was laughed at by nearly everybody. Cardinal Cooke (I think it was him) publicly had a hissy fit at the very idea.

Of course you remember that, right?

a male might be fearful to work in a female dominated environment such as school teacher because he fears a false accusation….

Priests used to teach kids as often as nuns. My fifth grade teacher was male, that was 1967.

Healthcare is far behind for men, how many men examine their testicles for cancer in relation to how many women examine their breasts….

Ummm, clits and G-spots are about orgasms, not health care.

Men usually are tip-top when it comes to orgasms.

Do men have the right to a paper abortion, even when they find that the woman whom they married had another man father the children?

I have repeatedly gone on record as saying this is a GREAT idea, and was attacked for it right here on this blog, remember?

Last time I had this discussion here, Dungone accused me of brainwashing my (obviously stupid and bewitched) husband into adopting my child. Not going THERE again! (The idea that he might actually have thought of it himself and wanted to do it himself, did not seem to occur to him.)

To repeat, paper abortions are a GREAT idea and would have saved me mountains of heartache. Rah rah rah paper abortions.

Many believe men (outside of prison) can’t be raped…

ETC.

When have I EVER held these views? Are you saying I have?

Further, I think women discussing rape has made it possible for men do to so. Lots of us never even knew it happened outside of “fluke” situations. Do not blame women for the silences men and patriarchal culture (yes I used the forbidden P WORD!) have imposed on each other. (I don’t think we should blame men for the silences women impose on each other either, a common feminist error.)

@ Daisy

I’m not preaching at you. I’m telling you if you’d read the article you would understand that it _has direct ties to the work you’ve been doing_.

Paul Elam has said shit that I would not defend in a thousand years and makes me cringe every time someone brings it up. But his position on jury nullification is well reasoned and has hugely wider implications for civil rights as a whole.

Stoner, here is the thread where we discussed paper abortions, and the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket.

http://www.genderratic.com/p/1492/the-difference-between-radical-feminists-mainstream-feminists-and-the-mrm/

Daisy: Aych, well, that used to be true.

I respectfully recommend that anyone who uses the aforementioned utterance to get with the modern age and stop pretending that women are somehow being kept-out of universities in 2012.

I fully expect to see somebody claim that women weren’t allowed to use electricity until feminism made it possible.

Daisy:
I think you mean, “high status women have shut low status men out of the gender debate”–since they are the ones running it.
I’m not sure the responsibility can be split so easily. If you’re wanting to make a distinction that all feminists aren’t like that then that is a fair distinction. But, at least out of today’s crop of feminists, it seems the desire to shut men out of the debate even as they complain that we aren’t in it (which usually translates into them not wanting men involved unless they can control out level of participation and damn near control what we participate with) runs from the high to the low.

Hell shutting men out with “because male privilege”, “because patriarchy”, “because it doesn’t matter who has it worse so would you all quit disagreeing with the fact that women have it worse “overall”* so we can help everyone?” has almost become trendy.

Aych:
Objectively, it ranks among the dumbest utterances I have ever seen. And the fact that a lot of people don’t seem capable of seeing how dumb it is testifies to how distorted these kinds of conversations have become.
And the reason it is so dumb is because of the selective monolithing such a phrase engages in. You can’t simultaneously say that “the whole world is a men’s space” while acknowledging that there are subsets of men that are marginalized and while men in general are marginalized in different ways. Either the world is welcoming of “men” as a whole or it is not. Can’t have it both ways. From what I can tell the flat answer is no the whole world is not a men’s space.

Daisy:
Aych, well, that used to be true. They didn’t used to let women into Harvard and Yale AT ALL. Really. I know, you are SHOCKED.
True women were once kept out of high end universities. But here is the thing that bugs me about the used to be true and what is still true thing.

How is it that women can still bring up things as if they are still active and/or left behind effects that are still active (even if that’s not the case) as if they are a top priority that would/could be addressed if it weren’t because of misogyny but if men bring up something that actually still is active or has left behind effects that are still active it can be shut out with a simple “but that’s no longer true”.

For example. Women can still bring up not having the vote until ~1920 as if there is anything on the law books that still keep anything like that active. Men bring up the draft and its cousin Selective Service and it’s declared not right to bring up because “the draft isn’t happening anymore”. Well out of curiosity I’m wondering in what ways are women’s voting rights are still limited today and also, at what age do women need to register for Selective Service under possible punishment of fine, prison, automatic disqualification of application to government funded colleges, automatic disqualification of application for government financial aid, and possible lost of citizenship.

