I was given another argument today, this time about how to properly be a feminist, in a comic.
Urgh, I said. The old “You shouldn’t be a feminist, you should be an equalist” argument, that ignores historical and continuing inequities — let’s just pretend it’s fair and even now! I replied with this link.
But then it turns out they can’t even be honest in their comic strip arguments. Someone later pointed out that that was twisted, flipped around, and completely re-written version of a comic by Rebecca Cohen that has a completely different message.
You know, that’s kind of appalling — these bozos can’t even be original, and steal other people’s art to corrupt to fit their message. Get your own damn art, liars!
“Dr. King, if you want everyone to be treated equal, why do you keep talking about black people’s rights? That’s racist.”
How does he get “you only care about” from “my main focus is”? Not even close.
it is possible to be both a feminist and an egalitarian.
Typical feminazis! Whining about how we “stole” and “twisted” “your” “art!” I mean, men have their art stolen, too! Why aren’t you talking about that, huh?! Hypocrites!
(Urgh, I feel like I need another shower, now.)
Did the abolitionists have to deal with this nonsense? Are there editorials from the 19th century saying that they should call themselves “Freedomists” if they’re so concerned with freedom?
They ignore that being an equalist would in reality mean raising those who’re unequal, oppressed, disadvantaged, to the level of those who aren’t. But since that means focussing on people other than the (mostly) dudes coming out with this shit, then they’re never going to acknowledge it.
Speaking for myself, when women fighting for equal treatment stop calling themselves feminists, I imagine I’ll follow along. Until then, I don’t presume that I know better than those women what they should call themselves.
That’s because I’m a feminist, y’see.
People who claim to be helping the cause of gender equality by ignoring women… probably aren’t doing it right.
Just sayin’.
The original comic seems a great way to alienate people that mean well and could be otherwise be sympathetic to the cause. I have been oblivious like him and when I was told “You are the reason feminism is necessary” I honestly felt unjustly accused.
Don’t get me wrong, the argument is right, but it’s stated in a way that’s gratuitously confrontational.
“The fact that you and too many others are oblivious of your privilege is why I am a feminist” vs “You are why I am a feminist”.
The first one gives useful information, the second makes the other person frustrated and defensive.
People are not the problem. Culture is the problem. People are the fucking solution.
You need people. You can’t afford to attack them just because you feel like being smug or something.
F.O. @ 8:
Sheesh, I mean, if only those women would just ask nicer when trying to be treated like human beings! They’re so much prettier when they smile!
C’mon, hun, little smile for me – you’re not really that mad, are ya?
(…the above post may contain trace amounts of sarcasm, bitterness, etc. Blame it on me being a feminist who hasn’t learned to smile just right yet.)
some bastard @4
trying 2b funny? or just a dick?
WAIT, hold on, do i smell banhammer oil?
.
And sometimes snark and anger get through the barrier of not shutting the fuck up and listening. No social movement will occur with “nice”. It doesn’t work, as history shows.
F.O.: Good grief. This comic strip was not published in a vacuum. The context is plain to the writer’s audience.
For using a gendered slur?
Possibly.
F.O. @8:
Fixed that For you.
What gendered slur? Some bastard is as far as I can tell mockingly parroting the typical response of the MRAs – hence the shower reference. I do that all the time – minus the shower reference.
Sandi:
some bastard on the internet was being snarky (the closing line is the giveaway).
Chigau’s comment @13 references your use of “dick”, which is a gendered slur. Granted, it is punching up, rather than punching down, so I have less of a problem with it than I used to, but for consistency’s sake, since gendered slurs are not acceptable here (and I’d love the day when they become less acceptable in other areas on the net and in meatspace), that includes *all* of them.
tony at 16: never having seen some bastard comment b4 i didnt know either way. So plus one if it really is meant 2b satirical, and bastard isnt a Most Righteous Asshole.
It’s not intended as an educational comic teach to people about morality; it’s written to entertain people who already accept the moral premises in question.
Maybe it would help to look at some better-known examples. Consider the “Tom and Jerry” or “Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd” cartoons. They’re written for people who accept the moral premise, “It is a great evil to kill and eat humans, and presumably also hypothetical beings with human-level intelligence.”
A person who didn’t accept that premise might say, “Well, Tom did make the first attack, but Jerry’s response over the next ten minutes was completely disproportionate. Really both sides are equally bad.” And because of that they wouldn’t enjoy the cartoon. But that’s not the cartoon’s fault. I’d blame the person’s parents, for not providing proper moral instruction.
To un-derail (rerail?): the first panel of that comic is just genius. Waterson level.
The refutation to their argument is pretty fucking childish – unless the genders are already equal, it follows that one of them will require more focus than the other. You know, because they aren’t equal. IT AIN’T ROCKET SCIENCE, DUDEBROS.
If this is about pay, is there a solution? If there is a solution, what is it? If this is about overall equality of everything, seriously, what do feminist women want? Testicles and a penis? Do they also want the testosterone that causes 94.2% of the prison population to be men vs their 6.8%? Can we perhaps leave this be and admit men make more because they are by nature more inclined to take more risk? I’m waiting for the day a feminist says, “Only 6.8% of prisoners are female, I want equality! It should be 50%!!!!”
You know, it would surprise me at all. Privilege-blindness certainly isn’t a new development.
Bah, that should have read Tom Foss @5.
Jesus Christ @ 21,
Door, ass, way out.
F.O.
Poor baby! Now imagine feeling like that every single day of your life because female. The cartoon doesn’t mention privilege, it has the dude complaining about reverse sexism in response to a woman trying to address actual oppression that is directed towards half of the population. Too many people have this odd what about the menz? knee-jerk response to equality measures. Reverse sexism doesn’t exist. There is no culture where men are systemically discriminated against, or treated as less capable or intelligent than women . The real world is full of clueless dudes who spout sexist bullshit, and then whinge that people were mean to them by not explaining it for them.
the original Sandi @ 17
I assure you, I am not a Most Righteous Asshole (dibs on the band name, though).
Joking aside, I was attempting/failing to do what ModusOperandi is famous for at Dispatches: bringing snark without invoking Poe’s Law.
some bastard on the internet #26
「the original Sandi」is really not someone you should concern yourself with.
Tethys @ 25:
I see what I did there! Damn blockquotes!
Tethys, I was admiring how you justaposed these. And you thought I wouldn’t notice!
“Reverse sexism doesn’t exist. There is no culture where men are systemically discriminated against, or treated as less capable or intelligent than women . ”
“The real world is full of clueless dudes who spout sexist bullshit, and then whinge that people were mean to them by not explaining it for them.”
While I’m here:
Cheezus Rice @21
Well, not considering someone’s gender when determining pay would be a start.
Again, we’d rather ensure that one’s genitalia are irrelevant to determining the value of one’s non-genitalia-related contributions.
Right, men should get paid more because PRISON!!! If testosterone was the actual cause of that, why are men traditionally given the larger share of responsibilities and rewards? I mean, practically speaking, wouldn’t that suggest that we should change that to favor women?
Wouldn’t an admission of such a thing only be appropriate if that said thing was, y’know, a fact?
Because PRISON!!!!!
permanganater
You’re new here, aren’t you?
One person observing that making clueless sexist statements does not entitle you to either a nice reaction, or an explanation from the person you just insulted, does not constitute a pervasive anti-male culture. How many times must anyone point to entitled sexist behavior before the offending party stops acting entitled and defensive? Perhaps permanganater can answer this puzzling conundrum?
If non-white people want complete equality, do they also want white skin?
/sarc
Yeah, the guy is actually accusing her of reverse sexism after she specified that she chooses to focus on an issue.
He’s going for a strawman.
I was wrong.
@Anri #9: strawman.
@Naked Bunny with a Whip #12: you do make a good point.
@Tony! The Queer Shoop #14: No, I don’t claim to speak for all humanity, but I have my personal experience. Do you have evidence of the contrary? People sitting on the fence that don’t see it as confrontational?
@Tethys We agree on almost everything, but you are an imbecile.
And you know why I am here, complaining with you moron?
Because I care about this. It’s a war I want to win because I care about other people who happen to be different than me, because I have friends and relatives that have been raped, abused and humiliated, because I want a better fucking world.
Yes, you FUCKING HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT.
Get over it.
Let’s use the Tony argument: where is the evidence that insulting people improves things?
Let’s start from this: http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want-to-be-right
Come, you little coward, come mansplaining to me what my experience is, how I found myself changing my mind over the issue, how I have come to realize that there was a huge problem and I had so no fucking clue that I refused to acknowledge it for years.
A hint: it was not because scumbags like you kept shouting and feeling smug.
You are a shit of a human being, and you are DAMAGING A CAUSE I BELIEVE IN even if you pretend to support it.
Fuck you.
Beatrice
Only if they ask nicely enough.
