Sometimes I read things on the internet that make me furious at how clueless and exploitative they are. Other times I read things on the internet that make me laugh myself sick at how unbelievably shallow and idiot they are. It is a rare occasion indeed when I have the opportunity to experience both reactions simultaneously, with a good deal of nausea thrown in the mix:
There were words the upper class used to keep those lower beings in line, and check those who’d forgotten their place. One of these words seemed more effective than the others.
Nigger.
That was what they were, after all. Niggers weren’t the same as human beings. They were legally and socially less than the privileged class. Niggers could be harmed and the police probably wouldn’t help them. Niggers were subject to vigilante justice.
(snip)
Misogynists aren’t the same as other human beings. You don’t have to listen to anything a misogynist says. They aren’t allowed the same rights as everyone else. Debate with the superiors? Pfft, what for? They are just a bunch of angry misogynists after all. Don’t talk to me because you hate women…Nigger. Their misogynistic posters got torn down? Serves the niggers right! Debate? No, they are dangerous nig- oops, I mean, misogynists.
I have a big selection of animated .gifs that I could use to characterize my response. There’s “disgusted black woman“. There’s “Ripley tearing into a room of idiots“, there’s even “angry panda“. Ultimately, after a long and arduous selection process, I think my reaction is best expressed by Tracey Morgan:
No. Just no. Not even close. It is 180 degrees from correct and sprinting for its life.
Now there are a million varieties of wrong in this post from “A Voice For Men” (as though we’re facing a shortage of places in which men’s voices can be heard), but I am going to ignore the obvious ones and go for the ones that I think centrally and fatally undermine the thesis that the author, a black woman blogging under the name Nurdy Dancing, is attempting to advance.
Before I delve too deeply into this, I will point out the one place in which I think she and I probably agree: I don’t support the use of the word ‘misogynist’ to identify people. Not because it’s not nice, not because it’s bad tactics, not even because it’s awkward English. We shouldn’t call someone “a misogynist” for the same reason we shouldn’t call someone “a racist” – because it’s inaccurate and places the blame in the wrong place. Ideas, institutions, systems, and behaviours can be misogynist, but to call a person “a misogynist” is too global to be accurate. Insofar as Nurdy is making the point that labeling people as “misogynists” is both dehumanizing and inaccurate, I would agree.
But then there’s all that other stuff she said.
1 – “Nigger” is ludicrously mischaracterized
Race theorists describe racism as a combination of “prejudice + power” – the idea is that racial prejudices are not all created equal, and that the crucial element to identifying racism is the extent to which a person holding such a bias has the ability to enact some sort of consequence. If a black employee hates his white boss and calls her “whitey” behind her back, these theorists would argue that this is not “racism” in the same sense that a Chinese city council member who thinks Latin@s are lazy and untrustworthy and thus diverts funding away from “unsafe” neighbourhoods is “racist”.
While I don’t usually share this definition (I find it a bit simplistic – racism is often caught up in a number of other systems that are so diffuse as to preclude the idea of the personal exercise of power), it is useful in this context because of how the word “nigger” is used compared to how “misogynist” is used. Nigger was the word that a politically powerful and oppressive class used to categorize a group of people based on external characteristics. Those who coined the word held exclusive rights to land ownership, protection under the law, the benefit of the doubt in all disputes, and had created an elaborate mythology that exalted themselves above those so labeled.
While Nurdy and her fellow MRAs would undoubtedly wish to leap to their feet and say “that’s exactly like feminists!”, you’d have to live in a Bizarro version of Earth to think that today’s feminists are in the same position of power that white men in North America have been in… ever. Such a characterization is reminiscent of those who claim that the Occupy folks are “holding Wall st. hostage” or that anti-war protesters are “oppressing the military”. Even if the charges were accurate (and they aren’t – more on that in a second), the balance of power precludes the possibility of any kind of meaningful resemblance.