Simply put these actions by MRAs as of late are causing the true colors of some feminists to come to light. For the longest time they have pissed and moaned about how men need to get out there and do the work themselves. And now that they are they are going to grasp at any straw they can to stop it from happening. They are crying sexism on a men’s center that hasn’t even been built yet (I remember that this exact point was coming up when people were going on about how Sarkeesien’s work was being criticized before she even released it, I guess only feminists and women deserve a fair shot before getting shot at). They are trying their best to liken them to hate groups without actually making the accusations (even going as far as saying that copying a headline from another source verbatim is a flag). They are calling facts hate speech.

Oh sure they can go on all they want about how there is hate among MRAs and how that hate means the entire lot of them need to be dealt with harshly. I’ll buy that when they take a look at their own with the same harsh eye.

The day I’ll believe that the likes of Paul Elam and ALL they bring to the table need to be tossed out of the MRM will be the day that feminists start tossing the likes of Daly and Marcotte and ALL they bring to the table from feminism. If the likes former deserve fair consideration of their work (meaning that some can be acknowledged as a good and some can be acknowledged as bad without tossing it all about because of the bad) then god dammit the former deserves the same. I’ve grown rather bored of hearing that you can’t strike all of Daly’s work from feminism because of this reason and that but then hear those same people say that all of Elam’s work should be tossed out without consideration.

* – Where individual measurements where men have it worse than women are swept under the rug or skated around in some way that they can be talked about and resolved without actually acknowledging that men have it worse in those areas because that would be “oppression olympics”. No the only time it is allowed to say that one has it worse than the other is when women have it worse than men. But remember it doesn’t matter as long as it all gets fixed.

Yeah. Thanks for the link, Jared.

Seriously, i’m disappointed. I hoped that it would be good but these posters are a mix of good information and disinformation.

(i still stand by my repulsion at what was written on that photo “slap is not a…”)

Once again, yet another problem that can be solved by arresting the people responisble. Well enough of them confessed online and got video taped, that hopefully one of them will get caught this time. I really, hope that happens.

Wow, a few of those posters are pretty CCCP-propaganda-ish.

Daisy, I may be wrong but it seems to me like the dog thing hit a personal note for you. I hope that if that is true, that you are on the healing path.

In general, I think that MRA’s need to be aware that as daisy states, misogyny is not the answer to misandry. I have a lot to say about that, but in short, let me summarize with this: we need to be better than the feminists who don’t acknowledge what feminism does to marginalize men (as evidenced by the fact that my browser knows the word misogyny, but apparently thinks I have made up the word misandry). We need to recognize that we can cause damage to women if we use cheap, poorly thought out, stigmatizing arguments to support our position. We don’t even have to do that _just_ for women’s sake, but for our sake as well. We all win when we are all free of pigeon-holing and finger pointing.

Let me clarify lest Genderratic think I am white-knighting here:

What those people did was violent, and down-right scary. In practice, it was likely to be viewed as a crime if perpetrated on a “legitimate victim”. In theory, its a poor strategy, and really quite stupid. The posters now have waaaaay more exposure than they ever would have on the wall of a BC building. A feminist website I saw had people commenting about ‘enemies’ and ‘winning the battle’. Fairly strong counter argument to the old adage that if women ruled the world there would be no war, or poverty, or was it discrimination? (Hard to remember what evils my gender – cis, white male – is responsible for anymore.)

Druk: “I’ve been following it a little, and one thing that happened was one of the MRAs tried to have the people tearing down posters stopped by informing appropriate authorities, leading one anti-MRA to engage in physical violence. No charges were pressed, and the police ended up telling the MRA to stop inciting violence!”

0.0

Talk about a Monty Python sketch come to life.

Very true Danny. I think we in the MRA movement have legitimate gripes that our voice has been shut out of the conversation, which is the biggest injury feminism has caused men, in my opinion. When we talk about injuries that we have received because of a misandric system or situation, we are ridiculed (as you correctly point out) “because male privilege”. And when we then complain that our voices aren’t being heard, all of a sudden it becomes a sort of “welcome to the life of women/minorities/transgendered, etc. To which some of us respond “well, lets fix it for everyone” and some of us respond “screw you for perpetuating that on another group of people as some sort of petty revenge”. I think both responses are valid, in their own ways, but only one is actually going to make things better for people.

