A guy is suing LSE for sexism.
The man, 39-year-old Tom Martin, based in London, began pursuing an MSc degree in gender, media and culture at the LSE’s Gender Institute in October 2009. He withdrew six weeks later, citing “anti-male discrimination” in the coursework.
“Its programs actively block men’s discourse and perpetuate the men-bad, women-good dialogue,” Martin told me by phone yesterday. “I want gender studies to be more inclusive for men.”
Its programs block men’s discourse?! Oh.my.god. That’s so terrible, when men have been silenced for so long. What’s that men-bad, women-good dialogue though? I’ve never heard of that. It sounds like a hell of a boring dialogue, as well as kind of stupid.
Martin, who calls himself a “feminist” and a “men’s rights activist,” said he did a line-by-line analysis of the core texts taught in the gender classes and decided they were “overwhelmingly negative on men, blamed men for women’s perceived inequalities, and complained about misogyny but never spoke about misandry [which is defined as the hatred of men].” Martin declined to provide me with a list of the texts.
Ohhhhh that. Right. Now I know where we are. (I spent a fair amount of time there myself recently. Funny what a malodorous place it turned out to be.) He calls himself a feminist MRA and he thinks women have gone past equality into privilege and that “misandry” is comparable to misogyny (and he keeps his list of texts a secret).
While Martin claims he’s after egalitarianism only, some of his views may raise eyebrows. “I don’t buy that women were oppressed by men historically,” he said. “There’s a perverse incentive in gender studies to preserve the inequalities that women face.” He also believes that men are the “victims” of prostitution, that women “volunteer” into sex trafficking and that women’s “hysterical” fear of rape damages equality.
Check check check. He’s learned his lines well.
Funny how he says women haven’t been oppressed yet he admits they face inequalities. Now, you *can* have inequalities without oppression, certainly, but what inequalities is he thinking of, if they don’t stem from women being silenced, suppressed, kept in their place? Is it that we’re not as tall as men?
Even funnier — your site is sporting an add with the header “Date Christian Girls”. Algorithm for targeting ads gone a bit astray there, methinks.
I know, plus the “Christian girl” I saw looked rather…erm…well she didn’t look very pious.
“I don’t buy that women were oppressed by men historically,”
When someone says something like that, I tend to write them off as a nut. What a stupid thing to say, along with some of his other quotes.
That being said, it’s unfortunate that he says stuff like that if he wants to be taken seriously. He may have some valid points that are being dismissed because he is perceived right away as a crackpot.
I took some woman studies courses in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and there was a lot of male bashing going on then. Maybe it’s changed, I don’t know. At the time, I thought it was justified because many women were just starting to realize that they were being suppressed by a male dominated society and it’s normal to come out of the gate strong after being treated as second-class citizens for so long. By now though, women have made many gains in society. Perhaps not totally equal, but they’ve come a long way. Hopefully, feminists are not still bashing men as a group and instead are working on the areas where society as a whole still treats women as inferiors.
I say “society as a whole” because women’s inequality to me is not a gender issue. An anecdote: In one of my women’s study classes, I met a girlfriend who was active in the feminist movement. She had a busy schedule and was always asking me to stand in for her at various events. I remember when she asked me to hand out ERA literature at a mall in Fresno. I was a bit concerned about how men would approach me. Wrong concern. Not one male made a negative comment during the weekend that I performed these duties. But I did get several red-faced women who yelled at me with their fingers in my face about how I was trying to take away their privileges and wanted them to be raped during wartime (I supported drafting women if men had to be drafted). This was an eye-opening event. I think that if women want to be treated as equals, they need to bash both men and women who stand in the way of equal rights for all citizens.
Feel free to bash me if you think this is a stupid post. I’m still open to broadening my perspective.
For those of you wondering what an oxymoron is, here’s a prime example. Martin is showing he’s both an ox and a moron.
Or is that a moran?
What a nutjob.
I’m the guy suing LSE’s gender department.
Okay then, this shouldn’t take long:-
First, you disparage the problem that men’s equality issues are being silenced in gender academia. You infer men’s issues have been discussed at length at some other point or place in history. Name one men’s equality issues forum in history. What inequalities of opportunity for men did they discuss?
Second, at no point did I say women have gone past equality into privilege. That would be the pendulum argument, which I don’t buy (just like I don’t believe women were more oppressed than men at any point in history).
Thirdly, misandry is as bad as misogyny, but the difference is – women use four times more misandry than men use misogyny (Goodwin and Rudman 2004) – and so right now, women need to stop male-bashing. Oh, that.
No, women have not generally been oppressed by men, but yes, women do face inequalities. Not inequalities of opportunity so much generally (in the West, on the whole) – but women have not achieved equality of outcome (in so many areas) – and if gender departments teach women that they will always be victims, then equality of outcome is a very long way off.
Do you think it’s possible to achieve equality if we’re only looking at half the problem?
If gender studies departments want to achieve gender equality, (if), then they of all places, need to cut out the victim-feminist male-bashing, and set women and men a better example.
(And all those who don’t want equality, please move to The Yemen) – www dot sexismbusters dot org
Poor widdle guy.
I think he’s just yet another person who doesn’t understand what is meant by “privilege”. If you don’t understand the term, any talk about male privilege can sound like an attack on all men.
I really dislike the term. It makes people think it’s something it is not, and becomes really difficult for the beneficiaries of these forms of privilege to understand what is meant. When someone who is the beneficiary of “privilege” hears the term, they think it means that they are part of a group where they’re guaranteed success. Of course, most people who are part of a privileged group see little to no benefit to the privilege their group holds, but this isn’t always clear.
Of course, I don’t really have any better ideas, so this is just grumbling.
I think Tom lives in an alternate, self-created universe. I think the LSE’s money is safe (as long as they’re prepared to defend against the suit rather than settle–and I hope they do, for the sake of academic integrity).
Women have made a lot of progress in places like the U.S., but in my experience that’s only in the passing of laws that rarely even get enforced. Marital rape was legal up intil 1992 in my country. Domestic violence and sexual abuse are still very common and women are still held somehow responsible for ‘provoking’ men’s violent behavior.
Does pointing that out make me a male-basher?
MRAs are like the white supremacist groups who claim whites are victims of reverse-racism now more often than nonwhite people are victims of racism. Just really sick of hearing this b.s. Women’s oppression can’t be real but men are being oppressed left and right by reverse-sexism and evil feminists, right.
“Name one men’s equality issues forum in history. What inequalities of opportunity for men did they discuss?”
The Constitution?
The Bill of Rights?
History in general is about men, men’s rights, men’s accomplishments, but because men are treated like the default human it might sound to you that men’s rights aren’t being discussed.
There was a CiF article in the Guardian a few days ago, by a male academic who studied gender studies at the very same institute, and who refutes Tom Martin’s claims:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/gender-studies-anti-discrimination-case
What inequalities of opportunity for men actually exist? Maybe I’m living an idyllic existance in a shitty backwards low tech jobless arse end of nowhere town in eastern australia but the closest I’ve ever seen to gender discrimination againt men is one friend who can’t seem to get receptionist work because all those jobs go to young women. Even thats not conclusive to sexism since it could be that the boss wants eye candy or because the boss realises he doesn’t have to pay young people as much
Okay, Grace, the bill of rights may have discussed equality issues for all men, but it did not discuss or try to eradicate the inequalities faced by men in relation to women. So at the time, men would be expected to pay for everything, fight for everything, and so forth, but there would be no men’s equality forums to eradicate these inequalities in relation to women.
Domestic violence and rape, are areas where male victims receive a lot less protection and support than female victims.
Men being assumed as the unproblematic ‘default human’ has been recognised AND accepted within gender academia in the early 1990s, as the reason men’s quality of live have been assumed to be okay, and therefor in no need of evaluation, and therefore ignored, and therefore in need of evaluation.
It seems, this year, those who would seek to keep men out of gender debates, are seeking to rebrand this realisation that we’ve been ignoring men by assuming they’re alright, as another example of women being ignored for not being the assumed norm group, and therefor, it is just a further about-turn betrayal of men before getting to men’s issues.
And to Sunil, yes, there was a Guiardian article in on the 8th. I dismantled it today in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/gender-studies-male-blaming-bias
As for all the other standard anti-male shaming tactics deployed by others in this blog – like insinuating I’m a coward (that’s a code yellow), or insinuating I’m a wacko (that’s a code stupid) – it doesn’t cut it – so, anyone up for a debate on whether feminism can function without male-bashing. I think it can.
Could this be the guy ?
Tom, these so-called inequalities against men from women are the result of a patriarchal society that needs to keep women in line by telling them they don’t need to work or have rights because men are protecting them from the big bad world (by paying for things, by not letting women in the military, etc.)