2 – “Misogynist” is closer to “racist” than it is to “nigger”
Perhaps the most obvious place where Nurdy’s argument fails is that it fails to address, in any way, what the words “nigger” and “misogynist” are describing. “Nigger” is a word used to describe a person based on an inherent belief that black people, by their very nature, are inferior to white people (although it has expanded rapidly since its original coining) and thus deserving of whatever treatment the culture was trying to justify at the time.
“Misogynist”, on the other hand, describes a set of behaviours or beliefs that are consistent with a belief that men are superior to women. Most often when it is used in the context that Nurdy is bemoaning, it refers to approval of a status quo that inherently relegates women to an inferior position – misogyny in the absence of intentional, conscious hatred of women. It is not necessary to be willing to articulate the position that women are bad; it is sufficient to hold and defend positions that share their ideological roots and axioms with overt anti-woman beliefs. To use a mangled Gump-ism, “misogynist” is as “misogyny” does (or believes).
Long-time cromrades should immediately recognize how similar “misogyny” is to “racism” when expressed in that context. They are both descriptions of a behaviour, not a phenotype. There is no set of behaviours that would disqualify a black person from being labeled a “nigger” – all it takes is for a person who notices your blackness to need a club with which to hit you and you become “niggerized”. On the other hand, there are any number of behaviours and attitudes that are non-misogynistic. There are even those that specifically refute the word, even if you eschew describing yourself as “feminist”. Despite MRA’s whining assertions to the contrary, not everyone who disagrees with a feminist is a misogynist, nor are they labeled as such. There is a pretty clear path to being so described – say or do something misogynistic.
Of course it’s easier and faster to write stupid things than it is to refute them, and I could employ myself for a week in the pursuit of a thorough refutation of everything in Nurdy’s post. Most of the egregiously stupid things – the absence of violence associated with the “misogynist” label, the historical revisionism, the assertion that “nigger” no longer carries teeth because it was “overused” – are absurd on their face and trivially easy to skewer. That being said, I didn’t want the fact that the argument is stupid to overshadow the fact that it’s simply fucking wrong.
I will leave the discussion of the eagerness with which MRAs are leaping on this absurdly and obviously-wrong post because a black woman agrees with their own pet persecution complex for another time. We shall see if they extend to me the same benefit of the racial doubt when I tell them that white men aren’t victims of Shroedinger’s Rapist, and ask them not to use my experience to justify their assholery. I wouldn’t advise betting money on their ideological consistency in this case though.
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Good post. However, I call a spade a spade. If you hate women, you are a misogynist. If you believe women are inferior to men, you are a sexist. If you believe black people are inferior to whites, you are a racist. etc etc etc….
Even if it were necessary to explicitly state that women are bad for one’s opinions to be considered misogynist, the folk at AVfM would fit this definition handily. It is, after all run by Paul “Legalize Rape” Elam.
Regarding the topic at hand, this is my handy heuristic for determining whether a word is a hateful slur: if it has–in the present or the past–been commonly shouted at a person being murdered specifically for being considered a $slur, it is a slur. Misogynist is not a slur.
I’m on the east coast of Canada, and the ball Ian just hit out of the park splashed into the Atlantic a second ago.
Since we’re spade-calling, you’re simply flat-out wrong. Ideas, behaviours, institutions, these things can be racist or misogynistic or what-have-you. Individual people may SUBSCRIBE to these ideas, but the case in which someone is “a racist” or “a misogynist” to their core is rare in the extreme. Labeling them as such is not only inaccurate, it’s too easy to refute.
Besides, I’ve had misogynistic ideas in the past. I probably do even now (in fact it’s not probable, it’s almost certain). By your definition, I am “a misogynist” in any and all cases, not simply those in which I am adhering to or advancing things that specifically disadvantage women. This kind of labeling is too broad to have any usefulness at all – we all have these ideas bubbling away in our subconscious.
Guilt by association makes me uncomfortable. There are ideas that people on FtB have that I don’t necessarily agree with – I do not gain those ideas by osmosis simply because I blog here. Nurdy is probably fairly feminist in her approach to and beliefs about many things, even if she would not describe herself as such. These people are wrong because they’re wrong. We have enough good reasons to disagree with them without adding lazy ones.