Aych: I fully expect to see somebody claim that women weren’t allowed to use electricity until feminism made it possible.

That IS true is Saudi Arabia. You know that, right? (technically: have to wait until they are told by husband or father that it is acceptable to use appliances. They can have this right revoked by husbands/fathers at any time, just like the right to leave the house.)

We are working on bringing feminism to them, so they can use electricity whenever they want.

Good example!

Aych: Because it’s a gender-warrior’s prerogative to keep moving the goal-posts around until she can lay claim to women being the bigger victims. And if that proves to be impossible, she can always sneer down at the oily weasels who play “Oppression Olympics” since she would never allow herself to stoop so low in a million years. Until the next opportunity, of course.

Yes and no. The goal posts are right THERE, I just gave them to you.. therefore, I have to laugh… when presented with real live boogeymen like Bob Jones Univ, Warren Jeffs the pig, Hyles Anderson/Jack Schaap… well…. (crickets) They just sneer or say “huh”… These are poor working class fundamentalist white women and they DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

They instead make jokes about Michele Duggar, instead of offering some real feminist analysis of the whitewashing of the lifestyle that she represents and why her family is given the kind of airtime it is.

Why am I having to instruct you all to Google? Why haven’t the big feminist blogs taken on these stories?????????????????????????????????????????

Because they are about religion, and just like law enforcement in my above example, they DON’T KNOW how to write about the stories. They are scared they “might offend” somebody. Well, duh, its fucking offensive, of course you will offend somebody!!!!!

This is why radical feminist Heart became so powerful in feminist circles, this was her forte. She came from the Quiverfull right wing; she had even been on Dr Dobson’s radio show back in the day! Nobody else had a fucking clue. Thing is, she brought her old-school fundy nastiness with her: her fundy dislike of whores, porn, men, boys, gay men., drag queens, trans women and so on. So, we ran her out on a rail, but who will stand in the gap? (haha, pardon biblical reference, am I funny or what)

The absence of Heart as a reporter on this world (she is still blogging but very sparsely), unfortunately means nobody else has a fucking clue. I am therefore trying, but I am only one person… and I think you all know I am not the most popular person either.

So yes… there ARE victims. But just like the Muslim women, we have to somehow say nobody is really a victim of religion (you will offend the Muslim women!!!! And we are all about cultural DIVERSITY!!!!!) at the same time that we say these women are oppressed. And that is a contradiction. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!

That is the problem right now, within feminism, as I see it. So, bloggers end up talking about TV and dates and bullshit, since the real victims are 1) not women like them, 2) women who follow laws and ideas they do not understand and make them uncomfortable, 3) might share religions with trendy Manhattan women who are their friends, 4) some feminists have chosen these lifestyles and therefore claim these lifestyles are beyond criticism and reproach.

As an evil Marxist, I do not call every damn choice a feminist choice, just because a feminist makes it. i.e. Porn is not necessarily a feminist choice (would depend on the porn), and it doesn’t have to be, to agitate for fair working conditions for the women who make it Rights for women are NON NEGOTIABLE, dammit! But this tendency: “I am a feminist, so what I do is feminist” is all fucked up… in the radical 70s, this was called “a personal solution” and regarded as unfeminist as a STRATEGY, since all women did not have access to “personal solutions”–that is why they were called personal.

If a feminist “chooses” Christianity, that’s nice, but it does not make Chrsitianity or porn, or Islam, or whatever, feminist. WE MUST AGITATE FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS WITHIN THESE SYSTEMS. We should not have to stop and ask if we are offending … WHOEVER. Fuck that noise.

I first asked myself these questions when wondering why feminists did not cover the nuns (example) challenging the Holy See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/us-nuns-seek-open-dialogue-with-rome-over-disputes/2012/08/10/64ab2534-e31b-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html

Well, of course they won’t, they don’t know HOW and the whole subject of nuns makes them nervous. In addition, they would have to educate themselves about Canon law and whatnot. Easier to ignore the whole fight. Even if its a FRONT LINE FEMINIST FIGHT.

So Aych, the goal posts are CLEAR, but the Third Wave is SKEERED to take the fucking field.

Thank you for asking these questions… you have helped me to articulate a lot of these things, possibly for the first time.