Honestly, the movement may need more people, but it needs less assholes who make demands on time and energy by requiring nice, polite explanations rather than educating themselves with available information. If someone is truly a feminist, they will not turn away from women because a few not-even-particularly-harsh words were turned towards them; they’d actually understand the reasons behind the tone, and be able to get past that.
Or are male egos really that fragile, that they would turn away from social justice because of a few meanies?
Oh hey F.O. this response applies to your first post. I’ll see about the most recent one at #34 later.
Indeed. Things like that DO have the effect of alienating willfully ignorant bigots. FEATURE NOT A BUG.
Otherwise sympathetic to the cause? Don’t give a fuck. You were completely justly accused.
Ask yourself what is the point of alienating or not alienating assholes like you.
If we’re friendly and explanatory, and don’t jolt you with some anger and sarcasm and baldly stated, “WE DO NOT LIKE YOUR KIND AROUND HERE” even if you think we should want you around, then we end up with a bunch of clueless fucking assholes at feminist organizing meetings and strategy sessions, fucking everything up. We end up with a bunch of clueless fucking assholes calling themselves feminists while using gendered slurs and making sexist statements and sometimes even behaving in a sexually predatory manner.
So seriously. If the best you can manage is, “I support feminism but you’re alienating me with your lack of niceness,” then it’s highly likely that the most supportive thing you can do for women’s equality is shut the fuck up and stop pestering feminists to cater better to your particular set of biases.
F. O.
Don’t. That’s your job now, since you SAY you thing women’s equality is a thing worth fighting for.
I will believe you when YOU STOP FIGHTING FEMINISTS LIKE YOU ARE CURRENTLY DOING, you pustulent shitfrigate.
Does F.O. want me to smile at them more? Would that make everything better, if I just smiled and looked happier and more approachable? I keep getting told that….
Jesus Christ @ 21
How about not funneling women into lines of work that pay less and not reducing pay in lines of work that become female dominated for some reason?
No.
Testosterone causes people to commit crimes and yet 17 out of every 18 men in the US manage to not be under any kind of correctional supervision.
Because willingness to take risks is always a positive trait which should be rewarded with higher pay.
I’m waiting for the day I encounter an anti-feminist who could represent feminist positions honestly and accurately.
Wut?
The original comic used some mild sarcasm, it wasn’t even mean.
F.O.
You’re being a bit confrontational. That hurts my feelings and turns me inacapable of contemplating your words. Maybe you should calm down if you wantto change people’s opinions?
The bigoted position, that we feminists should call ourselves “equalists”, is ridiculous for a number of reasons. But the best reason is that it implies that we should all call ourselves something that shows we are interested in fighting simultaneously for equality in all areas of human interaction. In other words, the dudebros are saying that we SHOULD call ourselves Social Justice Warriors, and that they would then respect us and agree with us. I’m loving it.
@ F.O
So this “be less confrontational” thing only works in one direction, huh?
Feminists fight for equality. Equalists just want to take away people’s bending powers.
F.O.
This is not an explanation for why you think you are entitled to being treated like fine china for demanding step by step diagrams for your own poor behavior before you allow that you might be the asshole.
Well no, I actually don’t have to do a damn thing to remedy your ignorance of basic courtesy. That’s kind of the point that you keep missing.
I’ve already explained your error twice, though I’m thrilled to have successfully mansplained something. Perhaps I am better at being a man than Ursula Le Guin! I don’t find commenting on a blog to be particularly brave, but I am bemused by the war and coward word choices. Changing attitudes via peaceful means is the opposite of shooting and bombing ones adversaries no matter how many military references you throw into the discussion.
It is impossible to be an egalitarian and not a feminist.
@8 F.O.
Yes, indeed it was, but you mistake which part of the comic is the gratuitously confrontational one. You seem to think it was the “You. You are the reason i’m a feminist”. You are completely wrong, it was this one: “So you only care about women, that’s not equality- that’s reverse sexism”. Look, you are even aided by the graphics of the young man with his hands on his hips, getting angry and being all comfrontational for no reason other than because he is not everybody’s focus and because he fails to see the extremely simple point that in an unequal system, in order to achieve equality you FUCKING HAVE TO specifically address the group that is disadvantaged. That’s gratuitous…
A woman getting mildly snarky after getting that gratuitously confrontational reaction from a dude is not gratuitous…is down right overly polite. He deserved more snark…or at least being grounded without his toys…
You should apologise for your post number 34….
F.O at 34:
What the hell did that have to do with anything?
Oh fuck right off. Guess what, for me it WAS because “scumbags like them kept shouting”. I have no idea how the fuck you define “smug”, since it has nothing to do with anything happening in this thread or the image linked by PZ.
You come in here, whine about how the comic is confrontational and doesn’t help, and then call other’s shit of a human being and damaging a cause you apparently can’t even fucking understand? Jesus-fucking-Christ.
Oh, so that’s why the Gynostar comments have had so much MRA whinging in them recently? I thought it was just coincidental discoveries. My congrats/dolences to Ms Cohen for attracting their attention.
@Anri, 7
Agreed. I suspect that feminism will stop being a word that people fighting for gender equality use only when we actually have gender equality, but yeah, I’m certainly not going to waste my time agitating for a different word for feminism any more than I would for atheism. Even if it was my place to tell other feminists what to call themselves, what would be the point? Propergenderequalityism would get just as much baggage heaped upon it, and it doesn’t sound half as nice on your tongue.
@F.O., 8
Were you telling feminists that they were wrong to call themselves feminists, and that focussing their efforts on the people who are most disadvantaged is bigoted? I’m sorry, but the people coming out with comments like that very much are the reason why people need to be feminists. He’s not oblivious, btw. Oblivious people don’t use reverse sexism/racism/whatever as their first resort; people who are fully aware, but opposed to ending sexism/racism/whatever do.
For the record, I’ve been told similar things in the past, that I was the reason that feminism is necessary. It hurt, and I did feel unjustly accused, but they were right. Being offended about it won’t change that. Hopefully they’re not right anymore.
I’ve actually tried that one, and it turns out that privilege is just a conspiracy theory that sets out to demonize men and attempt to justify unfair accusations against an entire half of the population without regard to evidence. Also, it’s offensive to call people oblivious just because you disagree with them, damn dogmatists!
No matter how diplomatically we phrase these things, people are going to take offence, because many of them want to.
@JC, 21
No, it’s not about pay. Yes there is a solution. The solution is to pay people the same wage for the same work. Another solution is to hire and promote people based solely on merit; introduce blinding to the procedures involved in hiring and promoting so that only those who demonstrate the required abilities go forward, not the ones who benefit from their employer’s inherent biases. Interestingly enough, if done properly, this would probably also help productivity as the best people would be promoted, rather than those who, for reasons other than ability, find themselves in the position of being favoured by their employers.
No. That’s actually kind of one of the big things – women don’t want to have to be men in order to be considered people.
Evidence?
I suspect most feminists would rather see fewer violent men and thus fewer men in prison than more women. Mind you, there are places in the world which are working on the latter by criminalising miscarriage, so you can fixate on that, if you would like?
Is anyone selling “You are the reason I’m a feminist” t-shirts? I need one for work.
F.O. @34,
From
to
in 5 lines. Is that a record?
@gondwanarama, 50
Of course, if Tethys doesn’t now completely change zir approach and turn into Smiley McPatientpants, F.O. will be definitively proven right!!
Either that, or F.O.’s concerns aren’t really reflective of the problem at hand, and that people who’re looking to dismiss will do so regardless of tone, possibly even making accusations of unnecessary confrontationality (Chrome doesn’t think that’s a word… but I’m pretty sure it should be… hmm. If it isn’t, I’ll just Shakespeare it.) when the tone is as diplomatic as a diplomat fresh out of diplomat school, while those who’re willing to think about it will do so even if their pride is wounded by what’s being said to them.
@Athywren,
Yeah, I didn’t feel a strong aura of good faith.
When F.O comes down from their frothy, disproportionate, pointless bout of emotional rabies, they should consider why they were so quick to completely ignore the obvious confrontational attitude of the dude in the comic and skipped past it as if it was a polite, unproblematic thing to say, and went straight against the female’s response to his shitty comment as inappropriately confrontational. The burden is solely on the woman, the man can be as much of an arsehole as he likes and that’s totally fine…but she responded to his arseholery with something other than smiles and candy and that is just in such bad taste and so gratuitously confrontational…
Piffle. You asked for explanations, I provided one, and now you are having histrionics. Throwing out psychological buzzword salad and insulting my intelligence while yelling that I am required to explain? Oh please, GTFO. You completely fail at being a decent human being if a mild chiding is a justification for you to spout raging torrents of abusive, stupid, self-serving crap about your hard personal journey toward being an ally of feminism. Maybe. If we’re nice enough and explain things to you like the special snowflake. Pish, what use are such poor needy allies?
rq @35
Yes.
