I have been running across some really useful new words and I’d like to share them, spread them around, help them get a foothold in the language.
Narcissiverse – This refers to a somene’s personal delusional world, the only place where their fact-free assertions are true.
As in:
“Men cause all wars and women are the majority of victims!!!!”
“Where, in your narcissiverse?”
or:
“Women are all prostitutes who live to feed off of men!!!”
“In your naricissiverse?”
Just think how often you run into this kind of thing and how useful it will be to have a term for it.
HT: Volokh Conspiracy
Misangyny – Have you ever seen one of those endless circular debates “Oh, that only looks like misandry; it’s really misogyny…. Oh yeah right – the man has to register for the draft but the women feels excluded, so it’s misogyny! – oh waaaaah!” when really it’s both at once, even if not equally?
Well now someone has a brand new word to cover that. Use it. Spread it.
PDWG – Privilege Denying White Girl. Pronunced “pudwag”. That’s intentional.
This is someone who is quite willing to parade her moral clarity by declaring she fully acknowledges her white privilege but emphatically denies to a moral certainty that anything like female privilege exists. She is the exact analog to Privileging Denying Dude that denies the existence of male privilege. And she is a girl rather than a woman, whatever her age, because this eternal girlhood is both a function of toxic femininity in which in our society there is no functional difference between women and gitrsl, no passage from one estate to another, and also because this attitude can exist only in a thoroughly callow, sheltered and naive worldview.
Use it. Spread 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 
hahaha, so Amanhater Marcrappy is a pudwag….
can we call Hugo Skeezer and David Fatrelle pudwags to and change the g to guy?
I like these. I find a lot of times where pudwag would fit perfectly. 🙂
“pudwangs”?
oh, and you don’t know all the times I gleefully dropped this link at Inmalafide and to the white nationalist neo nazis, haha, looks like your ideolo9gy is closer to Amanhater Marcrappy’s than mine ever will be….
http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/update/
Gwallan, that’s a good one. We sya “wang” too but it’s not as common as someother expressions and it may even be a little dated. Have to ask the younger folks.
And yes, the “g” can stand for guys.
Scented Nectar, it’s so very good to see you drop by! Welcome, welcome, wlecome.
And Gwallan, you’ve been away a while too. Welcome back.
SWAB, let me go look at that link. I think I have read it and I think I liked it very much.
SWAB,
This is sort of offtopic, but I am a bit unhappy with calling him “Fatrelle” (as well as your nicknames for Marcotte and Schwyzer).
First, fat-shaming is a bullying tactic, and I want nothing to do with bullies. Perhaps as a result of being on the receiving end of bullying, I have grown somewhat sensitive to these things, and while I tolerate it in my opponents (who I often expect to be assholes), I will make noise when I see it in my allies (who I expect better from).
Second, mr. Futrelle’s body weight has nothing to do with his annoying politics, and I suspect the reason you dislike him is the latter, not the former. Giving him a nickname that has to do with his body weight makes that the focus of attention – and really, I would prefer it if people talked about his cherry-picking or the fact that his readership happily engages in accusing a rape victim of lying without him stepping in, as opposed to people talking about his body weight.
Third, it makes you seem sort of immature (related my first annoyment; bullying behaviour often comes across as childish) and nasty, which only makes it more difficult to take your (otherwise often insightful, interesting and valuable) points seriously.
“Second, mr. Futrelle’s body weight has nothing to do with his annoying politics, and I suspect the reason you dislike him is the latter, not the former. Giving him a nickname that has to do with his body weight makes that the focus of attention – and really, I would prefer it if people talked about his cherry-picking or the fact that his readership happily engages in accusing a rape victim of lying without him stepping in, as opposed to people talking about his body weight.”
http://omegavirginrevolt.wordpress.com/why-is-female-approval-needed-for-dating-advice/#comment-7411
yeah, RocketFrog, I even said in the comments there, it was ’cause I found a weak link in his armor that I said all that…
he reminds me of the bullies I dealt with growing up…
http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/high-school-sucked-ass/
While I see your point RocketFrog, no one ever calls me out when I insult the White Nationalists and tell them to have fun re-creating the brutal butt rape scene from American History X. They are bigoted bullies and so are Futrelle, Marcotte and Schwyzer-it’s just that the White Nationalists are on the wrong side of the tracks and those on the right side don’t get called out by the $PLC….
Anyways, we need to call out their lies as aggressively as possible and show that the $PLC isn’t standing up for human rights….
You might have a point, but an obese guy with a site called “manboobz” is asking for it
maybe I’ll just refer to him as fatuous Mr. Manboobz….
The ‘fat’ in ‘fatrelle’ could refer to ‘fatuous’.
It could, but it so very clearly doesn’t.
It’s politically and anthropologically interesting to find an anti-oppression group that’s still at the stage where they are willing to engage in intersectional oppressions with people they don’t like. It’s not a good habit, by the way.
Oh, you guys might find this interesting. I got asked by a feminist about how to find ‘legitimate MRAs’ with which to ally. Here is my slightly edited reply from http://brutereason.net/2012/09/20/in-brief-do-feminists-care-about-mens-issues-a-handy-list/#comment-4934
Thing is, my unidirectional-feminist friend, there’ve been a lot of burned bridges. Finding MRAs who don’t have an instinctual (and well-earned) distrust of feminism as currently presented would be like trying to find trans radfems… you can, but even most third-wave feminists find their output suspect. Just like with the second-wave and those in the third-wave that give them a pass, and trans women, don’t expect feminism to get a pass.
You want MRAs to ally with you? Good. I do too. But expect that they’ll disagree with you on some things, and expect to agree or at least dialogue non-dismissively with them on some core points:
1. We erase a fucktonne of male victims of rape (and CAMAB victims of rape) and female perpetrators of rape (and CAMAB perpetrators of rape)
2. The workplace-related death gap, the overtime gap, the elemental exposure gap, etc. All get erased in discussion of the wage gap. If you’re going to blame men for creating an environment where 83% of workplace-related fatalities (that’s about 43,000 extra men than women per year), are men, then you’ve done so in ignorance of safety-oriented unions, and women making up a majority of the electorate since 1964.
3. Our justice system relies on a lot of sexist assumptions about fitness of a parent, danger of an offender, veracity of a victim’s account, and exacerbates and reinforces those assumptions by maintaining social attitudes that make men less likely to report assault, sexual and aggravated, of any level of severity, even those assaults that should require medical attention. Of adults who were sexually assaulted as children, 64% of cis women describe what happened to be a sexual assault. 16% of men do. So if you can’t manage to be horrified that someone who was raped at thirteen (and thirteen-year-olds cannot consent, nor can one retroactively consent to what happened to oneself at thirteen) is made to pay child support to maintain his rapist’s child, you probably won’t get very far with MRAs.
4. Recognize, and here’s something you can do for your trans sisters too, so we’re not erased until the day that a slim minority of us finally come out: It’s not female presentation that invites femmephobic abuse. It’s femininity, the less socially acceptable the better, and that femmephobia intersects with cissexist norms, so if you think femininity is policed and derided in female-presenting people, you should try having the exact same attitudes, mannerisms, and speaking style, and then present male. Don’t worry, I’ll be there to pull you out of the trash can, and teach you which way to look at your nails so you won’t get abused (actually happened to me).
You should be concerned about what’s directed at cis men, if for no other reason than because a disproportionate amount of it happens to trans women (intersectionality again), and in a way that keeps many of us closeted. When someone is told to shut up, they’re taking too much space, and that silencing is followed by gendering someone as their presentation, they’re going to be more likely to focus any gender angst they have outwards, instead of being able to go on questioning who they are… but you don’t need to hear about my college years…
5. Don’t compare Western men to non-Western women when making the case for the rights of Western women. Just don’t. If you’re going to dismiss US circumcision of boys (and some girls, there’s another reminder, don’t erase trans people before they identify as such) then don’t compare that to what happens in Burundi or Cameroon or Afghanistan. There’s a lot of repression in those places that flows from economic privation. Compare Western circumcision to Western infantile clitoroplasty… even if it weakens your argument.
6. You’re going to have to drop the idea that straight cis men unidirectionally oppress straight cis women. That doesn’t mean there’s not choking clouds of institutionalized misogyny right now, but it’s not the only sexism in town, nor, is it really clearly the most prominent… it’s just the one you see most, because, well, you’ve trained yourself to see it. There’s a lot of confirmation bias in ciscentric feminism, and a lot of trans women learn to use that model, because, well, among other things, cis privilege means never having your gender questioned when you disagree with predominant feminist theory. My favorite example comes from a job I had, working overnights, where I had to say no to a lot of people.