This system was instituted by men, not women. That there are right-wing women who want the “perks” of patriarchy is not feminists’ fault (see the great post on Christian Patriachy movements on this blog). This is the promised exchange of patriarchy, we men will protect you as long as you stay in the home and raise the children and not get jobs or try to compete with men.
Domestic violence is overwhelmingly against women who step out of line. I know, I have been the victim of domestic violence and still deal with the injuries from it, and I didn’t get any support from my family, the cops, or anyone. I was blamed for provoking the violence by not being submissive enough. I have close female friends who have been victims of sexual assault and rape who were told not to prosecute, that it was their fault (and this is by the people who supposedly loved them, they’re own family and friends).
No one assumes that men are all ‘alright’, people are pointing out that globally, political, social and economic power is overwhelmingly in the hands of men.
You are NOT telling the truth. You’ve read to many Warren Farrell books I’m thinking.
No one is ‘shaming’ you, you presented an opinion and people are disagreeing with it. That’s how debates work.
Having only read the text provided, it seems you are doing some pretty impressive stereotyping. It isn’t impossible to imagine a professor of gender social issues might be unfairly negative towards men. In fact your first paragraph seems to actually suggest men being degraded is (sarcastically) acceptable.
Perhaps there is more to this story that justifies the utter dismissing of all his arguments, but you didn’t present it, and without presenting it, you just seem dismissive and, frankly, painting with broad brush strokes.
This guy seems like a first class asshole. The line about “blamed men for women’s perceived inequalities” says he is completely out of touch with women’s issues. They are not perceived, they are real.
That being said, too many of you are too quick to discount issues of sexual injustice ONLY because a man is claiming he is the victim. In this particular the case, the dude in question is a douche. However, its common for all victims to be told “Shut your mouth, be quiet because its not THAT bad for you, after all, you have such and such and this and that which is better than what I have.” Don’t do this, to anyone.
Upper class men, no doubt, expected to pay for everything–except when they didn’t (men did marry rich wives sometimes, you know). Poor women had to work just like everyone else.
Yes. Men fought amongst themselves for control of resources (which, historically, included women).
Tom, feminism can function without “male-bashing”. The problem is, you’re mighty quick to perceive male-bashing. The comments on this blog, for example, aren’t bashing men, though some of them are bashing you (not for your gender).
(Am I the only one to think that MRAs have adopted the worst tendencies of a few 70’s feminists–self-pity and and a fondness for PoMo-style analysis unencumbered by history or logic–without picking up any of the good stuff?)
Tom Martin – “I dismantled it today in the Guardian…”
Are you for real? Argumentum ad You Tubum and blog posts from other MRA’s not only do not constitute “dismantling”, it also indicates incapability of coping with any kind of higher education. The job was to prove a case by providing a reasoned critique of the course to provide an counter-argument, instead what everyone is given is MRA talking points and unproven assertions as “In a world which verbalises four times more sexism against men than it does against women.”
It’s almost looking to me like it was planned that way from the start, wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done something like that – just to try and score a few points. You knew you were entering a gender studies course right from the start, you don’t earn any compensation for finding it’s about gender issues.
@Martin
I’m very skeptical as to whether or not the premises of your argument are true.
Not necessarily because of anything you have done here or because of anything I have read that was written by you. But because this has come up in a context where I have come across many self-described Men’s Rights Activists in the past and have found their ideas and position… Wanting.
So unfortunately you’re tainted by association here. My intuition is against you – but that’s not a good enough reason to dismiss you outright.
However, simply based on what I have read here and the three articles on the guardian, there still isn’t enough to go on to quell my skepticism.
Some actual examples of the kind of discrimination you claim to have found in the textbooks would be nice. But of course, you have an active lawsuit, so I can understand why you might not be at liberty to share this information freely.
So given my skepticism and the associations I have formed over the years regarding Men’s Rights Activists I do find myself reacting similarly to others here.
But rather than just dismiss you, I thought I’d take the opportunity to express why I am so skeptical.
I do share the view common to others here than men are privileged over women in our society in many ways. Occasionally these may be overt and intentional. But for the most part they are passive, systemic, and unintentional.
An obvious example would be the cultural assumptions and reactions that women experience when online. A long time ago I had the nickname ‘Che La’, as this is a homophone of my surname. However, ‘la’ is a feminine suffix in some languages – which lead to the regular assumption that I was in fact female.
My experiences online were incredibly different while I was using that particular handle. It seemed that I couldn’t go online for five minutes without someone sending me personal messages that were overtly sexual: ‘Hey Che La, a/s/l, wanna Cyber, PM me back, you have pics?’
*shudders*
And that isn’t just because the people contacting me were male. I’m very sure that I would be equally weirded-out had women reacted to me in a similar way while under the assumption that I was male.
As a ‘female’, the internet became a very different and much more alienating place for me than it would have been otherwise.
I can definitely see how this could be a problem for women. After all, I can just log off, change my username to something more masculine – perhaps even my actual name – and then dial back in again… And hey presto. Instant maleness, and the internet goes back to being normal and non-creepy. Which is fine for me… But for a woman? This entails hiding the fact that they are a woman. So the choices are: Tolerate the sleaze, or hide who you are. Not exactly appealing.
My career involves working with applications online and a deep familiarity and affection for technology. My experience with technology and socializing with technology have always been overwhelmingly positive. Looking over my past history, I can see very easily that if my experiences with technology in social settings had been consistently similar to the experience I had whilst unintentionally posing as female online, I would never have acquired the skills that I required in order to break into my industry at the time and age that I did.
So what might seem like a rather trivial account of privilege in the grand scheme of things can be shown, at least in my case, as having a snowball effect that would have led to increasing my cost of entry into the field of software development as a career. Whether that would have prevented Danielle Schealler from entering into software development in the long run remains an open question – but it would have certainly made things harder for me while at the exact same time undermining most of my determination and enthusiasm for breaking through in the first place. *
This is an example of how I understand terms such as ‘male privilege’ and ‘systemic discrimination’ – both in what they mean and how they function.
Over the years I have had my eyes opened to the many forms of systemic discrimination faced by women (and non-whites and GLBT, etc) via careful explanations from some very, very patient people. In nearly every case, I fought against it for a while until, slowly, eventually… Yeah. They were right. I was wrong. The privilege – my privilege – clicks into sharp focus and I can’t understand how I’d missed it for so long.
That these forms of systemic discrimination towards women exist and that they are a problem, and that they are a greater problem than similar systemic discrimination that may be identified towards men, is something I accept as obvious – in hindsight. It wasn’t obvious beforehand, however. Remaining blind to privilege is one of the manifestations of the privileged. And while I like to think I do not court privilege, I am certainly prepared to admit both that I am privileged and that I have a responsibility to do something about it – even if only to restrain myself from making things worse.
So that is the lens through which I examine these kinds of issues.
So when I come across some of your claims, such as that “women use four times more misandry than men use misogyny (Goodwin and Rudman 2004) – and so right now, women need to stop male-bashing” – I find myself skeptical.
Obviously misandry is a bad thing. And obviously it will be possible to find some examples of it with a large enough sample space.
But I have to wonder… Are the things that you think are examples of misandry actually misandrous? And are they as endemic as you claim them to be?
Too often I have come across MRA’s that cry misandry when what is really happening is that the MRA has spat a petulant dummy because a woman (or a man) is seeking to redress a genuine systemic inequality.
Or they have decided to get their backs up on the subject of Men’s Rights and have therefore gone anomaly hunting, looking for any time a woman has gone on record with a gripe, rant, tease or even fight-me-back-now style of flirtation regarding men such that it can be taken out of context and cited as if it were an example of misandry or male discrimination. Context always matters.
There is a parallel between this and Christians that claim that a privately funded billboard with the slogan ‘Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.’ is an unforgivable attack on Christianity… Or find an example where an atheist had a ranty vent on a blog in response to extensive religious bullying they had been receiving, producing a few quotable quotes that could be used to defame all those angry, shrill, God-hating atheists.
In fact, I have come across this kind of situation from MRA’s so often that it is now my default assumption in these kinds discussions – and I think with good reason.
This is why I am skeptical of your claims.
To be clear, I don’t mean to assert that no woman anywhere has ever put a foot wrong regarding men, or that no woman has ever played the sexism card to score a cheap victory. Far from it. I can come up with examples of my own if you want. And I’m not saying that such instances shouldn’t be redressed when they do arise, because of course they should.
I’m just saying that I remain unconvinced that it is anywhere near so big as a problem as you seem to be indicating it to be – that it does not shift the overall balance of privilege in a meaningful way.
I hope in the above I have managed to put forward to you that my skepticism is justified – or at the very least, that I think I have very good reasons for why my skepticism is justified.
I also want to point out that I think that study on men’s issues are also certainly valuable and helpful. I’ve always thought that it is worth examining the culturally held notion that a man’s perceived status amongst other men is tied to his ability to have sex with many women that are also perceived as high-status by those men. How much of the alleged male promiscuity is down to actual libido, and how much of it is just trying to achieve a high status in the eyes of the male’s peer group?