One could also equate it to aryans calling jews a “threat” in 1933.
Pretending to be the victim is a form of propaganda. It is an attempt to rationalize the commission of violence and crimes, not to prevent them.
I first heard Jay Smooth say this, and I’m still trying to get it to sink in. Not that the right of it isn’t completely apparent to me, but that using such global identifiers of people is so engrained in the way in which I, and the culture in which I live, uses language. It’s going to take some work for me to change this, but it seems worth it.
So…I shouldn’t call people stupid anymore, then right?
Damn.
The equivalent to misogynist in terms of race would probably be white supremacist. In terms of sexual orientation it would be homophobe (although I think that term is problematic for a bunch of reasons), in terms of class it would be Mitt Romney, etc.
Now, there’s a huge difference between calling someone a misogynist and saying that someone did something misogynistic. (That nuance, unfortunately seems to be lost on most people on both sides it seems) That people take the former (and even the latter) to be a slur is actually a good thing, and I’d be very worried about anybody who didn’t see things that way. That’s a huge red flag for me.
But at the very least, putting misogyny over sexism is terrible awful framing. Misogyny is a subset of sexism, but sexism overall is the problem.
Ha! Everyone says that at first.
It starts off subtly. In a discussion of opticw, you casually mention cuttlefishes’ W-shaped pupils and their ability to see polarisation of light. Then you find yourself wondering how you might wire LEDs into an octopus Halloween costume to simulate chromatophores. Next thing you know—bam!—you’re fending off hungry sperm whales.
I can understand the reluctance to use “misogynist” as a descriptive as it labels people and not behaviours. I am curious whether “misogynistic” remain a fair adjective to use however?
Namely, “Bob is a misogynist” is problematic for the reasons mentioned, but is using “Bob is misogynistic” fair and proper, or still to be avoided?
I think it’s MORE accurate, but I usually prefer to stick to the descriptions of ideas, behaviours, and institutions rather than people. “Bob’s attitude is generally misogynistic” might be true of Bob, regardless of how much he totes respects wimminz.
I fully agree with Melody here. People, actual people can be misogynists or racist when their entire worldview is based on these ideologies and their actions reflect their ideologies. Of course, some really good people occasionally say racist or misogynistic stuff, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes not so subconsciously, but their entire outlook on life or their actions are not always racist or misogynistic. I agree it would be a mistake to lightly label people like this as misogynistic or racist, especially if one is trying to make them “see the light.” But unfortunately there is a fair share of dedicated racists and misogynists.
Ah but there’s a vast gulf of difference between guilt by association (tarring one person with another’s views) because they’re co-located, and because they hang out with and don’t disapprove of behaviours for months on end. I think you and Stephanie just had a tiff along those same lines recently, in fact. And frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this reaction of yours about “guilt by association” is entirely because of people assuming they know everything about you because of where you blog.
The point is, yes, you can’t just say “that person is an FtBer” and assume you know anything about them. You can, however, say (for instance) “that person posts very frequently on the Thunderdome threads at Pharyngula and actively provides apologetics for X-behaviour that I find appalling”.
You can bet that just about every person in the comments at A Voice for Men who isn’t a drive-by or about to be banned as a troll has active antifeminist sentiments. You can further bet that the WRITERS at AVfM are actively antifeminist as opposed to advocating actual men’s rights, considering the cesspit of misogyny that goes on there. But you can’t know if any particular writer for AVfM shares Paul Elam’s pro-legal-rape stance. Just that none of them have decried that stance or left for saner pastures.
I can’t believe that linked piece equates being the target of bigotry with BEING A FUCKING BIGOT. As if bigots are somehow a marginalized, oppressed group of people. And that oppression is due to immutable personal traits, like race? is she saying bigotry is just part of a man’s genetic make up so we have to tolerate them?
what planet does this person live on? Or was the pay check good enough to straight up lie?