I transitioned ‘in boymode’, which means I didn’t change a stitch of clothing as I transitioned, just took spironolactone until people started gendering me female. After that happened, the usual pleading-to-venom cycle went, “Can you help me sweetheart?” or dear or some other slotting form of address designed to gain my acquiescence, trying to make me be ‘nice’. Followed by calling me a fat bitch or cunt. Before I was gendered female, it was, “Can you help me buddy?” or pal, or some other slotting form of address designed to remind me that real men don’t let bureaucracy get in the way of being functional and potent… then when I had to say no again, they called me a fat prick, sometimes made reference to my lack of sexual prowess, etc… So what we saw was classism: Customers expecting service… but cloaked in sexist language.
7. Finally: Expect a lot of groping about. There’s no MRA canon.
Well, there’s Warren Farrell, but we’ve seen the impressive amount of effort expended in taking a thirty-five year old interview out of context… but seriously. There’s Spreading Misandry but that’s not really a work of theory… there’s Cocksure but that’s not really MRA stuff… just Richler taking the piss out of identity politics. While man may have got the default pronoun and been considered the default citizen in most works of the enlightenment canon, they were meant to be universal, and largely remain that way. Further, those that don’t, didn’t anticipate the extension of citizenship to the female-presenting, a change which occurred roughly 100 years ago, and, like those voting Republican now, was not a solely male exercise, so they’re hardly going to be relevant to men’s rights in a liberal-democratic society with a universal franchise.
My point is that MRAs don’t have universal positions on questions like abortion, not because they don’t buy the idea of personal bodily autonomy, but because they’re trying to reconcile a system of child rearing where one party has all the rights as to deciding when to commence a pregnancy (Mississippi excluded, but again, that exception’s not relevant to most of the Western world. See Rule 5), and the other bears all the responsibility for that decision (Save for a physical risk which is lower than that of taking low-dose aspirin for a year). They don’t have universal positions on women in combat roles, either, because, well… they note that a lot of feminists haven’t been chomping at the bit to equalize casualty rates. (I have, but it’s not high up on my list of priorities). They’ll disagree a lot, because, frankly, there’s not the intellectual uniformity that comes from having a canon and an academic discipline, where one may not have to follow the party line, but one will definitely have to reconcile one’s positions with the party line…
I think, actually, that’s where a bit of unidirectional-feminist ire at MRAs comes from… they expect MRAs to be like feminists, but they aren’t yet. The MRM grew up in the internet… the people preceded the books, and it’s not like you could get a university to help them write the books (though men are an abject minority of undergrads now) because the backlash would be more than any progressive university would want to bear. There’s not the same MRM party line that there is for feminists… there’s not the same level of intellectual coherence, and factionalism, and clearly identifiable intellectual tendencies… so when someone hears someone who calls themselves an MRA say something really disgusting, it’s not like we can slot them with the MRM equivalent of Mary Daly or Sheila Jeffreys.
You know how mad third-wavers get when someone quotes Daly or Jeffreys or Bindel, or Raymond at them, and the response is, “Most feminists aren’t like that”? Yeah… that’s the bind into which MRAs are put… only difference is, nobody in the MRM gets paid to be their noxious equivalent of a prescriptivist, trans-exterminationist, gender fascist, and moderate MRAs don’t come together as a community to mourn the loss of their Dalys… MRAs don’t have a death toll to celebrate, as Raymond did, when she got her work made into Reagan Administration policy… but I digress. They have no professional academics, no canon, and thus, there’s not the same handful of factions to point to… everyone’s a free agent in the MRM, and recognizing that is important.
“The ‘fat’ in ‘fatrelle’ could refer to ‘fatuous’.”
That would be “our” inside joke, everyone else would think it is fat shaming….
Yes, I’ve done my share, also, I don’t know why but I was bullied hardest by the fat kids growing up…
“And she is a girl rather than a woman, whatever her age, because this eternal girlhood is both a function of toxic femininity in which in our society there is no functional difference between women and gitrsl, no passage from one estate to another, and also because this attitude can exist only in a thoroughly callow, sheltered and naive worldview.”
I don’t agree with this analysis, and I think if anything, it’s the flip-side of the punishment of intellectual and hedonistic pursuits that don’t reinforce masculinity… we ought to embrace our ungrownupness a bit more, everyone, instead of life being a constant series of ignored and unaddressed abuses that we are told to grow beyond, while enabling abusers in the same breath… it’s toxic attitudes like that that keep raped and battered men from coming forward.
Valerie: I commend you for entering into that thread. You’re a braver one than I. That entire post might as well be tldr’d as “Yuh huh! We do SO care! Now shut up about it!” Especially considering the blogwriter’s antics in the comment section.
@ Paul
They want to feel like they care but they don’t want to actually _have_ to care, get it? Sheesh.
@Paul
Yeah, there’s a reason I compared her to factcheckme. She didn’t take me on because… well, not quite sure, other than she thinks in the face of a transfeminist, she’s not going to get much traction.
Ginkgo:
Where is the syllable break in “pudwag”? I assume it’s probably “pud.wag” and not “pu.dwag” because the second would be difficult for English speakers and a lot of them would probably insert a schwa, but I’d just like to be sure. IPA transcription might also be helpful.
After reading through the comment section I’ve got another term for your list: “gendobabble.” It is very similar to “psychobabble” but involves the use of jargon, buzzwords, and esoteric language in discussion of gender and gender relations. A prime example can be found in Valerie’s comment of 10/6 at 7:15pm. This is no knock against Valerie. I’ve seen far worse elsewhere. While I think Valerie has some very interesting things to say in her comment, her use of language gets in the way of her message. It is one thing for professionals to use the language of their profession when speaking to each other (it helps establish credibility and enhance communication), it is altogether different when speaking to persons who are not professionals in that field. In this case it gives the impression of plausibility through obfuscation. To paraphrase Theodore Dalrymple when speaking of psychobabble: gendobabble is the means by which people talk about gender without saying anything.
From Valerie: “You’re going to have to drop the idea that straight cis men unidirectionally oppress straight cis women. That doesn’t mean there’s not choking clouds of institutionalized misogyny right now, but it’s not the only sexism in town, … There’s a lot of confirmation bias in ciscentric feminism, and a lot of trans women learn to use that model, because, well, among other things, cis privilege means never having your gender questioned when you disagree with predominant feminist theory.”
@Valerie – Please don’t think I’m picking on you. Like I said, I’ve seen far worse. Your comment is actually quite thought provoking. I may decide to discussion some of these issues on my own blog over the next week or so. I think you are spot on when you state “There’s no MRA canon” and “my point is that MRAs don’t have universal positions…” I would say that this is not only a correct observation, but is also the way it should be. Unlike feminism, men’s rights is not ideologically based. There are only two basic assumptions. 1) Men and women are different and those differences will result in differing roles and all roles are important. 2) Because these differences exist, equality cannot measured by outcome (in cases where men and women are different), but equal opportunity, equal protection of law, equal responsibility, and equal rights are laudable goals. You mentioned abortion and reproductive rights. This is one area where these rights can never be the same because of biological differences. However, they can be made much more equitable by granting men at leat some rights rather than only responsibilities. You mention that feminism is an academic discipline. I would disagree. It is an ideologically based interpretation of history that turns women into victims and men into monsters that masquerades as a social science in the same way creation science masquerades as a real science.
this is my second attempt at getting together a “list of human rights for males”
http://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/a-list-of-human-rights-for-males-version-2-0/
I know there are differences, but at this point, I don’t know what the differences are, and I don’t think anyone knows what those differences are. I suspect everyone has a unique combination of strengths, weaknesses, and inclinations, and it would be better if we could help each person create their own role.
Valerie:
Oh, you guys might find this interesting. I got asked by a feminist about how to find ‘legitimate MRAs’ with which to ally. Here is my slightly edited reply from http://brutereason.net/2012/09/20/in-brief-do-feminists-care-about-mens-issues-a-handy-list/#comment-4934
Oh that post. Notice how feminism as a whole gets to claim the works of those individuals as feminists caring about men’s issues. Now I wonder what they would say if feminism as a whole got held up to the Feministe post from a few weeks ago on that Savage post about the woman that raped her boyfriend. Let me guess, the fact that some of the feminists were fine with the way that guy was treated doesn’t count as “This is what feminism looks like.” but the fact that some of them weren’t does?
“I don’t agree with this analysis, and I think if anything, it’s the flip-side of the punishment of intellectual and hedonistic pursuits that don’t reinforce masculinity… we ought to embrace our ungrownupness a bit more, everyone, instead of life being a constant series of ignored and unaddressed abuses that we are told to grow beyond, while enabling abusers in the same breath… it’s toxic attitudes like that that keep raped and battered men from coming forward.”
Thanks for this, Valerie; it pulls a lot together.