Someone needs to draw these people a Venn diagram.
@SallyStrange #36
“Assholes like me”? Why thanks. Sorry, disagreeing with you doesn’t make me an asshole.
The rest of your arument is just delusional, but I found this especially telling:
“I will believe you are a Real Atheist (TM) when YOU WILL STOP FIGHTING ATHEISTS LIKE YOU ARE CURRENTLY DOING.”
Flawless reasoning. /sarcasm
@Rowan vet-tech #38
Care to quote any post of mine where I suggested you to smile more?
Oh, yeah, I got it, I disagree with you therefore I am an anti-feminist asshole.
Why don’t you attack me on why I say, rather than what you would like me to say?
@Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought #40
@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy #42
I’m just following Thetys’ enlightened example: she obviously knows everything so much better than me, and I faithfully follow her path of effective communication.
I eagerly await for HER to tell me why my tone is wrong.
It totally goes both ways: you will notice that in my answers I’m matching the tone of my interlocutors (ok, I went over the top with her).
Now, she justify her harshness by being a victim of rape culture, of which I, as a man, have no personal experience.
I believe her fully.
Her experience matches that of my ex-partner and I have no choice but to acknowledge that the everyday grind of being cat-called, threatened, objectified could and should make a person extremely angry.
I actually think Thetys has all the rights to be angry and to leash against even the smell of anti-feminism.
But she’s doing the same to me.
She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know what I have been through. By my male privilege, probably less than her.
But probably isn’t certainty.
She is discounting my experience, of which she knows nothing.
If she has the right to leash out, I have the same right.
It goes both ways.
And guess what? If I freak out and have a tantrum on her, she may try to understand me, or not.
Either way, she’d be right to ask me to explain what exactly makes me so angry.
BTW, I see Thetys’ answer and she totally toned down.
Wow, it works? Humanity sucks.
@Tethys #44
I don’t give a shit about being treated one way or another.
But I genuinely care about this issue, will you concede me at least this?
I want to see things change, I want to see my side, *our* side, Thetys, win.
I assume you are a woman: you have been perfectly aware of what you had to endure daily.
I have been on the other side: I could not believe it, I rejected it.
And yet I changed my mind.
I realized that I was wrong, that I was blind.
I realize now that I still have a lot to learn about it.
But most importantly I remember what swayed me one way, and what swayed me another.
When I was accused of being the problem, I felt just frustrated and resentful, I went defensive.
I could see no logic in that statement, I could not understand what was I doing wrong.
And I wasn’t being malicious or willfully ignorant: just plain ignorant.
And I didn’t go read around, because it sounded so weird that I considered it a fringe idea.
I don’t think I’m exceptional: I think a lot of men are going to react this way.
I want to win this cultural battle, I want to convince people that the problem is real and I don’t think that this is a good strategy.
It’s not “you are mistreating me”.
It’s “I don’t think this is an effective way”.
You are welcome to disagree with me of course, and if you want to explain why I’m wrong.
@azhael #46
Yeah, pretty much.
I think I ended up confusing the two cartoons.
I said already that my interpretation was wrong.
@Island Adolescent: #47
Read the article. Diminishing people won’t do shit for your argument.
Unless you just want to vent.
Are people trying to convince me or to vent?
@Athywren #48:
No.
BTW I am curious about your motives to argue with me. Am I not a lost cause?
Maybe different people will react in different ways.
@gondwanarama #50
What can I say…? FOR SCIENCE!
F.O.,
Why not just admit that you’ve no idea what’s going on here? You could also acknowledge that you have pissed off half the resident population. Operating under those two disadvantages, it is most unlikely that you are right.
F.O. who is this Thetys you’re talking about? There’s a Tethys here. If you’re trying to be an ally you should at least read carefully before responding.
While it’s true that I do get easily confused, what has the number of people I piss off to do with whether I’m right or wrong?
If you piss off a large number of people here, you should definitely consider that fact that you are wrong. If you only supports is coming from dudebros, you are wrong. Etc.
I do not understand – why is the word “feminine” so bad and unequal? Men can be feminine, non-binary genders can be feminine, feminine things are traditionally caste aside in the majority of societies, what’s the issue? People who have a problem with “feminism” because of the word have no idea what it means.
My understanding as well – feminism is advocating for equality, while egalitarianism is the idea of equality in and of itself. So they have different usages. Please call me out if I am wrong.
F.O.
Here’S an idea:
1. Step away from the keyboard. Really, the only thing you’re contributing to right now is in making yourself look silly.
2. Consider the idea that you might be wrong, regardless of the number of people who disagree with you, or the language they use in disagreeing with you.
In short: put down the fucking shovel and stop digging
Have you looked in a mirror, ever?
This is your entire argument, and an article (which I did read) that IS entirely irrelevant:
That’s it. We’re supposed to hold you as some paragon of logic and reasoning and convince you otherwise when your entire foundation is literally “I figure everybody is like me and I claim this helped me!”
Hey dipshit, if that’s all it takes, my existence makes it so the different approaches are 50/50 effective, so both should be utilized. There, you’re fucking refuted by the very standards you use to make your case, so kindly fuck off, and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
F.O. @ 34:
Ah, so you weren’t saying:
when you said:
My bad.
Clearly those are worlds apart.
The absurdity of it is that under the “egalitarian” or “equalist” name you still have to focus on raising the disadvantaged group (females) to the level of the advantage group (males), in order to achieve equality. So you have to do exactly the same wether you call it feminism, egalitarianism or equalism…The “criticism” if it can be called that is purely about the name, not the content, but the absolutely trivial distraction about the name is used to prevent discussion and advancement of the content. Fuck that.
F.O. I think you’re making a mistake in assuming everyone reacts in the same block-headed way you admit to. I’m a white Australian, and while I always thought I wasn’t racist (not even a little bit), it was an angry exchange I had with an Indigenous Aussie that made me see that I did have a lot of racist beliefs that I didn’t even recognise. Yes, I felt defensive and annoyed at first, but as time went by and I thought past the defensiveness it was clear to me that they were right and I was wrong. This may never have happened without the anger. Don’t assume the same approach works for everyone.
Yep, but under “equalists” dogma, since there are laws in place to “protect women”, nothing more needs to be done, and the males can go back to their unthinking misogynist thoughts and practices.
We see that from groups like the liberturds, who, under the name of freedom, essential restarts the post facto discrimination from earlier days. So labels are important.
If a male can’t deal with feminism as a label, they should be asking themselves why, and being very honest with themselves. But then, they probably won’t like the answers.
@F.O. #34:
How not to ally 101: Being an aggressive douchenozzle toward feminists who correct your behavior because how dare feminists tell all-important-and-must-be-listened-to you how to ally with them, thereby utterly failing to understand the concept of punching up vs. punching down.
@F.O.
It was already explained.
In case you don’t know, we have been explaining these things since forever. Pharyngula and other blogs that deal with feminism have to explain shit so much, many of them have a collection of Feminism 101 links ready to be pasted for the benefit of the next clueless person. They almost never get read.
Some people here are old-school feminists, and have way more experience in how much explaining shit all the time works with what kinds of people. They’ve been trying to educate people who WANT to be clueless FOR DECADES. And here you stroll, accusing us of being smug while presuming you know better! Fuck you.
@azhael
And thus, you’ll get complained about all the same.
F.O.
Please read this is you are still having trouble grasping why you are being called out – http://withinthismind.com/fuck-civility/ .
At no point in history has any disenfranchised group achieved anything by being ‘nice’ and ‘polite’ and ‘non-confrontational’ about it.
F.O. #8,
The original comic has a very clear context though. The man there represents a certain mindset and the woman’s final response is aimed at that mindset.
If someone is genuinely confused about why people fight for women’s rights specifically instead of every living thing’s rights, then I would give a polite response. That’s a big if though. Someone who actually approaches a feminist to tell them that they should be focusing on men’s rights too isn’t exactly innocently curious.
K.R. Syncanna
And that’s another reason to use ‘feminist’. Because many feminists I know (including myself) also focus on the devaluation of ‘feminine’ things as well as the rights of women. Not all of us want penises and testicles and testosterone*, we want those to not be markers of first-class citizens.
* Or more abstract things like the inability to express emotions other than anger, or a disdain for textile art.
Pretty terrible reasoning, actually, but fortunately for me that’s a mile away from what I was saying. Your analogy fails because, as we all know (all together now, class!), “Atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods!”
If you were to substitute “atheist activist” for “atheist,” or perhaps “humanist” then the analogy would actually work.
Being a feminist isn’t a passive state of being. Self-identifying as a feminist means putting some hard work into understanding what the fuck that actually means, you know, “feminist,” “sexism,” “misogyny,” “implicit bias.” Clearly you haven’t.
