From “Assholes Come in Two Flavors”
Gwallan describes how male victims of sexual assault in remote areas of Australia have to drive thousands of kilometers and pay for treatment while paying for women’s treatement:
Australia’s a big place. Outside the south east there’s not much. Male victims in those places often have no choice but to travel thousands of kilometres and pay thousands of dollars for private treatment. Meanwhile their taxes are often funding free services in their own neighbourhoods but which reject them on the basis of their sex.
And then there’s this from Gentleman_Thief on reddit regarding women reducing him down to a performance. And I thought only bros did stuff like that!
The last woman I was with, I couldn’t ‘perform’ (many personal reasons but this isn’t the place), and she started crying then later ridiculing me. She brought it up /with her friends/ and they all had the same hivemind about ‘if a man can’t get it up and use it well, he’s not a man’.
I held my tongue.
A facepalm from reddit’s LadyMRA. If you’re ostensibly part of the Men’s Rights movement, doesn’t it behove you to be passingly familiar with the fact that men face gender-based violence too(potentially exclusively until someone shows me evidence otherwise):
It helps when MRAs don’t try to play oppression olympics and downplay the problems women face. Vice versa. We’re all adults here, surely we can admit that both sides face problems (to varying degrees). Most men aren’t going to experience the terror of dealing with sexual violence or gender based violence, but that doesn’t mean guys don’t face harmful expecations, etc.
My Reply(paraphrased):
I wasn’t aware that women walk the streets in fear of gangs of men mutilating their genitals? (Incidentally there are now reports out of Africa of men being forcibly circumcised by gangs.)
Or are you implying something about rape? If we’re talking about rape, more (or at the very least as many) men are raped in prison than women in the community. Then there’s the rape of adolescent boys in juvenile facilities by female staff. Then there’s the community rape of men(mostly by women) that was, in 2011, nearly equivalent in extent to the community rape of women by men.
And then there’s the rape of men in the Congo. And also the fact that the majority of gendercides around the world target men.
And finally there’s circumcision. Which is still effectively legal to do to men. All around the world.
All of these issues are forms of gendered violence and/or sexual assault that men face.
Most of them are effectively legal to do to men because they are ignored by the government or NGOs.
And the branding of rape victims as “women” or “majority women” by feminists continues apace:
But surely Fast Eddie must be aware that TV Tropes isn’t just a repository of fan clichés and geek trivia. The categorization of tropes that hurt, marginalize, and perpetuate victims of rape and rape culture—particularly women—is incredibly important in a cultural moment where debate about sexist tropes is greater than it ever has been.
A final question. To those of the feminist persuasion who happen upon this post. How should I be reacting to the marginalization of male victims by your “rape culture” discourse?
Everybody together now! What-if-the-genders-were-reversed?
Anyway, here’s a link to thursday night’s A Voice For Men radio show on Rape Culture.
- What will Dior’s decision regarding Johnny Depp mean for male survivors? - August 10, 2022
- Chauvin Released, Teen bullied for supporting trump, False accuser forced to apologize| HBR News 277.5 - October 13, 2020
- What Jordan Peterson checking into Rehab can teach us all - October 26, 2019
by 
“To those of the feminist persuasion who happen upon this post. How should I be reacting to the marginalization of male victims by your “rape culture” discourse?”
By extending the discourse to male victims? By pointing out how the same problems with silencing, victim-blaming, and the aggressive male/passive female narrative also hurt male victims? By extending the discourse to other groups traditionally ignored or marginalized in feminist anti-rape projects?
I think that recognizing rape is a human problem that affects male humans equally might impede it’s use as a tool to sexually shame male humans into a state of gender dysphoria, which they then have to “earn” their way out of by “manning up” and turning the engines of capitalism.
See, this is why I hate it when women and/or feminists complain about men pulling the “whatabouttehmenz” card. The response is “we know thats a problem, but thats not the topic now.” Okay fine. Here’s the problem there:
I have yet to see any article not specifically written by/for the MRA movement that is about male rape victims that doesn’t, within roughly the first three paragraphs (or even the first three sentences) have some version of the sentence “Now we know that rape effects women way more than men”
@ Paul
“I have yet to see any article not specifically written by/for the MRA movement that is about male rape victims that doesn’t, within roughly the first three paragraphs (or even the first three sentences) have some version of the sentence “Now we know that rape effects women way more than men””
Actually there are quite a few MRA articles arguing that rape emphatically does not affect more women then men.
Because it doesn’t.
I know TB, I disclaimed those articles here: “I have yet to see any article *not specifically written by/for the MRA movement*”
I know MRAs are aware of these things and don’t minimize this way, but everyone else does.
@Paul:
Even if you did see an article not by an MRA that said such and wasn’t followed by the “women more than men” trope, I’d be willing to bet that there’d still be some attempt at dismissal with a “but men are the primary perpetrators” type phrase You know, as if that would somehow make the rapes less worthy of being talked about.
Misread, sorry!
And, yeah, wouldn’t perpetuating an asymmetrical view of rape as something men do to women because… penis! logically be rape culture?
The problem is that the term is hopelessly tainted by it’s use to demonize male sexuality and impugn collective guilt upon men.
@Typhonblue
I think that recognizing rape is a human problem that affects male humans equally might impede it’s use as a tool to sexually shame male humans into a state of gender dysphoria, which they then have to “earn” their way out of by “manning up” and turning the engines of capitalism.
Typhonblue, that is not what gender dysphoria is. The radfems have tried that line and attempted to appropriate gender dysphoria for themselves already.
And, yeah, wouldn’t perpetuating an asymmetrical view of rape as something men do to women because… penis! logically be rape culture?
Yes, yes it would… but somehow in the unidirectionalist mindset, men are the ones who need to stop fulfilling teh patriarchie’s narrative that they are rapists by ceasing to rape. Which… I’m pretty sure that everyone’s on board with the idea that you shouldn’t rape someone… well, almost everyone… (looking at you, Amanda Marcotte.)
@Paul
Sorry for the triple post, but here goes:
I know MRAs are aware of these things and don’t minimize this way, but everyone else does.
I’m a feminist and I bring this up ALL THE TIME… to paraphrase The Newsroom: I’m not an MRA, I just sound like one because I believe that the wage gap is caused by differentiated preferences, not Andrew Dice Clay.
@ Valerie Keefe
“Typhonblue, that is not what gender dysphoria is. The radfems have tried that line and attempted to appropriate gender dysphoria for themselves already.”
From what I’ve read it also covers milder “symptoms” then transexualism.
Further, if I understand this correctly, you are a woman. You’re not uncomfortable with your gender identity, so why would gender dysphoria apply to you?
“….it’s use as a tool to sexually shame male humans into a state of gender dysphoria, ..”
I think “gender anxiety” is more descriptive of what is actually going on.
I said a while back that the only “rape culture”, the only culture that sees everything in terms of rape, that normalises and trivialises it and uses it to consciously keep women in a state of fear, is feminism itself. Elevatorgate shows that pretty clearly, as does the online spat over Kate Beaton and the male fan who said he wanted to have her babies – any expression of male sexuality, no matter how respectful or ironic, is interpreted through the prism of rape and seen as something inherently hostile to women. That’s “rape culture”. No matter what modern mainstream feminists say about repudiating Dworkin, if they subscribe to “rape culture” or its manifesto, “Schroedinger’s Rapist”, they’re still working from her playbook.
@Typhonblue
Further, if I understand this correctly, you are a woman. You’re not uncomfortable with your gender identity, so why would gender dysphoria apply to you?
Well, at the moment, it’s in remission, but for a long time I was uncomfortable with it, because, like most people, I had internalized cissexism to the point where I wasn’t allowed to think of myself as who I was, but rather, who I was expected to be, and how well I could imitate that.
And yes, I would say to an extent that I’m still uncomfortable, that I still have this internalized, existential, self-hate that requires validation… it’s just not at the level where it’s life-threatening any more.
Cis women worry that if they don’t conform to sexist preconceptions of who a woman is that they may be flawed women, but they don’t have to reconcile that discomfort with a society that tells them that they’re not women, merely deluded men that are being humoured out of pity. We are social creatures, dependent on the reactions and perceptions of others for the occasional sign post, and it is the cissexism which trans women face, which cis women do not, that differentiates dysphoria from the niggling little voice in the back of your head saying you should pick up the latest edition of Cosmo.
I have seen this mentioned, perhaps here, that when we talk about “privilege” we are really talking about 2 distinct things:
1) “Privileges” which are actually human rights: dignity, a certain level of respect from others, etc. These “privileges should be extended to everyone. E.g. it’s not really privilege when a white person isn’t afraid of getting his/her ass beat when the cops pull them over for a traffic ticket, its normal. Brown people should have access to that “privilege”, but obviously don’t always.
2) Privileges which are exactly that, the extension of special treatment to a certain group or class. One example germane to our discussions here is the assumption of parenting skill by mothers/women, in context of divorce/family court. (That assumption might totally suck for women who are crappy parents outside that context.) Another might be the assumption of legitimacy extended to male public figures which is not extended to their female counterparts (e.g. asking Hillary Clinton about her wardrobe)*.
Obviously, we should encourage everyone to have access to the first category, and in an ideal world, no one should have access to the second. Some people think we need to artificially extend category 2 privileges to groups that lack category 1 “privileges”. (Affirmative Action). I would prefer extending group 1’s to everyone, but I see the motivation for artificial group 2’s.
All this was to make the point that not being afraid of rape every time you go outside is a category 1 “privilege”. And thusly, being afraid solely on the basis of membership in a group determined at birth is not a lack of privilege, it’s violence. And feminism very much needs this violence to continue if they want people to feel the need for feminism to continue in its current form. It’s not entirely different from police forces which are not designed to combat the sources of crime, but instead to combat the symptoms. I would argue modern feminism has reached the same point, and to much the same outcome: many good people still call themselves feminists (there are a few here), and work towards ending the root causes of social imbalances based on sex/gender**, but those that get their message out the most are simply trying to maintain the status quo.
* I put this in the second category because I believe that we should not extend any assumption of legitimacy/credibility to public figures. If you believe we should, you might have filed this in the first category.
**I think if you really are working to end lack of cat1 “privileges” for a certain group, you will end up benefiting the mirror group as well. Thus, feminists who work to really and truly end discrimination against women are also doing a service to men. – Bit of a No True Scotsman, I know, but if its true, its true.
“Rape Culture” is a rhetorical device that allows people to equate rude behavior with rape. Once they have equated the behavior with rape, they win the argument, as anyone arguing against them can now be demonized as being pro-rape.
The argument is a form of the slippery slope fallacy; However, rather than claiming that rude behavior will lead to rape (a difficult claim to sell,) proponents will claim that rude behavior and rape are already on a continuum. (Perhaps a continuum of misogyny?)
This is a form of ideological superweapon, because once you have been accused of contributing to rape culture, you cannot argue against the accusation; to deny your participation in rape culture is, in itself, participation in rape culture. There is no defense.
If anyone has a good idea about how to fight against this rhetorical tactic, I would love to hear it.
EGR,
“If anyone has a good idea about how to fight against this rhetorical tactic, I would love to hear it.”
Well here’s you one point right here:
“I said a while back that the only “rape culture”, the only culture that sees everything in terms of rape, that normalises and trivialises it and uses it to consciously keep women in a state of fear, is feminism itself. ”
Here’s another:
Society is far more generous in granting women access to men’s bodies than men to women’s bodies. Presumed access to someone’s body is a core feature of a rape culture.
http://goodmenproject.com/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz/uh-crunk-feminist-collective-we-need-to-have-a-chat/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Merriman – read the section on Cúirt An Mheán Oíche
…and all these strories of f-on-m rape on /r MensRights where nothing happens ot the rapist.
And then finally
““Rape Culture” is a rhetorical device that allows people to equate rude behavior with rape. Once they have equated the behavior with rape, they win the argument, as anyone arguing against them can now be demonized as being pro-rape.”
point out that its a cheap, and emphaize cheap, silencing tactic.
@EGR
You can try pointing out that comparing whatever the fuck they’re complaining about to rape minimizes the pain and trauma of rape. For instance, being invited for coffee or even “Coffee” in a lift is not on a contineum with being raped, to quote the imortal Jules Whinifeild, its not the same ball park, not the same league, not even the same motherfucking sport. They won’t listen of course, because they’ve already attained a level of narcissim wherein the idea that other peoples experiences are somehow as valid as their own is as alien to them as the surface of Pluto, but it gives you a reason to end the discussion.
Isn’t promoting the idea that women are never safe of rape, and so influencing women’s behaviour through fear a part of rape culture. I mean if there were no more (male on female) rapes starting from tomorrow, but the evil patriarchy would still convince women, that they are in great danger of rape and hence control their behaviour, wouldn’t we still live in a rape culture.
Quote from finallyfeminism101
So is feminist handling of the topic “rape culture” not an essential part of rape culture.
See also this weird post in which the author first tells men to oppose and get angry at mainstream feminism and then to align themselves with it. I don’t get what she wants; maybe it is because I see feminists as having some agency and being responsible for what they say.
A final question. To those of the feminist persuasion who happen upon this post. How should I be reacting to the marginalization of male victims by your “rape culture” discourse?
Well, I am feminist, but I don’t have any ‘rape culture’ discourse. I don’t use the term; Kathleen Barry and me never got along.
I don’t marginalize anyone, if I can help it.
I wish people would stop assuming they already know what I think, just because I use the term “feminist” to describe myself. Believe it or not, there was feminism LONG before Women’s Studies Departments existed and colonized feminism for their own professional, careerist reasons.