There are surely interesting questions such as this that could be researched (or perhaps have already been researched and of which I remain ignorant) that could shed useful light and information on gender as a subject.
And as I stated earlier – genuine discrimination against males or instances of genuine misandry are of course problems that are to be discouraged. Of course, I remain unconvinced that they are as large a problem in either magnitude or quantity as you have suggested above. But I do accept that, insofar as real examples can be found, that they are still problems that deserve some attention.
As a concrete example, I am personally opposed to circumcision. But I remain more opposed to female genital mutilation. The context and consequences of FGM are orders of magnitude more pronounced and more worthy of attention than circumcision. This is not to say that circumcision is unworthy of attention at all. But there is an economy of resources in play.
I hope that this comment makes my position clear, as well as making a good case for why I would like more evidence for you to support your claims, as well as for explaining the kinds of evidence I am interested in.
I have taken the time to write this because I do take genuine examples of mens’ issues seriously – and I am open to the possibility that you may in fact be genuine.
Hope to hear from you.
Oh… I don’t mean to be rude – but I’m busy today, this is probably going to be my last foray online, and I have a busy Friday and weekend ahead of me. So please don’t be offended if I don’t get back to you for quite a while.
——————–
* Phrasing things in terms of how difficult Danielle Schealler would have found it to get into the position I’m in today is actually a pretty interesting thought experiment. I’m surprised I’ve never thought about these issues in such concrete terms before; not just ‘what if I were a woman’ but ‘if I were a woman how hard would it be to get where I am right now’.
Suddenly I’m getting all huffy and puffy and big-brother-protective regarding the plight of a woman that never was but could have been… And that woman is me. Very strange… But a useful idea. I suspect I’ll be bringing up Danielle quite a lot before I get tired of the concept.
My kingdom for an edit function.
Want to go back and edit out the over-use of ‘I’… So… Badly.
Oh well. Can’t be helped now.
“I don’t buy that women were oppressed by men historically”
So I guess all those pictures of Mrs. Pankhurst were faked by the Allies after the war.
Hstorically, men generally paid for what they chose to obtain, including wives and families. Women were rarely in a position to force men to pay for anything. Who do you think was doing the ‘expecting’.
Men also fought for what men chose to fight for. Admittedly it was not always the same men. Poor men fought when elite men told them to – but that is a class issue.
He’s clearly a loon, but it is conceivable that he is a loon with deeply bizarre and offensive views AND is being discriminated against by the LSE. An academic institution must protect the rights of its academics and students to put forward their ideas, even when those ideas are sexist, racist, homophobic and otherwise vile, or they forfeit the principle of academic freedom.
My professor advised me to steer clear of any courses with the word ‘Studies’ as a suffix.
Havent found cause to change that viewpoint yet.
Bullshit.
Wow……………
I got nothing today. I think others here made good comments.
An exercise if you think men have it worse than women. Take any given situation, whether its in your textbooks, a plot of a movie or book or television show, or a news article. Switch the genders of everyone involved and see what happens. Its an illuminating exercise.
Yeah. As a person who studies gender in antiquity with a focus on how masculinity works, I gotta say, this guy is full of shit. The fact that sexism harms men is common fucking knowledge, it’s just that this asshole doesn’t get how it works. Instead of looking at the evidence trying to figure it out, he bizarrely seeks to blame it all on women, who apparently set up the whole system from their lofty position as domestic servants, political tokens, and sex slaves. (Seriously, women weren’t oppressed historically? Yeah, that whole patria potestas thing was just one big party for the ladies. I, personally, think it’s awesome when my
ownerfather or husband has the legal right to kill me for stuff. Also of interest: being a war prize! And not voting! I just love to get together with my women friends and conspire against men to not have the right to vote.) “Men would be expected to pay for everything” – very amusing, and typical. The unpaid domestic labor of women, apparently, counts for nothing. Think, moron: If women were adequately compensated for their labor, including the extremely hazardous and taxing (especially historically) business of birthing and raising children, men probably wouldn’t have had to pay to house and feed them. And as I alluded to before, part of the reason women were rarely in combat is that in wartime, they were afforded the lofty status of property.Tom @14
“So at the time, men would be expected to pay for everything, fight for everything, and so forth”
Way to miss the point. Men paid for everything because women didn’t have property rights. No property rights = no ability to buy and no ability to sell. Men fought for everything because women weren’t allowed in combat positions. In some countries, women still aren’t allowed to serve on the front lines, or in certain units (e.g. as submariners).
FFS.
Oh, and some more bullshit: When rape happens to anywhere from 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 women, it’s far from “hysterical” to think it might happen to you. And it’s not “hysterical” to fear it happening again, in the not-terribly-unlikely scenario that it has happened to you. I’m not “hysterically” afraid of rape. As a rape survivor, I’m rationally, reasonably afraid of rape.
As for whether that fear hurts society – frankly, yeah. It does. For me, it restricts my behavior, it keeps me from getting close to people, it makes me afraid to be noticed in public and therefore afraid to be outspoken or successful. The fear of rape has done demonstrable harm to my own personal struggle for equality. But given the reality of rape, it’s really not the victims’ fault they’re afraid. I’d say that the people who to blame for this damage to equality are the people who, you know, rape people? By and large, that’s not women.
Tom Martin:
You’re not being silenced here, are you.
(Please, amuse us)
Equality? To what equality do you refer?
Your insecurity is noted, O wimp.
Us real men don’t whinge about imaginary slights; we’re secure in ourselves.
And here’s a shiny new internet for you and you alone.
Tom Martin
Yes, obviously. In Al Bundy’s home (which is, although Peggy is never shown to do any work and is portrayed as a lazy slut, spotlessly clean to a point my mum in law would be jealous).
In the real world, men got those things cheap.
Don’t believe me?
Here I have a little exercise for you:
Keep track of the work even a modern SAH mum with washing machine and dishwasher does. The hours, the tasks, when those things are happening. Then go out and purchase those goods on the market. Ye-es, all those things are avaible: Childcare, jaintors, cooks, people who do your laundry, people who do the shopping for you, people who water your fucking plants.
Don’t forget to add some extra cost for “washing sheets at 2 pm because the kid just puked all over them”.
Then take a look at the cost and compare to theaverage income on which the single earner SAH mum household works.
Of course, when we were traded like cattle (and in some places of the world still are) by our fathers, we were not opressed.
When we were executed and burned as witches, we were not opressed.
When men gained the right to vote and we didn’t, we were not opressed.
When our husbands were legally entitled to rape us, we were not opressed.
When our husbands had the right to decide whether we were allowed to work out of the house, we were not opressed.
When unmarried women or rape victims are stoned to death for adultery, we are not opressed.
When we are derprived of the right to make decissions over our own body, we are not opressed.
When we are victims of rape, and told it was our fault, and dismissed by the police, and accused of ruining the lives of good men, we are not opressed.
Nope, totally no opression of women by men never in the history of mankind.
The problem with this argument (as has already been pointed out above, but bears repeating) is the ‘women weren’t oppressed historically’ canard. Were there differences between cultures when it comes to the treatment of women? Yes, of course. I studied Roman law as part of my LLB; that the Romans dropped much of the misogyny of their early law, while the Greeks never did, is a case in point (that Christianity later reinstated much of the earlier misogyny is also very revealing). Do some feminists overstate their claims when it comes to modern western societies, where many differences between the genders in terms of observable outcomes may be artifacts of choice, not oppression? Yes, they do.
But the argument from history is completely bogus. The Married Women’s Property Act, which allowed women in common law jurisdictions to earn, keep and manage their own property after marriage was not passed until 1882. Women could not open bank accounts without their husband’s permission in common law jurisdictions until the mid-60s to mid-70s. Laws against rape were constructed as torts, rather than crimes, taking the women’s behaviour into account (unlike other crimes against the person). The latter problem has not been completely overcome in many common law jurisdictions, which is why attrition rates and conviction rates for rape are higher and lower respectively in the US and the UK compared to, say, Sweden or France.
[Like most lawyers, I accept the presumption that economic and social rights are actually more useful for women than political rights, which is why having women in the Afghan parliament and giving them the vote has achieved very little; what really needs to be attacked is the unequal divorce and property rights laws characteristic of Sharia ‘law’ — I also follow H.L.A. Hart in holding that Sharia is not a legal system as such, but a moral code].
Nothing is ever pure or simple in any of this analysis. Not all societies are created equal; some civilisations are better than others. Saying things like this, in these days of moral relativism, is difficult, which is why it needs to be said.
As an aside, I think that quite a few of the courses on offer at the LSE of this type are essentially engines for the manufacture of grievance, and the point made above (comments are no longer numbered, alas) about men who may well have legitimate complaints about aspects of feminism borrowing from the worst of the intellectual sloppiness characteristic of postmodernism is, I think, well-made.