And, doing what you’re doing now? Whining and raging at actual feminists because they aren’t interested in holding your pathetic little hands and gently guiding you into the same knowledge that we acquired via the School of Hard Knocks? That is an actively anti-feminist thing to do.
Just as someone who claimed to be an atheist activist, but who only ever spent their time yelling at atheist activists for being “gratuitously confrontational” would be met with skepticism regarding their actual interest/work in creating a world where religious privilege does not rule the roost, so too does a fucking privileged clueless git like yourself, who seems primarily interested (based on this thread, and others, since I’ve seen you commenting but rarely see you commenting to do any of the feminism 101 educational work yourself–correct me if I’m wrong) in whining and yelling at feminists for being “gratuitously confrontational” get met with skepticism regarding your actual interest/work in creating a world where male privilege does not rule the roost. I mean, demanding that we cater to your male privilege isn’t exactly fucking helping, that should be obvious, if you had actually done any of the internal work and self-questioning implied by claiming to be a feminist/feminist supporter. And let’s not forget that you’re an obvious hypocrite with regards to the confrontation thing.
I’m one of those feminists who think men can be feminists, so it’s not your gender. Technically you disagreeing with me doesn’t make you an asshole–your raging obliviousness and hypocrisy does that. You disagreeing with me–on this subject, at least–just makes you wrong.
I would really much rather to NOT have your help in the struggle for women’s equality. You lack the self-awareness required to not accidentally hurt more than you help in the process of trying to help. Please to fuck off and educate your goddamn self before you claim being a feminist or a supporter of feminism in public anymore.
@ Becca Stareyes
I totally agree. I want to punch my younger “masculine is cooler” self in the face so badly. But the next best thing is to keep using the term “Feminist” :3
kage, #67:
It’s a precise mirror of the old atheist movement accomodationist wars. The consensus conclusion was that all approaches are needed since all approaches have been shown to work at various times, but it’s difficult to predict how and when a different approach will work, and demanding that the person doing the educating/proselytizing act like a salesperson and pretend to be happy and nice when in fact they’re feeling pissed off and angry only adds to the emotional and mental burden of fighting against entrenched privilege.
I wonder why F.O. doesn’t think that consensus applies WRT to feminism. Oh wait, no I don’t. It’s because he hasn’t done enough work to actually understand what people are talking about when they talk about feminism.
@72 WithinThisMind
And not only that, it is totally and utterly appropriate to abandon niceties and politeness when you are responding to someone who already has.
As others have pointed out, it works too. When someone is being an uncivil arsehole, letting them know that what they just said is deserving of a few expletives is an effective way of putting the point across that what they said in the first place was not the innocent, unoffending comment they thought it was. Doesn’t work for everybody, but it works for many (at least for those who are willing to contemplate the possibility that they are not infallible).
@68 Nerd of Redhead
I prefer the label feminist if for no other reason that it is an instant reminder of which is the disadvantaged group in the equation, lest people forget…
Plus you are right, the “equalist” label is nothing but an excuse to not do a fucking thing.
First I thought this was the best comment, by Bruce:
But then I got to this one, by pentatomid:
And that wins everything. :)
If you were exactly like him, then, in fact, you were justly accused. That’s kind of the definition of it. “People who refuse to acknowledge the reality that women in general have it worse off in society than men” IS most of the reason feminism is necessary. If you were not, in fact, exactly like him, then you weren’t unjustly accused because you weren’t the one being accused. You do know that when you read something you don’t actually become the people you’re reading about, right?
I mean, jeez, you’re just looking for a way to be offended here. That’s pseudo-feminist guys for you, looking for ways to be offended so they can go off on their little rants.
PZ’s post about Ursula Le Guin led me to realize that my teenage obsession with her writing helped ensure that I never really had an anti-feminist phase. I did think I was “different from those other girls,” but not by virtue of being more like a boy and therefore cooler than girls, it was by virtue of being a weirdo freakazoid who was obsessed with SF, particularly authors like Le Guin and Diane Duane and Mercedes Lackey and more.
Starting a dialogue by treating your interlocutor as less than human is uncivil by its very nature, no matter how nicely you phrase it.
The simplest, most unarguable and unpardonable sin in the revised comic is that they did not change the attribution “Rebecca Cohen” at the base of the comic. That’s just plain malicious misattribution, dishonestly putting false words in somebody’s mouth. It might constitute libel.
Not to disagree with the other faults of the revised comic.
F.O. @ 57
1) Tethys’ initial response to you was actually quite measured. You’re the one who started with the CAPS and the swearing and shit. Note: I’m not saying you can’t CAPS and swear or I won’t listen to you. I’m saying you’re lying if you claim to be responding in kind to Tethys.
2) Nobody is saying your tone is wrong. We’re saying you’re a fucking hypocrite for expecting women to be non-confrontational when they explain feminism to delicate little flowers like yourself while obviously being unwilling to hold yourself to those standards. Especially given that YOU started this whole little merry go round by claiming that the woman in the comment was being “gratuitously” confrontational when the reality is she was reacting pretty mildly to the man’s actually confrontational response to a completely benign answer to the question he asked.
What you’re doing here is using “she started it” as an excuse to engage in a behavior you just condemned as being damaging to a cause you believe in. That’s hypocrisy. If you believed it does and should go both ways, you’d have maintained your civil tone knowing that that would be the most effective way to convey your message.
She toned down (according to your perception; her tone looks pretty consistent throughout to me) but you haven’t learned anything from her because you’re still engaging in the behavior that’s being criticized. So what exactly is it that you think works? That acting like an entitled fucking toddler will get people to be more gentle with your precious widdle feefees while you can continue to not learn anything? Looks to me like you just proved yourself wrong.
Care to quote any post of mine where I suggested you to smile more?
Oh, yeah, I got it, I disagree with you therefore I am an anti-feminist asshole.
Why don’t you attack me on why I say, rather than what you would like me to say?
Well, let’s see. You were railing against being confrontational, and a lot of men have viewed me not-smiling as confrontational (I have a grave/slightly angry expression unless I am actively smiling), so clearly if I don’t want to be confrontational like you think it is so cosmically vastly important to be I must constantly present super-duper-happy-face for you because that is the most fucking important thing when discussing feminism and sexism and misogyny.
So, I was attacking you on what you said in a roundabout way.
I also don’t know if you’re an anti-feminist. But you certainly are behaving as a right asshole right now, and displaying the most astounding level of weapons-grade hypocrisy.
You know that phrase, about how if you think everyone around you is an asshole… it might be that the actual asshole is you? Yeah. You’re that person right now.
FO
Seriously? Is the abusive tantrum at getting the exact thing you asked for, (an explanation); and the preceding whingeing comments above that suddenly invisible to you or something? I have not forgotten that I was supposedly mansplaining to your poor oppressed self, and destroying the noble cause of feminism by not being nice to your self-centered ass. A large portion of the thread is devoted to your whining on at length about not being treated in the kind nurturing manner to which you believe you are entitled. You can stay on your own side until you become an adult in owning and changing your shitty behavior.
EVERYBODY SHUSH!
F.O. is gonna tell us how to feminist. We’ve NEEEEVER heard this tip before. Sit politely with your eyes cast demurely toward the floor and take notes on how to gently coax men into thinking you deserve to be treated like people. Never forget, intent is magic and they deserve cookies for caring at all. After all, we’re only women.
There ya go, F.O. You can take it from here.
Or
You can shut up.
Yeah, just shut up.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCPW-NObHQ&w=560&h=315%5D
I am very curious to know where I was particularly harsh or said anything about being a victim of rape culture. Was it the poor baby or the clueless dudes in my #25 that set off your tantrum? Also, since I’m doing all this leashing, could you possibly stop projecting your ex GF sad feels onto me and imagine yourself a muzzle?
F>O>
Telling women to be less “confrontational” while you scream “GET OVER IT”, and mansplain at us does not make you an ally. You don’t tell me or any other woman what aspects of misogyny we need to get over or issues directions to us at all, ever. No one asked for your opinions or orders to feel and think as you’d like us to. I’d love it if you’d gtfo and never come back. You are rude, sexist and obtuse and you think you an authority on shit you know nothing about, namely women’s experiences of sexism and how we deal with them.
Go be a Thunderfoot fan. You will not be missed. You are not needed here. You are not helping. If you see any of those men offended by us not being sweet enough to deserve their awesome manly incite and support that you are so worried about on your way out, take them with you.
“issue directions”
I loved pentatomid’s response too, carlie.
Nothing to add to the range of excellent responses to FO’s nova-scale flameout, I noted that Sally Strange, as so often, gave us a jewel @75. On phone, so forgive no quote, but take her response (you are being actively anti feminist right now) and apply it to Shakesville’s hate site, or CHSommers, or that atheist self professed feminist Youtuber (Jaclyn Glenn, maybe is her name?) PZ mentioned a few weeks ago.