Sorry I screwed up the italics again. (rolls eyes at self)

Skidd, I see the govt collaboration in that fact that many of them are living on AFDC… they can only legally marry ONE wife and therefore, legally, the other women can collect welfare on all those kids. The women themselves never see these checks or food stamps, probably don’t even know how to use them or know where the money is deposited.

How ELSE are they making so much money out there in the middle of fucking nowhere?

Who is turning a blind eye to this stuff???? Politicians, govt, local media… just as I have learned here in SC… Jim DeMint his fucking SELF gave a chapel address at Bob Jones. David Thomas, state Senator, was an alumnus, newspaper people are alumni. BJU is tight with law enforcement and politicians. Likewise, the “runaway wives” are brought back by local law enforcement who know these guys or who are also FLDS.

If this was a ring of African Americans in the city, they would be investigated faster than you can say NATION OF ISLAM. The fact that they are rural and surrounded by sympathizers, is why they get by with stuff that would never be tolerated elsewhere. I would have investigated them for welfare fraud… but of course, BY LAW, polygamy is not recognized, so they ARE a bunch of fatherless kids, according to the law. The law is not written to DEAL with these kinds of abuses! They busted Tom Green because he was cashing the checks himself… so they learned from that situation –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Green_(polygamist)
and now have the women doing the bare minimum and swearing they are unmarried. And Green made the mistake of actually legally marrying them all. Now, they have FLDS ceremonies but not legal ones, and they can keep right on going collecting the money.

many have stood up and said that they much prefer their method of dress.

They better, if they know whats good for them.

Women who are barely literate (and according to the book I read about Warren Jeffs, “Answer them nothing”, many of them are, and cannot interpret or understand the meanings of any other texts besides religious ones) do not “choose to wear” shit. I will not go storming in to force them to stop looking like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but on the other hand, I will not buy that ridiculous okeydoke either. That is like saying, the “Lost Boys” all leave because they CHOOSE to. And no they don’t! That is a LIE.

If you recognize lies about the boys, please recognize them about the girls, too.

Further, like the Duggars show, I see “Sister Wives” (TV show) as an effort to whitewash this lifestyle and make it acceptable, minimizing the abuses. PROPAGANDA, in short.

PS: you might find this interesting (trigger warning, toxic Christian masculinity)

http://www.ransomedheart.com/blogs/your-stories/texoma-wild-hearts

I would consider this the misandry equivalent in the fundie Protestant community, there is lots of this stuff. Not “Lost Boys”–but sending the boys who will not “man up” to these crazy assed boot camps.

Here is the “marriage/romance guide” thing put out by the same outfit:

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2005/09/Theres-Something-Fierce-In-The-Heart-Of-A-Woman.aspx

Just plain gross, isn’t it? Where do you start.

I think it makes it very clear how misogyny and misandry are completely intwined. Can’t have one without the other.

“No, we have not shut low-status men out of the gender debate. You are talking to the wrong person.”

They have shut you out too, over and over!! Why are you defending them and saying “we”. You take a principled stand on Assange (I am not completely convinced but it is still a principled stand) and you get the high school clique treatment for it.

As for the dog thing, it wasn’t you that came up wih the “men are pigs” meme, and you have never defended it, so once again, you have no reason to claim kin with those people. But it is a LITTLE rich of feminists to decry men calling women by animal names.

Who was it up there who gotr offended at the “A slap is not”? That was not part of the poster, that was part of the vandalism. It menat to say basically that a woman has a full right to attack and man physically and he has no right to defened himself. Frankly I misogyny is not my forst concern in response to that kind of bigotry.

As for the larger issue of misogyny – since reasoned argument on the topic of men’s rights has a well documented history of compelte failure, not only in feminist spaces but in male-dominated society in general, maybe a few sacred taboos need to be broken to get people’s attention and get the conversation going. This is the MRAs’ equivalent of burning bras, saying they don’t recognize anyone’s princess priveilege any more and won’t continue to grant it.

Daisy:
Your September 12, 2012 at 10:42 am comment.
What you say about the way religion oppresses women is true. I am not a fan of organized religion on my own terms but when I noticed the way a lot of them regard women (and men) it fueled my fires of contempt for them even more.

However those religious influences predate the idea of women not being able to vote in American politics. You can say that those religious ways are what caused women to not be able to vote in the first place but I don’t think you can say that those remaining religious ways that still haunt women today are lingering effects of women not being able to vote in American politics.

And my further point, contemporary Third Wavers don’t care. I named the reasons why.