They are also the ones who started using terms like ‘rape culture’ and “discourse”…
If this is an open thread, here you go–
I have started THE HISTORY PROJECT at my blog… okay, lefty history, but history nonetheless.
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-history-project-part-1.html
Cosplay and super heroes… something for everybody!
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/asheville-comic-expo.html
Albino Skunk Music Fest — features a 3-legged dog and hippies listening to bluegrass
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/albino-skunk-music-festival-2012.html
Odds and Sods-final debate edition.. contains a photo of me at the Voices Against Violence benefit:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/odds-and-sods-final-debate-edition.html
Good music
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/taxes-death-and-trouble.html
My radio co-hosts and my cats:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/weekend-update.html
Give Jill Stein some money! She doesn’t have a $BILLION to spend on her campaign like SOME PEOPLE DO!
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/jill-stein-for-president.html
Oh yeah, last week I wrote about my problem with MRAs and why I can’t finish their posts… they are just too snarky to finish:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/10/my-problem-with-mens-rights-advocates.html
That should do it.
I’m in moderation! Too many links. 🙁
Sorry about that.
Daisy, you can double or triple post any time, but especially when you have a lot of links. I mean, if you are going to go to the trouble of all that research, the least we can do is a be a little grateful.
BTW, an etymological note – the literal translation of “potpourri” is “rotten pot.” I think it fits this collection of quotations very well.
Rape culture refers to so many different problems that it disguises the relationships among these problems.
So there are ideas that enable rapists, and there are ideas that isolate and/or stigmatize survivors. [The ideas that womyn can’t rape and men can’t be raped would be exact examples of rape culture, wouldn’t they?]
And then there are cultural narratives which sexualize some people for being female, for being feminine, for skin color, and body shape, and so on. But I’m pretty sure these are closely related to the cultural narratives which desexualize people for this and that and ought to be considered together. And I’m pretty sure that fantasizing doesn’t require consent, though objectifying should, and how do we define these? And of course there are psychiatrists and medical ethicists and so on pushing defamatory theories.
And maybe we need different words for these things.
And since this is an open thread, I saw this essay earlier today, h/t to Amy Dentata:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-lost-faith-in-the-pro-life-movement.html
Marja, I thoroughly agree that we could use a litle more detailed nomenclature. It’s useful to have this umbrella term; however objectionable it may be, it is equally hurtful when it is turned around and that effectiveness is not something to throw away lightly.
That doens’t mean that there isn’t some broad thing going on here and that some term should exist to cover it.
My comment is still in moderation…should I repeat the non-linked part of it?
@EGR
“If anyone has a good idea about how to fight against this rhetorical tactic, I would love to hear it.”
Point out that rape jokes, cat calls and pornography have never caused any man to rape. Get rid of all of these rude and sinful things and there would still be rape.
But having _been_ raped, in particularly by a woman, is a risk factor for a man to go on to rape women.
If we want to end rape then we need to end rape.
@ Daisy
Your comment is free.
What are we supposed to call the people who use the term “rape culture” then?
Also, MRAs are snarky because (most, many, all?) of us* are extremely pissed off. Every time I turn on the tv or the radio or even let my concentration wander to internet ads I see at least one instance of equating maleness with evil a day. (Somewhat less often I see something equating women with ineptitude, but I see this as the flip side of making men out to be hyperagents and responsible for literally everything.)
*Not sure if I’m an MRA exactly, more a gender agnostic because I notice that every time we over inflate men’s agency in the world(usually by casting them as some sinister, omnipresent evil), we puncture women’s. And considering that feminism(for good, for ill, for neutral or just for something new, after the dust settles)has been one of the biggest socio-political changes in the last century… FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOULD YOU PEOPLE OWN WOMEN’S AGENCY?!?
Sometimes it is, but mostly it is guilt by association. As in, you are already guilty by association (you are male), so how dare you do anything but cower apologetically in your own profound sense of guilt?
It takes a confluence of bad ideas to result in this noxious premise that all men are guilty enablers of rape. Ignoring female rapists and child abusers to make it seem like only men rape or contribute to rape. Ignoring male victims to make it seem like only women are victims. Female feminists walk away from “rape culture” as fast as they can once they realize that there is some chance that they, as members of their gender group, will be seen as just as guilty by association if held to the same standards.
But once the coast is clear, they drag out all of the worst of the worst – the psychopathic paranoid lunatics who want to commit gender genocide and mass castration, women who have never been raped or sexually assaulted and are apparently mentally ill. But instead of guiding them to receive some sort of help, their point of view is portrayed as the normal, sensible response to this social problem. It goes far beyond gynonormativity in the normal sense, it gets to the point of promoting a very sick and twisted version of the female psyche. Schrodinger’s Rapost, anyone? These are some of the same exact people who go on to make claims of satanic ritual abuse. Rape culture is on a continuum, that’s for sure – a continuum of paranoia.
If someone said “all heterosexual sex is rape”, I would consider them a fringe looney. (I really hope that the majority of people, even in the gendersphere, agree with that. If not, I think I will have to cry.)
I want “we live in a rape culture” to be met with the same incredulity. I don’t just want to win a particular discussion; I want to win all the discussions. I want to win ground for people to really discuss the relations between the sexes, without being called a rapist and dismissed, rust for having a penis.
Daisy:
Not all feminists talk about rape culture, but you can be sure that anyone who brings up* rape culture is a feminist. Of course, synecdoche (part-whole confusion) is fairly common in the gendersphere.
Being you must be like being Ron Paul. One of a few lonely libertarians in a Republican party that’s been taken over by other kinds of people.
* Unless they bring it up to deconstruct it.
I think they are perennial ideas, maybe even instincts, that feminism just picked up and “intellectualized”. Women’s investment in sex is higher, so men will always take more than she wants to give: they are all rapists. Women are concerned with excluding pretty much all men from sex to get the best offspring, but this massive majority still expect sex one or more times during their lifetimes: a culture that includes men is rape culture.
I really hadn’t encountered the hypoagency claims before.
I had encountered strong intersectional critiques of the way poor womyn might not have the same options as rich men, and strong intersectional critiques of the shitacular ‘personal-responsibility’ victim-blaming narratives which blame people born with lifelong disabilities for supposed ‘poor life choices,’ and so on.
But I just saw a decent response to a hypoagency claim:
http://dissimilarto.tumblr.com/post/34775579864/all-acts-no-matter-how-empowering-they-may-feel
And yes, there are more problems with the original unidirectional analysis, and the ways it ignores economic class, race, etc. in its narrow focus on sex class.
“I want “we live in a rape culture” to be met with the same incredulity.”
If it’s a white woman feminist saying it I rub her white nose in the lynching campaign that lasted 90 years and the Women’s Ku Klux Klan.
Incredulity is only the starting point.
@ Marja Ewan
The problem with Patriarchy theory(re: your link) is simple. There is no evidence that the male-bodied individuals in charge share any kind of contiguous identity with the male-bodied individuals not in charge.
If we were ruled by trans women would feminists _also_ say they rule for the benefit of other presumptively “male-bodied” individuals?
There is no shared male identity.
Because they don’t understand this truth Feminists vastly overestimate male agency in society.
What was that link even going on about? Women express agency when they kill men and say no to sex, but otherwise they’re pretty much going along with the Patriarchy? And this is better than the “absolutist” version that says that women have no agency at all? I’ve got a question. In which one of these versions of female agency are women actually supposed to go to jail for murder?
@Marja, I’m just going to take a stab at this, knowing that I may have missed the point you were trying to make. But to me, when I read something like this:
I think that’s 100% hypoagency. Hypoagency as it’s been discussed by the couple people who ever brought it up thus far is the idea that women are insecure because they feel that the only thing they have to bring to the table is their sexuality. So by either limiting men’s sexual access or accentuating it somehow, they seek manipulate men’s hypoagency and thus assuage that sense of insecurity somehow as opposed to actual intellectual or mercantile pursuits that would actually bring something more than just sex to the bargaining table.
Strangely, both the original post and the response to it are examples of hypoagency for that reason. And I mean it’s strange just because it’s so obvious what’s missing from the response, if you think about it. Women who choose intellectual pursuits? Not mentioned. Women who ask men out and refuse to wait to be acted upon? Not mentioned. Women who support men financially? Not mentioned. Women who invent, discover, manage, contribute, create, or in any other way display agency that isn’t somehow related to access to their sexual organs? Not mentioned.
All you really get is a rejection of sexual advances, a manipulation of other people’s sexuality, and the option of being able to refuse to hand out sexual favors as a means of subsistence. This is female hypoagency down to a T, as it had been described (I say that because I don’t really agree with the hypoagency theory completely).
Wilson:
So “rape culture” has no explanatory power and is therefore meaningless. We can ignore the concept and go about our business. Thanks!
In the comment above, it was supposed to say men’s hyperagency.Sorry.
I don’t like these terms because they are both misnomers. Women don’t have an actual lack of agency and men aren’t actually full of it. These are just a priori assumptions that people are socialized into rationalizing their own behavior and that of others. But that’s counter intuitive.
I don’t like hypo agency because the person who seems to have coined it tried to use it to explain why women have a herd mentality and try to invade men’s spaces. When in reality, those two things have nothing to do with being female or even being socialized as female- every single religion, ever, creates the same thing. Men aren’t any more immune to it than women.
I do like the term hyperagency, though, because it is basically a better word for Patriarchy which immediately exposes the logical flaws and a priori rationalizations in the feminist framework. If you take any feminist sentence and replace Patriarchy with ‘male hyperagency’ you can immediately start to see what’s wrong with what they are saying.
Should also add that Wilson’s comment is an example of equating all male sexual desire with rape, thereby normalising and trivialising the very concept. “Rape culture”, if it can be said to meaningfully exist, exists in the words and deeds of Wilson and those who think like Wilson. Rape culture is feminism, nothing else.
Patrick, I think that you missed that Wilson was describing the assumed viewpoint of a (rather myopic) feminist. I don’t think they were actually arguing for those ideas.
Dungone,
“In which one of these versions of female agency are women actually supposed to go to jail for murder?”
At present it seems to depend on the status of the womon and the biases of the judge. So that Cece McDonald is in prison for self-defense against violent neo-Nazis.
“In which one of these versions of female agency are women actually supposed to go to jail for murder?”
At present it seems to depend on the status of the womon and the biases of the judge. So that Cece McDonald is in prison for self-defense against violent neo-Nazis.”
Marja’s example is good. It shows how the less feminine one is read the more agency is ascribed. Race and class come into this. Black women routinely report things that indicate they get read as feminine less in this society than white woemn do, and their actions are punished more like men’s than white women’s are. The same is true for working class white women. Looking at incarceration rates beyond the standard categories of gender and ethnicicty you will see exactly what kind of white women go to prison and which don’t.
And that’s if you get read as female at all. Cece McDonald probably had that going against her too.
I don’t see Marja’s comment as being directly relevant to my question. Feminists and tradcons only assign hypoagency to certain groups of very, very privileged people. Certainly not to a minority trans individual acting in self defense. It was a good point, though. I should have worded my rhetorical question differently. Under which version of feminist and/or tradcon theory does a woman who is recognized as a woman by feminists and tradcons actually deserve to go to jail for murder?
I read a comment on the Guardian cif site the other day making the point that that arguing that rape culture is not a valid description of our society is part of rape culture.
So basically they’ve theorised themselves into the position where their beliefs are unfalsifiable; any evidence or rational argument against this dogma becomes, in the mind of the feminist, evidence for the dogma. It reminds me of people who actually believe in the devil: any argument that god doesn’t exist has been planted by the devil, therefore their precious little beliefs are safe from any criticism.
Well, that assumes retribution/revenge is justice. I for one don’t think retribution/revenge against human beings is even compatible with justice. I don’t think you can get justice by returning evil for evil. I think you have to do what you can to undo the evil.
I don’t think there’s a universal feminist theory of justice. I imagine some would choose one way or the other based on misandry, but most would choose based on their theory of justice, and their understanding of the particulars.
@Marja, can you just answer my question? Is there ANY feminist theory which suggests that, under the Patriarchy, women should go to jail for murder?
Marja Erwin:
To respond to a question like that with a meditation on revenge and its justification is in and of itself an appeal to the idea of female hypoagency. In making that response, you assume that evil done by a woman must always be a reaction to evil done to that same woman and exclude the possibility that a woman might actively and of her own accord commit an act of murder or of physical violence against an innocent person. This assumption of reactive female violence is identical to that which forms the basis for the dismissal of male victims of abuse as having “done something to deserve it” (a rationalization which I happen to know from experience even extends to excuse violence done to children).
WTF? Did either of you read my response? *headdesk*
By retribution/revenge, I’m referring to the criminal/prison system. I’m against it. I’m not sure what you were reading into that. Many feminists support prison reform, and I for one would seek prison abolition, and this would benefit men as well as womyn.
I think it’s because you didn’t answer it fully. I was asking about “female” (feminist-identified-female) specifically. You answered the question generally, without addressing the specific contrast that feminists make between male agency and female agency. Feminist conceptualization of female agency under Patriarchy seem to imply that women shouldn’t go to jail for murder. And in fact, there are feminist organizations who take it upon themselves to support releasing all women from jail, but not the men. There are some feminist organizations that even refer to women who murdered their husbands as “victims” without exception.
If it’s anything like the Duluth model, then no thanks. I don’t support brainwashing of prisoners.
Marja Erwin:
I think the problem is that your response fails to communicate the intent you are now ascribing to it because you provide no context to indicate that you are talking about the criminal justice system. You only talk about revenge/retribution in the abstract. You do not provide any response at all on the general question of responsibility, which arose from the question of agency.