When your actions are explicitly accomplishing anti feminist ends like tone arguments or other silencing tactics, then you’re being a pretty crappy feminist.
It’s far too late for me to be getting this comment in, but I was going to refer F.O. to the First Rule of Holes; When you find yourself in one, STOP DIGGING! That screed at #57 was painfully awkward to read.
The ’77 Cents on the Dollar’ Myth About Women’s Pay
Men ‘twice as likely to take risks’
Do Women Take as Many Risks as Men?
Risk and Reward Are Processed Differently in Decisions Made Under Stress
Counter arguments? Anyone? Bueller?
@37 Sally Strange — well damn, if you’re motor on down the ad hominem highway, at least you’re driving a ’73 Maserati Ghibli. Pustulent shitfrigate is simply world class!!
And, naturally, dibs on the band name.
Ah, another tone critic who thinks ad hominem simply means insult. SS stated why she said the insult. So, it isn’t an ad hominem.
@JeezyCreezy, 93:
-First link is behind a paywall, and appears to be an opinion piece from the WSJ.
-2nd link: Ok. What’s your point?
-3rd link is an opinion piece from the Harvard Business Review, and again I don’t know what your point is.
-4th link: I’ll admit I only read the abstract, but it appears to be another study about men taking more risks than women. I ask again: what, exactly, is your point? I can’t counter argue if I don’t know what you’re trying to argue.
And anyway, I don’t find it at all surprising that men would take more risks than women. Girls are discouraged from risk-taking from an early age: don’t get all muddy, don’t get yourself hurt, etc. “Ladylike” behavior largely revolves around not doing things that might result in fights, loud noises, or injuries. Boys are not discouraged in this way, and in fact might even be encouraged to do things with risk of injury– sports for example. Obviously this shapes adult behavior.
(And then women are told, every day of their adult lives, to be more careful– don’t walk alone at night, carry pepper spray, don’t get drunk, don’t go to parties… yeah, again, chalk me up as unsurprised that men would take more risks.)
So, copyright violation that Cohen can sue for?
Good… but then I don’t really understand why you’d equate your situation with the one in the comic. Well, I do, it’s because you misunderstood the comic, as I have since seen, but that’s what I was thinking at the time of writing: “Why is this guy comparing himself to that?”
No. People are only truly lost causes when they die. There might be people out there who completely refuse to consider other points of view, so that would make them technical lost causes, but we can never really know another person’s mind, so we can never really justify assuming that someone is completely beyond reason. Not convinced we have to cut them (or you) any slack, though.
I don’t believe you’re unwilling to consider other points of view, it’s just that you’re tone trolling. There is no way to be critical of people who don’t want to take criticism that won’t result in their being “alienated,” so arguing that we’d get better results if we were nicer about our criticisms doesn’t help.
Just to demonstrate the point, a friend of mine once responded to an anti-feminist comment on reddit, listing all the reasons why they’re against feminism. Her only comments were to go through the points in order and ask, of each one that wasn’t a feminist position, which was basically all of them, and ask, “since when was this a tenet of feminism?” She was called out for being overly aggressive; the paragon of the vicious feminism that drives people away. There is no way to address these points that won’t been seen as too combative and alienating to those who do not want to be criticised.
As for those who mean well and are otherwise sympathetic… well, again, criticism will always hurt, because someone is telling you that you’re doing something bad and that makes us defensive, but people who mean well and are otherwise sympathetic are far, far more likely to actually take that criticism on board, and far less likely to care whether it was given with saintly patience or with venom.
If different people react in different ways, would that not imply that a variety of approaches would work, and that no one approach is without merit?
Even if we assume that otherwise sympathetic people might not be swayed by more direct approaches and might even be alienated (you know, like the way that you were so alienated that you never, ever came around?) surely you can understand that taking a softer approach can easily result in your being shouted down and walked over? And surely you recognise that seeing how people are actually react to what you say can help you understand that some things are not merely incorrect in an academic sense, but are also painful, sensitive, and anger-inducing, can help people understand exactly why it’s important to change their actions? Feminism isn’t just a theoretical exercise that matters only while you’re talking about it, it deals with people’s real lives. People are really being abused on a daily basis, as you know, and attempts to reduce that abuse are being minimised and misrepresented on a daily basis – and whether you intended it to do so or not, misunderstanding or not, your comment @8, in criticising the criticism of the cartoon guy’s assertion that feminism is reverse sexism for being too alienating plays into that minimisation – and this, understandably, pisses people off. So, yeah, people are going to respond to these things in ways that might seem offputting to someone who thinks they’ve raised this point for the first time in the history of points, but hopefully the people who actually mean well and are sympathetic will recognise that as the reaction of a person who is pissed off at being asked the same old PRATT questions, rather than simply the ravings of a feminazi. If not, well, tough.
JC, do you have an argument or a point besides taking the risk that you’ll make yourself look not very bright by posting a bunch of links without a coherent statement of what you think the links demonstrate?
Firstly,
Bureau of Labor Statistics Report, October 2013 [PDF]
AAUW’s report on the gender pay gap, Fall 2014 [PDF]
Second, risk taking would only mean a damn thing if we were talking about people working their way up the pay scale. But we’re not. You do realize that the idea behind the pay gap being unfair is the disparity that exists between pay for full-time year-round workers in the same professions and that the disparity exists in all education levels as well, right? Of course you don’t, because you’re a fucking MRA idiot.
Piss off, Jesus Christ.
Phew, I’ve always wanted to say that.
Huffpo has an article about the first WSJ opinion.
I’m sure absolutely no one is shocked that rightwing libertarians are hard at work battling evil Obama statistics that show the wage gap is well documented. I will assume that the other links are equally fact free.
Tethys, #101
Hahahahaha! Perpetuated by Obama? And here I thought that was going to be a somewhat serious article. The gender pay gap has been tracked for years and years. What a bunch of sorry misogynists.
Is there anything that They™ won’t try to blame on Obama?
Jesus Christ @ 93
Perhaps you out to tell us what YOU think of those articles. Then we can go form there.
Edit: ..you ought to…
Sorry, just got up.
With regards to risk-taking: yes, it seems that men are more likely to take bigger risks under high-stress situations. But that doesn’t mean they thereby get better outcomes. Women, as it turns out, seem better able to keep their cool and accurately assess the possible payoff and its relation to the risk when stressed.
When unstressed, both men and women take risks at about the same rate.
Opinion article from the NYTimes by Therese Huston that draws on several studies to make its case
Jesus Christ,
Before you reply, look at my #100:
That is a 91-page document that from page 8 onwards is nothing but statistical tables looking at specific age groups, education levels and occupations and their pays by gender. There lies the counter argument. Before you bring some horseshit op-ed pieces again, look at the data.
Jesus Christ’s argument is that men get paid more because they’re more willing to take risks and that the wage gap doesn’t really exist once you account for how much less awesome women are than men.
hyrax @ 96 already discussed a lot of ways men and boys are encouraged toward risky behavior and women and girls encouraged away from it which kind of cuts your risk argument off at the knees. If risk taking is a learned behavior, and willingness to take risks is such a valuable trait with regard to maximizing earning power, there should be no reason other than sexism that we’re encouraging it in boys/men more than girls/women.
However, even if men are simply biologically more inclined to risk taking, that doesn’t mean that risk taking is necessarily always a positive quality which warrants higher pay.
With regard to the wage gap being a myth, no matter how people have tried to cook the numbers, nobody has yet been able to get it lower than about a 4-5% difference, which is still significant over a lifetime of work. I’ve also never met an article claiming the wage gap is a myth that manages to effectively reckon with cultural conditioning. They all just assume that these choices women make that cause them to make less money are made freely because women are just biologically predisposed to work in careers that just happen to pay less money and aren’t the result of socialization or atmospheres which are hostile to women.
I’m pretty sure a tendency within a group to take more risks, whether learned or innate, has very little to do with crime prosecution and incarceration rates. “Taking more risks” would include less secure job offers (such as with a start up), learning to sky dive, bungee jumping, etc. It doesn’t include “hold up a liquor store at gunpoint.” But please continue to conflate “risk” and “criminal activity.”
Seven @ 108
In fact, you could easily make an argument for the opposite. If I’m hiring an employee I want them to be reliable. I would pay more to someone who is risk-averse and more likely to show up on time and do their job without getting distracted than I would to someone who takes a lot of risks that could compromise their ability to work.
@95 Nerd — I wasn’t criticizing. Loved it! And understood the context.
drst @ 110
For certain fields, sure or in certain specific circumstances. I think there are definitely situations where you want someone who is willing to stick their neck out but you need them to also be able to accurately judge whether the reward is worth it and what the odds are of their success. As Sally Strange points out, men are often more willing to take risks but not necessarily in a way that nets better results.