Feminism has not risen to defend these women (or men, or any damn body). This is an outrage.

I really appreciate Skidd mentioning the Lost Boys, because all of these sects, like the IFB, have the equivalent of these.

@Skidd

Every cloud has a silver lining. If it wasn’t for the FLDS kicking out its youngest male members, then America’s supply of gay male “barely legal”/bareback porn stars and underage male prostitutes/”go go” boyz would be cut in half! Wait, that isn’t very silver, that isn’t very silver at all!

MaMu: Every cloud has a silver lining. If it wasn’t for the FLDS kicking out its youngest male members, then America’s supply of gay male “barely legal”/bareback porn stars and underage male prostitutes/”go go” boyz would be cut in half! Wait, that isn’t very silver, that isn’t very silver at all!

Words fail.

Daisy I don’t necessarily disagree with you on the nature of many religious organizations especially the more fundamental ones. I think a lot of what you’re seeing is America’s love of Kantian ethics (hell our bill of rights is practically modeled after the Kantian principles). In this what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is their prerogative. Of course there are plenty of arguments on why these situations and organizations are coercive and real consent couldn’t be made but at the same time the American public fears infringing on peoples right to choose and stripping them of being an end unto themselves.

This isn’t an argument for why you’re wrong just pointing out the idea of what a person can or can’t consent to has to be one of the slipperiest slopes their is. I always found this to be an irony with American Feminism. Feminism and patriarchy theory is based on the idea of not only a constant social pressure but a long term cultural determinism. As you pointed out with the girls sharing ideals with the trendy Manhattan women, feminism CANNOT be about choice otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop women who are “choosing” to reinforce the patriarchy.

BTW, Skidd–The feminist I spoke of, above, who “rescues” the FLDS wives who want out? These women are always older, Second Wave age. Usually the rescuees are young women who are scheduled for an arranged marriage; in the book I read about the Warren Jeffs sect, they only get 24 hours notification ahead of time… one reason for the short notifications is because they are afraid they will bolt. After they are officially a man’s “wife” –then law enforcement is forced to bring them “home” when they try to run away.

Why aren’t more women helping women escape? There is no shortage of requests. It IS hard to get the requests to sympathetic people on the outside.

The women “rescuers” are often easily spotted since they are ALONE… and its a big factor in why they are at risk; all the other women of this age in FLDS areas are accompanied by “sister wives”–they don’t let women out by themselves, unwatched and unobserved.

Which brings me to ask, Skidd: the women in these classes you describe, were they surrounded by other family/sect members, or did they attend all by themselves? As individuals? Are they permitted to come and go as they please, by themselves? It is my understanding, as you described the women in Costco, they are forced to be in groups of “spies” (sister wives) at all times and are never left alone.

@DaisyDeadhead

I only wish that my prior post was a joke. I worked as a DJ in New York City prior to enlisting in the military. When you DJ in NYC, you’re going to spin your records for a sizable amount of gay tastemakers, pseudo-celebrities and “scene kids”. Scouting among the various “Lost Boys” for “fresh meat” was depressingly common, among hebephilic gay men.

Then again, from talking to a few of the young men in question, their paths tended to parallel in the same way

Rendered superfluous through breaking minor rules/codes of conduct
Banished or shunned by the elders of their sect, with multiple attacks rendered against their minds (if not bodies)
Transported dozens (if not hundreds) of miles away from home
Released into a world while possessing a substandard education and few to no marketable skills

Assuming that they arrive at a time in which the shelters established by mainstream Mormons are at capacity, they have nowhere dose to go. Some of them become drug addicts. Some of them join gangs. Some of them become street hustlers. And some of them meet a “pretty cool guy” with a cool car and an understanding smile, who tells them all about how he was once “thrown out, but look at him now!”
I’ll never forget the first time I actually found myself having a conversation with a “glitter thong kid” (in retrospect, the conversation made me feel more homophobic than an entire life spent in majority-minority neighbourhoods.) During his expulsion from his sect, his father and uncle and the entire male council told him that he was going to burn in Hell for the sin of feeling the pubic hair of an older yet unmarried girl (obviously, she was supposed to be handfasted with Father Kling, not some brat!) For him, the idea that there was no hope for Heaven made the decision to dance seem worthwhile (even after he started working in the movies.) And he wasn’t the only “go go dancer” or urbanite club kid who pronounced his “W’s” as “R’s”, said “No” to coffee or Cokes and “Yes” to actual coke, and answered my question of “Have you ever even *tried* to have sex with a girl!?”, with “I would, I…I mean I could, but {insert name of sponsor here} would get mad.”