“I don’t agree with this analysis, and I think if anything, it’s the flip-side of the punishment of intellectual and hedonistic pursuits that don’t reinforce masculinity..”
Adutlhood =/= masculinity. Stoicism =/= masculinity. There’s not much more I can say about this. A great deal of what gets called “femmephobia” is in fact contempt for childishness, and the femininity the considers flightiness, submission to emotion and general helplessness feminine it itself deeply problematic and misogynist.
“we ought to embrace our ungrownupness a bit more, everyone, …”
Speaking as an American Boomer, we have more than enough ungrownupnes in the culture. My generation has celebrated childlike spontaneity to the point of absurdity, and has been doing it for deacdes now. And it didn’t start with us – the yuth revolution really started in the 50s’ So we’re good on that, mre than good.
This may be different in Canada, and you personally seem very serious, so YMMV.
“instead of life being a constant series of ignored and unaddressed abuses that we are told to grow beyond, while enabling abusers in the same breath… it’s toxic attitudes like that that keep raped and battered men from coming forward.”
I can see the connection, but it only apparent. Male rape victims don’t come forward because of male disposabilty and the assumption of male sexual availabity. Adulthood has very little to do with it; little boys are erased quite as much a sgrown men are. As for battering, the psychological abuse I took form my ex-wife was not because i was unwilling to be “ungrown-up’ (abnd BTW that is a useful formulation) but because I refused ot exect her to behave like an adult. I redused to insist she act at the same level of adulthood as the owmen I had grown up around. I allowed her to turn me inot her emotional caretaker even as she abused my emotions – in other words, because of her ungrown-upness. And this was all about gender roles and expectations, and also there were some caste issues. So I don’t agree with you on this point.
TDOM, I liike “gendeobabble” or maybe just genderbabble.
@ Ginko
I thought about genderbabble, but thought gendobabble was a little more light-hearted and says a little more about where the term comes from.
Who asked where the syllable boundary on PDWG was? I assumed it would be pronounced “pud wag”, as a verb-object compound. Envision one of these sanctimonious, canting Women’s Studies types wagging her pud, and you have the image I am trying to evoke.
The only problem with that is that giving each person their own role would land you right back at square one. All the girls would pick girly roles, all the guys would pick boyish roles. To the large extent that each person’s gender role is actually a reaction to the world around them, you can’t just “give” everyone their own gender role without at the same time changing everyone else to allow for that to happen. Fact of the matter is you’re just not going to get a muscle-bound intellectual female who is respected for those traits while at the same time she still expects men to ask her out, pay for dates, and contribute to child support while losing custody and holding down a majority of the less-desirable jobs. A “strong independent woman” who is useless to anyone but herself might as well not even exist to begin with. Of course, she can’t exist out in a vacuum, either. There have to be enough of women out there to make a meaningful difference – a single woman has no right to criticize the way men as a whole behave, if those men are reacting to the reality of how the vast majority of other women behave.
@TDOM
Yeah, heaven forefend that I point out that mainstream feminism doesn’t give two shits about trans people…
As to your premise… no, I don’t think all MRAs believe that society is shaped by those inherent differences, and I think those inherent differences, while significant (I mean, how can you be trans and deny inherent differences?) are frequently overblown. For example
And as to your accusation, quite frankly: I need language to describe the way I’m treated that has long been denied women (and men) like me, while the old verbiage is now used in arbitrary and aggressive ways to maintain cissexist power structures. I’m sorry if you find my words confusing, but that’s just because I’m being specific instead of engaging in cisspeak.
Cisspeak… that’s a better helpful word: Used for obtuse, inaccurate, nonsense phrases like ‘biologically (fe/)male.’
@Gingko
Again, if the toxic series of behaviors we treat as adulthood weren’t coded as masculine, the phrase man-up wouldn’t be leaking over gender lines.
http://dippyman.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/man-up-never/#comment-420
And again, there’s a difference between, “Don’t write cheques your ass can’t cash,” which is pretty much rule one with me… and “Be everyone’s provider, protector, oh, and showing emotion, especially pique or sadness, is verboten.” One is adult, the other is toxic, and conflated with adulthood.
Also, given the transmisogynistic history of Women’s studies, I doubt many of them have a pud to wag, which as a lesbian, I find disappointing. ^_^
As to your premise… no, I don’t think all MRAs believe that society is shaped by those inherent differences, and I think those inherent differences, while significant (I mean, how can you be trans and deny inherent differences?) are frequently overblown. For example do you really think that if family court were fairer, the wage gap would be nearly as high?
I am curious to hear your perspective on how inherent differences in males and females are overblown. I do agree that there is a huge amount of confusion over this which I think is driven by the variability of many of those inherent differences. ie There are some women who are taller than many men but generally men tend to be taller. etc.
Oooops. Previous comment was directed to Valerie.
Valerie: It’s femininity, the less socially acceptable the better, and that femmephobia intersects with cissexist norms, so if you think femininity is policed and derided in female-presenting people, you should try having the exact same attitudes, mannerisms, and speaking style, and then present male.
Could you elaborate on this, Valerie? Not exactly sure what you mean.
My friend is dealing with coming out to family. (He blogged my tarot reading, which I thought was just the coolest thing! http://southcarolinaboy.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/tarot-reading/ ) In doing so, he is afraid to go the final steps since we are talking about one of the most fundamentalist counties IN THE WORLD. (afraid as in, physically afraid, not ‘socially nervous’or whatever) And there are the financial and social costs, which he will have to shoulder himself. Very few, if any, allies.. I just worry to death over him. (Damn, she noted, I am starting to sound like some old grandma, I know!)
I am thinking now that transphobia is also an unwillingness to consider these things: “S/he doesn’t ‘look like’ a woman/man so I don’t have to call them one” is an act of privilege. There are good reasons for these dynamics, if you take the time to learn. This unwillingness is part and parcel of the transphobia too, and this is something I only learned through my friendship w/him.
Example: I was thrilled when he used one of my photos as a Facebook photo… I think somehow I captured him as a him, when other pics (like by his family) have deliberately tried not to do that. (If any of that makes any sense) For instance, he has always had lots and lots of HAIR (on his hair and chest)-which I find extremely interesting and instantly noticed when I first met him, and he was still called Rachel .. (I thought, damn, Rachel has LOTS OF FACIAL HAIR FOR A WOMAN! LOL–I now know why.) And now Ray has very cute (but decidedly hairy!) sideburns, and I made sure to get those in a profile photo…. other photos have tried to avoid the sideburns. I think that’s why he liked the photo. (PS: He has never taken T, that is his natural hairy self)
Enjoy your thoughtful posts on these issues.
Valerie, what I was trying to say (and likely failed) is that Ray also gets shit for being “too femme to be a man”, which goes with your general thesis. The hairy chest is a marked departure from that, and that is why they try to avoid it in photos. The fundie-transphobes are generally flummoxed by his whole existence.
Transphobia is its own thing, and can not be readily connected to other forms of oppression, and that has been a major lesson for me too. Its social-dynamics have as much in common with ableism as sexism, I think.
TDOM: You mention that feminism is an academic discipline. I would disagree. It is an ideologically based interpretation of history that turns women into victims and men into monsters that masquerades as a social science in the same way creation science masquerades as a real science.
I see “feminism” as merely: the legal/social movement and philosophy of moving women into full societal participation. “Women’s rights” in other words, but as Mary Ann Glendon rightly pointed out (and I really hate to admit that), “rights talk” is a Western thing and greatly limited in discussing agency. ( “You have the right to remain silent” is a right you have AFTER you are arrested, for instance… you do not have the right not to be arrested in the first place, if they want to arrest you.) I abandoned “women’s rights” largely due to her cogent arguments re: “rights talk”… again, I really hate to admit that, since she is a huge annoyance in most respects.
Feminism morphed from street action into an academic discipline, which is what turned it into… well, indecipherable gendobabble. But your phrase “interpretation of history” signals a largely-academic approach… street activists did not dither over history or interpretations of history.
Another way “interpretation of history” can be applied, is in a Marxist sense (historical materialism, dialectical materialism) and I can appreciate that (and tend to personally adhere to it), but that is not where the majority of feminists were/are coming from. The third-wave is mostly a result of “women’s studies”–not political strategy, street activism or similar work.
Thus, when people like Dungone trash feminism from the git-go (from its inception), I tend to hear them as trashing women achieving equal rights, which is all I consider the term to mean. All these other meanings are recent additions, as in, over the last couple of decades. That is not the feminism that shaped me: feminism meant I should not be forced to wear skirts/dresses to school in subzero weather, since the boys didn’t have to. (This was the first ‘feminist cause’ I ever agitated for!) So, when Dungone says feminism was always bad, I hear him as endorsing the rules forcing me to wear dresses in minus 10 degrees F and getting frostbite on my legs since I had to walk a good distance to school. (PS: this really happened) This is why I get emotional; to me, equal rights isn’t some academic or remote historical idea. The frostbite really did hurt. Girls compared our frostbitten legs in the restrooms; this was real.