Additionally, I have never seen a work or action from significant contemporary feminist-identified persons or groups which fits your description as far as equal benefit goes, but I have seen an awful lot specifically advocating the opposite.
Also, I have come to view such arguments as merely evasion tactics to sanctimoniously avoid addressing imbalances inconvenient to one’s philosophy. They appear far more often as a shield against criticism than they ever have as attempts to actually advocate or accomplish anything.
@Typhonblue
The problem with Patriarchy theory(re: your link) is simple. There is no evidence that the male-bodied individuals in charge share any kind of contiguous identity with the male-bodied individuals not in charge.
If we were ruled by trans women would feminists _also_ say they rule for the benefit of other presumptively “male-bodied” individuals?
Trans women aren’t male-bodied, when will this idiotic meme die?
@ Valerie’s Horse:
Do you ever get tired? Does she ever get off of you long enough to actually read posts by other people? Btw, you sure are a tall horse.
@ Valerie:
You missed the word presumptive. You have eyes, use them.
@ Valerie
What I’m referring to are those individuals who categorize their bodies as male but still believe that their gender identity is socially determined based on an arbitrary set of behaviours.
They don’t derive their positive social identity from having a male body, although they recognize that their body is, in fact, male.
Valerie, heads up… I sent you a message on Facebook. I did not know how else to contact you… it is not about this thread in any way, apologies for being off topic! Just letting you know. You may find the info helpful.
@Equilibrium_Shift
I noted that the word presumptive was preceded by the word other thus the construction of that sentence would refer to cis men as the other group of ‘presumptively male-bodied’ people. The criticism stands.
Valerie:
Actually, as the construction appears in your quote it refers to both trans women and the “other” group (presumably cis men) as “presumptively “male-bodied””. In order for it to only include cis men, at least one additional comma would be necessary. I am inclined to think that the scare-quotes around “male-bodied” also play an important role in constructing the meaning of the sentence (i.e. that the “male-bodied” might not actually have male bodies).
Reading the original comment again, it seems like it is referring to groups of people presumptively considered “male-bodied” by feminists.
Re: black women receiving harsher sentences for crimes than white women.
Shi’dea Lane, the woman who spat upon, punched and choked a bus driver prior to being punched back and thrown off a bus, received a six-figure settlement from Cleveland’s transit authority. Cleveland has the same set of rules as NYC (concerning the assault of bus drivers). In NYC, a teenaged (and sometimes, even pre-teen) boy who assaults a bus driver is charged as an adult, no questions asked. There have been cases of obviously juvenile male assailants who received an adult felony charge in NYC for hitting a bus driver with food or water (even when the bus wasn’t in motion.) Ms. Lane, OTOH, physically assaulted a bus driver while the bus was in traffic. On top of that, unlike the average male assailant, she was serving probation for her assistance in an armed robbery-turned-shootout (her male co-defendants are still in jail.)
If she had received the same punishment for her offenses as a male perpetrator, she wouldn’t have been in the position of earning a dime from the government for committing a violent act against an innocent party.
@ Valerie
I’m not even referring to trans women at all in the construction.
I’m referring to the male bodied who do not take a positive sexual identity from having a male body but, instead, take it from how well they adhere to a hierarchy of behaviour.
They don’t identify as women _either_.
Reading the original comment again, it seems like it is referring to groups of people presumptively considered “male-bodied” by feminists.
Being a feminist myself I think the definition of feminist needs tightening for that to be accurate.
Valerie:
I didn’t say anything about whether or not it was true, just that that is, to the best of my ability to decipher, what the original comment was saying.
MaMu, if she had been white what are the odds the bus driver would ahve been charged?
@Ginkgo
The bus driver has apparently been fired, so jail time on his end is moot. He’s also a 59-year old man to her (IIRC) 24 years, yet he didn’t even receive a “senior citizen’s” punishment discount. If you visit websites with a predominantly black readership, you’ll see that opinions are divided between two groups
18-35 year old black women-who believe that he was thoroughly in the wrong, and that he’d be in jail and the settlement would be in the $500,000 range if the victim had been white.
Everyone else.
It’s the Rayon McIntosh case Part 2.
@MaMu1977…
I’ll stay away from those websites I think. It might enrage me too much.
I saw earlier coverage of the bus driver situation. Thankyou for the update.
I believe it’s now overt truth. Men have no no right to self defence or protection from any woman. Every bus driver in that city should be on strike at this very moment.
Am I missing something, or is this piece extremely condescending?
http://goodmenproject.com/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz/nice-guys-again/
I know that Ozy is usually reasonably sympathetic, and am hoping I am just completely misinterpreting this piece.
@RocketFrog: I don’t think you are missing anything; that piece is very condescending, although the condescension comes from a place of reasonable sympathy.
The simplicity of “maybe almost all women you know look for something in a man you cannot offer, but that doesn’t mena that your niceness, if genuine, is seen as unattractive” doesn’t even scratch the social and psycholgical problems unhappily single, non-assholish people face – see people like Amanda Marcotte who claim that genuine niceness pretty much guarantees romantic success, leading romantically unsuccessful people into a spiral of self-doubt and/or self-loathing.
Bonus points for: Ignoring the social pressure on the issue of who initiates dating, reducing men to inanimate objects, assuming it’s enough for a healthy sexual self-image if exactly one person is okay with having sex with you, and ignoring the way many young women respond to unwanted sexual/romantic interest.
Anyone who knows Ozzy knows that on the subject of “Nice Guys” she should be ignored as much as possible.
It’s actually a sign of progress for her that she didn’t seem to take even one side-ways, passive-aggressive dig at those of us who identify as being or having been in that group.
The people at TGMP are wrong. It’s that easy.
Speaking of which, here is your rape/Christian sex cult death story for the Sabbath:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2012/11/the_bizarre_christian_sex_cult.php
Wild, huh? Interesting in light of TB’s apexual paradigm… the cult leader forced a lower-echelon member to kill the cult leader’s wife, so he appears to be getting off, so far. I hope they get the guy in charge instead of just blaming the underling(s).
Re: Oxy’s post at TGMP.
What’s wrong with comparing men (or women) to different colors or furniture? I think its a good analogy, although not sure what “nice guys” have to do with it… in fact, I have decided I am too old to fully understand what “nice guy” is supposed to mean in the current social/cultural context. I don’t think we had (the equivalent of) “nice guys” when I was young, or maybe they just didn’t grow them in the Midwest? Back in the day (pre-feminism, or concurrent with 70s feminism), girls rarely had “friends” of the opposite sex, unless they were gay. I was already married (the first time) by the age 19, so maybe that’s why I was not schooled in “nice guys”–but I would have classified my first husband and present husband as “nice guys”… and my present husband and I just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (insert colorful cartoon hearts here!) … so not sure where this anti-nice-guy consensus is supposed to come from.
For this reason, I am starting to regard “nice guy” as an ageist trope, not a sexist one. It assumes that we are all in the same setting and share the same values.
But as for what Ozy said, it is absolutely true that if you want purple, nobody is going to talk you into orange, and vice versa… and if men want thin or blond or fat or short, they likely will not choose the opposite if they really have a choice. What’s wrong with saying women are the same, and if they want a certain kind of guy, others are not the ones they will choose? Is this really controversial? What is controversial about it, exactly?
Off-topic, but this is just for Daisy:
http://manboobz.com/2012/11/23/innovative-new-bread-metaphor-explains-why-most-women-are-stale-and-moldy/
I hope she can keep the “ageism” accusations in check here, when faced with someone who really IS an ageist.
And anyone who follows that link (warning, misogyny, ageism) understand he only sees women as useful for sex, so basically he’s saying that no women over 34 or thereabouts is capable of being sexy at all.
@Daisy: It’s not wrong per se, but it glosses over some important aspects. One is that “Just go on being the way you are, someone will pick you” is pretty demonstrably untrue for a great many men. Another is the disconnect between the way feminists are perceived to be asking men to act (“nice guy”) and the choices women make in terms of partners I:E “bad boys” or “alpha males” being consistently more popular.
Regarding “nice guy” villification as being ageist, what I’ve noticed is that the nice guy/ bad buy dichotomy tends to exist in young men. As we get older, the nice guys toughen up or become psychological casualties, and the bad boys mellow out or self destruct.
The other point I want to address is that up until the Heartless Bitches International article in the early 00’s ” be her friend first” was the standard feminist advice for ethical dating, or at least it was the advice feminists gave me when I was growing up in the eighties.
@Daisy: My problem with the metaphor is that for one, it takes away all the emotions, agency and humanity from “nice guys” – from a pragmatic standpoint, I doubt anyone feeling bad about one’s romantic lack of success would get anything worthwhile in terms of enlightenment when being compared to that one inaimate, soulless, feelingless curtain in that store that has been hanging there for ages without anyone wanting to buy it.
Secondly, a point I forgot to mention in my previous post: Fuck damn it, people cannot be as easily split into seperate categories as home textiles! There are more dimensions, more “uses” to every single one of us, even in the sexual/romantic realm, that are completely erased by this curtain/floor rug split.
You know what I think would be a better metaphor, if we need to stay within the world of home textiles: There are some pretty decent mint green bed sheets available at the store (a store where the really awesome bed sheets are sold out before 90% of people even heard that they are in stock), but they don’t get sold because for some weird reason, all the world shares the steadfast belief that something that is mint green simply cannot be used as a bed sheet. Mint green bath robes are all the rage, but mint green bed sheets? That would be strange!
@ShoutyBloke: So, the thought pattern behind anti-nice guy sentiments is “We didn’t really think those advice we gave you through, so now we shame you for having followed them!” What a mature way to argue …
Roosh is a douche….
he’s the type of guy who in real life, I’d listen to a few of his tales then say, “Yeah, hook me up with your sister.”
They either get really mad at that or their like well, you are less of a scoundrel then me so maybe….
and if you wanted me to go for some “low blows” he sounds like he is having, ahem “technical difficulties”–maybe he needs to lift some weights and eat better, or maybe he is getting “old.”
I hate roosh almost as much as the white nationalists and male feminists…
yeah, Daisy, we’ve already gone over this….
https://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/some-of-the-grittiest-shit-ive-ever-read/
If they wanted equality, how come they elevate abusive guys like Schwyzer and denigrate inexperienced Nice Guys ™ …..
Clarence, that “bread” thing seems to be a rewrite of the old “geography of a woman” that made the rounds in the 70s. (warning, sexism, ageism) I think it was first credited to Hustler? http://coolquotescollection.com/6100/geography-of-a-woman-between-18-and-20-a-woman-is-like-africa-half-discovered
It was remarkably easy to find, but its been updated… the last line didn’t used to be about ‘Afghanistan’, used to be Cambodia. (The comparison of an old pussy to a war-torn area is fascinating to me; the concept is that too many men have visited and ruined it already).
Also, that last part about men, is a brand new addition since the last time I heard it, decades ago.
Shoutybloke: One is that “Just go on being the way you are, someone will pick you” is pretty demonstrably untrue for a great many men.
(sigh)
But lots of men complain that women try to remake them or change them. I thought that comment was a reaction to that–a way women were trying not to be manipulative bitches?
I have always seen that comment as pro-male and positive. So now I am really confused.
Shoutybloke: Regarding “nice guy” villification as being ageist, what I’ve noticed is that the nice guy/ bad buy dichotomy tends to exist in young men. As we get older, the nice guys toughen up or become psychological casualties, and the bad boys mellow out or self destruct.
I really disagree. Some (most?) men really do not fit into either category. I think classifying men that way is as limited (and sexist) as saying all women are madonnas/whores or sweet girls/bitches. I find it a damaging stereotype and generalization.
Shoutybloke: ” be her friend first” was the standard feminist advice for ethical dating, or at least it was the advice feminists gave me when I was growing up in the eighties.
I think its great advice. It has always worked for me. (?) Why is this supposed to be bad, to be friends with someone? I could not be married to someone for 25 years, who is not also my best friend. Make fun of that all you want, but I am talking about the long haul here.
SWAB: If they wanted equality, how come they elevate abusive guys like Schwyzer and denigrate inexperienced Nice Guys ™ …..
SWAB, I have no idea what a “nice guy” is, by your definition. That is sort of my point.
As for the post you linked: a guy who pointedly brags that he can snag strippers, has tipped his hand… sorry. He obviously has very high standards. For all his fulminating about no sex and doing without (poor dear), I very much doubt he tried one of the dreaded fat girls or otherwise un-stripper-like, ‘socially inappropriate’ women. I find his post as unrealistic as the Harvard women on “60 Minutes” who whined and actually sobbed (!) that they can’t find ‘eligible’ men to marry… obviously “eligible” doesn’t refer to the unmarried plumber who just fixed their faucets. ‘Eligible’ translates into men of a CERTAIN STATUS. The ‘lesser’ men are totally invisible to them. Just like this guy admits he had a wife, had strippers, etc etc… then complains and whines he didn’t get ENOUGH. He thinks hot babes should be throwing themselves at him ALL THE TIME… just like the Harvard ladies seem to think all the doctors and lawyers (and similar, appropriate professional men) should be throwing themselves at them. JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE SO AWESOME.
Narcissism: its a bad thing.
Elementary: You know what I think would be a better metaphor, if we need to stay within the world of home textiles: There are some pretty decent mint green bed sheets available at the store (a store where the really awesome bed sheets are sold out before 90% of people even heard that they are in stock), but they don’t get sold because for some weird reason, all the world shares the steadfast belief that something that is mint green simply cannot be used as a bed sheet. Mint green bath robes are all the rage, but mint green bed sheets? That would be strange!