Re men, women, and the wage gap, it should be noted that one explanation is classicly “women don’t negotiate” and that that lack of negotiation accounts for lower wages. All very well as a theoretical argument, but then someone ruined it by going out and getting the facts: Yes, the study showed, women were less likely to negotiate. But they also noted that, in contrast to men, when women did negotiate, they more often received lower offers than when they didn’t. So women don’t negotiate because women are rational actors who learn from experience how to get the best deal possible. They can’t negotiate because of sexism. Not because of lack of willingness to take risks (it’s not a “risk” if you know it will result in a bad outcome).
FO:
So Tethys has the “right”, in your eyes, to be angry? How delightfully condescending of you. Telling survivors (and there are many survivors here) and their friends that they have the right to be angry and lash out is what I would call, in a poker game, a tell.
==========
Jesus Christ, do you have anything other than opinion articles? Like, y’know, peer reviewed research? Or actual statistics?
Also re; women not negotiating and that explains why women make less, Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) just recently made an ass of himself by advising women not to ask for raises and just to let karma do its thing. This at a conference that was about supporting women in the tech industry. So it’s the classic situation of women being conditioned to be a certain way and then having that conditioning used against them.
First rule of stealing and twisting artwork: Remove the artist’s name from the bottom.
One thought on “twice as likely to take risks” is that if the negative consequences a men taking a risk and failing are less than a women taking the same risk and failing, then men aren’t really taking the same risk as women in the same position. Also, if the positive consequences of taking a risk and succeeding advantage men more than women, that skews the risk analysis even further to men’s advantage. I’m not sure how this would/could be studied, but it wouldn’t surprise me if, in general, men and women take the same number of risks overall based on equal real world consequences.
drst
I think the conflation isn’t quite that direct; they’re actually conflating ‘risk-taking behavior’ with ‘poor impulse control’. While the latter may well lead to increased risk-taking, the kind of risk-taking that’s potentially beneficial does not correlate well with a lack of impulse control.
What I get from this thread is that Jesus Christ has crappy arguments and sucks at being a feminist. I guess 2000 years into eternal life isn’t enough to learn some people.
Wait, was JC trying to make a point about men taking more risks leading to men winding up in prison? Because, I mean, yes the prison population in the US is overwhelmingly male… but it’s overwhelmingly one particular type of male. Unless JC has some more opinion pieces to prove that African-American men have much higher testosterone levels than everyone else.
JC also clearly doesn’t see the fact that risk-taking women are viewed differently from risk-taking men. A woman who puts herself forward is seen as ‘pushy’ or a ‘busy-body’. A man who puts himself forward is seen as ‘confident’ or ‘motivated’. Girls get socially punished for being forward and thus learn to be more cautious, and that’s something that stays with us through adulthood.
Dalillama @ 188
Possibly. Which is still incorrect, of course. Being willing to take risks is not the same thing as having poor impulse control. I’m not a risk taker but I frequently succumb to buying cookies from the self-serve display at the grocery store.
Mmm, cookies.
Heh, and I like that JC posted those links and ended with “… Bueller?”, a joke implying that there will be no response. And they’ve gotten over a dozen responses out of the last 20 comments. Swing and a miss there kiddo.
@123 hyrax
Not that that’s going to make the slightest difference, though…
Jesus Christ wasn’t necessarily saying no one would respond. I think what they were really trying to say is that, much like Ben Stein, their opinion of their own intelligence (and correctness due to that intelligence) is vastly more important than any demonstration of their reasoning or critical thinking abilities. Sort of like self-deprecation as an art form.
bastard @26
Most Righteous Asshole isnt mine. :) AFAIK it was our host Himself that first used it. I do remeber Caine and Nerd repeating it at some point i think, but it was aloooooong time ago.
Or, you know, could count to 100.
Well, that is above their fingers and thumbs, so incomprehensible….
What, are we not allowed to Spinal Tap percentages now?
Yes, Spinal Tap is a verb now. Deal with it.
Maybe the prison population is so motivated they’re giving it 101%!
I like how this nincompoop sees that way too many men going to prison, and takes away from it that we should be imprisoning more women to compensate. The destructive mindset of the MRA in a nutshell.
Ok, I don’t have the material time to answer one by one, and for this I apologize, I shouldn’t have entered an argument that I could not properly bring to the end.
I find contempt much more offensive than yelling words.
Mansplaining, especially when coming from people who should know better, makes it much worse
This is no justification, just an explanation: unfortunately being dismissed and treated with contempt when I talk about my personal experience is a trigger point for me and too often I fail to control it as I should.
If I am telling you “how to feminism” is because I saw what worked or not with me.
The closest thing I have to a “dudebro” is the one who told me I am the problem.
I also have a friend who, due to a really bad scar, is sympathetic to the “women have it easier” argument.
Telling him “you are the problem” would just trigger him.
For many of the people who answered me in this forum he (just like me) is just a lost cause, a willingfully ignorant asshole.
But he’s also a good person and with all his faults he has integrity; so I’m certain I can convince him.
Should I not try? Should I insult him? Is an ignorant misogynistic MRA better than an aware half-assed feminist?
(I have also practical reasons for this: he’ll meet often with my angry feminist friends and I hope his mind changes before they eat him alive…)
Also.
I have certainly a lot of blind spots and a lot to learn and to change, but in small ways I am making a difference.
I am a dance teacher, and my classes are the only ones in the whole fucking city who are not gendered, this for one of the most reactionary and gendered dances ever. This did cost me students, and I am very fine with it. I am preparing to include the basics of consent in my classes.
I cleaned up my vocabulary. I am trying to become aware of all the small ways in which I am sexist, and change them.
I take a stand against rape jokes and against rape culture.
A friend of mine has suffered years of abuse and freaks out if she’s alone in a room with a man, unless it’s me. She trusts me enough to cuddle non-sexually and using the “r” word for the first time when talking about her past. She’s slowly recovering now.
I’m not your ideal of feminist (or mine, for that matter) but I think I am doing at least few things right, at least a little difference for just a bunch of people.
I’m sure I can do more and I can do better, but really, am I a misogynistic asshole, a lost cause that’s better filed with the MRAs?
The shut the fuck up. That is what you are doing.
Anecdote =/= data. Another problem.
We don’t say that. We say if you dismiss the woman’s word in any form, you are manspainin’. Which you have done. Tone trolling is another offense against a rude blog. You know better, and have excuse, such as ignorance.
Look at the effect of what you say, not what you say. Your effect is that of a mansplainer. You belittle the women criticizing your words. You demean their arguments. Argue with me, a old fart fat bald-headed man, but I don’t take your words for anything other than mansplainin’, until you stop doing it. Which means, shutting the fuck up, and listening to those criticizing you. Which you haven’t been doing. Don’t bother to defend youself, just listen and think about what you hear.
F.O. @ 132
You’re being dismissed for acting like a fucking asshole. You’re being dismissed for acting like a fucking hypocrite: demanding feminists bend over backwards to be gentle with asshats like the one in the comic while you clearly have no expectation that they afford feminists the same courtesy. Nobody is denying your experience. Lots of people react badly and shut off their ears in response to harsh words. But lots of people also hear those harsh words, realize they’ve made people angry and pull their heads far enough out of their asses to think that maybe they did something to cause it and think about that. Many of us have long years of experience with people who whine about tone but then, when they get the diplomacy they insist upon simply ignore you altogether. By insisting that we must be less confrontational you are denying OUR experiences of what works and doesn’t.
If you’re going to have a nuclear grade fucking meltdown every time you get corrected for saying something stupid? I don’t know…what do you call someone who thinks he can demand women treat him with deference lest he take his ally ball and go home?
You’ve been acting that way in this thread. The way you’ve been acting would earn you a big ole red flag and a “disinvite from anything meaningful” label from me in real life.
That doesn’t have to be a problem for you. You don’t have to give a fuck what the effects of your actions are. If you’re satisfied that your own evaluation of the effects of your choices is sufficient, that you don’t need our input, then fine. Don’t expect me to be nice or patient with you, then.
You still haven’t acknowledged your enormous, blatant, so-obvious-as-to-be-insulting hypocrisy on the whole matter of confrontation. The longer you go without copping to that, the more dishonest you look.
Contempt bothers you? Well, that’s a problem because I have nothing but contempt for the sort of tantrum you threw here. Fuck you. Go to the MRAs, you’re only marginally better than them at this point. Honest enemies are better than false friends.
This is an insult that relies on implying that entrenched misogyny is a result of low cognitive function. Nothing could be further than the truth. Deal with the truth, and don’t throw disabled people under the bus. It’s casual one-liners like this that contribute to a cultural and legal milieu where people can take advantage of, attack, rape, and murder people with disabilities and often get away with it. In a word, it’s ableism.