I would like MRAs to understand that for some of us, this is what we are hearing, a disregard for how things really were, once upon a time. If they honestly don’t care about that, they might remember that they couldn’t have all the sex they want with no resulting babies, unless an argumentative and self-identified feminist named Margaret Sanger hatched a scheme with Havelock Ellis to set up shop and give away birth control devices and go to jail for it. This was necessary, this feminist act. You are not continually saddled with children you don’t want, because of her actions. This is another reason I am puzzled when MRAs are anti-feminist, since I think they have also benefited from such changes in our social mores, particularly the increased sexual freedom of women.
PS: Schala, before you start preaching to me about Sanger’s racism, as you did the last time I mentioned her, please know that *I* wrote the first-ever feminist article uncovering and criticizing Sanger’s racism in RED TIDE newspaper, eons ago… (my work was then stolen by academics, which is one reason I hate them).
You actually quoted me to me the last time, which made me laugh for about an hour.
Brilliant, pdwg, I love it. Especially because it captures exactly what I feel those people do, which is wave the fact that they were born with a vagina around in order to claim membership in some sort of club for oppressed people. Pdwg’s, the remora of the oppression olympics.
My only problem is that it seems to discount the possibility that other racial groups can use misandristic tactics in order to get their point across or get their vision out there to the masses.
Daisy, small quibble on the birth control point. Women (with uteruses, sheesh Valerie, get off my back) don’t need to have a ton of babies they don’t want. Men still don’t have that option, unless they are with a partner who respects their wishes. Women are in firm control of the reproductive rights sphere, crazy ass attempts by Limbaugh and paleocon legislators notwithstanding.
To me, you might as well be saying “I owe everything to god,” without so much as proving that your god exists. Feminists certainly don’t help themselves on that front when they take credit for shit that happened prior to their existence, or activism by women who strongly disagreed with the very premise of feminism. You’re claiming that without feminism, there would be no equal rights – including the equal rights that were obtained before it existed. You might as well pawn it all off to the power of prayer and time travel, as far as I’m concerned.
This is known as an illicit substitution of identicals, aka the masked man fallacy. It’s a tired old apologetic, really not worth much of a response. Another example of it is this: “To me, god is love. Therefore, how can you love, if you don’t believe in god?”
Equilibrium: Daisy, small quibble on the birth control point. Women (with uteruses, sheesh Valerie, get off my back) don’t need to have a ton of babies they don’t want. Men still don’t have that option, unless they are with a partner who respects their wishes. Women are in firm control of the reproductive rights sphere, crazy ass attempts by Limbaugh and paleocon legislators notwithstanding.
True now, but it was not before. And these rights are up for grabs in many areas of the country, even now.
As I never tire of reminding everyone, check out the propaganda of “19 kids and counting”–women enslaved by fundie religions are still stuck in 1920. Fundie faiths are still the last refuge of the patriarchs. Women as breed mare, making more babies for the Church.
Dungone recently wrote that he had no sympathy for women stuck in these religions (many raised in IFB, FLDS and other such cultish environments), but seems to conveniently overlook the fact that some men choose to convert to these faiths BECAUSE of the old-school role they promise men in the family… (whether that propaganda turns out to be true or not in actual practice, is another matter). The men they try to attract as converts to these faiths are the men with money, such as the successful businessman who can support three households on the TV show “Big Love” … or political hustler Jim Bob Duggar.
Keep in mind, I live 6 miles from Bob Jones Univ and these people are right in my backyard, so I cannot dismiss them the way Dungone and others can. They are responsible for initially electing Sen Jim DeMint to congress, and the rest, as they say, is history. They have a base of operations and political power here in SC, and are a very real force to be reckoned with.
Dungone: To me, you might as well be saying “I owe everything to god,” without so much as proving that your god exists.
Huh? I have not mentioned god, goddesses, any of that.
What it is: this is a largely ’emotional’ statement, so you have no response to it. You don’t care about emotions, when they are what guide most people. You are therefore on the outside looking in, in most human interactions and in understanding what motivates people.
No wonder you are so pissed off all the time. Life is a perpetual mystery… you are like Mr Spock trying to understand those pesky, confusing humans. How do you manage?
Feminists certainly don’t help themselves on that front when they take credit for shit that happened prior to their existence, or activism by women who strongly disagreed with the very premise of feminism.
As I said feminism simply meant “equal rights for women”–nothing more and nothing else. Other recent additions are simply that: revisionist, recent additions.
There have always been women who dislike equal rights for women… Andrea Dworkin wrote a whole book about them. (?) Your point?
You’re claiming that without feminism, there would be no equal rights – including the equal rights that were obtained before it existed.
No, that is not what I am claiming. (here he goes again, with his utter and total lack of reading comprehension!)
Read carefully:
I am saying: FEMINISM IS THE MOVEMENT FOR WOMEN’S EQUAL RIGHTS. Nothing. More. Nothing. Less. That is ALL.
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A vindication of the rights of woman” in 1792, and I date the “movement”–as it were, to that date. That was the textbook. It was not an academic book, it was a bestselling book that lots of people read… people took it with them in pioneer wagons over the great plains. Bourgeois women used it as inspiration for getting out in the fields and doing hard work alongside their men for the very first time. Genealogists have repeatedly written about finding the book in their pioneer-ancestor’s collections.
You might as well pawn it all off to the power of prayer and time travel, as far as I’m concerned.
I just dated the movement, and gave my reason for that. Prayer and time travel? Whatever.
This is known as an illicit substitution of identicals, aka the masked man fallacy. It’s a tired old apologetic, really not worth much of a response. Another example of it is this: “To me, god is love. Therefore, how can you love, if you don’t believe in god?”
As I said, whatever. I don’t do academics, and babbling about fallacies is academic. I am talking about equal rights for women, i.e. not jailing women for wearing pants, which yes, really happened. Not sending me home from school for wearing pants, which yes, really happened.
Even now, women can be arrested for going shirtless, while men enjoy the right. This post got 12,000 hits for a reason:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2009/07/women-should-have-right-to-be-shirtless.html
These are measurable rights, and there is nothing imaginary about them.
I am not talking about god… not sure why you are. (?)
And feminists are not the only ones fighting for those rights.
No, you just threw out another example of the illicit substitution. Please refer to the detailed explanation at this link: http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/112-illicit-substitution-of-identicals
This is the same exact illogic as your own argument:
Daisy, I am talking about now. And the past is past. Although we need to keep the understanding and knowledge of the past alive and well, it would do us a great deal of good to let go of the emotions and fears of the past. Those ties us to the past, tie us to the pain and ensure that we never heal. So when I say that women control the realm of reproductive rights, I am correct. It should have no emotional relevance to say that in the past this wasn’t true.
And do you truthfully believe that there will ever be a successful movement to censure the rights of a woman when it comes to reproduction (keyword: successful)? To limit access to birth control? Abortion is obviously the outlier here, but even with that, most of the country will never limit that right. Do you really think there will ever be a constitutional amendment banning abortion? Banning the pill? If you do, its because you haven’t left the emotions of the past behind. Look around you today, and not just at BJ”U”. We live in a changing world.
I’m giving you additional examples of the type of logic that you are trying to use so that hopefully you can start to understand where you are going wrong.
Then move – problem solved. Apparently, though, you are talking about god after all. And you do this on numerous occasions, I might add – you blame everything you don’t like about religion on men, all the while supporting religion.
So you’re saying that men, who are generally far less religious than women, will join a church to get laid? You don’t say? What does that have to do with all the women who join those churches? Why do you insist that the religious bullshit that women flock to is actually the reason why feminism must fight the Patriarchy, instead of just taking responsibility for their own decisions?
Probably that you’re being a dolt, but you don’t need me for that to be plainly obvious for all. Dworkin is a prime example of a woman who never had a clue to begin with, whose vile, hateful rhetoric was anything but helpful to women, let alone men. The fact that you support her and associate with her sort of feminism goes further than anything else to refute your claim that feminism is nothing more than equal rights for women. And, by the way, lots of women won’t ever call themselves feminists because of bigots like her. This doesn’t mean that they fight against abortion rights or whatever else you imagine them to be against – it means that you are erasing other women who don’t want to participate in your little cabal.
Dungone: And feminists are not the only ones fighting for those rights.
Um, whoever said they were? (speaking of illogic)
Please refer to the detailed explanation
No, I will not be tutored by academics and go to your links. You obviously never go to mine. (Tit for tat, excuse expression–considering the subject of my last link.)