As much as I love music, I had to get out of the business. I couldn’t deal with the seaminess of the clientele (and as gay clients saw no problem with paying 2-4x more than our straight clients, we had to do a bunch of parties with gay men.) Whenever people make comments about the heightened levels of mental illness among gay people, I think of the glassy (yet still sad) eyes of those boys.

MaMu, that is all sad but true. That chicken-hawking you talk about has abated a lot because the culture and tastes has changed, but NYC is bound to have a little time warp going.

I have heard estimates as high as 50% for queer youth as a percentage of the homeless youth population.

And lest anyone think MaMu is picking on gay people, we all know that the same holds true for legions of vacant-eyed young girls, and even grown men in tropical countries where rich white women go to “find love”.

John D. it has become something much, much worse.

Take a look at the latest articles garnering popularity amongst its readers:

http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-good-life-16-ways-to-not-be-a-shit-guy/

http://goodmenproject.com/moustacheclubofamerica/reasons-i-have-rejected-guys-based-on-their-okcupid-profiles/

Now take a look at these ones:

http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/dont-be-creepy-ten-tips-for-weirdos/

http://goodmenproject.com/good-feed-blog/6-things-men-can-do-to-help-prevent-violence-against-women/

(I know you’ve already mentioned it but here’s the link even if comments have been closed)

And finally, the piece de resistance:

http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-good-life-when-men-waste-womens-time/

Between this and Joanna throwing her support behind a lawyer who’s been known for anti-father bias in one thread then saying this comment in “6 things men can do to help prevent violence against women thread:

“Danny – if a 100lb woman hits a 180 lb man, let’s say she slaps him, is he justified in punching, choking or killing her?

Because that’s the reality we’re talking about.

If my 5 year old hits me in the middle of a tantrum (still happens, rarely) am I justified in punching him? Should I say, “You shouldn’t have hit me?”

I mean, the weight difference between him and me is actually only 60lbs.

Of course he is a child and a wife is not, she should know better. I’m SIMPLY talking about size and power. Women who are abusers do huge damage, but to say that a dangerous response to a non-threatening situation is WARRANTED is horrifying to me.

Eric, if you think that a guy would be arrested for grabbing his wife’s arm while she beats him up, you haven’t known many female abuser situations.

And back to my point, IF AN ANTI-VIOLENCE GROUP WANTS TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN BEING ABUSED BY MEN, it takes NOTHING AWAY from men who are abused by women.

NOTHING.

If I want to raise money for Prostate Cancer research, it does NOTHING to harm Breast Cancer research. If the Breast Cancer people want to raise more money and awareness, they get up and make a change and do more fundraising.

You want to talk more about awareness of women abusing men? Then DO SOMETHING about it other than complain and antagonize in a thread dedicated to a poster that is designed to HELP PEOPLE HELP each other.

When I see you three actually working for domestic abuse organizations, even if you wrote stories for GMP about it (I, myself, publish these pieces with some regularity, I even seek them out) then I’d have more respect for this stuff.

Instead, I see a group of men saying that a group of men who want to help men help women is somehow hurting you.

At least WRC is doing something.”

The very fact that she believes she has the termacity to ask “What are you doing about it?” when voicing protest IS DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT just makes me reach one conclusion:

Stay away from that site. It’s wandered so far from its original goal that I’m grieving just talking about it because I put my trust in these guys, my faith in the belief they were a site to feel safe and free from the very things that cause me, as a survivor of both male and female abuse, to lose not only hope but become stuck in a loop of self-loathing and self-pity.

I’m going to see if I can publish what I wrote on being bullied by girls here. Screw that, I will publish it here. If you guys are fine with that.

I just feel immensly betrayed.

A guy just below says the obvious lie:

“As someone doing graduate research on gendered language I can tell you it is really important to recognize that most violence of this nature (over 85%) is by men towards women.. even 80% of men who are abused are abused by other men. The language has to stay gendered even if there are exceptions to the rule. ”

The crap, again. Arrest rates, again. Underreporting is something. It’s like rape. Men are taught that they can’t be raped…except by men, and only because they’re wimps who couldn’t fight him off, and that obviously makes them gay.