I have been following one case (a different, though related, course at the LSE) through the courts; it bears out the ‘grievance industry’ claims quite admirably:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/08/17/msc-in-grievance-studies-at-lse/
It may be a trite observation, but having just read through all the comments, I don’t get the impression that men are being silenced or shut out of any of this egalitarian debate (even when they’re wrong).
My own take on gender studies – having read a reasonable amount – is that they are not predominantly man-hating. In fact, I would say that the distinctions between men and women in particular are much less discussed than the heteronormative framework of society (which naturally effects both men and women).
The dominant theorists in the field (as far as I can tell) are much more interested in the structures and means by which we generate those structures, rather than being simplistic and complaining about male privilege. Not that there is anything wrong with complaining about male privilege, but it’s one thing in a milieu of privileges, and most gender studies stuff I’ve read focuses on the underlying structures of those privileges as a whole.
As to men’s equality issues, which Tom Martin brings up, it sounds suspiciously like the White Man’s Burden; a reinterpretation (perhaps in a Hegelian sense?) of privilege as bondage. Also, Judith Butler – as irritating as I find her writing and argumentation style – consistently explores issues of restriction-of-action of the performative reinforcement of heteronormative constructs for both men and women.
To support his claim that women are more prone to misandry than men are to misogyny, Tom refers to a single paper (Rudman and Goodman 2004) that does not even address his claim.
Here’s the abstract to the paper. (The full paper is behind a paywall unfortunately, but if you have access to a university library you should be able to download it). Goodwin and Rudman were trying to understand why gender relations don’t follow the usual patterns of in-group bias seen with racial or social class strata. They tried four different experiments to find out why women reported stronger liking for other women than men did for other men. Not once did they measure “misandry” or “misogyny” or anything that could be described as a surrogate for those terms. The study suggests that there are several factors at play, and suggested several more hypotheses that were not tested by them.
Let’s quote the paper to see how close it comes to Tom’s deranged description: “…this analysis suggests that women (as well as men) should possess automatic gender attitudes that are relatively free of bias, when in fact, women strongly prefer women (i.e., are implicitly sexist). Moreover, we cannot assume that men’s absence of implicit sexism (vis-a-vis evaluation) signals that they are more egalitarian than women. For example, compared with women, men are more likely to associate female gender with negative traits (e.g., incompetence, weakness, and coldness; Richeson & Ambady, 2001; Rudman, Greenwald, & McGhee, 2001) and subordinate rather than leadership roles (Rudman & Kilianski, 2000). These findings add mystery to the phenomenon of men’s weaker in-group bias. If men readily associate women with negative traits and low-status roles, why would they not also evaluate women unfavorably?” (my emphases)
In other words, Tom makes a sweeping claim about men and women that is irrelevant to the specifics of the LSE course and supports it with a single paper that he describes inaccurately to the point of being deceptive. Welcome to the creationistique wing of the anti-feminist movement.
Tom’s attempts at re-establishing the norms of patriarchy are not in any way feminist however much he fails to couch them in the jargon of gender studies.
The few examples he gives of male disadvantage are, interestingly enough, at the hands of other men and products of men’s self-image.
Not sure how that’s women’s fault.
Well, you have to admire his courage in chasing references to himself all over the web, but if Tom is familiar with all internet traditions, he might also be aware of the concept of ‘First World Problems’, which would seem to be the category his complaints fall under.
Quick quiz – if you were going to be reincarnated to a random place in the world right now, knowing nothing about the social or political conditions you were going to find, but you had the choice of sex to be born, would you choose male or female?
Nobody who isn’t some kind of perverse masochist would choose female [it seems to me – but maybe there are some optimists out there?]
Also, when he’s calmed down one day about how nasty feminists are to him, he should research how nasty they can be to each other – it’s politics, bro, if you bought the idea that it was all fluffy sisterhood and cuddles, then you’re the dummy.
I think it’s possible to recognize the wholesale oppression of women while also acknowledging that individuals experience discrimination retail, person to person, and that this experience comes in many – indeed in all – forms. Men view women with sexism, and relate to a “woman” rather than to an individual, but do the same to other men. Women routinely impose stereotypical gender roles on men and on other women. I see examples of all of the above every day. Together those multifarious, routine injustices make the fabric of the “sexism” problem, not something invented and imposed by a premeditated patriarchal conspiracy, but a cultural and psychological artifact of our primitive histories as barely civilized apes. We are all terrible sexists by nature. To make ourselves think and act like sex-blind egalitarians is an unnatural act, not easily undertaken or maintained — like traveling 500 miles an hour at 30,000 feet. Worth doing perhaps, but not achievable by simply insisting it happen. We need real data and a practical perspective, and a calm place to examine the facts.
So I definitely agree with those who are noticing that the whole gender war, feminism, MRA, etc discourse needs a healthy dose of skeptical inquiry and scientific rigor, and a lot less righteous dogma, personal anecdote, reflexive outrage, political speechifying, and flippant accusation and counter-accusation. Where is the calm, sober, science-minded discussion of gender happening? Because I’d like to be a part of that. Is it anywhere in academia? Certainly nowhere on the web. Certainly not here.
I don’t know about this guy, but the gender equality class at my undergrad was pretty much useless. Basically 75% of it consisted of women yelling angrily about how all men were the scum of the Earth and responsible for all of societies problems. It was completely intellectually vacuous. Reasons why men were responsible for these problems were almost never brought up; they were simply assumed, and the destructive criticism went from there.
Okay, well it appears a lot of you appear to be strict patriarchy theory adherents here, so let me give you a little clue in that area:
See Aries, E. 1996 for meta analysis which shows beyond reasonable doubt, women elect men to positions of ‘dominance’ 90% of time.
That is, when women and men debate something, the woman wins the argument and gets her way, but then elects the man, to announce the decision.
A little clue. More on request.
Y’all being wrong about ‘patriarchy’ aside, I would like to make clear, that you cannot just read the abstract of the Goodwin and Rudman research, as it is written with extreme victim-feminist obfuscation, to cover up for the very damning evidence the actual research uncovers in the paper. Women associate negative traits with men, overwhelmingly.
One reason they might do this, is because they’ve been systematically lied to by the victim-feminist academic and media orthodoxy. Patriarchy theory adherents are part of that problem.
Research be Macnamara, 2004, shows ‘factual’ media coverage of men is overwhelmingly negative on men (69% of time) and positive on men just 12% of time.
Media practitioners went to universities, where criticality on men in keeping with the victim-feminist propaganda machine shows up throughout a wide range of curricula.
Proper feminists, the lesser spotted egalitarian variety, don’t male-bash as much as non-feminist women – but male blaming victim-feminists, actually seek to find a way, to portray women as good and innocent, and men as bad and guilty. This is no longer okay.
Who is going to be the first high profile female feminist to stand up and call time on all the hate?
Equality is only possible if we treat men fairly too.
seems like the simplest reason women would have negative views of men is that men are more likely to be assholes to them, not because they have been brainwashed to perceive men into being assholes.
I mean, what do you mean by negative views? For instance, is feeling less safe around a man vs a woman a negative view? Your terms are too vague, you aren’t even giving a proper anecdote or example to clarify the random data you throwing out.
I guess I just don’t even get what you are saying besides “stop hating men” and all the feminists I know say “we don’t.”
Maybe I’m dense, but I fail to see what point you are trying to make via your “clue” either.
Tom, your arguments are so close to caricature that it is hard to take them seriously at all.
If you’re simply going to toss around oblique references to single studies in order to support arguments that you must at least realise are contentious, then people are going to treat your interpretations and claims with skepticism.
It is impossible to believe that the authors are making claims which even approach the substance of your own. Those references are being given to support strange and cartoonish claims, such as that:
Or even more bizarrely that:
This is a claim that can be so easily disproved by simple reference to the history of voting rights or by to more recent reform of divorce law. We don’t even need to examine your claims about domestic violence to see that you are wrong. These are matters of historical record which make the point without needing to deal with the technical problems of measuring violence in relationships.
If you have managed to score small points by arguing specifics (and I don’t believe you have), it in no way changes the fact that the larger points you attempt to make are simply flawed in conception and explanation. Your arguments are deeply unconvincing as well as being poorly articulated.
As has been pointed out before, probably most of the privilege that we talk about is basically just the result of deeply rooted thought patterns. So that a woman might see a man as a better leader reflexively, it doesn’t discredit the idea of a patriarchy. And it’s not like feminists are looking for a matriarchy either, generally speaking it’s the general goal to do away with all the “archy’s” (Yes. That’s linguistically awkward. What can ya do?)
And here’s the deal, as a male. There are serious issues with male culture. Not necessarily individual males (although it can change how we think and act, even sub-consciously). Daniel up above gave one of my big ones, that the “male libido” is more focused on sex as a status symbol than on actual sex. I feel like this is a pretty big problem for the modern Western male culture, and one that has serious repercussions.