I love the view that people cannot be misogynist or racist only their behaviours and actions. It makes so much sense and is a much more optimistic view than that of someone being an inveterate racist or woman hater when in all likelihood they don’t behave in this way in all aspects of their life. Also leaves open the view they can change. And Brownian makes the link to the word ‘stupid’ which Dan Fincke obviously made a good case for. I’m going to have to try and stick with this – criticise the ideas not the person.
In terms of nigger the nearest in this example would be ‘MRA’ given it is a label often applied to denigrate from this point of view. Thing is I’m sure they are happy to be called MRAs so not really anywhere near equivalent, especially as they self-identify as MRA for the most part and can change. I do wonder how much they post things just for the shock value and to get a wide audience of outraged articles. No publicity is bad publicity.
There are women who attend skeptic meetups where people say and do misogynistic things, and they don’t speak up. There are black and gay and poor Republicans. There are pro-choice Catholics. To suggest that all of these people are “really” supportive of beliefs simply because they don’t fight back against them is silly. There are a lot of reasons why people don’t speak out against things – some of it is assent, some of it is fear, some of it is socially normative pressure. I refuse to speculate about the beliefs of others based on what those around them say.
Which isn’t to say that AVfM isn’t a misogynistic publication – it is. I’d be SHOCKED if the majority of people who comment there don’t sincerely believe some disgustingly anti-woman bullshit. But I can’t make the leap from “X at Y said Z” to “therefore everyone at Y is whatever-ist”.
I get comparatively little of that, unless I insert myself into those conversations. My reaction is because I think someone’s actions, and not their associations, are an accurate indication of their behaviour. Your second paragraph seems to indicate that you feel the same way.
One thing I would disagree with. A human is defined by its actions and beliefs. If someone acts in ways that are misogynistic, and believes that women are objects that can be abused because they hate them, then they are indeed a misogynist. I find that trying to use the Christian pussyfooting “love the sinner hate the sin” tactic removes the responsiblity from both sides of the argument.
we “all” do? No, sorry, “we all” don’t. Your subconscious can bubble away, but don’t think that everyone is infected so quiet your own guilt.
Stephanie was asking people to recognize the fact that this person — Gurdur, Tim Skellitt — hangs out for months on a thread that is entirely built as a “monument to free speech”, but serves exactly one purpose: to foment hate campaigns against certain people who hold feminist views. He finds cameraderie with them because he also hates PZ, just like they do; he praises the creation of the Phawrongula wiki where they mischaracterize people’s arguments and heap opprobrium most especially on feminists for being feminists; he calmly and rationally discusses how best to stop us — and the only thing he finds issue with, when they post threats, people’s personal information, wage all out war with us, is how these people need to be more careful about how they wage that war. Not that the war is necessary, not that it short-circuits rationality or tars people unnecessarily for each others’ views.
When you’re facing down a hate campaign from a group of people determined to do chipping damage to the point where your members lose the will to fight, as Jen and Greta and Ophelia and Stephanie faced, and FRIENDS say “oh, you can’t tar someone for hanging out with those people for months on end” — yes you fucking can. You can tar someone for being the “good man who’s silent” when the “good man” part isn’t in evidence. When the supposedly “good man” doesn’t have a single goddamn thing to say about all the misogyny, but can only correct their grammar at absolute worst, that’s complicity. You can use pattern recognition to synthesize from everything they’ve agreed with, that everything they’ve heretofore ignored, and what battles they’ve chosen to fight, what kind of person they are. You might be wrong, depending on how much data you’ve collected, but if you’ve looked at quite a bit of data, the chances of that are slim.
Knowing as I do that you’ve not read any of the slimepit threads, that you’ve not seen the scope and breadth of the hate campaign and misogyny there, you might think “hanging out in the slimepit” isn’t tar-worthy. I assure you that if you were to actually read those threads, rather than asking for a single tweet to summarize the whole thing, you might get why people like Stephanie and I want these folks to wear their colors off the field. Especially when we’re talking about judging people for their behaviours, and other people’s pattern recognition have already long since collected enough data to trigger on a label that you might think is “not useful” in conversation. Especially where your pushback against guilt by association comes from your fear that you’re not collecting enough data on the person just by looking at their peers.