Men are also taught they can’t be victims of DV, especially not from women. Besides men beaten by women deserved it, it’s funny, and he should change his behavior to have her stop beating him, obviously.

Of course Men don’t count.
We can’t even protect our infants:
They are whining that there may have to be some REGULATION. Parents might have to sign some CONSENT forms for a procedure that not only smacks of child sexual abuse but adds EXTRA RISK to non-consenting babies!!! I can imagine having to explain to your kid why he grew up with herpes: “Son, your mother & I are big on tradition. So we allowed the local child sexual predator – er, “Mohel” – mutilate your penis and suck off the blood with his lips. Sorry ’bout that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/nyregion/regulation-of-circumcision-method-divides-some-jews-in-new-york.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/blog/bal-hopkins-ethicists-bloomberg-circumcision,0,812250.story

“And back to my point, IF AN ANTI-VIOLENCE GROUP WANTS TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN BEING ABUSED BY MEN, it takes NOTHING AWAY from men who are abused by women.”

Is she serious? I mean, yes, she’s right in that it doesn’t “take” anything away from men, but she seems to be ignoring the cultural trend of, well, not giving a fuck about men. Period.

This also ignores the very real fact that every time someones HAS tried to raise awareness for men, they’re usually told to shut up and check their privilege (See, for example, the poster thing up in Vancouver)

And frankly? How much more “awareness” do people need that sometimes violence occurs against women? it’s like the pink ribbon breast cancer thing. People know about breast cancer. I’ve read reports that breast cancer research has more money than it knows what to do with (can’t prove that though)

Not only that but it completely ignores the fact that campaigns like this paint men as perpetrators and women as victims. Therefore it actually *DOES* make raising awareness for male victims harder because it makes it harder for culture to be able to see *men as victims* AND to see that women *can commit unjustified violence*

JDCryan writes:

“One of my biggest problems with radical feminism, and the primary reason why I started becoming more interested in men’s rights was because of the way they use statistics to gloss over individual concerns whenever it’s convenient.”

When you discount cooked-books statistics I’ve actually found it to be the opposite: That they use personal stories of female victimhood to overwrite statistics.

Put one crying woman in a video, and it undoes 30 years of peer-reviewed studies which show women instigate more DV.

“…know where your clitoris is.”

Every man should know that he has a g-spot in his prostate and that he can have MULTIPLE, FULL BODY orgasms if he trains himself correctly for a while. It is actually easier for men to become multiorgasmic than for women people are just unfamiliar with the technique. I find it interesting that the fact that men could also be multiorgasmic was described in the same report in 1982 or so that first described the g-spot to western audiences but only knowledge of the g-spot spread not male multiorgasm. It is only in recent years that this knowledge has started to spread. There is actually a big sexual component to male liberation just like there was for women. Men experience only a fraction of the sexual pleasure women do the way they have sex today. But if they learn the right techniques men can have as amazing and frequent orgasms as women can. Once you experience the difference between the ejaculatory orgasms you used to have and multiple whole body orgasms you start to feel sad for the lack of sexual pleasure most men experience. Take a look at any video of a straight couple on youporn.com. Who is enjoying the sex the most? It looks like quiet men experiencing little pleasure servicing women who can relax in enjoyment of and focus on their own pleasure. The guys hardly make a sound and don`t show much involuntary movement at all. As long as a woman can have one clitoral orgasm, through whatever means, when she has sex she is experiencing a ton more sexual pleasure than the man she is with regardless of wether she is unable to come during the act of penetrative sex while he is able to come during penetrative sex. If you examine orgasms by sexual sessions and not during penetration the numbers skyrocket for women. Personally I would rather have the orgasms women have very third time I had sex than male orgasms every time I had sex.

A bit late for the party, but….

To clear up the mystery: I am the creator of the “guilty dogs” graphic that was discussed earlier.

For the record, I have nothing to do with the posters, or the postering campaign. However, I am in pretty close touch with all of that activity. I regularly cross-post on the Masculism.ca blog, where I have admin access, and the blog master of that blog, Jack Day of Vancouver, is one of the main dudes in the postering campaign. I hope to get to Vancouver eventually, and glue up a few myself!

As for the guilty dog thing….I live for the day when feminists everywhere will indeed be “slinking around like guilty dogs”. And I am doing what I can to hasten the arrival of that day. Such is the future I have in mind for feminism, when the crystallization of feminist guilt comes to be generally felt and understood.