You won’t even do me the simple courtesy of ascribing correct meanings to my words… and you actually want me to read your links? You are hilarious. Even Mr Spock knows better than to try something like that.
Dungone:
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A vindication of the rights of woman” in 1792
Daisy thinks that feminists fight for women’s rights.
Therefore, Daisy thinks that that Mary Wollstonecraf was a feminist (and that feminism is responsible for all women’s rights since 1792)
Hoo boy. After all I have written, he is still unable to read.
What can you do about simple illiteracy?
Correction (it seems this sums up ALL my responses to Dungone, doesn’t it?):
Daisy thinks that feminists fight for women’s rights.
No. I am going by a simple definition, I don’t “think” any such thing.
I said, the definition of feminism is… from Merriam Webster:
Definition of FEMINISM
1
: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2
: organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests
— fem·i·nist noun or adjective
— fem·i·nis·tic adjective
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism
And that’s all.
Therefore, Mary Wollstonecraft was feminist.
Insects have six legs. Therefore an aphid is an insect and a spider is not.
I’ll bet the dictionary agrees with me, like my example above.
Dungone: and that feminism is responsible for all women’s rights since 1792
Hello? You are saying this to a Marxist? (And you notably red-baited me in a recent thread, so I know you are aware of this fact about me.) Are you stupid? Unions are responsible for workers rights, and some of those workers were women. I would never, and have never, claimed such a historically-incorrect fact. (Triangle shirtwaist factory fire and so forth.)
I wish you would read what I actually say and stop making shit up. Once again, the phrase “not arguing in good faith” comes to mind.
What I said was, and I repeat for Dungone-the-reading-challenged: I date the women’s movement (feminism) to 1792, and the “rights program” specifically enunciated by Wollstonecraft… i.e. educate women (her first priority); allow bourgeois women to work, own property and earn money (of course, there have ALWAYS been working-class women and peasant women who worked, although not permitted to own property); allow women the freedom to not marry (or else get stuck in the convent or teaching school if they refused or were not chosen for marriage); suffrage, etc. (She didn’t even go as far as advocating for women to hold political office or to refuse childbirth–it was fucking 1792.) Feminist is simply a shorthand term that evolved for a person involved in these pursuits… NO MORE AND NO LESS.
Very simple, and Wollstonecraft was the first to lay out the program. If you can name someone earlier than this, who wrote all of this down, knock yourself out, but you can’t. (I believe it was Clara Zetkin who first agitated for women to be educated by the state.)
I am dealing in historical facts, not goofy stuff that you have decided in your head. Illogic indeed. You confuse “female supremacist” with “feminist”–and you can certainly make the case it morphed into that… but the word originally did not mean that. And that is the context I am using.
Feminist is just a term, like “southerner” or “TV star” or “football fan”… that’s all it was originally. The other meanings you are ascribing to this simple word, CAME ABOUT THROUGH THIRD WAVE ACADEMICS and you are therefore further empowering them by using their definitions instead of mine.
Know why? Because you might be a feminist by my definition (and Merriam Webster’s) and you are heavily-emotionally invested in being an ‘anti feminist’–so you have to define feminism as evilll and bad, the devil incarnate.
You are the religious one here, Dungone… I am simply using the dictionary definition.
You did. Through your stated definition of feminism. If feminism is about women’s rights, and this makes women who fought for women’s rights 160 years before feminism feminists, then, you are the one who is saying that feminists are the only ones fighting for women’s rights. Get it? You’re saying that.
“PS: Schala, before you start preaching to me about Sanger’s racism, as you did the last time I mentioned her, please know that *I* wrote the first-ever feminist article uncovering and criticizing Sanger’s racism in RED TIDE newspaper, eons ago… (my work was then stolen by academics, which is one reason I hate them). ”
No idea who Sanger is. Since internet I haven’t read much books.
I own Lord of the Rings and the Space Oddyseys series, which I read during high school and a bit after. And that’s pretty much it.
When I was a kid I read ALL books or readable stuff I could find, everything. I’ve always been good at writing and reading. My vocabulary lacks only from lack of exposure to higher-vocabulary stuff. But I sure am out of touch with everything book. I don’t read E-books either. And don’t have a tablet, a smartphone, or a plain cellphone. I don’t want one. You’ll have to pay me to own one.
Equilibrium: And do you truthfully believe that there will ever be a successful movement to censure the rights of a woman when it comes to reproduction (keyword: successful)? To limit access to birth control?
What the right wing does (are you in the USA?) is try to return to states rights… Romney pointedly mentioned “states rights” several times in the last debate. What do you think that means? For those of us in extremely conservative states, or maybe THE most conservative state?
He is an advocate of states rights, which yes, WILL harshly limit reproductive rights for women here in SC. You know that right??????????
Birth control is not currently available to women who cannot afford it, of course. Why do you think poorer people have so many more babies? (Also lack of birth control education and religious opposition to birth control, have done as much damage… Bristol Palin, anyone?)
I have to strongly disagree with you. Our (lady) governor went on “The View” and announced that women do not care about birth control. http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/04/nikki-haley-women-dont-care-about.html
OUR. GOVERNOR. Would your governor say this on national TV?
She actually thinks this will help her get re-elected.
I’m not feminist, not because I’m against women’s rights. But because I think feminism to be the wrong movement to bring about equality.
It ONLY fights for women’s rights, sometimes even AGAINST their rights (presuming and encouraging hypo-agency is definitely going AGAINST women’s self-interest), but it completely ignores men’s rights or problems.
Will NEVER achieve equality. It’s not aiming for it.
You can say “We’re aiming for Mars”, but you’re obviously looking at Saturn. You won’t ever hit Mars.
“Why do you think poorer people have so many more babies?”
Some have more because “it happens” and they don’t do a thing to stop it, even if they could (ie they can afford condoms and the pill, but they don’t want to).
Some do because “babies give a meaning to their existence”, and I’m serious here. Having babies makes their life “complete”, gives it a sense. Not having it means life is senseless drudgery that only ends when you die, to them.
In this post-religious society, even the very religious don’t believe what they preach, about living and dying by their religion’s ethos. They live and die by capitalism. And pay lip service and have a social life through church meetings and mass.
Careful Schala! Andrea Dworkin wrote about the likes of you. Better go back and earn a feminist merit badge before someone calls you out on your misogyny. /s
Well, I won’t tell you to move, because while you may be capable of leaving SC, others may not be so lucky. But yes, to answer your question, I do live in the states. TX, actually. And I look around here I still stand by what I said (keyword: successful). What you fail to see, Daisy, is the the turning of the hands of time. Romney, and the conservative hand up his puppet ass, are old. Boomer old. And getting older every day. Sure, these people are raising children, but just look at age demographics on marriage equality (here meant in the gay/lesbian vs. straight sense). The fight is being won. Society is moving forward. Every day we push out the old and bring in the new. And thankfully, a lot of good work is being done to make sure this new generation is okay with other people being different from them.
BTW Ginkgo – I love pudwag! It even sounds right when said. That’s a keeper.
Dungone: You did. Through your stated definition of feminism.
Once more, with feeling.
My definition is the dictionary’s.
Also, what you said, breaks down like so:
Some feminists like pink.
I hate pink.
Therefore, I am not a feminist.
Right? See, I can play too.
“Women’s rights” are a specific category concerning gender… some workers are women, some minorities are women, blah blah blah. Obviously, those women will benefit from rights extended to those groups. My mother was a feminist and a disability rights activist. She never believed that her disability rights work was only for women, and she worked for deaf MEN’s rights also. Duh.
Is this really complicated?
Dungone sympathetically and realistically responds to the fact that I live in the most conservative area of the USA: Then move – problem solved.
Speaking of privilege… I guess you can get a job anywhere? Many of us cannot. We are older and find it hard to get jobs. Also, we have more than one person to think about… as well as health care and other benefits. Thus, we have to stay where we are employed. Must be nice to be able to jet-set anywhere you want and set up shop! I assume you are under 40 and well-educated, from an affluent family.
Further, why should I leave the place to them and allow them to consolidate their power? I am fighting them, since cowardly chickenshit trendy “atheists” like you run away from the fundies instead of standing up and fighting them… consequently, somebody has to do it. Somebody has to stand up for the young atheists/gays/Wiccans/whoever they periodically hang out to dry, and you are obviously too afraid to do it, so I have to. Surely you understand this.
Note: Here comes the illiteracy again. I am starting to relish it, since he writes one (usually more than one) amazingly illiterate thing in every single reply.
Dungone: So you’re saying that men, who are generally far less religious than women, will join a church to get laid?