You have just described how I have outfitted MY WHOLE HOUSE *AND* MY WARDROBE, as well!!!
😉 I mean really.
“Narcissism: its a bad thing.”
hahaha, tell that to the Schwyzer….
anyway, I’m full on MGTOW/Grasseater….
I’ve never been married and don’t have any kids….
notice I didn’t throw in the machismo of “not that I know of…” unlike a certain creepster male feminist…
well, at work one of the guys was like your single, lemme hook you up with one of the homegirls….
I was just like, yeah, let me guess, she has kids…
(I’m not gonna get involved with someone with kids…)
Then another guy was saying I should work full time. I’m an independent contractor and don’t have to work full time. He even said something along the lines of chicks dig guys who make good money. Well, if I’m gonna be judged by my wallet, then I might as well deal with prostitutes. I declined the full time thing, basically saying if I had to do it, I’d walk. (Yeah, you’ll probably call me privileged, but I don’t have health insurance and I pay my own taxes.)
Now the guy who wanted to hook me up with his homegirl was telling the born again Christian with tatt’s that he could take him to a whorehouse over the weekend. I was a little bummed that he see’s me as the Nice Guy who’d hook up with the single mom and see’s this other guy as the fun guy who should get some tail no strings attached. Of course I butted in and said “Are ya gonna introduce him to your mom and sister?” haha-He didn’t like that too much…
now the simplest way I can describe this is women and society see’s some guys as worthy of casual sex and other guys as not. Well, it would be fine if the guys not seen worthy of casual sex were let of the hook, but the double standard is when the single mom expects devotion from a never married/no kids guy. (And he’s looked upon as a misogynist if he dares utter the fact that he thinks she’s “damaged goods.”*) Further more, the guys who don’t feel they are being treated fairly and “opt out” via MGTOW/Grasseater, well society still wants it’s utility from them. Look at all the articles that have been written about the “end of men.” Amanda Marcrapster didn’t sign up for Selective Service at 18 and I did, I’m so fuckin’ privileged.
* that might be a harsh word, but the point still stands that maybe he feels a never married, no kids woman is his peer, not someone who had a chance at a serious relationship and it didn’t work out for whatever reasons….
What is “grasseater” and what does this term have to do with MGTOW?
Wait, don’t tell me. Women = meat, so going without meat is “grasseater”?
Charming!
SWAB: I’m not gonna get involved with someone with kids
What most women hear, when you say this: Obviously, I am far superior to such low class women.
SWAB: Well, if I’m gonna be judged by my wallet, then I might as well deal with prostitutes.
Careful, some of them have children… you might be inadvertently contributing to their kids’ support. Isn’t that against your values?
now the simplest way I can describe this is women and society see’s some guys as worthy of casual sex and other guys as not.
Maybe its because some men say things like “I’m not gonna get involved with someone with kids” and actually expect to be taken seriously by women… then wonder why they can’t get some tail with no strings attached? Saying the right things helps. But if I tell you that, I am criticizing men and a misandrist… but if I don’t, isn’t that the equivalent of saying “You are okay the way you are! Don’t change!” …even though I know NOBODY can get laid saying something like that. (NOTE: Even women without children, don’t want you to say that.)
(sigh)
SWAB, you have confused me terribly. (sobs)
Wow, Daisy, way to miss the point.
I think SWAB was saying more to the extent of he’d only “get involved” with a woman with kids for casual sex and nothing else.
Who could blame him? If he doesn’t want one of his own, why would he want to take on the responsibility of someone elses?
As for me, she’d have to be rather young, have a decent reason for being a single mom, and be willing to have at least one more with me. Otherwise, it’s pump and dump time. Or would you prefer I led her on?
@Daisy re: grasseater
Blame the japanese, they’re the ones who coined the term.
anyway, Here’s the problem with Ozy’s analogy as I see it
The problem really isn’t “consumers don’t really want purple curtains!” The problem is that for the entirety of it’s curtainy life, said curtain has been told that consumers want purple curtains and that all it has to do to be bought is continue to be purple and *poof* it will be bought.
Except… the truth is that not only does the curtain have to be purple, it has to be purple with a blue stripes, be about eight feet wide and come at 20% off the sticker price.
Nobody ever told the curtain *that* and by the time the curtain figures that out (if in fact it ever does) it’s been hanging on the shelf so long it has an inch layer of dust and a rat has chewed up his lower half.
The fact that Ozy’s posting about nice guys again kinda makes me wonder if xir’s hit count has gone down.
Grasseaters are my brothers from Japan….
“About one third of the Japanese workforce is now casual or part-time, and confidence in the future is at rock bottom. For many young men, the post-war dream of lifetime employment, home and family, with all the sacrifices it entailed, is fading. In response, some have turned their energies elsewhere, toward the once feminised sphere of consumption – or away from life altogether.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japans-generation-xx-1704155.html
I’m not quite as, ahem, metrosexual but you get the idea….
Daisy, looks like you intentionally miss read me just so you can pick a fight or pin on me things I didn’t say ala Manboobz….
Daisy:
“Grasseater” is probably better rendered in English as “herbivore”, and it comes from Japanese. In Japan, it was used to describe that young men seemed to be retreating from the world, becoming more passive and less concerned with striving for success in the grueling social and economic hierarchy (trust me, if you’ve never lived in Japan, then you have no idea). In other words, they were becoming placid grazers, “grass eaters”, rather than the active carnivores of social expectation. That active, aggressive, image and success-obsessed role was remarked to be taken on more and more by young women. There is no woman-as-meat metaphor and if the “grass eaters” are single it is only because the women in their society don’t look twice at someone who isn’t fighting to be top dog (there’s also the matter of the absurd difficulty of meeting people in Japan post-university. The increasing loneliness and desperation of the whole population can be seen in the rise of the host and hostess clubs where men and women essentially pay for the illusion of a familiar social relationship with an attractive member of the other sex).
@Daisy:
The point is that according to many younger feminists, a man who tries to build up a friendship with a woman he is sexually/romantically attracted to is an entitled manipulative creepy dishonest predator if he hopes that the freindship will turn into a relationship, or is sad that it doesn’t.
I guess the whole “guys, be friends with the woman, first” advice came from women who didn’t like getting approached by men they barely knew, while the “don’t befriend a woman you actually want a sexual relationship with” came from women who didn’t like finding out that there friends were sexually interested in them.
Good argument for why women should stop giving dating advice to men, generally. Not that they would ever stop. They’re just not serious about it and may very well be malicious. Generalizing this advice to “all men” instead of just the rejectees is just a way disguising the way in which this advice dresses up the meanness of rejection with a dose of guilt tripping and demands for continued chivalry.
Interesting how one of these gets coverage and the other doesn’t:
This is problematic to say the least. But it’s been going on a few years and doesn’t necessarily lead to trouble for someone, is happening a monarchy (not a supposed “democracy”) and doesn’t just happen to women:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/25/world/meast/saudi-arabia-women/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Meanwhile:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/oz-to-launch-false-accusation-app/
“What most women hear, when you say this: Obviously, I am far superior to such low class women.”
Not at all, not even remotely. More like “They have one father already, that’s all you get; let him raise them.”
I remember a commneter on FC five or six years ago who called herself NYMOM. She was always ragging on men for “not taking responsibility for kids” – other men’s kids! This entitled narcissist thought thought there was something wrong with men for not taking in whatever kids a woman happened to have hanging off of her, when she had shucked the father off somewhere back along the road.and the raging sexist part of it is that there is no expectation, much less legal coercion, on women to do anything remotely similar (and quite rightly).
It’s ex post facto cuckoldry. The end result is the same – a man is financially supporting and raising another man’s children. For women to “hear” that not being entitled to a multitude of fathers and chances to correct past wrongs makes them a lower class of women is preposterous – albeit correct. They are lower class than a royal princess. And the equivalent for women would be that if a man was already paying child support, dating him would make a woman legally bound to contribute. But as we know, there is no shortage of women who will look at a man who pays child support and judge him by how much less money he has – quite literally rejecting him as a lower class man.
To me so called nice guys are made. Ladies, if you have a problem with nice guys then perhaps instead of blaming men, change the way you interact with them. Be clear, don’t ask for favors, don’t lead him on.
I also find it odd how some woman say that men with certain personality traits makes these men “hot”. So becoming friends first seems like the logical step to figure these things out. No? Can a woman really determine all these personality traits (humor, intelligent, etc) without “becoming friends”? It just seems contradictory to me.
Anyway as was said by others, this nice guy crap reads like dating advice. I have some advice too. Never take dating advice from someone you’d never want to date.
You shouldn’t take advice from someone who doesn’t know a single other person who would actually go for the advice they’re giving you. If they’re selling you on the idea of a hypothetical person that would have to be miracled into existence, then by all means ignore them. If their ‘hypothetical’ advice only really applies to them, and they wouldn’t want to date you anyway, then tell them to shut up.
Never take dating advice from someone who has never had to use it themsleves, e.g. Amanda Marcotte who has never dated a woman in her life and thus has never had ocasion to test her own advice.
Daisy:
The reason I found it a terribly condescending read is that the use of the household textile metaphor makes me feel that the author thinks the target audience consists of idiots.
It is very possible that the Nice Guy trope had no direct parallel in your youth. Perhaps these guys were created by a pattern of upbringing that did not exist at that time (which would make sense, since many of the Nice Guys who actually write about their experiences online mention being raised by feminist parents, which for obvious reasons is a more common background in my generation than in yours). Personally, I ended up with that particular role because I tried to follow my upbringing (which, among other things, had taught me that modern women liked soft men – which is what they are actually called in Denmark, lest someone starts jumping on me for my choice of terminology), an upbringing which was more or less entirely carried out by feminist women. When I became a young adult, I learned that most women around my own age did not like such men at all – at best, they found men like me “nice, but not boyfriend material”, at worst, they found men like me contemptible and deserving of ridicule and public humiliation. Quite apart from not knowing how to “make a move” (which I still do not), I was also very afraid that any action in that regard would be viewed as oppressive, predatory or creepy.
I do not think anybody was wanting to deliberately bullshit me, or other men like me (and at least in my experience, the women who admonished young men to act like Nice Guys are not the same women who then go on to ridicule and shame those very men for doing so). But it has been my experience that the kind of strategy I was encouraged to adopt (“just be yourself”, “women like soft men”, “become her friend first”) was not just worthless, but worse than worthless: It contributed to (but is of course not the only factor in) making me a person it is impossible for women to be attracted to. I would prefer to have no guidance at all than to be guided straight into a ditch.
I was completely devastated when I read the original H-B “nice guy” piece, because it basically told me that by doing what feminists told me to do, I had become a contemptible creature that embodied all the things feminists hate most.
The suggestion that “what you have is great, it is a pity that nobody wants it” which is the basic message of the piece I linked, is correct, but it infuriates me to have it told to me like I was a child or an idiot. Just because a man is not sexually or romantically successful does not mean that he is stupid.
RocketFrog:
Yes it is condescending and ironically the image Ozy uses, shows one point in which she is fundamentally wrong on this subject:
Ozy:
Of course we can say that people have an inherent value which is not determined by their accomplishments or the judgement of others, but people want to be valuable as a whole person, meaning their intellect, their physical abilities, but also their sexual and their romantic side, etc.. If you lack value in one of those your fundamental sides, you cannot compensate by more value in another side, but will experience and feel this deficiency.
When it comes to the sexual or the romantic side, a person’s value is in practice solely determined by the judgement of other people.
To the image: If nobody wants to buy a curtain, this curtain is effectively worthless. Of course we could form a comitee and discuss what the value of the curtain should be, but all this will not really affect the curtain’s fate. It could be even worse, a curtain nobody wants to buy, unnecessarily takes up place in the shop, hence it even has negative value. Similarly, if there is no demand for a certain person’s sexual or romantic side, those sides are worthless and could be even seen as having negative value. (By demand I don’t mean only “wants to have a relationship with this person”, but anything desired which requires those sides of the person.)
To put it differently consider those two dialogs
RocketFrog:
How do you determine, whether somebody is sympathetic?
Damn:
Please erase or forget the line:
“To put it differently consider those two dialogs”
At first I wrote more, but desided then to erase it.
She never had to use her advice to date a man, either. Nor have the vast majority of women who give it. As far as I’m concerned, they’re back-seat drivers.
apparently this is how broads these days look at marriage:
http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/starter-husband
but, yeah, I suppose a feminist will tell me that the divorcees and single mom’s are more “experienced” and more “mature.” Or is it more desperate…
I suppose being wary of women is the same as being distrustful, so that officially makes me a misogynist—go spread that around the gendersphere everyone!!!!
and, yeah, as far as the little tiff with Daisy….
howabout this analogy…
If a non-smoker says they don’t want to get involved with a smoker where’s the double standard there?
How come it’s different if a never married, no children man says the same thing…..
Didn’t wisest of the wise (borrow flashing SARCASM button from the Manboobz bigot) Amanda Marcotte say in her dating advice article that like follows like aka a stock broker dude probably can’t relate to the bookish anime chick?
Wouldn’t it also follow that although I might be the same age as the divorcee with kids, since her life took such a different ark, we really aren’t peers?
Oh, but wait I think I know the real answer here…..