It’s not bashing men to think that there are problems with male culture. I think there are problems with female culture as well.
But now that I think about it, all the problems I have with BOTH male and female culture (and thusly the culture as a whole) come down to the “archy’s”. I’m strongly opposed to social ordering. I believe the harm that it does strongly outweighs any potential benefits it might have. So things like patriarchy and matriarchy of course don’t appeal to me one bit.
So it’s very fortunate that by and large the modern feminist movement (and for that matter the modern atheist movement, especially of the “gnu” variety seems to generally work in the same direction, in terms of fighting back against social ordering and confining culture roles, which include gender roles. I do think that gender roles are the most confining, but they’re not the only roles that we’re demanded to play in our society.
Or in short, feminism helps men by fighting back against the culture roles in our society, that often hurt men by confining them as well.
Well this is fun!
Tell us more, Tom Martin – it’s fascinating.
Tom,
If you can’t find a single “men’s equality forum” in history, there are two obvious possibilities. One is that men didn’t feel the need, because they aren’t oppressed for being male and are generally aware enough to realize that. The other is that you and men who agree with you are so used to the idea that someone else does the boring, time-consuming, unpaid organizational work that you’re waiting for women to decide that we have the time and energy to create a men’s equality forum. You know, even if I had the time and energy, why would I want to do that? It’s your issue, you create the forum. Seriously: I am the wrong person to run it and make the decisions, because I don’t know what you want, and why should women do the unpaid shitwork, make the coffee while you make decisions and take the minutes so you can talk to the press?
Now that I’ve taken care of a few pressing tasks – a couple of points. Tom Martin –
All that says is that media coverage of the news is overwhelmingly negative, which is already well known. Journalism focuses on problems and catastrophes. Media also pay far more attention to men than to women, so naturally that plays out as “negative coverage of men” – but not remotely for feminist reasons. The “coverage of men” in Thucydides is very “negative” too; that’s because Thucydides saw a lot of men being shits during the Peloponnesian War. The “coverage of men” in historiography of the Third Reich is quite “negative” too, and so on.
Same thing. You’re just talking about human life, there. Men have most or all of the power in most places, so men turn up a lot in academic inquiry into history, sociology, political science, economics, und so weiter.
I have a very simple point. Tim, you said:
…did not discuss or try to eradicate the inequalities faced by men in relation to women. So at the time, men would be expected to pay for everything, fight for everything, and so forth, but there would be no men’s equality forums to eradicate these inequalities in relation to women.
So you would say that the feudal lords of medieval Europe were oppressed by the peasantry because they had to pay for roads and fight all the wars?
You are seriously arguing this?!
Okay, to prove my point, that people are overwhelmingly negative and uncaring towards men and men’s issues, and in large part due to the false propaganda on men which they have received at university, and through the media, and through all the other typically victim-feminist channels – I’m going to make a little experiment, film it, and put it on youtube.
In the spirit of fairness, would anyone from this forum like to volunteer to be the camera operator that day – to make sure everything is above board, and add to the fun?
I think, Monday or Tuesday afternoon next week, in Central London, for 3-4 hours tops.
My contact details are on my website: www dot sexismbusters dot org
Yes yes I get the gist of what you’re going to do, you’re going to put on a female on male abuse scenario then complain when nobody steps in to stop it or some such nonsense.
When you realize that’s actually the result of a male-positive stereotype (that men are and should be stronger than women) you’ll be able to deal with it a lot better.
That’s not an experiment. In an experiment, you look for ways to refute your ideas.
That said, I’m intrigued by your belief that anything you can do with a small group of people in 3-4 hours could usefully support your claim, simply because the claim is too large. For example, how can that one sample taken in London be representative of “people in general”? And even if you could demonstrate that whoever you’re filming has the attitudes you are looking for, how would you quickly and easily demonstrate where the attitudes came from?
At the risk of engaging in a bit of mansplaining, I just have to say…. Careful. Are we engaging in a bit of slut-shaming here because this woman in the ad (I’m getting it too) wears a lot of makeup and has bleach-blonde hair? Is that necessarily something to automatically condemn? Or if not condemn, automatically associated with a lack of piety?
I’ll be honest, I had exactly the same reaction as you. But I’m not 100% convinced it’s a healthy reaction. Just sayin’. It just feels too close to: “Hey, dat dere slut don’t look like no nice Crisschun gal to me.”
Take it for what it’s worth. Maybe I’m full of shit 🙂
How exactly is this evidence against a history of patriarchy and instutitional bias against women? Except for your little “woman..gets her way” job, this is pretty much exactly what I would say if I were trying to demonstrate just how ingrained and pernicious gender bias really is: Even women find themselves inadvertently perpetuating it!
James – condemn? You’re thinking I take “pious” to be a compliment?
Tom Martin – seriously – do you really, honestly believe that “people are overwhelmingly negative and uncaring towards men”? Just like that? People in general are uncaring towards men? So that if a bunch of people saw a man get hit by a car, they would just shrug and keep on strolling?
I think you’re trying to claim something much much much narrower than that, but you’re failing. You would help your own cause if you didn’t overstate it quite so absurdly.
Tom:
What the hell is that even supposed to mean?
So, are you saying that, to pull a random example, Hillary Clinton didn’t want to run for president but wanted to be secretary of foreign affairs and got her way?
Or that the little girl in Pakistan who got married to a mid-40s man chose this fate and elected her new owner into that position of power?
Or that truely the female secretary rules over the male COE?
Please, enlighten those of us brainwashed by feminism.
Now, listen ladies, it is time for you to man up. Murder more people, rape more innocent children, work hard to become evil dictators that tyrranize their people (on the other hand, the women there elected those evil tyrants into those positions of power, sneaky bastards)
So, if the majority of murderers and pedophiles are men, do you think it’s discrimination that they are portrayed negatively? Or should they strive to name a woman who did evil as well.
And here’s the evening-news: while a neo-fascist terrorist named Breivik gunned down 88 people, mostly teenagers, Mrs. Agatha Walsh commited the hilarious crime of stealing a Prada purse. And now some more news: A man shot Gabby Giffords and several other people, including a little girl. But she never wanted to eat her brocoli while he was always kind to dogs.
While a wide scandal of child abuse and cover up is shaking the catholic church, where hundreds of priests raped innocent children, boys and girls over decades and this was hushed up by the church, Ophelia Benson said something nasty on the internet.
Oh, I’ve forgotten, I’m waiting for my two favourite examples, to come up and I’m going to mention them just in case Tom forgets them:
Suicide and heart attacks.
Well…
I admire the voice of dissent, so long as it is genuine, sensitive and respectful to the dignity of individuals, whether man or woman. It’s the motivations that puzzle me–is it motivated for the right reasons or is something more sinister or self-serving at work?
I’d like to see another one of those dialogues, Ophelia, between yourself and Tom Martin, because the one you had with William Hamby led to some interesting insights. I wonder if it would be constructive or explosive? Either way, I’d be fascinated.
I don’t think so.
No one has spoken poorly of the woman in the ad and to be honest bleached hair and overdone makeup does go against the image of a pious woman. Especially considering what we’ve seen is expected of a Christian woman from certain movements within the U.S.
What’s wrong with it? You noticed a contrast between how something was being advertised and the ideals of many within the group being targeted. It seems fairly innocuous.
karmakin–
If you’re right, the best evidence Tom Martin can think of to defend his claims is the likelihood that bystanders will correctly identify amateur actors making a video as actors and decide not to interfere with the filming.
“Blase Londoners have seen film shoots before! Film at 11!”
Slightly off-topic (well, it’s about the ad): a few weeks ago I was watching something on YouTube (yes, probably something atheistically themed) and I was slightly startled to see the Google ad at the bottom (where they seem to have three alternating ones) trying to interest me in dating hot Catholics (yes, using that phrasing). I went to the website linked, but found no such copywriting there. Got the feeling it’s a tactic only used when it’s ephemeral enough not to be able to nail down and post somewhere as evidence.
@Tom Martin
It’s possible you may have missed my earlier post, or that you saw it but didn’t make it through the Huge Wall of Text – both are reasonable.
In brief: Please provide us with more actual evidence supporting your claims.
Because what you have provided so far is unconvincing to a justified skeptic.
@Egbert #59, read the comments for constructive insight. Martin’s claims about history are demonstrably wrong; he cites papers and misrepresents them; he makes sweeping claims like “people are overwhelmingly negative and uncaring towards men”–the man’s obtuse. He’s not the pony to bet on if you’re looking for worthwhile dialogue.
Tom, your evidence and arguments do not address any of the myriad points that have been made against your positions. You’re not even trying. Please respond directly to the comments that are being made, because they are relevant to your claims.