Um, where did I say this? I did not use the term “get laid” or refer to sex a single time. I mentioned families and the consolidation of power that is promised to successful (not all) men… but I guess its not surprising that you see sex everywhere. LOL (Honestly, you are like the stereotype of an MRA)
What does that have to do with all the women who join those churches?
As I patiently explained to you the last time we had this conversation, most of the women are raised (i.e. brainwashed) in these cultish faiths like the IFB churches or the FLDS. (This is what the term “lost boys” is about… the boys leave and the girls stay.) Most of the BJU kids are homeschooled and as ignorant of the real world as the Amish.
Why do you insist that the religious bullshit that women flock to is actually the reason why feminism must fight the Patriarchy, instead of just taking responsibility for their own decisions?
Who said they shouldn’t? Where are you getting this? Could you quote where I said this?
(More lack of reading comprehension. Really, Dungone, I’d ask for a refund on that tuition if I were you.)
How many of these women have you personally tried to get to leave? Time for the creds. I think I have much more experience in actually dealing with them and their problems than you do… do you think I hit them with “feminist” talk, directly after they are quoting the book of Jeremiah to me? Really? No, hon. I talk about personal responsiblity and their own personal goals and desires.
I doubt you have any first hand experience in trying to save people from fundamentalism, you have too much obvious contempt for them.
Dungone, showing comically-Pavlovian response to the name “Dworkin”–i.e. *TILT* like those old pinball machines: The fact that you support her and associate with her sort of feminism goes further than anything else to refute your claim that feminism is nothing more than equal rights for women.
Have you read all of Dworkin? From the beginning? Yes, some of her work was right-on and some was totally looney tunes. (Her analysis of women like Anita Bryant, in the book “Right Women Women”–which I mentioned in my post and made you go *TILT*… was just plain brilliant.) She was very likely schizophrenic herself, as I have written here before… nice to see that as usual, you were not reading, or are showing that usual lack of reading comprehension.
Dworkin was complex, like most authors. Her work was wildly contradictory and fluctuated greatly in quality throughout her life. What did you think of her essay on Tennessee Williams? And her observations about manhood in that essay?
I think we know that you are going on what the MRAs have told you to think about Dworkin, nothing you have actually discovered for yourself. As I said, you are the religious one here.
The Bible told you so, right?
Dungone: it means that you are erasing other women who don’t want to participate in your little cabal.
I believe in the big tent… you are the one erasing ME, remember? You are the one who subscribes to Amanda Marcotte’s definition of feminism, instead of the definition from Merriam Webster.
Your choice, but please, don’t call it logical when its entirely religious and emotional, guided by your obvious hatred of feminists.
Correction, Dworkin book was titled “Right wing women”, which yes, was pretty good in explaining the whole Queen Bee syndrome of Right wing women. i.e. how they become the “career women” they are supposedly fighting against, while fighting FOR traditionalism.
Schala: You can say “We’re aiming for Mars”, but you’re obviously looking at Saturn. You won’t ever hit Mars.
I’ll leave the space travel to you, Schala.
You can’t remember quoting all that shit about Sanger to me over on NSWATM? (you copied and pasted, so that is probably why). Well, I do. As I said, I was the one who wrote it.
Thanks for giving me the heads-up to disregard your posts… YOU don’t even remember what you write most of the time.
Dungone: Careful Schala! Andrea Dworkin wrote about the likes of you.
Are you referring to her supportive stance on transgender people, as opposed to most radfems of the day? How nice that you noticed! http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2009/08/andrea-dworkin-on-transgender.html
Equilibrium: Romney, and the conservative hand up his puppet ass, are old. Boomer old. And getting older every day.
I certainly hope you’re right… but I see the future as Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”–the corporations running everything. It’s the most realistic future I have ever read… also the companion novel “The Year of the Flood”–I recommend them both for a look at where we appear to be headed.
In short, it doesn’t matter what the people want… and its not just the conservative hand up his puppet ass, but the corporate hand that demands ever more profit.
A socialist reading of what happened to “feminism” would be that a way to make it PROFITABLE was discovered (see Herbert Marcuse, about “creating needs”) and therefore it morphed from a rights-oriented movement to a consumer-based ideology and then ceased to mean shit. A really good book about this syndrome is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell (that was the Canadian title, in the USA the title was “A Nation of Rebels”)
Me and Mr Daisy were just talking about France and the head scarves… what they did was needlessly piss off the Muslims, while in the USA, the head scarves (e.g. the Afro, corn-rows and the do-rag, equivalent “outsider” cultural statements in the USA) would be co-opted by fashion and therefore drained of any real meaning.
This, to me, has been the real tragedy of feminism, and every other truly challenging social movement.
Beware, this take a minute to load, since it has… (dramatic pause).. 8334 comments:
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html
As we say in retail: Does it sell?
Daisey, sure, the future isn’t rosy about everything, but it certainly is for *certain types* of social justice issues. Certainly not all, which is part of why I speak up about this stuff.
I’ll just drop this right here, sans comment: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8479276/cincinnati-bengals-ex-nfl-cheerleader-sarah-jones-pleads-guilty-student-sex
Immigrant & political refugee. Everything that keeps you from moving, I consider a privilege. Also, I’ve lived in both South Carolina and North Carolina. And Missouri. And FTR, my grandmother immigrated to the US when she was 65 and worked until she went blind. I don’t feel sorry for you.
Probably.
At this point I’m just going to respond to everything you say with “I know you are but what am I?”
Dungone, well, that’s a good point: I have no intention of working myself into blindness. The “old world” is called old for a reason, you know. It mostly sucked. That’s why the unluckiest of the old-world denizens came here, like you did.
I don’t feel sorry for you.
I don’t feel sorry for you either. Although it is tempting… I believe your inability to love or care for others, or empathize with those you consider beneath you (which is mostly everyone), is a form of hell. This is why your posts are so condescending and contemptuous. They radiate a weird Randian loneliness and isolation, common to most “fiercely independent” ideologues like yourself. But I confess I find them as fascinating as I find them disturbing. There is no ‘moral center’ … my philosophical tradition suggests such people are not good to argue with, that they suck you into their amoral vortex. (That’s a quote, but I’d have to go look up exactly who it was.)
I guess my discussions with you are my way of testing that thesis.
At this point I’m just going to respond to everything you say with “I know you are but what am I?
I already said that to you about four threads ago… did you just now get around to reading my replies? (LOL, better late than never.) No fair stealing my lines.
Question: General Grant said, politics isn’t really intended for the rank and file soldier. Do you agree with him? I am starting to understand what he meant by that.
Anybody else is welcome to jump in, of course.
Aside: Did anyone hear the Sandusky tapes? Just released on CNN… they will blow your mind. His sentencing is tomorrow, and his lawyer claims he had no prior knowledge that he was intending to release these tapes (not sure I believe that, but thats what he said).
Sandusky is blaming all the victims and a conspiracy against him, says they were offered perks to go after him. It is pretty freaking amazing shit.
I don’t read more than a couple sentences from anything you write. The first really egregious thing you say usually causes me to stop.
Daisy,
I read Woman Hating a few years back, and I hated that section the first time I read it, although I’ve come to understand that section better since then. I still have mixed feelings. I tried to respond to your blog, but something was wrong with the captchas and I finally just posted to my own blog.
Dungone: I don’t read more than a couple sentences from anything you write.
I’m glad you finally admitted this. A couple of participants here have even defended you, saying that since you are an immigrant and all, I should go easy on your obvious lack of reading ability.
Thanks for proving me right.
To those following along at home: I told you so. 😉
Marja, I hope you also read the comments on the post. I liked your comment! I agree that she let her agenda ‘rule’– but I also think that at the time (1974) , the concept that there might be more than two genders (or a continuum of genders) was radical stuff that most people had never even considered. It seems rather passe now, but certainly wasn’t at the time. Certainly, it was the first time *I* had ever heard the idea.
I’ll say more on your blog, and thanks again.
@Daisy:
I’m really not down with this kind of xenophobia. Not that you probably care, nor is it relevant as I don’t comment much, but given you’re willing to stoop to attacking someone’s status as an immigrant and relate it with reading ability/intelligence, I’m going to have to ask that you please never respond to anything I write (or at least don’t address me when you do so). I’ll return the favor in the future for anything you write.
Some of what you say is valuable, and I’m sad that I’ll miss it, but this is something I can’t tolerate.
Daisy:
I am saying: FEMINISM IS THE MOVEMENT FOR WOMEN’S EQUAL RIGHTS. Nothing. More. Nothing. Less. That is ALL.
The reason people have such a hard time with this is because it is being used as an illusion. The ones that are spewing the silliness and hatred hide behind this as a way to protect their silliness and hatred. If one challenges it they can just respond with the claim that since they are challenging it they must be against women.
This creates two problems.