I’ve been assigning good faith to someone who thinks I’m less than…
I should be kicked in the balls, humiliated, made fun of and take it all in good stride like it was a fun joke. I should laugh along with the feminasties on TV about the man who got his penis cut off (and thrown in a garbage disposal) when he asked his sociopathic wife for a divorce. After all, as a man, I should go to the battlefield and gladly die for oil. After all, as a man, I should jump in a cage of rabid dogs and sacrifice my life to MAYBE give another man’s son a chance. After all, I should take the first blow as a husband to my abusive wife, never complain and most of all NEVER hit her back–and if anyone ever asks about the black eye’s I can say weekend rugby in a gruff macho voice. After all, I should “marry the sluts”, the women my age who passed me by when I was 19, the one’s who had “their adventures,” had kids with another man, made fun of me as not good enough, had fun with the “alphas” but now want a doormat, um, stable provider who won’t complain.
It’s the same reason the Manboobz bigot makes fun of men who use sex toys but would NEVER make fun of the empowered women at Jezzebel who write articles about their beloved vibrators. It’s because I should always be in a state of desperation and constant horniness, ready to drop everything for a scrap of pussy, or **gasp** some affection. I should always be the pursuer and never complain about being pegged as Schrodinger’s rapist. And if I dare complain about the inequity of the whole situation–I am subhuman Nice Guy ™ garbage of the lowest order-much worse that Hugo Schwyzer who almost killed an ex GF in a drug fueled rage–at least he REFUSES to question female privilege…
FUCK
THAT
SHIT
end.of.rant
I feel better…. sort of…
SWAB, I think you just wrote a post for us. Thank’ee. It says a lot in a short space.
I dread looking at that video. The very term “starter husband” just reeks of male disposability.
Ah yes, the “starter husband.” Ginkgo I’ve read that article before, it’s exactly as bad as you think it is… actually, it’s probably worse.
Is it really so hard to understand why someone wouldn’t want to date someone who already has kids? Kids can really put a damper on things like going out on dates and having alone time. It doesn’t have to be with being “old” or being a “used good” or “low class”. And there is such a thing as single fathers.
In some respects it does happen, though – it is a part of it – and I don’t have a problem with that. Yes, men do have dating standards that tend to exclude women who are on a lower socio-economic level. And being a single mother is indicative of being less educated, less financially stable, etc. But the thing is, those women have most often already rejected their own peers when they only accept relationships with higher earning, better educated men. It’s hypocritical to then turn around and complain that higher status men are treating them as if they were lower status – well, they are lower status. We don’t see a lot of college educated professional black women settling on the average under-employed low status black man and marrying them, do we?
There’s just very little room to complain when the few socio-economic standards upheld by men are completely dwarfed by women. There’s a very good reason why the average age at which men first marry is several years later than women – it generally coincides with the man having to attain a higher level of financial stability before being considered “marriage material” by women.
Here’s a more or less passable article to give us some background http://www.economist.com/node/9218127
Please not how she already rejected a man from her own socio-economic level as not being adequate for her.
Same article goes on about another woman:
This one rejected three men from her own socio-economic group (badmouthing the one who supposedly hit her, but we get no explanation for why she rejected the other two). Now she wants God to help her find a man she actually wants. It’s kind of sweet, but yet it’s so entitled. I could tell her what the right man is supposed to look like… “God” already showed her 3 different ones.
@dungone,
I wouldn’t discount the possibility that she was rejected by those men, since by becoming involved in a relationship with her, they will then be responsible for child care for her previous children, as cuckoldry, ex post facto, as you say.
check this shit out:
“Women aren’t embracing a new masculine ideal as quickly as men need to adapt in order to keep their heads above water. Plenty has been written about women who struggle with this shift – struggle with being attracted to men of lowered status. Just a personal example: my girlfriend makes twice as much money as I do, and I’m struggling finding a better-paying job than my current one. I suggested that maybe it’s at the point where she could just be the breadwinner. “Fuck it, here’s the bread sweetheart, you won it.” If we have kids, I could be a domestic dad. She’s not cool with that idea though. She prefers that I get a better job which would allow her to pare back at her current job. There’s not much adaptation in any of this. It’s the same old model.”
http://glpiggy.net/2012/11/27/it-takes-two-to-make-a-thing-go-wrong/
keep in mind, Chuck Rudd is one of the alter righties who hung out at Inmalafide, not one of the more proggy types from Feminist critics…
Good link to an excellent blog, SWAB.
@ES, that is a possibility, as are a few others. However, the bottom line is that in her own words, there are two men who are great fathers and reliable financial supporters, while she herself doesn’t know what she’s really looking for in a man and hopes to someday find one she likes. Even if it all 3 men had the same idea – they were the ones who left her – she doesn’t seem to think of it that way.
The Hanna Rosin response… it’s like dumb and dumber. A tradcon and a feminist arguing about how to bury a corpse.
@dungone,
that is true. It seems like she does view them as good fathers, but apparently, not good enough to be good husbands, despite the similarity of those roles, esp. when married to a woman like her.
I get the feeling that in certain sections of society, an ex who reliably pays child support is regarded as preferable to a present dad. I remember a friend of mine was once pursued by a woman whose goal appeared to be a baby and a divorce. A monthly direct debit is not another human being you need to accommodate in your life.
“I get the feeling that in certain sections of society, an ex who reliably pays child support is regarded as preferable to a present dad. ”
Patrick, what part of “a woman nees a man like a fish needs a bicycle” do oyu not understand?
ES
“that is true. It seems like she does view them as good fathers, but apparently, not good enough to be good husbands,”
And yet the gender flip of that, the surrogate mother – “drop the kid and hit the road, okay?” – is somehow dehumanizing and horrible and sexist.
@Patrick, one should never take risks with someone who has nothing to lose. I would not want to get involved in a casual relationship with any woman for whom child support from me would be a lifestyle improvement for her.
SWAB: I’m not gonna get involved with someone with kids
Clarence: Wow, Daisy, way to miss the point.
(sigh)
SWAB and Clarence, actually you are the ones who have misread me… I do not mind you having your own standards; we all have them. But I AM telling you that you simply shouldn’t say that when you are actively trying to get girls. Do you understand the difference?
I am trying to get you guys laid here, okay? Certainly, you don’t have to heed my advice… but my single male friends tell me it is usually excellent. 🙂
Women often hear that comment as 1) proof you think you are superior to women with children, and/or 2) a mean guy who doesn’t like children. Either way, can hurt your chances. My advice is: don’t SHARE those standards, with anyone. (Even other men… men will tattle on you and tell prospects, “he doesn’t like women with children”–to try to elbow you out of the way, so that’s why I think you should keep such sentiments totally to yourself).
SWAB: and, yeah, as far as the little tiff with Daisy
I didn’t realize we were having a tiff. You guys are SO oversensitive.
SWAB: If a non-smoker says they don’t want to get involved with a smoker where’s the double standard there?
None at all, see above. What I would personally choose to say is, “cigarette smoke makes me sick” or some half-truth, so as not to be seen as judgmental… but if possibly being seen as a moralist or prude doesn’t bother you, go for it.
What if you meet some hottie who smokes or has kids and has 2 million dollars? 😉 You may reverse those standards in a heartbeat. Leave your options open! i.e. “Wow, cigarette smoke always made me sick before, but YOUR cigarettes don’t! It musta been those CHEAP brands, darling!”
SWAB: end.of.rant
Victim chic, men can do it too! (*applause*) And what does that accomplish, besides making yourself a victim? I am pretty sick of it from everyone, quite honestly.
Question: You keep mentioning Hugo… is this a call-out?
Okay, let me elaborate.
My defense of Hugo during the extended Hugo Homicidal Follies, was a defense of someone I saw as being attacked because of drug addiction and what he did while an addict. I find feminist blogdonia VERY hypocritical in that any kind of rude, nasty, vicious behavior is countenanced and accepted from people who claim they have various mental challenges, “triggering”, PTSD, ADHD, depression, bipolar, schizo, BPD, etc etc etc. And yet, addiction is not given the same pass, and there is NO tolerance of it… although there is certainly a helluva lot more proof of its existence than there is in depression being a “chemical imbalance” and other just-so stories. This is because addiction is considered low class. There is more “chemical imbalance” in the body of one who has used drugs/alcohol over a long period, than there is in some “triggered” person that we are all supposed to tiptoe around.
In any event, I was violent when I drank also. That was a big reason I quit. If I had been a pussycat, would not have been the problem it was. That is sort of the point.
The way Hugo was feted and flattered by feminists and then suddenly tarred and feathered over this one story of his, was mighty weird. I found it particularly odd and hypocritical that some of the MAIN “mental health feminists” were the first to start peeling and eating him alive (Hi Ginmar!). I still find it odd and don’t get it. Thus, I defended Hugo as a fellow addict/alcoholic, not as a man or male feminist. I found the whole spectacle sordid and gross. As I wrote in my 30-year sobriety-anniversary post, I decided there were a lot of things *I* would not be writing about, as a result.
I resent the fact that some people can write about all manner of goofy, crazy behavior and still be accepted and get ((((hugs)))) from feminists, and drug addicts can’t. But Hugo died for my (our) sins, and as a result of the way he was savaged for his honesty by the morally-pure, perfect people, means I will be keeping my especially-harrowing tales to myself. Even if someone might learn from them…. and in my opinion, that’s too bad.
Just for the record. I figure that is why you keep mentioning Hugo, so wanted to clarify… and thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so.
dungone,
the upside to being relatively poor is that the tiny bit of female attention I get isn’t for my money….
Daisy,
as far as why I hate Hugo….
He’s done worse stuff than me in real life, yet will still shit on me for being a relatively low status male. “Oh, how dare a man like that question the system that I profit from, he has soooo much privilege, doesn’t he poor dears?” Skeeze says to the uncritical thinking students of his….
Yeah, the likes of him and Futrelle…. making the gender discussion less honest and creating the need for guys like me and a few others in the manosphere to call out the general script and tell it like it is….
since you mention drugs and alcohol-well, how much of DV is because of that rather than “patriarchy” as feminists keep telling us?
And, yeah as someone who is not exactly straight edge, I still like the old Frank Zappa quote where he basically said “Drugs and alcohol is an excuse to act like an asshole.”
Anyways, in my parents case, they just slapped each other around ’cause their both mean…
SWAB: And, yeah as someone who is not exactly straight edge, I still like the old Frank Zappa quote where he basically said “Drugs and alcohol is an excuse to act like an asshole.”
And as a Zappa fan since the 70s, let me say: Frank Zappa could be a first class asshole, so he should know assholes.
I am talking about addiction, a mental illness given to self-destructive, dangerous behavior. Assholery may or may not be included in that. Some people (Kurt Cobain, et al) become rather passive and eventually just commit suicide. It really is a serious matter, nothing to jokey joke about… and as a MENS RIGHTS person, you should keep in mind it is a majority-male condition.
(In fact, that is one reason I think the condition is particularly stigmatized among feminists. I have even been told, more or less, it is mostly about the guys… so I should please shut up about it.)
Thing with Hugo is: He had embraced the standards he was judged against when judging other people men. Honestly, sometimes it feels like he doesn’t think he, individually, did what he did, but that Man did, collectively. It’s actually quite depressing.
On another note, Daisy, and since this is an open thread: Have you seen this tweet and the ongoing discussion, by any chance? Do you by any chance know of a man who wrote, directed and starred in a movie in which he didn’t play an idealized version of himself? 😉
“I am trying to get you guys laid here, okay?”
I can’t believe you just said this, Daisy. What’s next? “Guys, don’t do that!” It’s elevatorgate and skepchickness all over again.
And I am happy to be a prude and be seen as one. Prude and proud, thank you very much.
/disappointed
Daisy,
“Women often hear that comment as 1) proof you think you are superior to women with children, and/or 2) a mean guy who doesn’t like children. Either way, can hurt your chances.”
I think this is quite accurate, Daisy, and it happens to be where the problem is. The problem is with these women and the way they hear these men. they are hearing what they choose to hear rather than what the men are saying.
Why is it so hard for these women to understand that these men are not interested in *other men’s children*? Has there never been a woman who passed up on a man because she wasn’t auditioning to be housekeeper and nanny? Why is this so hard to get?
“I am trying to get you guys laid here, okay?”
You got a spare ex-husband lying around?
“The way Hugo was feted and flattered by feminists and then suddenly tarred and feathered over this one story of his, was mighty weird.”
Yeah. It felt very Palm Sunday/Good Friday.
Daisy:
I always found “The way Hugo was feted and flattered by feminists mighty weird”. Didn’t he write a post in which he blamed an 11 year old girl for the sexual abuse she suffered on the hands of her adult caretaker, while largely absolving him from responsibility. How feminist was that?
If the story of Mr. Schwyzer trying to kill his girlfriend is true, I don’t see what choice feminists had but “tar and feather” him. They would have looked ridiculous criticising Rebecca Watson’s elevator friend or so called “nice guys” whose biggest offense was writing an anomous rant and posting it on the internet.
@Elementary
Charlie Chaplin, Christopher Guest, Alan Alda, Sly Stalone (unless Rocky is an idealized man? Perhaps…), Ben Stiller, Billy Bob Thorton (Yes, he wrote Sling Blade), Nikita Mikhalkov, Tom Hanks, the list goes on, but that should be enough for now
@Elementary,
additionally, you might ask which woman has written and starred in the same movie that didn’t portray an idealized version of herself. It’s a valid question.
amazing video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a9XDb0nxSO4
Gotta love Girl Writes What. That video is quite a nice takedown of the feminist reaction to Nice Guys.
@ES: Huh, nice list there, didn’t think there were *that* many men who took the triple role of writer/director/actor in a movie. The reason I asked Daisy, though, is because I was thinking about a specific men both she and me adore.
When it comes to women, I guess Hollywood sexism is holding them back from ruining their image by playing a flawed human being instead of idealized versions of themselves?
“Didn’t he write a post in which he blamed an 11 year old girl for the sexual abuse she suffered on the hands of her adult caretaker, while largely absolving him from responsibility. How feminist was that?’