So, Tom, your plan is to continue throwing out references to papers that do not support what you say they support, and now to drag other people into being camera operator for some experiment (that you do not describe in any detail at all) that will, in 3-4 hours, “prove” not only that men have are being oppressed worse than women, but also that this terrible bias is causally related to “false propaganda” in university studies, the media, and “other typically victim-feminist channels”, and that you will submit your film to the respected scientific journal known as YouTube.
You are behaving like a creationist. I don’t know if you’ve seen “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” but you act like you have been taking notes from it.
Tom, I also note that when someone shows you up by actually reading the references you spew, you don’t apologise or make any admission of error, you simply spew more misrepresented references. This is known as the Gish Gallop. Look it up.
He’s got to be a Warren Farrell fan, what with the notion that women secretly dominate men by….by….what, exactly? Seems to me that if women dominated society, secretly or not, one of the most obvious things they’d do is actually try and help out women, instead of letting them suffer from the incredible abuse women in most of the world experience. It’s a secret plan! So….when and what is the playoff, then?
Guys like this have Illuminati-style conspiracies to explain how people on the bottom of the pyramid are actually crushing the ones at the top, with all their secret….rights, which only entail that they actually give up their rights and all in order to dominate an entire society Secretly. Which they do by…ouch. I have a headache.
Here’s how a society that’s dominated by one particular group looks:
1. Members of that group dominate society’s legal, judiciary, law enforcement, government, culture, heroes, and history. Remember textbooks that seem to instruct that there were no women in Revolutionary era America but Betsy Ross and Abigail Adams?
2. Members of the groups that are oppressed are disproportionately represented amongst the poor, the victims of prejudice, the injured, the ill, the powerless, or any other group which represents what happens when you have all opportunities stripped away from you since birth.
What white guys like this don’t even realize is that when they wake up in the morning, their road has already been smoothed by removing from competition, from their way, all the talented and capable minority men and women who would otherwise represent competition that they could otherwise not overcome. These people are denied opportunities, education, nutrition, freedom from harassment by law enforcement, encouragement, and so on—and they are removed from the competition pool. Thus the standards stay low for privileged dudes, and even the most mediocre of them get an outsized sense of how amazing they are, and what they should be due. When things start to equalize out a bit, these people bit by bit mix into the pool, and opportunities for mediocre white dudes dry up a bit. This might also explain why it feels to them like they’re being oppressed with horrible rules and stuff all of a sudden. The standards have gone up. He can’t meet them. All the people kept out of his way—his world, really—are also suddenly visible to him.
I forget who it was, but it was the guy who said he was harangued by women who didn’t want to give up their privileges. Of course, this followed the use of the term ‘male bashing’, which always seems to assume that all such ‘bashing’ is mean-spirited, inaccurate, and false.
Nobody ever talks about female bashing.
Anyhoo, if you were getting yelled at by women who didn’t want to be drafted, or lose their privileges, it’s probable that you were attacked not by feminists, but support women serving equally, but by Phyllis Schlafly fans, because she’s a notorious anti-ERA campaigner who talked like that at about the time you’re talking about. Also, the whole selective service thing is such a classic MRA dodge that I have to say, using it makes me even more suspicious. Hasn’t been a draft in forty years. Won’t be. Meanwhile, women serve and have done so, but get little attention, praise, or recognition for it, and—-while some people whine about the draft—–the Marines, for example, restrict by law women to just 6% of their forces, and they are unable to serve in combat arms, which are necessary for advancement.
Yes, what Stacy said @ 64 (yay! numbers! we have numbers again) – no, Tom Martin is not a good candidate for another dialogue.
For the documentary,
I will give people on the street, ask them what degree they have studies, then show them the Evening Standard article which first broke this story, which ends on the note that the university thinks any discrimination against men is ‘justifiable’.
I will then ask them if they have a £1 coin.
I will then ask them to donate it towards the fighting fund.
If they so no, I will ask them why not.
They will justify discriminating against men, by coming up with ‘the glass ceiling’ or ‘the patriarchy’ or ‘the wage gap’ or ‘violence against women’ or rape statistics, or ‘sex slavery’ or ‘the second shift’ statistics or whatever – all the victim-feminist stuff – and then, I will ask them a related question on that subject – on their chosen excuse for justifying discrimination against men.
Questions like ‘How many men a year are prosecuted for rape?’
or
According to UN stats, how many women worldwide die from honour killings.
— and allow them to make an educated guess.
I will ask them to explain where they get that sense from, and, when they over estimate the sense of female victimhood, or under-estimate the male victimhood, or over-estimate male culpability and so on across the board, I will then point to the victim-feminist propaganda on that subject which has led them to have such a skewed idea of reality.
I will then ask them to donate, in order that further generations are not similarly misled – and whether they choose to or not, the interchanges will be edited together, and become a youtube video.
Along the way, any anti-male shaming tactics by them, will receive the appropriate coloured card, like a referee.
(Please google anti-male shaming tactics if you haven’t already).
If I wanted to collect enough of these mini quizes, measuring the respondents success rate, and in relation to the degree they have studied – I may be able to show that the more social science, victim-feminist propaganda-laden degrees they do – the stupider they become.
But at this stage, I just want to capture a few interesting exchanges.
So, there is the format as it stands. Please make suggestions about how it can be improved, and if anyone would like to help me shoot it, then check my website www dot sexismbusters dot org
for contact details. Tuesday is busy now, so perhaps Wednesday or Thursday afternoon.
Thank you sisters.
@Tom Martin
I re-iterate my request for further evidence.
I get the distinct impression that a campaign against the terrors of reserve racism is next. Won’t someone stop calling racists racists? The terror!
Martin:
Hey, that’s cute. Evidently everyone here responding to Martin is a “sister.” Good thing there aren’t any men who think he’s an ignorant and willfully blind choad; clearly it’s just all the misandry and female privilege talking.
I just saw American History X a few weeks ago, and I swear, just replace women with blacks/latinos/jews and it’s the same crap.
@Grace
Is it just me, or does Edward Norton looks surprisingly bad-ass throughout most of that film?
A friend of mine pointed out that buffed-skinhead-Norton would make a very good Lex Luthor in a Superman movie.
What is this discrimination men receive exactly? You haven’t really explained it other than to say if women talk about (scare quotes deleted) the wage gap, glass ceiling, rape statistics or violence against women, it somehow is discrimination against men, and if anyone disagrees with you they are shaming you.
@Daniel Schealler
Yes and yes.
Just to pick on one teeny tiny bit of the blargh, as an example of faulty reasoning:
“Questions like ‘How many men a year are prosecuted for rape?’
…
— and allow them to make an educated guess.
I will ask them to explain where they get that sense from, and, when they … under-estimate the male victimhood, or over-estimate male culpability and so on…”
Ok, so we are taking numbers of men per year prosecuted for rape as being…well, what, exactly?
Are we assuming that people will overestimate the number of men prosecuted for rape? Actually, there is a well-documented problem of getting police to bring prosecutions for rape in the first place, and the fact that rapes are more under-reported than any other crime, going by the well-established annual crime-victimisation surveys which are designed by professional sociologists to bring to light crimes which are not in police statistics.
Or are we going to point out that many more men are prosecuted for rape than are convicted? Again, there is an extremely well-documented issue that rape is one of the most difficult crimes on which to obtain conviction, especially given tactics of slut-shaming and calling the victim’s personal integrity into question. This also feeds the problem of under-reporting of rape, since women are often very aware that you can try everything you can to bring an attacker to justice, have to relive everything, have your own reputation dragged through the mud, and then still at the end of it see the guy walk free and thumb his nose at you. (Bitter much? Yeah.)
So I’m not sure exactly what such a question would actually prove, in the real world. Except that, perhaps, Mr. Martin waves his hands and all this is magically unimportant or nonexistant, and what matters is just that people will overestimate the number of men prosecuted for rape and so thus men are victims.
:¬/
Mr. Martin, there is an entire subfield of sociology which specialises in creating surveys which do not rely on false assumptions and which do not “lead” the people surveyed into certain responses. I have a certain familiarity with this subfield, having in fargone days made use of it. I am capable of recognising that what you are doing is nothing at all like a valid gathering of data. It’s a shame that you are not; maybe you should look into getting more of an education.
Now that’s what I call scholarship!
Whoa. This Tom Martin (or whatever) guy is a piece of work — might I suggest getting professional help?
Yes, the questions I need to ask on the subjects raised, do need to have indisputable answers, so the question, ‘How many men were found guilty of rape last year in the UK?’ has a definite answer.
I would not be able to ask the question, ‘What percentage of rape allegations are false?” because there is no definitive answer.
I could ask, ‘According to home official statistics, How many women were murdered last year?’ The person answering the question knows that there may be some women who were murdered who didn’t get recorded as a murder – and they can work it out in the guess.