/SJW killjoy
Thank you for the patience.
I should point out another mistake of mine: I didn’t notice how, in the third panel, the guy strawmans the girl by completely ignoring what she just said.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls #133
I would genuinely appreciate if you could point out exactly where I was mansplaining.
(No, it’s not sarcasm).
@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy #132
“Many of us have long years of experience with people who whine about tone but then, when they get the diplomacy they insist upon simply ignore you altogether.”
Per above, thanks.
“you’re going to have a nuclear grade fucking meltdown every time you get corrected for saying something stupid”
Had one in 130+ posts, half of which are pretty much people correcting me for stupid things I said, so I guess I’m doing pretty well.
“lest he take his ally ball and go home”
Right or wrong, I said “if you behave X way you will lose potential allies”.
I have never threatened to leave myself.
The worst I can threaten is to continue to read this blog.
@SallyStrange #135
You’re right, I am wrong.
But nope, I really, really, really don’t want to go among the MRAs.
I’ll stay here.
@Tethys: My apologies.
I utterly, completely misread your post and reacted out of bounds, undeservedly insulting you.
Worse, you gave me exactly the information I wanted (ie, confrontation being effective) and I blanked over it.
I hope this error will make me more aware of my own pitfalls and I will do my best to be more careful when I read, and before I post.
is <blockquote> utterly out of possibility?
F.O.
“if you behave X way you will lose potential allies”.
The question is… are those people really allies then? If someone says “I would totally support your cause, but you’re mean, so I’m not going to”, then they don’t actually support your cause. They aren’t actually allies, they are looking for a cookie.
 
pluscool, saving that one to zing with in the future
@Rowan vet-tech #139: I think people are a more complex than that, many decisions happen in completely irrational way, and it’s just the way we are.
It’s not about decisions, it’s about one’s personal ethics and morality.
Here’s an example, from real life.
In college, I shared a ‘triple’ dorm room with a young Indian woman, Jyotsna, and another young woman who was african american, Tiffany. Tiffany joined us in the room after the start of the second semester. I gave up my closet (there were only 2 closets in the room total) and half my drawer space so she’d have plenty of room. She tried to get Jyotsna to give up more closet space and drawers, and also tried to get possession of the bottom bunk which is where Jyotsna was. Considering how clumsy she was, being in a top bunk would have probably resulted in Jyotsna’s death.
For the entirety of that semester, I was “That white girl” to Tiffany and her friends. I would come back to the room and find them doing homework on my computer. Tiffany was generally a very rude and inconsiderate person, and frequently used racial slurs against Jyotsna.
However, unlike those fake feminists, I do not look at Tiffany’s behaviour and decide that all black people must be awful and that because she was mean and bullying towards me that therefore racial equality is not something to strive for.
If I decided that, it would make me actively *racist*. It would also be *actively racist* of me to suggest that I’d be totes not-racist and totes for-racial-equality if only she hadn’t been a meanie poopyhead.
Instead, I am perfectly capable of viewing her as A PERSON whose personality I do not get along with. Her personality is completely separate from the problem of racism that she has doubtless faced plenty of.
Any ‘ally’ that is driven away from *Feminism* because of a caustic feminist is not an ally. If they were an ally, they’d be able to go “I don’t like that approach, so I’ll find feminists to talk to that don’t take that approach, but feminism is still a worthwhile thing and even if I don’t mesh well with that individual I’ll still work alongside them because this is a worthwhile goal and they are espousing worthwhile things.”
F.O. @ 137
Per what above?
You’ve thrown far more than one tantrum on this blog.
OK, so you think you can demand women treat obnoxious, sexist asshats with deference lest they take their ball and go home. How does that mitigate the part where you think you can demand deference from women lest something unpleasant happen?
Also: read Rowan’s # 142 as many times as you need to to understand. Threatening to abandon feminism (or that others will) because certain specific feminists were less gentle than you’d like is an anti-feminist thing to do.
Easy, when you dismissed Tethys for example. Classic manspainin’. You were telling her how she should feel. The same as a lot of your responses.
Hint, never tell another person how they should feel or think, especially about an emotional argument.
You seem to think you deserve a medal and special status. But being a feminist is a lot like being a caregiver. You just do it, not expecting any reward, other than feeling good about yourself.
@F.O. re: Rowan’s #142: If you need more, read this short comic by Randall Munroe. If you condemn all of feminism becasue you dislike some particular feminist(s), you’re doing that. Don’t do that.
FO
Approximately 80% of this thread is you telling feminists how to properly teach you how not to be sexist, complete with abusive denial tantrum, and repeated attempts to assert your right to dominance when I refused to agree, or handle you with kid gloves as per your request. Your entire premise has been an exercise in mansplaining. Remember when you said this back at #34?
You automatically decided I was a dude? Why? I don’t really care about being misgendered, but it is crucial that you examine your own underlying sexist attitudes if you hope to change our culture. My gender has no relevance to the validity of my argument. I want equality now, and I am tired of having to waste my time having philosophic discussions with supposed allies who are wondering if sexism is a problem. This brings us full circle to the actual point of the comic and your continued misunderstanding of the issues because just like the ass in the comic, you do not fucking get it, ie; clueless dude
AAARRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH! This is the same misogynistic BS that is pissing us off in the first place Mr. logicMcSpockypants. Would you have a discussion about racism with a POC and inform them that in your white male opinion they should really just fight for equality and ignore racism? Would you accuse them of racism if they disagreed with you? Why the fuck do you keep insisting that the only problem with clueless dude denying that specifically fighting sexism is important, is that it is a logical fallacy?
@57 F.O
@137 F.O
I’m pretty sure you have no idea what the problem with the guy in the cartoon is…O_o
I don’t understand how confussing the two versions of the cartoon has any impact on what the dude says, since he says exactly the same shit in both, and as for strawmaning the woman? What?
Just to make it perfectly crystal clear to any people who find themselves wondering if sexism is a problem. I remind you that the SCOTUS just ruled in favor of one mans “sincerely held religious beliefs”, against medical science, and against all womens rights to privacy, self-determination, and freedom from religion. I have not one whit of mercy for any fuckwit who proclaims that more evidence is needed that misogyny in particular is a huge fucking problem before they might grudgingly condescend to help fight it.
F.O. in general:
Kinda seems like if your response to someone’s approach is “I would find that more effective if it was done differently,” then you should go out in life and use the approach you think will work, rather than telling people to stop using their approaches.
Many of us are sort of burned out on niceness. If you have the patience and that’s the approach you want to take, good job. Just please stop with the suggestions of how other people should do it.
@Seven of Mine: Shrieking Feminist Harpy #137
Per something I deleted. Sorry. You gave me exactly the information I was looking for.
True.
I was trying to explain how someone who does not care either way may be thrown off by the perception of being treated unjustly.
I don’t think anymore I have been treated unjustly, but this is irrelevant because I care and, even if I was convinced that you are all self-righteous assholes (I am not) I wouldn’t leave a cause I believe in.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls #144
Thanks.
No I don’t think I deserve a medal.
I do it because I can’t do otherwise.
@Tethys #146
I reread your post.
It says nothing of what I thought it said.
I realize I read only “Poor boy” and a few words here and there, and completely made up all the rest.
I knew already that my brain doesn’t work as smoothly as it used to, but this is really frightening me.
I hope it’s just because it was an internet argument, but I don’t really know what to think about it.
I always assumed you were a woman, nor I wanted to imply otherwise.
I am not a native speaker, sorry if I gave you that impression.
@azhael #147
The woman says “my main focus is on the unequal status of women”.
The man’s answer is “You only care about women” which is either a strawman or a non-sequitur.
Regardless, he’s not listening to her.
@Feats of Cats #149
It’s a rather moot point now.
Tethys’ original answer would have been an acceptable response. My brain just decided she wrote something completely different.
I still can’t believe I completely misread Tethys’ post, I did suffer from cognitive impairments and this worries me.
I really hope it was just normal human pettiness and ego.
Maybe I just need to learn to read.
Meager consolation as it could be, I think I am more aware of my cognitive pitfalls, which makes my life and hopefully that of those around me better.
I hope the internet argument didn’t have any bad effect on yout RL.
Again, thank you all.
Dan Finke wrote an essay in July on feminism versus humanism or equalism. I just stumbled across it. I like this:
F.O. (#34)
Well, why don’t you believe in it with your fucking mouth shut from now on. If you’re trying to shut down feminist women for the “sake” of the “cause,” then you’re automatically doing it wrong, you tender-egoed, ignorant piece of shit.
And learn what “mansplaining” is, for fuck’s sake.