I thought that was a boy. There was some boy he wrote about who was molested /raped by a woman caregiver of some kind and Hugo analyzed it in rigorously 3rd waver terms as not as serious as a man-on-girl rpae because the boy had male privilege. I shit you not.
How feminist was that? I think if you had two feminists you would have three opinions on that.
Just disgusting – some theoeretical construct like privilege trumps an actual crime of rape.
Ginkgo,
You are right about the genders, but for they don’t matter if we are for gender equality. You are wrong about Hugo Schwyzer analysis. He didn’t compare the boy to a girl, he compared the boy to his adult caretaker:
Here the link
Hugo Schwyzer isn’t stupid, he must have known that he can’t continue writing insane stuff and portraying himself as a caricature of a feminist without offending feminists and at some point getting the boot.
“He didn’t compare the boy to a girl, he compared the boy to his adult caretaker:”
That is right and it was disgusting. But I was comparing the rapes to each other, not the victims. My point was that he was argued the female rapist’s rape was less of a rape because the boy’s male privilege somehow gave him some kind metaphysical power while he was being raped that somehow lessened the power differential. Gross rape apology and apology for pedophilia (I think the kid was pre-teen.)
And then Hugo Schwyzer went on to write an article published on The Good Men Project called “Can Young Girls Really Seduce Older Men”: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/can-young-girls-really-seduce-older-men/
This is about a girl aged 11 who started having private piano lessons at man who was in his mid thirties. Here’s a quote:
There is no prize to guess that Schwyzer (correctly in this case) came down to the sexual relationship being the sole responsibility of the adult man. The keyword being man since he came to the opposite conclusion in his article about Pal Sarkozy where the adult was a woman. In his words (my emphasis):
Reading that article next to the one Jupp linked to illustrates perfectly Hugo’s hypocrisy and double standards.
Thanks for remembering those details, Tamen.
“That means the onus is solely on adult men to set and maintain good boundaries.”
This means Hugo thinks men solely can be adults and held to adult standards. This is the misogyny of white knights.
Check this out: from a link Hugo mentioned in his piece:
“The Young Girl Erotica Repository (TYGER) is a collection of stories all involving young girls having sex; sometimes with boys, sometimes with men, sometimes with other girls and/or women; and sometimes with relatives such as fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles or cousins. Some of these stories will include violence or an element of non-consensual sex and others will not. But, all will portray one or more girls in sexual situations even if in dream or flashback. …”
Now carefully NOTE how Hugo describes it: “We see this theme in pornography. One of the staples of written erotica (both in serious literature and in modern porn) is that of the very young girl who seduces a much older man. A little Googling led to one website, “The Young Girl Erotic Repository.” It features an archive of stories, most of which feature the same thing: girls 12-16 (or even younger) seducing their uncles, teachers, pastors, and—astonishingly often—their own fathers.”
What is he leaving out? I’m sure many of you here can spot it.
Another thing Hugo doesn’t mention about many of those types of stories – in at least some of them the man is blackmailed into the relationship.
Also in some of them the man would be in the clear in my state because 16 is AOC here unless you are in a “position of authority” over the mid-teen.
People like Hugo will twist anything anyway they can in order to be anti-male. The misuse of the pedophile moniker and the association of male sexuality with it, is only one of many tactics.
“People like Hugo will twist anything anyway they can in order to be anti-male. The misuse of the pedophile moniker and the association of male sexuality with it, is only one of many tactics.”
It is an expansion of the use of a very familiar type of vilification of gay men.
He artfully omits the seduction by boys as a pornographic theme? He also omits any mention of the type of pervarication common with women who commit this kind of victimization, seduction of less powerful males – boys, Jamaican vacation gigolos, etc – as “love” and therefore somehow less sordid.
This is typically of a lot of framing of pornography. Cath Elliott had a post up at the guardian that carefully, oh so carefully, distinguished between “porn” – visual images – and “erotica” – written texts, such as romance novels. We know exactly why that particular criterial binary was chosen.
I’ll also add that I find it telling that no feminists were calling him out on that particular hypocrisy.
Then there is also the article at Role Reboot where he stated that he’d hesitate to call it rape in a case where the man said no and the woman straddles him and put his penis in her vagina regardless:
– http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2012-01-erections-arent-consent-what-the-new-fbi-definitions
I am willing to wage a bet that by similar incidents Hugo would NOT include incidents where the woman says no and then the man penetrates her regardless.
Again I can’t recall that there was any mention/criticism at all among feminists of this aspect of that article by Schwyzer. There were some negative comments on that article from me and some other commenters who’s handle I recognized from the “manosphere”, but all comments are for reasons we only can guess at all removed.
Ginkgo:
Sorry I misunderstood you. I am personally not that apalled by the double standard, of girls have it worse; I expect that. My problem was the blaming of a victim of sexual abuse.
Tamen:
This is what I find difficult to understand, I thought that sexual violence was the biggest issue for feminists today and that blaming a victim is a huge offense. The lack of criticism of Hugo in this regard simply doesn’t make sense, unless we believe they hate all men and boys. But for me it is hard to believe that so many feminist hate the males in their lives and especially their sons. I am rather inclined to believe that Hugo gets in-group privilege.
“The lack of criticism of Hugo in this regard simply doesn’t make sense, unless we believe they hate all men and boys.”
Jupp, I think you already know this but I’m gonna just flat out and say it. “Making sense” is not what’s important. Do very religious people who try and “make sense” out of their odd beliefs rely on logic, reality, and rationality to hold these beliefs? No, they fall back on dogma and faith. Exactly like some feminists. And remember that intelligent people (like many feminists) are good at rationalizing their beliefs. I’ll add that so much of what feminists do is “deconstruct” which is, to me, an excersise in rationalization. “Let’s see how can I explain this in terms of privilege”, for example. Or “how does this violent act on a man really hatred against all things feminine”.
@debaser71, I completely agree with that. This is a problem not only with feminism, but with counter-rationalism that has swept through just about every single social science in academia. That “deconstruction” you speak of is a direct subset of post-modernism. In fact it’s not even an invention of feminism and women’s studies, but some of the most awful male philosophers who had ever lived, starting with Kant. And it probably spread through English departments and literary criticism into women’s studies, not the other way around.
It is not that rationalization is an invention of academia, or that at its core isn’t religious in nature. It’s that somewhere along the line, some people in academia decided to abandon science and pursue Truth by other means. They don’t believe in the scientific method. Instead, they believe that they can judge a study through literary criticism in light of the perceived power structures in our world, much the way in which one can judge the actions of a tragic hero by the literary constraints of a tragedy. Taking the “truth” about how the world functions axiomatically, they can proceed to give meaning to reality itself. They don’t even believe in peer review, which is why actual scientists had found it so easy to mock them by, for example, getting their journals to publish postmodernist deconstructions of physics written in jest. Feminist theory is just a small subset of that line of thinking, which is why I think it does enjoy the level of support that it has in our society.
debaser,
I get what you are saying, but this example seems so close to home. Let us say I am a feminist mother of an eleven year old son, who wants to do parenting with Hugo S., One day I need somebody to watch after my kid. I can’t take man, because he might be a rapist. Yoe never know, right? but if I take a woman, I can’t hold her responsible for what happens, because my son has male privilege over her.
I understand that people are hypocritical, but this case hits a rally tender spot for parents, especially for mothers, that I can’t imagine that many feminists agreed with Hugo about the Pal Sarkozy story. In my opinion the lack of criticism of Hugo stems from the idea that you shouldn’t alienate an ally.
dungone,
this is sadly true. And many of the social justice types seem to misunderstand the opposition to their movements. They seem to believe it is about the basic values, while it is more about their way of thinking and viewing the world.
Jupp, try googling Biting Beaver for an hopefully extreme example of how a feminist mother actually may view their sons through the lens of her feminism.
You said:
It sound as if you’re not aware that Hugo Schwyzer have gotten a lot of criticism from many feminism when they after a quite a long while discovered that he had written an article about how he had sex with a girlfriend and then decided unilaterally to try to kill her and himself with gas from a gas stove. He also got a lot of criticism for having positioned himself in a leadership position within the feminist movement (the slut walks being one example). He got criticism for his past transgressions with his female students, he got accusations that a leopard never changes it’s spots in this regard. He has Tumblr pages and Facebook groups dedicated to get him removed from feminism.
But as far as I know none of those who have criticized him for those things have ever criticized him for the Pal Sarkozy article nor for the Role Reboot article about male consent.
One example is this article by feminist fannie (who some will remember visited and had an unfruitful commenting stint at Feminist Critics a short while back) on Alas, a blog: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2012/01/20/feminism-men-and-redemption/
At comment 45 I bring up the two articles by Hugo on culpability when children initiate sexual relationships with adults after Schala and Danny brought up some of Hugo’s apparent belief in male culpability and his articles on male culpability in general. I got two replies (#49,#52) from feminist – all pointing out that there is a class difference between a nanny and a piano teacher. The comment from Megalodon at #53 can be read either way (seem to be saying that class is a difference, but still wonders what the case would be if the gender were different, i.e. one were talking about a gardener or maintenance man.
Many feminists have a huge blindspot on the issues of male victimization of rape, sexual violence and violence. When challenged on these many of them fall back to society’s prevalent view of men as non-victims (often by use of the feminist all-purpose-tool “male privelege”) and that makes them in effect bedfellows with their old enemies the tradcons on these issues.
After reviewing Schwyzer’s original post on Sarkozy I’ll mention that Mythago (of Alas, a blog) did criticize him in the comments, as well as a couple of others. Other’s again were defending Schwyzer and agreeing with him.
Debaser: I can’t believe you just said this, Daisy. What’s next? “Guys, don’t do that!” It’s elevatorgate and skepchickness all over again.
Okay, how about: fuck you.
I was trying to be *whimsical* here, okay?
OVERSENSITIVE! Jesus H…. why don’t you all go to Feministe, where you will fit right in? Want some tissues? Poor dears.
Better yet, make that Shakesville, where Melissa actually *edits* comments that might trigger somebody… then you won’t EVER have to worry about feeling bad about *anything*. Its all safely G-rated.
Except the name DEBASER might get edited too, you realize? Just sayin.
Debaser: And I am happy to be a prude and be seen as one. Prude and proud, thank you very much.
Atheist prudes? Just what we need.
PS: Who is being debased, in your screen name? (Not that I care AT ALL, just pointing out that *you* are not perfect either.)
Debaser, if I bother you so much, please do not read or reply to my posts. Thanks.
/pissed
additionally, you might ask which woman has written and starred in the same movie that didn’t portray an idealized version of herself. It’s a valid question.
Few women get to write AND star in movies, since the appearance and age requirements for women in Hollywood are much more strict than they are for men. I have trouble thinking of ANY women who have done both, at all.
Kristen Wiig is the only recent example I can think of.
Emma Thompson might qualify, but her screenplays were from books first written by Jane Austen, of course.
Elementary: The reason I asked Daisy, though, is because I was thinking about a specific men both she and me adore.
You betcha. (insert colorful hearts here)
I watched “Touch of Evil” again last week! (sighs) I wish Charlton Heston had not been cast –but its a small flaw in a work of art… nonetheless, he aggravates me. (You keep wondering how Moses got to Mexico.)
Jupp: If the story of Mr. Schwyzer trying to kill his girlfriend is true, I don’t see what choice feminists had but “tar and feather” him. They would have looked ridiculous criticising Rebecca Watson’s elevator friend or so called “nice guys” whose biggest offense was writing an anomous rant and posting it on the internet.
If elevator-man had been drunk, aggressive and dangerous, and was later known to be an alcoholic in recovery, I would feel the same about any criticism of him.
Either alcoholism/addiction is a mental illness or it is not. If it is not, then lots of other conditions certainly are not.
If you believe it is not, you are correct to tar and feather the drunk/addict for what he/they/we have done. If you believe it IS (and most feminists claim this view), then you are wrong to tar and feather someone who has entered recovery precisely to deal with this kind of destructive behavior.
But you can’t do both… I believe that is called having your cake and eating it too.
Debaser: Do very religious people who try and “make sense” out of their odd beliefs rely on logic, reality, and rationality to hold these beliefs? No, they fall back on dogma and faith. Exactly like some feminists.
And exactly like prudes, who start with being offended (actually, they LOOK for reasons to be offended; it validates them) and then backtrack to articulate all manner of smart reasons for why their personal offense “should offend *every* decent person”.
The implication is that if you don’t share their offense, you are immoral.
Jupp, try googling Biting Beaver for an hopefully extreme example of how a feminist mother actually may view their sons through the lens of her feminism.
Aside: Did you know that *I* was the one accused of stirring up the 4chan boyz and inciting them to hack Heart’s blog over the Biting Beaver debacle?
I’d like to take credit for that, but alas, I didn’t do it. (I’ve never even been to 4chan.) One of my commenters on the thread about it, said it was actually the kids at “Something Awful” –but the Heart crew claimed it was 4chan. (I’ve never been to “Something Awful” either.)
Ah, good times.
@Daisy,
It very well could have been both. SA and /b/ have a large overlap of readership. /b/ is just the version that is less moderated, and attracts more 12 year olds who want to be edgy because of it. Thus there are entire circlejerk threads trying as hard as possible to prove that everyone involved is a racist, and proud of it.
To be completely honest though, /b/tards have articulated, in between the incessant rape references and “Tits or GTFO”‘s, some of the very same complaints that the MRM has with feminism. Privilege: if a /b/tard can spot it, much less articulate it, it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that it exists.