So, if someone thinks 1,000,000 men were prosecuted for rape last year in the UK, that might explain why they do not think men deserve fair treatment in gender or any other discourse or advocacy – but if they find out the real number – they might tone down their naturally occurring misandry.
We know, the media, and people in general, are down on men – and it is not that we are all being deliberately evil towards men – it is because we are overly critical of them, due to the stories we hear about men in the media.
Also, I’ve done a content analysis of television in the UK, and
I found that, whilst men are overwhelmingly presented negatively in every imaginable way (except as brave soldiers), women are typically presented as perfect angels across genres, fact and fiction – they’re the put upon victim, or the brave heroine, or the sensible one in the relationship, or the non-corrupt official and so on – but this comes with a catch. Untrustworthiness,
bitchinessand manipulative character traits are disproportionately ascribed to female characters across TV – Women are presented as something like 20 times more relationally aggressive than men on TV – so it’s as if the story writers are exhibiting passive aggression, by saying ‘women are angels, angels, angels – but we can’t trust them’.Research shows women are only slightly more relationally aggressive than men – certainly not twenty times more.
So yes, women do express too much hatred of men, but in my opinion, it is not because they are nasty manipulative
bitchesas the media portray – but because they genuinely think that men deserve that level of criticism – and all based on a warped sense of female victimhood and male culpability levels across all the areas the male-blaming victim-feminist establishment lie about.Victim-feminism is used, in my opinion, because feminists and policy makers do not believe women can be trusted with the truth, and need to be lied to if they are to become more economically active.
It is misogynistic, to have such a low opinion of women’s motives.
Women want equality for themselves, and for men too, and do not need to be lied to, in order to make it happen.
Victim-feminism in gender studies is used, in my opinion, because of a similarly misogynistic fear, that the female customer base do not want to hear about men and equality. And because the victim-feminist tropes are seen as justification for these gender departments continued existence, given so few have the skills or confidence to advocate for men – or the belief in how straight forward it is.
So, anyway, who want to help with this documentary?
Don’t use the word “bitch” here Mr Martin.
@Tom Martin
I re-iterate my request for further evidence.
Again.
And some writing lessons!
“women are typically presented as perfect angels…”
Let me translate: women who are abused have to prove they are perfect angels for abuse against them to be wrong. If you think abuse is wrong, you think all women are perfect angels.
This is all MRA 101 stuff.
Your question is very disingenuous, Tom Martin, because you know as well as any of us do that men who rape are very, very rarely prosecuted or convicted for their violent acts.
Mr Martin’s planned excursion to record some Vox Pops of Mr Average Man and Ms Average Woman in the street is utterly laughable for its ineptness. It’s a truly bizarre attempt to collect some indiscriminate anecdotes that would completely fail to rise even to the level of low standard qualitative data in any remotely academic setting. YouTube is not a peer-reviewed sociology journal. If this is the level of “evidence” or reasoned argument that he attempted to advance in tutorials or classes at LSE, then I’m not surprised he failed to last longer than six weeks.
One notable thing about the 2004 study that Mr Martin completely misrepresented in his first post above – the study looks at in-group selection, and the words “misogyny” and “misandry” never appear – is the relatively small number of participants (N=379), and the four separate experiments use less than the total number (one of the sub-experiments used results from 204 people). Having small numbers of subjects is sometimes common in social science research, and elaborate methods have to be taken to ensure the variable you wish to measure isn’t an actual bias introduced by your selection of the group. In other words, you need experimental controls to ensure you get repeatable results. (This is besides the statistical variance of small numbers which tends to make conclusions less reliable.)
Since you don’t wish to answer Daniel Schealler, Mr Martin, would you be inclined to explain your misrepresentation of Rudman and Goodwin’s work?
Classical Cipher,
My question isn’t disingenuous, because in the UK, it is known that only 6% of rape claims end in prosecution, so when I ask it, they will know not to give a huge number.
Remember, there was a government-sponsored report by Baroness Deech or someone, saying we should stop quoting the 6% figure for prosecution because it is misleading. But that 6% stat was flogged relentlessly by the BBC, Women Against Rape, and everyone else. The Baroness said we should instead refer to the 58% prosecution rate for rape claims which make it to trial, which is a similar prosecution rate to other crimes.
Anyway, rape is just one example of subjects to be discussed. We will be covering the whole lot.
Orphelia,
I used the B word to refer to the stereotype of women as exaggerated by the media. I was problematizing overuse of the concept.
Women are not Bs, just misinformed about how generally alright men are.
Grace,
You’re grasping at the wrong straw.
Daniel,
Yes, lots of text. What research findings would you like me to clarify?
And I’m still waiting for someone to volunteer to help me with the proposed vid.
Unsurprisingly, you misunderstand my objection. The number of men prosecuted for rape is going to be a hell of a lot smaller than the number of men who rape people. It is therefore silly and disingenuous to run around waving that number in the air as an example of “how generally alright men are.”
Tom Martin:
Lied to? That’s a pretty lofty claim. Define ‘victim-feminism’, show that it is in mainstream use, and show that it is a lie. That being, that it is false, and that those who came up with it know it to be false.
@Tom Martin
I don’t wish to tie you down to any one thing. You’re a self-professed expert, and I expect that as such you will have a better understanding of the available evidence than I do.
In my initial post on this thread, I explained the basis of my skepticism of your claims. You can use that to make an educated decision as to what evidence you think I might find persuasive.
—————————————————
Of course, you may want something more specific to guide your thinking. So here’s some additional information.
I have two main objections with the arguments you have put forward.
1) I do not trust that the things you claim to be misandrous are genuinely misandrous.
2) I do not trust that examples of genuine misandry you may be able to cite will actually represent widespread and systemic disadvantages towards men to the same degree that discrimination is routinely experienced by women.
Aim any evidence you present at addressing these particular objections.
Elaboration on these objections below.
—————————————————
For 1, it would be helpful if you could provide a short list of specific real-world examples of the kind of ‘misandrous’ activity you claim exists.
Because I do not trust you, it is important for you to include the context in which these actions or utterances took place. That way I would be able to make an educated analysis of whether or not the alleged misandrous activity is genuinely misandrous.
Failure to provide the context for an example will lead to dismissal of that example.
As justification for this stance: There is obviously a very large difference between a woman punching a man as a form of violent abuse and a woman punching a man as a form of play.
When out at dinner recently, I said something cute to tease my girlfriend. So she lightly punched me on the arm – which in this context was actually flirtation, not abuse.
So it would be highly disingenuous of me to claim that the fact ‘my girlfriend punched me at location X and date and time Y’ is indicative of woman-on-male abuse without supplying the context.
I am focusing on physical abuse here, but I am open to examples of verbal abuse or systemic discrimination – but only so long as they are supplied with enough contextual information for me to evaluate that they are actually genuine examples of discrimination.
—————————————————
For 2, it would be helpful if you could provide evidence-based grounds to suggest that the examples you provide are indicative of the kind of systematically widespread misandry that you claim is facing men at large.
This is because I would not be surprised to find a statistical minority of cases of genuine misandry.
As an example: I expect that if we dig enough we could find a number of cases of men that are physically abused by women in their lives – in the order of black eyes, bruises, broken ribs, etc delivered by wives or partners.
This of itself is obviously an issue in need of redress.
But it does not, of itself, indicate that men face a particularly larger degree of systemic sexism than women do.
And violent abuse is just one kind of systemic disadvantage. There are other subtler forms of systemic disadvantage that could be in play.
One example of subtler disadvantage the stark contrast between the culture of online social interaction that can be experienced between men and women. I provide an example of this in my original post where I tell the story about a time when I regularly used an online username that subtly suggested I was female – and was shocked by how creepy and alienating the internet suddenly became.
Tom Martin, just a thought: Maybe nobody’s volunteered to help you make your video because a.) it’s stupid, b.) that’s not how experiments work, and c.) you’ve already proven that you’re disgracefully ill-informed and disingenuous, and everybody would be ashamed to be associated with an ignoramus like you.
Tom Martin
Well, I was tempted to write Tommy-boy because of your absolute inability to carry an argument. Then I noticed that this would be an insult – to my 2 year old and all those bright kids in kindergarten.
I thought about writing a lengthy reply to all the shit you’ve written again while avoiding any point anybody else made about your previous claims.
Here’s a friendly hint: You’ll fail any academic course if you simply ignore valid criticism and act as if it didn’t exist.
Then I thought I needn’t waste my time because you ignore everything anyway and the rest of the people know it anyway.
But there’s one thing I notice about your Ray Comfort style “research” (I use that word in the widest possible sense possible) that you constantly mention bullying people into giving you money, probably because they think that a pound is a small price to pay for getting rid of you, while you will take it as an endorsement of your position.