How, exactly, does someone not care ‘either way’ with the concept that women should be treated equally? If someone does not care if I’m treated as less than a man, they are NOT an ally, they are NOT a feminist. Me being ‘nice’ to them isn’t going to make them suddenly see me as an equal.
WithinThisMind (#72)
And any individual or group who appears to have done so is probably a product of massive historical revisionism. For example, White-Approved Non-Confrontational, There-for-All-Races MLK Jr.™.
~*~*~*~*~*~
K.R. Syncanna (#76)
Meee tooooo. Now that I’ve grown up a bit, I can be cool with femininity as an option for others and call out enforced femininity instead. Like what’s happening to girls’ toys or how women’s “athletic shoes” at the department store are too cheaply made to withstand much actual athletic activity and how 95% of them have large swatches of pink or pale purple on them.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Seven of Mine (#108)
No kidding. An example of risky behavior that deserves docked pay rather than any increase: My apartment is right next to a construction site. The other day, a worker operating an acetylene torch started smoking near the acetylene and oxygen tanks and even lit his cigarette with the torch while the cigarette was in his mouth. And this was like 10 feet from my living room window. When I complained, the acting site supervisor thought it was a hoot, though.
Mansplaining (Wiki)
In other words, stop doing this….
Nerd
I agree that you shouldn’t ever deny the validity of others feelings but that doesn’t mean that you should give a pass to people who dismiss legitimate criticism because it hurt their feeling. Emotions are an important component of humans. It is entirely possible for an argument to be both emotional and entirely rational. I don’t think “I want to change the culture that routinely treats everyone but white men as second class citizens through feminism.” qualifies as an emotional argument. All the discussion about allies is really kind of messed up IMO. Using patriarchal concepts of worth and rank, and military metaphors, are not particularly helpful because it frames any action by feminists as a gender war, or a culture war, complete with mythical feminazis who want to subjugate men. The gamergate fuckwads frame their campaign of hate, harassment, and hacking as if they are embarking on actual secret spy operations and engaging in actual battles of glory. I don’t want allies so much as I want a society that doesn’t disenfranchise over half it’s population.
—-For example, White-Approved Non-Confrontational, There-for-All-Races MLK Jr.™.—
Even if we pretend that MLK Jr. was a non-confrontational saint among mortals, would anyone have listened to him if it wasn’t for folks like Malcolm X?
If they don’t care either way, calling them out isn’t treating them ‘unjustly’.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
The folks who shuttled the molesting priests from venue to venue and continued to sign their paychecks are just as morally culpable as the molesters themselves.
FO
If this discussion has made you aware of the ways in which you have unconcious sexist bias, great! I would suggest getting rid of that bombastic man-child ego thing. That dude is a huge pompous ass.
@Rowan vet-tech #153
By ignoring the extent of the problem.
@Tethys #159
I was very close to make the mistake again: assuming that I’m right because I thought my things through without really bothering to consider what I was told.
I have to learn to read.
One post ago I would have thought that mine was just stupidity and was about to answer you on this line.
Stupidity certainly played a role, but I do have to consider the possibility that I blanked out on your post because you are a woman.
I was aware of my deep-seated tendency to consider women less intelligent and I hoped I had it under control.
You are right, it is an ego problem, which is bad but somehow relieving.
This discussion has been cathartic for me.
Again, sorry for the tantrum, sorry for not reading your post and thank you.
chigau (違う) @ 31
Naah, I’ve been reading since 2010 but didn’t register ’til 2012; and have only ever posted a handful of times. I let myself get too busy.
Tethys @ 32
I didn’t explain myself very well. I’m Aspie and sometimes miss or lose the nuance.
The hilarity was in your coupling: end to end (shortened):
“There is no culture where men are systemically…treated as less…intelligent than women. The real world is full of clueless dudes who spout sexist bullshit…”
Are men generally as clueless dudes who spout sexist bullshit? If broadly correct, then there’s no point dancing around it. You’re not going to get complaint from me about you putting that out there.
FO
You’re welcome.
I don’t know about men generally, but an alarming number of men are very clueless about sexism. It does not appear to correlate with intelligence. The head CEO of microsoft, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris are very smart by relative intelligence standards, but that doesn’t prevent them from holding deeply sexist attitudes which they are not shy about sharing in public. Women can be just as clueless when it comes to sexism and feminism. It certainly isn’t unique to men, but there are very few women in the world who have never been subject to sexism, so women don’t generally tend to get defensive about sexism, or deny that misogyny exists.
…and then you figured out why you were wrong to feel that way.
so, actually, your argument is a big heaping pile of fail, and I get to use YOU as support for why that is.
..and I see others have already pointed this out.
F.O:
I know you’re coming ’round, and hope that you are open to hearing what I am about to say to you. This has been bothering me from the first. As a survivor, I need to say something, and what I am going to say is important. Please hear me.
I am very uncomfortable with your attempts to use the women in your life as a shield from criticism up-thread @57, @132. That you were, in the past, a compassionate witness to the pain of your ex-partner and your friend does not make their pain your personal experience, nor does it shield you from the behaviors in which you have engaged in this comment thread (that you are now taking responsibility for). Their trauma and trust was and is not yours to use in this manner. None of us needed to know, in the middle of an argument about something else entirely, that your friend trusts you to cuddle her. It’s not relevant. It’s appropriative. Please don’t do that.
That my own spouse knows about, for example, my rape and attempted rapes, that he in the past has raged with me, cried with me, provided a shoulder for me, is basic decent person behavior. It does not give him license to use my intimate vulnerability with him or his appropriate compassion toward me as a shield to deflect accountability for his potential present or future actions toward other women. I hope he would not. You should not either.
Someone trusts you enough to share their traumatic experiences with you, using that trust to deflect criticism of yourself by others– criticism which has nothing to do with whether or not the women in your life are trauma survivors– is a betrayal. There are reasons that most women I know do not share the full depth of their past with the men in their lives, and one of those reasons is men are so prone to using it as a get out of jail free card when called on their other crap.
Please, when you are engaged by angry folks in the future, refrain from attempting to position the experiences of women you know between yourself and that anger. While I am glad that you showed yourself to be someone trustworthy in those moments, with those people, it actually hurts your credibility as a trustworthy and compassionate person when you use other people’s trauma as a shield. They trust/ed you. Be worthy of their trust. Let the choices you make be yours to defend or improve on their own without dragging other people’s trauma into it to prove what a good person they think you are.
And, that’s about as gently and politely as I can put that, so I’ll have to end it here.
Tethys:
I swear sometimes the intelligence makes things worse. Because they are assured that they are so smart and rational that they couldn’t possibly be wrong. Because they are so used to their role as Spock putting them on the Right Side and earning them adoration and praise . Because they think being smart and right on so many things means that they can just as easily be smart and right about everything. Because they believe their own hype.
Nobel prize winners sometimes turn out to be cranks when they decide that their profound accomplishments in one field make them masters of all fields, The same thing is at work here: just because you are smart doesn’t make you infallible. And it certainly doesn’t make you immune to being a privilege-blinded asshole.
I propose that FTB start handing out Cluey awards every year for these misogynists of exceeding prominence. I imagine a tasteful statuette of a golden penis and scrotum would be highly appropriate. The front-runners for 2014 are shaping up to be Rush Limbaugh for the lifetime achievement award, Anton Scalia for sheer volume of women’s rights violated in one day, and a repeat winner, Richard Dawkins for best flaming twitter rape witch hunt rampage. There is also a special Cluey Cage award this year for the rapist Shermer. Feel free to enter your nominations and suggestions for other categories everybody. Let’s properly honor the brave heroes of misogyny!!
Oh Tethys, why turn it into a competition. From where I stand, all of the “wonderful” people in the misogyny-based community are “winners”.
Good point. We should be fair in recognizing all the brave heroes. We can give all of them a medal to honor their noble deeds. If Dawkins insists on being the 4 star general of the entitled clueless ass brigade I think we should give him his rightful acclaim.
@Ichthyic #164: Yup. And the worst thing is that I made EXACTLY the same mistake as the guy in hte comic, ie not listening to what Tethys told me.
@Onamission5 #166: Thanks.
I appreciate you being non-confrontational, but I really need to learn to deal with it. I’ll start following the Thunderdrome more closely.
I was about to answer AGAIN without reading all of it. Even now. I feel like I am not learning the lesson. This is all sorts of bad.
I am not sure where I mentioned women in my life in post 57.
Am I missing something?
Regarding #132, for some reason (ego, misplaced anger) I decided to read some of the answers as if they were saying that I am a worthless human being and a lost cause, and on that wrong assumption I wanted to argue that even if I am far from perfect I am making a positive difference.
Of course, it’s still an argument based on flawed assumptions.
I noticed yesterday that I dismiss too easily the arguments from my dancing partner without actually listening to her. I feel it is my fault if she yields to me so easily.