Equilibrium_Shift, until I was accused of hacking Heart (or encouraging the boyz to do it, or whatever she said I did), I had never even heard of 4chan and their friends.
BTW, have you read Parmy Olsen’s book about Anonymous? Really good reading, highly recommended: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/books/we-are-anonymous-by-parmy-olson.html
another amazing post by Mr. M3….
http://whoism3.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/limbo/
(and to those who think he is a “whiner”-the closest thing I can compare him to is the people who went to college thinking they would be able to find a decent job and only have a mountain of debt to show for it. Since sooooo many of those college grads are womyn, you won;t be hearing the feminists describe them as “entitled.”
Daisy:
“If elevator-man had been drunk, aggressive and dangerous, and was later known to be an alcoholic in recovery, I would feel the same about any criticism of him.”
We don’t know whether he was drunk or drug addict, all we have is Rebecca watsons account, which describes him as polite and not remotedly aggressive. And still it was enough to warrant the wrath of feminists.
Daisy:
“Either alcoholism/addiction is a mental illness or it is not. If it is not, then lots of other conditions certainly are not.
If you believe it is not, you are correct to tar and feather the drunk/addict for what he/they/we have done. If you believe it IS (and most feminists claim this view), then you are wrong to tar and feather someone who has entered recovery precisely to deal with this kind of destructive behavior.”
Seeing that many feminists have no problem calling awkward or not neurotypical guys “creep”, that they have no problem calling all men potential rapists and that they have no problem telling marginalised men, like homeless men or mentally ill men, that they should never approach strange women and are entitled if they do, I would be really surprised if they made an exception for a violent drug addict.
But what is really interesting to me is why Schwyzer could write texts like the one about Pal Sarkozy I linked above and be accepted as a feminist. Maybe you, being a kind of daywalker, could explain me how this works, how blaming an 11 year old for the sexual abuse he suffered can be “feminist”.
Tamen,
maybe you are right, which just leaves me really wondering what is up with the pro-Hugo feminists.
What this whole Hugo business reminds me of is my misspent youth as an evangelical Christian. There was a big emphasis on conversion, so you got a certain amount of status in the gang for what a terrible person you were before you got saved. Seeing we were all middle class teenagers without much time or opportunity to do anything really terrible, I suspect most of it was probably made up. But only “sins” that made you look edgy and cool and rebellious worked – if you “confessed” to something genuinely unpleasant and reprehensible, something that actually made you look bad in the eyes of the group, you’d be shunned.
Hugo seems to have done something like that as a feminist. He confesses all those “sins” that make him look cool and sexy, and the fems love him, but then he brings up one that makes him look out of control and genuinely dangerous, and that’s not part of the game, that’s horrible.
@Daisy: Thinking outside the Hollywood box, there’s Julie Delpy who made the movie “2 Days in Paris” and its sequel, “2 Days in New York” – both movies about relationships in crises, I gather, so I guess one could argue that Delpy’s character is probably an “idalized version of herself” there – or at least in about the same degree as Woody Allen’s characters usually were.
elementary_watson,
I’ve long thought that Schwyzer’s misandry was in part his way of absolving himself of responsibility for his behavior- If ALL men are inherently rotten, his behavior 1. isn’t his fault, and 2.doesn’t make men who DON’T act that way any better than him. He’s like a more sexist version of Saint Augustine. (I believe Patrick Brown has made the same comparison, actually.)
About the Sarkozy molestation story:
Schwyzer didn’t just say the crime was less serious because of “male privilege”- he called the 11-year old predatory and painted his abuser as his helpless, pitiable victim. It was a step beyond victim blaming or rape apologism into… Hell, I don’t even know.
Jupp,
“In my opinion the lack of criticism of Hugo stems from the idea that you shouldn’t alienate an ally. “
The problem with this explanation is that feminists are hardly shy about criticizing other feminists- other quite severely, and especially if the target of the criticism is male- IF they think it’s an important issue. If the subject of Schwyzer’s post that day had been “I address female store clerks as ‘sweetheart,’ and women who object to that sort of thing are getting worked up over nothing,” he’d have been torn to ribbons.
Hey Daisy, when I posted on Pharyngula in regards to elevatorgate (and actually it was me posting about being a stay at home dad and experiencing my own style of sexism), those idiots over there also said some stupid shit about my “nym” (as they call it). Why am I not surprised that you are pulling the same exact shit? And btw, debaser is a Pixies song. Fucking idiots.
And Daisy separate my personal preferences for stuff I want to impose on people. And for the record, making strawman argument is also something those skepchick whacko’s are good at too. Same shit you do.
Want some advice, stop arguing like political hack-job, Ann Coulter wanna-be. It makes you look like a bitter uniformed bitch who deals in propaganda and lies instead of reality.
Thus ends my last comment to Daisy ever.
Don Levine is the great debaser. He is a comparative literature professor (read: a decunstructivist hack) who ruined movie endings for Black Francis when he was a student at UMass. 🙂
time to lighten the mood a little…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhQf3LEr5uc
yeah, I think that’s what those male feminists will be doing for X mas when they don’t think anyone is watching…
Daisy:
I’m always very skeptical of any accusation which attempts to pin something on 4chan, speaking as if 4chan were a single community. True, a lot of different groups gather on /b/ to coordinate or find support for their endeavors (sometimes someone wants to make trouble for a social networking site, sometimes someone wants to track down perpetrators of animal abuse, etc.), but that isn’t all of /b/ (people showing off their bodies for attention certainly has them beat in terms of the amount of content posted and produced), and /b/ certainly isn’t all of 4chan. Anonymous was both a bogeyman and an easy target for a while, so people got in the habit of pinning every attack on them, but when someone simply attributes an attack on their website to “4chan”, it makes me wonder if they really think there’s any kind of communal bond between the people on /b/ practicing trapping and the people on /m/ subtitling Xabungle or the people on /lit/ prostrating themselves at the altar of David Foster Wallace or the people on /fa/ making catty remarks about each other’s taste in clothing.
Jupp, one reason I am persona non grata to lots of feminists these days (not all, I have some good friends left) is because I *don’t get it.* I have mostly written this off due to age, and my hopelessly Second Wave sensibility… as you know, we aren’t cool and are regularly blamed for all the bad things about feminism. But as you may also know, that ain’t the way *I* see it at all… one reason I participate here is to correct this ageist revisionism whenever I see it.
Hugo speaks the Third Waver language… what happened is that he tried to be bilingual and speak the 12-Step language AND the Third Waver language simultaneously, and there was predictable ignition and imminent explosion. I first realized this when I recently commented on a thread at Feministe about eating disorders and was instantly attacked, even though I thought what I said was pretty basic and in no way condemnatory (NOTE: I have had an eating disorder in the past myself)… and I realized that although Third Wavers accept the 12-Step definitions wholesale (as most USA-culture currently does)–they don’t like the 12 Steps as an entity itself– which I didn’t fully grasp until that moment. Thus, it explains why they went after Hugo (which is not to say their fury wasn’t weird; I still think it was, a total over-reaction)… but not why they accepted him as a feminist in the first place. Second Wavers did not give men a pass and tended to be openly misandric, as you probably also know… so they didn’t have token male feminists, except for the occasional Phil Donahue (and the major radicals still didn’t even like HIM)… since Third Wavers think they are free of us mean Second Wavers’ misandry, they have not properly dealt with theirs. In fact, some like to engage in rather open misandry as a sort of punk-rock touch, if you know what I mean.
Patrick, AMEN (haha), and you are on the right track… the 12 Steps have a Christian basis, which is why I suspect they are presently regarded as uncool. But yeah, I see that same thing going on with Hugo: “look how bad I was”…. Also, going back and understanding an event you didn’t appreciate/evaluate as “bad” at the time, re-interpreting said event in light of new ethics. I once stole somebody’s car (I gave it back, or rather, left it)… and I never saw it as “stealing his car” (hey, I BORROWED it, okay?) until I went into recovery. This kind of change of sensibility is dizzying, and one needs to share it to integrate it into one’s personality, to prevent oneself from doing it again. However, I dunno if that means sharing it with people who will be triggered by it… I would NOT go into a thread of people dealing with the fallout of having their cars stolen and expect them to be nice to me, you know?
Hugo has the aura of one who has always been forgiven, and nobody has ever knocked in the head him really HARD for stealing (or borrowing, haha) their car, or he might get it. At the same time, I found his actual story rather typical (lots of murder/suicides in addiction, “Sid and Nancy” etc) and thought the story was instructive, so on a 12 step level I was sorry that so few people seemed to have the opportunity to learn from it or analyze it. (sigh)
Debaser, Ann Coulter or not, I am getting a jump on my New Years resolution about not getting angry, even a little bit. (From little things, come large things… anger over little things leads to anger over the larger ones… ) I put my mala beads on last week and it really helps to see em there. Like that old Atlanta Rhythm Section song said, I’m not gonna let it bother me tonight.
Life is just too short. Hate me all you want, hope it makes you feel better. But I will not return the favor.
Hiding, check out Olsen’s book–she agrees with you. I really got a very good sense of the place, and I especially loved her biographical sketches of some of the major hackers… I actually ended up really liking a couple of those guys (Sabu and Topiary) and didn’t want to see them go down. The account of LulzSec, alone, was fascinating and well worth the price of admission.
Since Debaser so kindly brought up my career as a cultural commentator (haha) I want to plug my show about Damien Echols: http://occupythemicrophone.blogspot.com/2012/12/news-of-day-11302012.html His book, Life After Death IS PHENOMENAL (one of the LA Times books of the year!) and I want you all to rush out and read it. I was really blown away… his analysis of who goes to Death Row and why, is just an incredible read.
At the time of his release, he had spent half of his life on Death Row. The book re-arranged my senses, and all Mens Rights activists should read and review it.
He makes it very clear, he was not the only innocent man there.
” Second Wavers did not give men a pass and tended to be openly misandric, as you probably also know…”
No one knows better than the son of a 2nd wave feminist….
Daisy:
I’ll take your reading recommendations.
What exactly is “12 step”? I’ve had an eating disorder and some trouble with medication in the past, but they only thing I ever found that gave me appreciable positive results was just shutting up and beating myself (sometimes literally) back into functional condition.
hehe, looks like you have to believe in god to be a 12 stepper…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
Just for the record, hate is not an emotion I engage in. Frustration, yes. Disappointment, yes. Anger, yes. Hate, no. I’ve even wondered aloud here on these forums about “haters”.
SWAB:
When I was trying to deal with my alcohol problem, I was referred to a 12-step (AA) group. At that time, it was over a year since I had my last drink, and I was dealing with some difficult psychological problems (and found it impossible to hold down a job), so a social worker figured that I probably had some untreated issues relating to my former alcohol abuse.
The group started with a prayer, held its meetings in a church, and when I told them that I was atheist, they cheerfully told me of their success with converting atheists and agnostics to belief in The Higher Power – they even told me about how they convinced one member to first refer to a pebble in his pocket as God until he was ready for faith in the real God. When I said I was there for help with an alcohol problem, not as part of trying to find religion, they told me that I was already religious – I was worshipping King Alcohol (?!). When I said that their many bizarre rituals seemed like brainwashing to me, one member said that that was exactly right – they did these things because their brains were filthy and needed washing (!!).
I never attended another meeting.
I have currently not had a drink of alcohol in over a decade.
In fairness, I have no idea if my local AA group was severely dysfunctional, but I have read many similar stories online.
@RF: My ex started a 12 steps program because of her eating disorders, and I, too, saw a certain cult-like quality in that whole program.
To add: I guess “severe dysfunctionality” is one main reason to join the 12 steps program, so one probably shouldn’t be surprised to find a certain kind of dysfunctionality in their meetings.
John Markley:
Yes, you are right. It seems to be more about what is good for “feminism” (whatever this actually means) and Hugo had some utility, especially to shame men.
Daisy,
thank you for the response. It seems like people understanding each other is more a question of character than ideological labels.
Many of the positions of modern “girly feminism” seem quite contradictory, it is not only the question of misandry, but also the attitude towards sex (I generaly don’t buy their sex positivity), the attitudes towards power and marginalisation and the attitudes towards gender roles. Ironically it is these weaknesses which make them interesting to me (and I suppose a couple of other men). I mean interesting, in a let us get popcorn and see what happens way. For example I would love to see (or better read) a soap opera about a couple consistimg of a sex positive feminist and PUA-blogger RooshV.
In relationship with men a problem seems to be, that the “girly feminism” requires a “daddy feminism” on the male side, with all the problematic issues of mutual idealisation and codependency. No wonder a “daddy feminist” like Schwyzer had such a hard fall, when his alleged past transgressions came to light.
Earlier feminists weren’t any better. Nothing has changed.
Hiding, 12 step meetings tend to reflect wherever they are… very tolerant and hands-off in places like New York and other metropolitan areas, and can be very puritanical and Jesus-oriented in the south. Like democracy, it reflects the population. I went to AA meetings regularly for about 15 yrs (I haven’t had a drink in over 30 yrs, as I wrote in the above link) and attended “special events” for about another 5 or so years before defecting entirely. It is my opinion that however much time you spent “partying”–is however much time you should spend in meetings, just because nature abhors a vacuum. If you DIDN’T party (as I would bet that Rocket abused alcohol as a loner, see George Thorogood song, “I drink alone/with nobody else…”) then AA can be terribly aggravating and intrusive. I think it is better if you were a social drinker, since one thing you miss is the social interaction, and that can be an excellent substitute. I met great people and great friends in AA groups… the wonderful sponsor who saved my life, among others. Some were religious, but most were not; one popular concept (that Rocket Frog mentioned) is that addicts tend to make alcohol (or whatever it is) their God, and entertaining the possibility of another God is a way of refocusing that obsessive impulse. (“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”–lots of theologians posit that is precisely what addiction is.) Depending upon where you live, God may be very important or not important at all. Lots of feminist/women-only meetings changed the 12 steps (when reading them aloud) to say “she” instead of “he”, obviously to make a political (rather than theological) point about whether God was male. I went to at least one meeting that talked about Allah, not God. (That was interesting, since I was also the only white person there.)