1. The movement gets tainted. Which leads to…
2. Outsiders having a very hard time trying to make heads or tails of the movement and what it’s about.
A lot of feminists just tell us outsiders that we need to see that those feminists “don’t count” or at least their material “doesn’t count”. The problem is that crosses paths with the idea that each given feminist makes their own feminism in their own way.
So for example when some of the crowd at Feministe says it’s okay to presume that all men are either rapists or rapists in waiting (and a mod defends/ignores it) and all that is said is, “They aren’t all like that!” it leaves us wonder how exactly that reconciles with the idea that feminism is nothing more or less than equality for women.
On one hand they are feminists because they say so and that’s good enough. On the other making blanket presumptions about any group can’t possibly be in line with equality for women.Sure we could just say that they don’t represent all feminists and that technically is true. But when one can make remarks like that in a major feminist space and not only go unchallenged but actively defended what does that say about feminism being nothing more than equality for women?
Now Daisy I know you don’t have much stock in today’s crock of feminists when their fashion blogging and academics. But one thing to bear in mind, and this seems to be what a lot of today’s feminists either don’t realize or actively ignore, is that those fashion bloggers and academics are today’s forefront of feminism. But as soon as an outsider like more points some stuff like that out what do I get in return? That I am not giving feminism a chance. Which is totally aggravating if for no other reason than they are asking for a consideration that they are not even willing to extend to other people (namely non-feminists and especially MRAs).
@JDCyran, she obviously doesn’t mean it or even understand where she’s stooping to. Her M.O. is to try to play the victim at all costs and to try to paint her opponent as an oafish brute. To those ends she also goads me with comments about being a mindless follower for having served in the Marines (notice her remark about General Grant) – she’s just as likely to say that I can’t read because of that, or because I’m a man, or any of the other things that are acceptable for a Marxist or a feminist to insult someone with. I just don’t think she was really thinking when she extended it to immigrants, since that’s not really what her whole spiel is about. That’s all it is, she’s just trying to goad me, probably in hopes that in my own intemperance I will say something even more egregious that she can brandish about later. But she really shouldn’t have outright lied about what other readers might have said about me, because no one has ever said that.
@Gingko
I sent you an email to genderratic that you might find interesting. 🙂
Tit, send it again, could you? Those appear in my email, and I don’t see it.
nice article on politics….
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/fox_friends_punked_by_obama_su.html
not directly related to gender but interesting nonetheless…
JD: but given you’re willing to stoop to attacking someone’s status as an immigrant and relate it with reading ability/intelligence
Um, *I* didn’t say this… can you read?
Here is what I said, again: A couple of participants here have even defended you, saying that since you are an immigrant and all, I should go easy on your obvious lack of reading ability.
Two separate readers of this blog (one lurker, one not) emailed these sentiments to me, *I* certainly did not believe it for a single second. Should I out the people who indeed said this to me, in confidence? Doubtless I would be tarred and feathered for that too.. I think I am just being set up. (Now, I wonder why that is?)
Not for a single second did I think Dungone was doing anything but ignoring me… it was OTHER PEOPLE HERE who privately came down on me for suggesting Dungone could not read and told me I was being cruel to him, because he is an immigrant.
I conceded that this could be true.
And then, Dungone admits that he indeed WAS ignoring me, as I always knew he was.
But please, JD, stick to the Boys’ Club. I would be surprised if you didn’t. I now see that this private communication was all part of being played. Honestly, in my desire to think the best of all of you, I am ALWAYS taken in.
Yes, you know who you are.
PS: I defend immigrants and immigration virtually every single week on my radio show, and I have paid dearly for that position in conservative South Carolina, so I will also politely tell you to go to hell.
“I’m really not down with this kind of xenophobia. Not that you probably care, nor is it relevant as I don’t comment much, ‘
JD, you don’t mean to be funny, but this is funny. The image of Daisy as some kind of xenophobe is just goofy.
Believe me, Daisy knows what it is to be on the wrong end of xenophobia. She gets treated like a Yankee every day, to include vandalism to her car and similar harrassment. So no, the charge of xenophobia doesn’t really stick.
Dungone: @JDCyran, she obviously doesn’t mean it or even understand where she’s stooping to.
Then again, maybe he really CAN’T read.
Her M.O. is to try to play the victim at all costs and to try to paint her opponent as an oafish brute.
Some people make this far easier than others.
Actually, you are the one whining about your military service all the time, and your expected entitlement, that we should all bow at your feet for it. It pisses you off that some of us still won’t play that Republican game and bleat “thank you for your service!” on cue.
To those ends she also goads me with comments about being a mindless follower for having served in the Marines (notice her remark about General Grant)
1) General Grant was not a Marine.
2) Dungone manages to work a reference to being a Marine at least once in every thread. How can we address him WITHOUT somehow referring to it? He needs to understand that like me referring to my background as a leftist, not everyone is going to see that as a positive. Get used to it.
– she’s just as likely to say that I can’t read because of that, or because I’m a man, or any of the other things that are acceptable for a Marxist or a feminist to insult someone with.
Pay attention, everybody…. speaking of goading.
Red-baiting has nothing at all in common with Marine-baiting, now does it? Marines are HOLY and SACROSANCT and Marxists are BADDDD and EVILLL. No “goading” going on there, no sirree. (rolls eyes) Come now, Dungone… you tip your hand with such transparent nonsense.
But again, I am genuinely curious: why did you approvingly quote a well-known Marxist to me (Vivian Gornick) if you dislike Marxists? Are you confused or … just unable to read?
I just don’t think she was really thinking when she extended it to immigrants, since that’s not really what her whole spiel is about.
Not that you would know, since you can’t read.
That’s all it is, she’s just trying to goad me, probably in hopes that in my own intemperance I will say something even more egregious that she can brandish about later.
You are habitually egregious, without me doing a single thing. You are equally egregious in threads in which I don’t say anything at all.. so what’s up with that?
But she really shouldn’t have outright lied about what other readers might have said about me, because no one has ever said that.
You have access to my private emails now? Since when?
Danny: The reason people have such a hard time with this is because it is being used as an illusion. The ones that are spewing the silliness and hatred hide behind this as a way to protect their silliness and hatred. If one challenges it they can just respond with the claim that since they are challenging it they must be against women.
I understand the sentiments, but I am suggesting we come up with better and more specific terms. This usually gets me tarred and feathered around here, as when I disagreed with the term “tradcon”–to me, trad cons are religious conservatives who hate women (i.e. Jim Bob Duggar, the Pope, etc), while to the MRA-users of this term (mostly yankees with few actual “traditionalist conservatives” in their midst) this signals some kind of old fashioned chivalry (that was only extended, as you know, to white women of certain classes, not to most women in the world). Still, I think the terms are sorely lacking, and I won’t use ‘tradcon’ for this reason… what I mean is not what THEY mean.
Likewise, to me, the simple word “feminist” just means what the dictionary says it means. This is what I think it also means TO MOST APOLITICAL PEOPLE –which is most people. Thus, to say you are “anti feminist” is going to sound weird and backward to most people and will likely attract much of the ‘wrong’ element to your cause (malcontents)… in fact I think that has already happened, to a large degree. Better terms would be (nods to ballgame) “feminist critics” or ‘those critical of feminism’, which has the effect of making people interested in hearing more of what you have to say. I would go further and simply try to popularize the term “misandry”–since it does not target the movement known as “feminist” AT ALL, and also includes men who may do/say misandrist things. For instance, we can say, August Strindberg was misogynist (just read that recently, in the course of a criticism of his plays) and go on to talk about his work in that light, keeping this fact in mind. We can say, Mary Daly was misandrist, and go on to talk about her work, similarly. It should be a simple fact that people understand, and so far, I don’t think they do. It is not a popular or well-known concept.
To say “feminism sucks” will make mainstream people who thank feminism for (examples) giving them the freedom to be male ballet dancers or female car mechanics, to think you don’t like them and want to reverse this progress. This is not what I think you want.
The word “feminist” to most people, is the dictionary definition. If that is incorrect, you can make the case, but words like “female supremacist” (my favorite term, since I come from the era in which the term “male supremacist” was used routinely) would go to the heart of what you are trying to say.
I am talking about WORDS, and the advice of my patron saint, Philip K Dick (R.I.P.), who famously said: “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
The word feminist has been colonized and used. Other terms must be employed. For instance “Civil Rights”–the conservatives who wanted to criticize people they perceived as “racial opportunists” (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton), could not say “Civil Rights Activist Al Sharpton” without being perceived as somehow attacking Civil Rights, so instead they started using terms like ‘race-baiting’ and the aforementioned “racist opportunist”… the term “racialist” had a brief heyday on the right, but faded out. But they had a hard time making clear what they were talking about: political opportunists they felt had used the Civil Rights movement to advance their own careers or engage in (what they perceived as) demagogue-type behavior.