Yes indeed, “all feminists are like that”. And if they are not “like that”, then they are not feminists.

@Daisy: That IS true is Saudi Arabia. You know that, right? …We are working on bringing feminism to them, so they can use electricity whenever they want.

How interesting that you bring this up, Daisy (I know I haven’t been able to respond in a few days as I was off on a Pacific island) but I attended a conference in the UAE about 6 months ago, and I happened to sit-in on a presentation being given by an Arab-Canadian woman relating directly to this topic.

She was giving a seminar about how she moved to Saudi Arabia about 7 years back as an English teacher. Covertly, she was on a secret personal mission: to covertly preach feminism in her classes! What a good idea, eh? Well, after a few years, she decided it wasn’t really a very good idea after all. And the seminar was all about how she was humbled by the experience; as it turns-out, a lot of Saudi women aren’t really on the same page.

The feedback she got from her classroom surveys made for some interesting reading. A large number of Saudi women resented what they saw as high-handed foreign moralizing. They were quite polite and gentle in saying so. The feedback of the female students ranged from statements like “you should learn about us before you try to change us” and “it’s not right for you to push your opinions onto us.” After a few years of this kind of feedback, our erstwhile foreign teacher decided to rethink her covert mission.

The all-knowing western Sisterhood scores another bulls-eye!

Anyway, by all means, keep pretending that white First World women in the 21st century are being nefariously discriminated-against in college classes that they dominate and, therefore, need women’s centers while the male minority does not. It’s good for those of us who wish to point at laugh at a clueless dinosaur.

Okay, Aych, Wilson, Wudang, Fidelbogen, etc etc (fill in the blank)… as my Melungeon grandmother used to say, I have heard you.

I will stop posting here… at least for a good while. I can see I am being ganged up on like I was at Feminist Critics and I remember very well how that turned out. I thought it was a place to dialogue, but I see I was wrong.

Yes, I will indeed “force” my opinions on the Saudis and their fucked up religion. A religion that thinks its okay to kill ambassadors over VIDEOS, is anti-free-speech, fascist, shameful and fucked up. Go ahead and defend it though.. I forgot, PATRIARCHY UBER ALLES and that is the important thing: the guys are in charge, therefore it MUST be good! (I cut patriarchy no slack either, Fidelbogan.)

Aych: Anyway, by all means, keep pretending that white First World women in the 21st century are being nefariously discriminated-against in college classes that they dominate and, therefore, need women’s centers while the male minority does not.

I said nothing about women’s centers and colleges (?) what are you talking about?… I don’t care about college. You know I have no college degree and I am very proud of that, right? I am WHITE TRASH. And further, you didn’t get the memo: the term FIRST WORLD is considered racist by the very religion you are defending.

Careful or they might kill your ambassador next.

Adios, have fun. Am I the last feminist here? Why do you run feminists out of every place, because you value the echo chamber or just to enjoy the circle jerk?

culturally-brainwashed

What makes you think you’re not?

JD, of course I am. We have all been, to some extent or the other. I think knowing you are, is a good place to start though. 🙂

Most people think they are not, in my experience.

How much one adheres to certain standards (example: a woman I know who simply WILL NOT leave her house or answer her door without makeup) lets you know the direction of the brainwashing. For instance, my must-wear-makeup friend doesn’t seem to have any religious brainwashing.

A religiously-brainwashed person may not care about such things as having the “right” furniture, car or clothes, since they may be less-influenced by media (possibly due to having been warned away from such things from the pulpit). Etc.

Education, the type of education, is a big brainwashing-machine, at least here in the USA. (I don’t know where you are.) Media also. I think in other areas, other brainwashing mechanisms are paramount.

Gender equality means looking at “ideals” and then deciding if we measure up to those, and if not, why don’t we? (IMHO of course)

@Daisy: Gender equality means looking at “ideals” and then deciding if we measure up to those, and if not, why don’t we? (IMHO of course)

I don’t know if I would call the things you described “brainwashing,” but those are some fair points! I have some devil’s advocate-type concerns about looking at “ideals” related to gender equality and the standard we use to determine them, but I get where you’re coming from there.

JD, I checked your page, you are in Utopia! At least, that’s what I hear about the state.

I really like it. Politically, Western Oregon and Eastern Oregon do not get along at all as you can read about here (that’s actually a good article for anyone to read about political Oregon. It sheds some light on the state), but yeah. Where I live is pretty darn magical as far as things go. So is Portland.