Hiding, what I wrote on Feministe is that (IMHO) the 12 steps DO NOT WORK for eating disorders… they are based on abstinence, and we cannot have total abstinence from food. We must eat to live. It is simply not analogous. You do not need to drink, take drugs or smoke to live. The 12 steps work best in an all-or-nothing context and do not translate to eating disorders… unfortunately, the definitions of addiction (and by extension, eating disorders) were forged in a 12 step context during the 80s, since for many decades 12 step groups were the ONLY form of treatment for any kind of addiction. This means the definitions and ideas were lifted wholesale from AA and NA, even if people don’t realize it. But I don’t think it translates for things like “shopping addiction” (we all have to buy something sometime) or sex addiction or food addiction, although it does have some success with gambling addiction (again, something you don’t *require*).
Just my 2 cents… every person’s experience with the 12 steps is highly individual and different… as the path to addiction is too. But I spent *many years* listening to AA stories, lots and lots of stories and ‘testimonies’, some by people who later used again and died (or ended up killing someone else)… and as a result, I can spot certain things instantly. Like for instance, I knew when I first heard the song “All Apologies”–that the person who wrote it was not long for this world. I just knew, and told my daughter so at the time… who reminded ME later, that I had said I found it damned alarming. I often have this reaction to people in the public eye… I knew when Robert Downey Jr was busted the first time, that he was bullshitting with his copious mea culpas and wasn’t through drinking by a long shot (and he certainly wasn’t). And now, I can hear that he indeed sounds “through”… I dunno *what* that is, but its the same phenomenon as when I read the Tarot. Something is being communicated by people, that I can’t describe in words, but I feel it in my bones somehow. Somebody is telling me something, but I couldn’t tell you *how*… going to years of meetings honed this sense in me, and I have a lot of gratitude for that reason also. This skill may be spiritual, or it may be that same thing that great poker players have. But being able to read people and hear that which is unspoken, is a nice skill to have. It has served me very well.
one must ask, are these womyn “misogynists”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7n39RzgVNP8
Stoner:
That was funny. The song could be a bit misogynistic, though I think the repugnance they express is more for the form of their vaginas and less for the existence (in other words they are not sad they HAVE vaginas) or essence of them. Clearly it’s meant to be a humerus song, and just like some guy singing of the times it sucks to have a penis, I’m going to give them a pass.
Someone posted this on Facebook. Now I hate humanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phynkmB5xEU&noredirect=1
this is great:
http://glpiggy.net/2012/12/09/do-you-want-to-work-or-not/
and even better:
http://skepticink.com/incredulous/2012/12/01/science-denialism-at-a-skeptic-conference/
Huh, it’s almost like there is relevant information on evolutionary psychology of which the blogosphere will not make you aware and that basing a conference lecture on such a shaky body of evidence is an unreliable strategy… Go figure.
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha,
does the dishonesty ever stop with fatuous Mr. Manboobz?
he quotes Typhone Blue here:
http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/yttyphonbluebizarre.png
then says–
PROTIP: You’re not going to convince anyone you’re a great ally of trans* people if you refer to them as “it.”
He’s intentionally missrepresenting things….
what a fucking asshole….
Stoner:
I don’t uderstand, where exactly does Typhonblue refer to trans people by “it”.
It is not very surprising, that the manboobians see these comments as cissexist, as they touch the tender subject of what is gender.
Regarding that, what is the gender of a person?
I saw people explaining that “somebodies gender is what they identify as their gender”. But this “definition” doesn’t seem to work. For one this means that I can’t lie about my gender. Then I don’t have a gender, unless I claim one. And logically the statement:
“My gender is not what I claim it to be.” implies that the above “definition” of gender is a fallacy. Further it doesn’t explain how I identify my own gender.
I’m not sure Futrelle is misrtepresenting things intentionally. I think it’s quite possible he hallucinates misogyny and transphobia where they don’t exist when he doesn’t like someone.
SWB, Jupp: I think Futrelle was thinking of this quote ( http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/yttyphonbluebizarre2.png?w=604 ) where she does say: “Just because it has a male body does not does not mean it thinks of itself as male.”
I found the use of “it” jarring in that sentence and I think “someone”, “they” and “themselves” would for instance be a much better choice of words in place for it, it and itself in that sentence.
There are vastly more important things people can focus on in a conversation than whether someone used the wrong word in a conversation* (with the obvious exception being a conversation about the word), especially if they haven’t asked what the person meant or why he or she used the chosen word. One of the reasons I do not engage in much “debate” with online feminists, among other groups, is because there’s a gross tendency to kill any conversation by hunting for such things instead of actually discussing a topic. It always turns into a “you actually meant this, and you think this” sort of petty flame war where people argue with everyone but the actual other person, or dumbs down into a sarcastic, sniping pile of trash instead of anything productive, useful or tolerable.
In the case above, “PROTIP:you’re not going to convince anyone you’re a great ally of trans* people if you refer to them as it,” is a snipe and no doubt intentionally condescending. If someone were actually intent on having a real conversation that they wanted to go somewhere, “it looks like you used the pronoun ‘it’ for a transgendered person, and I’d prefer you not do that; with regard to your point…,” “did you intend to reference transgendered people as ‘it’ or did I miss something,” or “please be aware that transgendered people are uncomfortable/dislike having the pronoun ‘it’ applied to them” would work much better because it would give Typhon a chance to clarify or to make a note, but instead, it’s just a “full power to the starboard asshole guns, let’s ruin the conversation for cheap one-upmanship and pretend we’re intellectuals” statement.
*And before someone chimes in with the inevitable, “but it’s important to transgendered people,” duh. But that doesn’t mean its significance needs to be pointed out with a condescending conversation killer. Now, I don’t like tone policing any more than anyone else does, but I’ve never seen a conversation get anywhere when it has such elements unless there’s a great epiphany and/or massive conciliation later. It would be acceptable to derail a conversation to talk about something, but not with a snide or trite remark that is obviously not for edification. It’s ridiculous to converse for the express purpose of destroying a conversation.
Tamen,
“I found the use of “it” jarring in that sentence and I think “someone”, “they” and “themselves” would for instance be a much better choice of words in place for it, it and itself in that sentence.”
I find the use of “it” to refer to avoid gender identification jarring because “it” is itself gendered. “It” identifies a gender, the neuter gender and specifically the inanimate gender. It has for several thousand years. “It” does not meana “no gender”.
This reminds me of a slip a countryman of yours made in English over at Languagehat. He referred to a troll as “it” (of course, a troll is neuter) and explained afterwards that this was simply bleed-over from Norwegian. It was in fact good bleed-over, more accurate than arbitrarily assigning it a sexed gender.
okay, okay, now I’m thouroughly confused….
I see the second part where Tamen shows Typhon reffering to “male bodied politicians” as “it”–but I infer (and may be wrong) that in this sentence she is talking about men who are visibly identifiable as men and were born as male but referring to them as “it” as they don’t share a bigger identity with other men.
Tamen,
thank you for the explanation, but I still don’t understand:
In the text you linked Typhonblue refers by “it” to a “male bodied polititcian” or more generally a powerful male bodied person (like someone who owns Hollywood). It is quite possible that this group also includes some “trans people” (in the common sense of the word), but they are likely underrepresented in this group and not a defining part of it. Further the linked text seems to question the “maleness” of male bodied people who don’t show any solidarity or identification with the group of all male bodied people. This is different than the usual definition of “trans”, for example would Typhonblue, if she were male bodied, not meet the criterion “do not identify with other male bodied people”. David Futrelle on the other hand is apparently male bodied and is maybe “not really socially male”.
If you can accuse Typhonblue here of any offense, it is misandry or insulting words about alpha-men like Futrelle.
JDCyran: I agree that Futrelle’s “PROTIP” is snarky and confrontational. What else to expect from him.
SWB:
I am making an assumption that the screenshots Futrelle posted were in order and complete in regards to what Typhonblue wrote. I am not making that assumption based on Futrelle’s good reputation, but from reading the two first screenshots together:
http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/yttyphonbluebizarre3.png
http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/yttyphonbluebizarre2.png
It does seem like they’re made in sequence (with probably a reply from ittakesnogenius in between).
When read in sequence it appears to me that she is using the word “it” about both trans women and politicans having male bodies.
Ginkgo:
There is that. But “it” is also well known for specifically being used to de-humanize people. Based on my knowledge of Typhonblue I would find it out of character if it was meant in that capacity. But regardless of intent, the subtext of using the word it about a person will register with the reader and that was what I found jarring.
Typhonblue also used the word “it” about politicians. Am I too much of a cynic if I have less trouble with that? 🙂 (although it’s still jarring to read)
“Trans women don’t take their identity from their male body. What evidence is there that any politicians takes it’s identity from having a male body?”
To get back on track. After reading a bit about the Human Security Report projects new report recently presented for the UN I came upon the claim that senior UN officials argued against including male victims in the UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
One of the reasons for doing so presented by Anne M. Goetz in a presentation from UN Women/UNIFEM is:
This heavily implies that male victims of sexual violence and rape in conflicts and in a domestic setting rush to report the crime and that any male victims are not stigmatized by the community they live in. That ignorance/total lack of empathy for male victims in a senior UN policy maker/lobbyist is mind boggling and scary. When I read it my initial reaction was “WTF did I just read” followed by anger.
‘
Wow, another Futrelle post that would have been resolved in about ten seconds if he’d asked me.
Why would I refer to a trans woman as “it”? She obviously takes her identity from being female. Nor are trans women truly “male-bodied”; they are identified as “male-bodied” by society, just like apexuals are identified as “male-bodied” by society. While neither take their identities from being presumptively “male-bodied”.
I assert this because I see zero evidence that male-bodied CEOs, politicians, generals, etc. share any positive social identity with other male-bodied individuals. Instead they identify with their role as politician, CEO or general.
Is politician a sex? No. So how do you refer to a male-bodied politician? Zie is gender neutral but male-bodied apexuals(politicians, generals, CEOs, all the presumptively “alpha” male bodied) aren’t gender neutral, they are gender-less.
“It” seems more appropriate.
@Typhonblue
Ah, sweet, sweet vindication.
Daran just noticed that Feminist Critics were cited in the Human Security Report 2012, see footnote 110 in Part 1 Chapter 2. (http://www.hsrgroup.org/human-security-reports/2012/text.aspx)
Lately the Good Men Project has run some pieces about rape, reading these posts as well as their comment threads, I found that I might have had misconceptions about rape. My question is:
When a man has sex with a woman, how can he make sure he is not raping her?
See this exchange in this comment thread
Lisa:
Joanna:
Joanna can’t say if consensual sex might be rape. Her last three sentences I quoted might redeem her, if she hasn’t started them with: “But it also depends…”, implying that the question if the sex was rape also depends on how the woman feels afterwards.
It reminds me of the discussions about the slur “Creep” and the reluctance of the “fighters for the comfort of women”, to give a clear answer how a man should act, so that he is never a “creep”. Of course naming behavioural rules, which when followed will assure a man that he will never be a rapist, would mean to concede power and to hold women responsible for their own sexual behaviour.
Jupp: A concrete example of what I would call rape where the victim (in this case a woman) gave her consent to sex before it happened: http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2012-12-why-consent-isnt-everything
I am not sure that answers your question though, although you should bear in mind that the problem applies to both genders: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/
Tamen,
neither of the two cases you quoted is an example of “Is it rape if she consents and feels terrible later?”, because in both cases there was no consent to the sex act that happened. When I say sex act I don’t refer to what happens in the participants minds, but only what is visible to and controllable by the potential violator.
First in the feministe-example, the boyfriend didn’t give consent, but the girlfriend thought he did. The only question is if she had enough reason to believe, that he was awake and was consenting to sex. The answer seems to be yes (but I can see how people could challenge this view). So no rape.
In the rolereboot example the woman gave consent to intercourse, but not to the violent intercourse that happened. Of course if one consents to sex, one doesn’t know exactly how the sex will look like, but here we are talking about to fundamentally different acts, intercourse and violent intercourse. Also even without the sexual context, his disregard for her well-being (he likely could have seen her being in physical pain and he definitely noted the blood) would be a criminal offense anyway. Finally he must take into account that his violent behaviour might shock and frighten her from telling him to stop and hence make the common standard of “no means no” no longer applicable. So this was rape, as I see it.
The situation described by the text I quoted from Lisa bove, seems more like:
woman enthusiastically consents to sex, then feels violated and hurt (whether she realises this during the act or after) without clearly communicating her partner that he should stop. Does he have a duty to read her mind? Assuming that her mental state will usually be somehow reflected in her body language, how good a man has to be in reading body language, to be able to have sex without abusing his partner?
Yes, Jupp, we both agree that the Role Reboot article described rape. But it is telling that at the time the police didn’t charge the perpetrator with any crime:
So the police in that case came down on the wrong side of the question “Is it rape if she consents and feels terrible later?”
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[…] En todo caso, aquí hay un link al show de A Voice For Men sobre la cultura de violación http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/avfm-radio/avfm-radio-rape-culture/ http://www.genderratic.com/p/2247/rape-culture-a-potpourri-and-an-open-thread/ […]