I am saying, this is similar to the position the MRM is now in.
A lot of feminists just tell us outsiders that we need to see that those feminists “don’t count” or at least their material “doesn’t count”. The problem is that crosses paths with the idea that each given feminist makes their own feminism in their own way.
True… this is why I think “female supremacist” goes to the heart of what you are describing… in a much more immediate way. Feminist has also ceased to mean anything specific, which is the other problem. Even Patricia Heaton, prolife/conservative actress who attacked Sandra Fluke on Twitter as viciously as Limbaugh did (but you didn’t hear about that, did you?) claims to be a feminist too… thus, gets her off the hook for that behavior.
Perhaps the term “female supremacist feminist” would work?
So for example when some of the crowd at Feministe says it’s okay to presume that all men are either rapists or rapists in waiting (and a mod defends/ignores it) and all that is said is, “They aren’t all like that!” it leaves us wonder how exactly that reconciles with the idea that feminism is nothing more or less than equality for women.
Target the female supremacist remarks like this, singling them out, would be the thing to do. Feminists did the same with “show us your tits” and such, and made specific instances into examples. In other words, choose your battles. The “all men are rapists” thing is a good place to start…. a Feministe blogger who blogs about rape and then pointedly says, “I will delete all comments that say or suggest female supremacist lies such as “all men rape” etc”… and watch the shit hit the fan. But really, as with transphobia, that is what will be necessary, before certain people will stop the meanness and shit-stirring. Right now, bloggers who would say that, are not the ones blogging…. as you know. 😉
On one hand they are feminists because they say so and that’s good enough. On the other making blanket presumptions about any group can’t possibly be in line with equality for women.Sure we could just say that they don’t represent all feminists and that technically is true. But when one can make remarks like that in a major feminist space and not only go unchallenged but actively defended what does that say about feminism being nothing more than equality for women?
It means the word “feminist” has been drained of meaning, which is why we have to go back to the dictionary for some semblance of what it means.
I once participated in a knock-down-drag-out thread in which the book of Judith (in the Catholic Bible/Protestant apocrypha) was posited as “feminist”… which some believe is why Luther left it out of the Protestant Bible. In case you don’t know the story, Judith beheads Holofernes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Beheading_Holofernes and there are lots of paintings of this, etc.
Atheist feminists stood firm that no book of the Bible could be feminist, just because its in the patriarchal Bible. Period. Feminist studies scholars reminded them it was one of the first accounts of a woman kicking some ass for her people, etc. Charges of antisemitism, Christian/Catholic superiority, etc etc etc.,.. it all went to hell in short order. Finally, the “tradcons” and fundies entered the fray, calling us all sinners who did not understand the Bible in the first place. It was a gas!
But then I realized for the first time that the word ‘feminist’ (as in my Patricia Heaton example above) means whatever the user of the word wants it to mean. That is another reason why I think the MRM could greatly benefit from specificity.
Now Daisy I know you don’t have much stock in today’s crock of feminists when their fashion blogging and academics. But one thing to bear in mind, and this seems to be what a lot of today’s feminists either don’t realize or actively ignore, is that those fashion bloggers and academics are today’s forefront of feminism. But as soon as an outsider like more points some stuff like that out what do I get in return? That I am not giving feminism a chance. Which is totally aggravating if for no other reason than they are asking for a consideration that they are not even willing to extend to other people (namely non-feminists and especially MRAs).
I certainly agree… I think I mentioned here (forget which thread) that Jill’s recent piece on eating exotic meats from all the different continents (Anthony Bourdain, call your office), made me sick… I can remember when such a thread would have been inundated with animals rights people. It wasn’t. I realized it because we had already been run off by the bourgeois lifestyle-fashion feminists who don’t want to be made to feel bad about any of their cool capitalist choices. This was startling to me, but I think it signals that “feminism” as a specialized concern/category has indeed been left to a certain class of well-educated feminists on the coasts, the ones who have majored in “women’s studies”… the rest of us really aren’t very welcome, even if we helped start the whole thing.
We are mom, and mom is not welcome at the slumber party.
As always, Danny, your comments are so helpful in getting me to think and further clarify what I am trying to say. 🙂
@Ginkgo:
No, it really isn’t. She seems to be the kind of person who takes offense at her own hurt but happily doles it out to others, which I find to be incredibly trashy. No thanks. The fact that she’s asking people if they “know how to read” now is just infantile.
@ginkgo
I sent it again.
JD, I hereby take back everything nice I said about you for being in Oregon. 🙁
which I find to be incredibly trashy.
I am loud, proud white trash, that is 100% accurate. No argument from me. I am used to being ignored as trash, so I don’t worry about it.
PS: Using that slur illustrates your xenophobia too, Mr College Grad.
Her statement was extremely xenophobic, actually. Her only real defense is that she had no idea how xenophobic it was. Being called a Yankee isn’t even close, by the way. I’ve been called a Yankee when I lived down South, but it didn’t even compare to what I got called when they found out I was an immigrant.
@Daisy, let’s talk about this reading thing and set a few things straight. You – poorly educated and proud of it. Me – went college on an academic scholarship, literate in several languages, and (a little-known secret) an award-winning playwright. You can mock me as much as you’d like for being a “rank and file soldier” or an immigrant, but at the end of the day you’re the one who takes pride in your own ignorance.
Dungone: @Daisy, let’s talk about this reading thing and set a few things straight. You – poorly educated and proud of it. Me – went college on an academic scholarship, literate in several languages, and (a little-known secret) an award-winning playwright. You can mock me as much as you’d like for being a “rank and file soldier” or an immigrant, but at the end of the day you’re the one who takes pride in your own ignorance
Wow, really? In that case, why do you still not know how to spell “Betty Friedan”?
All that book learnin (cough), and you still can’t quite understand that it was other readers here who thought I was going too hard on you for being an immigrant? I have clarified this several times now.
If you don’t understand this, it is obviously because you choose not to.
Since chivalry is decidedly on the outs here, I certainly do not expect those people to speak up.
FTR, I’m a rocket scientist, too. No, a priest… yes, that’s the ticket. A priest. With the Nobel prize (a little-known secret). I speak 26 languages, just like John Paul II did. In fact, when I had lunch with the pontiff back during the twilight years of Liberation Theology, we spoke entirely in Quechua and then we went out to rumba. He wasn’t a bad dancer, for his age.
Got a link to a profile? Facebook? Blog? Anything? It can even be in Quechua. Otherwise, well, excuse me, its time to go rumba with Benedict XVI, who isn’t nearly the dancer his predecessor was.
Auf Wiedersehen!
Sorry – I skipped “feminist grammar for high schoolers.”
Right, that’s not xenophobic – or a lie. Look, talking to you is a monumental waste of time. Please do me a favor and refrain from wasting any more of mine.
How old are you guys??
Please do me a favor and refrain from wasting any more of mine.
Does that mean I don’t get to friend you? Damn.
Tit, a lady never tells her age. But friend me on Facebook and you will have access to my whole Timeline. No Romney crap, though!
I have had to defriend 5 people already, over that shit.
“How old are you guys??”
Tit, the youthfulness that Valerie thinks we need more of is the key to American creativity and innovation.
@Gingko
Tit, the youthfulness that Valerie thinks we need more of is the key to American creativity and innovation.
Actually, yes, ironically. It’s why I plump for a Basic Income: Turns the focus on work-as-source-of-necessities-for-self-and-others to work as a form of self-betterment: Economic, artistic, intellectual, or otherwise…
Fear of losing health insurance, for example, is why Americans are only 2/3rds as likely to be self-employed as Canadians and Brits are.
There’s legitimate fear, and then there’s fear for the sake of power, and we’ve too much of the latter in our economy.
“Actually, yes, ironically.”
Agree that it’s crucial. It’s just that it gets so. damned. old. when oyu live around it all the time.
“It’s why I plump for a Basic Income: Turns the focus on work-as-source-of-necessities-for-self-and-others to work as a form of self-betterment: Economic, artistic, intellectual, or otherwise…”
As pie-in-the-sky as this sounds, it really is the opposite. Learning hw to negotisate the challenges of affluence is harder for a culture than dealing with survival issues. wee have got to work out a sensible relationship with employment – not work, specifically employment. The 80s were a huge wrong turn.
“Fear of losing health insurance, for example, is why Americans are only 2/3rds as likely to be self-employed as Canadians and Brits are.”
This is civil society. A basic standard of health care is as much a part of civil society these days as universal police ptrotection or universal education, if only as a defense against epidemics in these over-crowded-and-still breeding times.
Valerie, when I talk about civilian privilege (which I think is a good thing, which I think is a huge civilizational achievement) this is the kind of thing I am talking about.