Because I had nothing better to do I tracked down the precise course Tom Martin stormed out of. It is the MSc in Gender, Media and Culture – managed by the Gender Institute with massive input from Media and Communications.
http://www2.lse.ac.uk/study/graduate/taughtProgrammes2011/MScGenderMediaAndCulture.aspx
A couple of the links are broken but most take you to the reading lists. And what do you find? Massive amounts of media studies, social science research methodology, economics, queer studies, race, class, de-colonialisation, disability, film history and criticism and, yes, a couple of very academic texts which would probably be shelved under Feminism.
I cannot find a single text by or even about dangerous lesbian feminazis who really out to be kept in cages. Perhaps some other exhausted-with-all-this-bullshit feminist would like to have a try?
Tom Martin, you are making the whole thing up as we suspected.
If Tom Martin thinks a little exercise to be posted on YouTube is how proof is obtained, then he might be unpleasantly surprised at how many things with which he disagrees can easily be “proved” using this method. What I don’t get is why we are spending time here trying to get him to cough up his sources. Isn’t he the one who has gone to court about it and will have to do his own proving?
I wonder if TM will be representing himself in court?
One can only hope. I could do with the amusement.
Okay skeptics. To give you an idea just how full of anti-male discriminatory texts the course was, I asked the Directer of LSE to pick three numbers between 1 and 10, which she did, then I used those references to find a week’s readings, select one of those readings, and select a page from one of those readings. I then analysed it line by line. It happened to be a text about race, so there was hardly any mention of male or female issues, but there was some – and it conformed to the general rule. Ignore men, hyperfocus on women, recommend a hyper-focus on women, blame men, exonerate women.
This analysis was in addition to a much larger, reliably selected sample of core texts, also submitted.
So, the documentary will also involve me, flicking through the main introductory core text collection – a book containing all the core readings photocopied from all their various original sources – and asking people I stop on the street to pick a page – then I will read out that page, and highlight all the balance and the advocacy or the biases and deceptions and discrimination against men or women as it appears.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of you can’t see the wood for the trees – or at least, don’t want to see it.
Daniel,
I’d love to chat to a certain extent, but am busy with an upcoming documentary and radio interview.
To all those who say I don’t provide enough references to prove exactly what percentile of domestic violence or any other issues is happening – get over it. I’m busy – and the bottom line is, the core texts typically pretended men were never the victims in any given gender dynamic.
Thanks for all your interest.
For those interested in the difference between attrition rates and conviction rates for rape, in the UK and elsewhere, with relevant links and legal analysis, I discuss the issues here:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/08/29/nuls-points-or-the-french-profumo-affair/
The ‘report’ (it was actually a ‘review’, creating almost inevitable confusion with the more famous and identically named one concerning climate change) Tom mentions was conducted by Baroness Stern. It is linked in the above post and can be perused at readers’ leisure.
I reiterate my point, made above, that the course content of the various LSE masters programmes does not inspire confidence, even allowing for Tom’s dissembling as to curriculum material.
Tom Martin, you don’t know how science works, and you’ve ignored every single argument that has been made about your ludicrous positions. Why should we take anything you say seriously?
Daniell Schaeller, when you mentioned your girlfriend playfully punching you on the arm, it reminded me of something. Did you know that the original study of domestic violence that MRAs so like to cite included that kind of thing when they counted abusive acts by women, and omitted all references to sexual assaults, which in the context of DV are comnmitted almost completely by men on women? In later versions of the Strauss/Geller report, after 1992, they retooled their methods and came up with more accurate numbers—at least ones that were less appalling skewed—-which is why MRAs never cite anything after 1992. That was the year the methods stopped including flirtatious moves as abuse.
I’ve seen the character of Elaine on Seinfeld referred to, in all seriousness, as abusive by some MRAs. Your girlfriend’s flirtatious slap would be enough to arouse cries for her arrest.
Stewart – why – well because he volunteered. Who could resist?
Women have, unequivocally, suffered under double standards and oppression throughout much of history:
Laws punished female philandering more harshly than male philandering
Men constrained women’s appearance and movement (e.g. look at mate guarding, and claustration in Islamic countries such as Iran)
Legal systems exonerated rapists if they thought the woman had brought it upon herself (e.g. by her style of dress)
Spousal battering was ignored and brushed off as part of marriage.
In many parts of the developing world, conditions of women have not improved since the Middle Ages:
Female foetuses are actively aborted
Newborn daughters are killed
Daughters are malnourished and kept from school
Adolescent girls have their genitals cut out
Young women are cloaked from head to toe in chadors
Widows are expected to fall onto their husbands’ funeral pyres
And adulteresses are stoned to death.
All of that is horrific and deeply shameful.
At the very same time, that doesn’t mean that the current political correctness around gender issues doesn’t often tip into misandry and shrill absurdity. Feminists are human beings, like everyone else, and many of them are not nice people at all. Many of them exploit the power benefits of a victim mentality and they thoughtlessly accuse men who disagree with them of having a misogynistic agenda.
Go to radical feminist websites and look around. Many of them have no compunction about making their sexism known, telling flat out lies when reality doesn’t suit them, throwing hissy fits and breathlessly pouring vile and histrionic accusations on anyone who directs the faintest criticism towards them, because they can get away with it. Human nature 101.
1. “Political correctness”—–That’s a big honking sign.
2. Shrill. Really?
3. Misandry!
That’s three strikes right there.
4.Victim mentality. As opposed to white dewdz who get everything and want more?
5. “Thoughtlessly” accuse—is this the new ‘false accusation’? Either way—far too revealing.
6. “Sexism”—reverse sexism, obviously, thanks for playing.
7.lying— ah, there it is.
8.Hissy fits
9.Histrionic
10.Breathlessly
11. “They can get away with it”
That’s just off the top of my head. At the very least, it paints a very clear picture of what he thinks feminists are like—-lying, shrill, emotionally unstable, and so on. There’s enough dogwhistles in those last two paragraphs for a kennel.
Not to mention “Go to radical feminist websites and look around” – as if it’s just self-evident what S Monkey means by “radical.”
At least now, if we ever hear Tom Martin is going to have a sex-change, we’ll know why…
Sad. Some of you apparently have poor comprehension skills.
S Monkey – maybe it’s your writing skills that are not so good. You did use loaded language in your last two paras. If you didn’t intend to, then your skills need improvement.
Meaning that we’re refusing to act as if rebellion by an oppressed class of people who have been abused, raped, and murdered by the oppressors is the same as the continued and ever-changing attempts by the most powerful population group in the world’s history to re-assert their domination and control of that oppressed group are exactly the same thing, morally, politically, effectively, and strategically?
Ya think, Monkey, there might be a difference in how oppressed people react to oppression and how oppressors react to rebellion? Just a tad?
@Tom Martin #98
So you’re not so busy that you can’t leave unsupported arguments-by-assertion all through this comment history, but busy enough that you don’t have time to back them up with evidence.
That must be a frightfully specific amount of business. Color me surprised.
Should your workload ease up and you’re still interested in supporting the arguments above, rest assured that I am subscribed to comments here. Feel free to come back any time and leave additional information. I’ll be watching.
But for the time being: You’ve entirely failed to back up the premises of your argument with substantiative evidence, all the while claiming that you have such evidence all around you. Despite withholding this evidence you have continued a strategy of proof by assertion and unjustified dismissal… Your presence here so far has been frivolous and ineffectual which – given the absence of substantiative evidence in support of your arguments – was always going to be the case.
I hope for your sake that you manage to make a better case for yourself in your legal endeavors. I understand that judges tend to take an even dimmer view of frivolous unsubstantiated argumentation than we do here.
@ginmar #101
I didn’t know about that as a specific example… But MRA’s taking things entirely out of context is familiar enough that it’s really not all that surprising.
“Gee Dan, are you really that cynical?”
When it comes to MRA’s it appears I am.
>.<
Really, Daniel? I hope he makes the case for himself just the way he’s made it here!
The standard caveat of IANAL applies, but I can see so many problems with Tom Martin’s “legal case” that I would be truly shocked down to my toenails if he came anywhere close to winning; and honestly, what I expect is a rebuke to him from the judge, if he is silly enough to press on with it.
Speaking from an academic standpoint, I wonder what the legal profession thinks would happen to higher education in this country (including, let’s face it, law degrees) if it became acceptable to mount legal challenges for monetary damages every time a discontented drop-out chose to claim that the fault was the academic institution’s for not covering precisely the material *he* thinks is more appropriate, or covering it in a way that he personally disapproves of…my feeling is that any such claimant would have to be able to prove that the course in question was grossly inadequate and/or fraudulent, for that to stick, such as a “medical degree” which included no study of physiology whatsoever, for example. This obviously comes nowhere near that. This is more like someone suing an economic degree programme for not covering everything from a purely Marxist perspective, or a politics programme for not spending more time on the relative benefits of anarchy.
That’s certainly how it strikes me (also NAL) – it has “frivolous lawsuit” written all over it.