Frankly, you should know better than that. It’s irritating that you don’t, in this particular case.
(Slightly further)
You already agree with me that people who hang out on AVfM are probably antifeminist, possibly misogynist.
What would you think about someone who hung out and chatted collegially on the comment threads at Stormfront or some other white supremacy board? Probably racist?
Do you have enough data to determine why people are using “slimepit” in their pattern recognition? Do you acknowledge that others might have more data; that there’s a disparity between your and their knowledge here?
I think you may be missing the forest for the trees on this one. Sure, there’s a lot to criticize in MRA-land but this seems a little nit-picky to me. YMMV obviously.
In the first place, you actually agree with the author’s main point: that the epithet “misogynist” is hurled just like the epithet “nigger” used to be: to attempt to silence opposition by dehumanizing the opponents, and not to have to take the trouble to actually deal with the arguments raised. You said above that calling someone a “misogynist” is both dehumanizing and inaccurate.
You just disagree with the author’s implied analysis of the way power dynamics and oppression actually operate. It just seems to me a knee-jerk reaction against ever admitting white men can be oppressed. And I’m going to point out that equating the dominant and powerful class with white cis-gendered heterosexual able-bodied men, simpliciter, is extreme intellectual laziness. That the members of the class consist exclusively, or almost exclusively, of that demographic does not imply that all members of that demographic are members of the dominant class. In fact most are not. So I disagree with
when you refer to “white men” without any distinctions. Your analogy limps mightily. Today’s educated, politically-connected, influential feminists do in fact have more power than the average working-class Joe. This is not to deny the existence of sexism (since educated, politically-connected, influential men have more power), only to deny that it is in every case more powerful than classism. You would do better to say that the degree of oppression faced by the average working-class Joe today is less than that historically faced by blacks or women. Nevertheless it is only a difference of degree, not of kind.
And there is another analogy fail here:
Yes but that is not the context the word “misogynist” is being used here: here it is used to stigmatize a person, or people, as morally inferior and therefore also deserving of whatever treatment our culture wants to justify. Therefore the analogy is apt.
First they came for the bigots, but I did not speak up, because I wasn’t a bigot…
Richard Coughlan just tweeted pointing out the NurdyDancing previously called him a racist for criticizing one of her videos. She apparently actually approves of this brand of accusation.
Nope. Read the above article again, but substitute “misogynist” with “MRA”. It still works.
“MRA” is not a slur. It doesn’t get people beaten, raped, imprisoned, impoverished or killed.
How do you account for the fundamental attribution error?
Yes, people whose actions and thoughts are misogynistic are morally inferior. When you dehumanize half the global population, you are morally inferior. However, nowhere has anyone taken the position that this justifies any action. That’s absolute bullshit. And in case you haven’t noticed, our culture either ignores misogyny or it outright celebrates it.
@hexidecima
Culture has a lot of ideological underpinnings. Ideology can remain invisible to people because it’s generally taken for granted. If you live in a culture that was built on genocide against an indigineuous population, slavery, colonisation, sexism — even if these things are in the past — then there are going to be a lot of problematic ideological ideas in your culture and it would be natural for anyone to unthinkingly absorb and internalise these ideas.
The only way the two are related are that they are both words people call each other that have negative associations. The similarities stop there. One is a word used in contribution to and reflection/approval of a system which marginalises and oppresses an entire group of people. The other is a word used by marginalised and oppressed people to call attention to their own marginalisation and oppression. It’s not punching down, in other words, it’s punching up.
One is offense for purposes of retaining unearned social power. One is defense for purposes of rebutting those who wish to retain unearned social power. Defending oneself when one has a shitty hand is neither equal to nor worse than going on the offensive when one already has most of the advantages.
But the dedicated racists, the ones who openly acknowledge that “I-hate-niggers!”, these people are by and large losers in the game of life. I mean, they can – and do – cause problems, all the way to murdering people. But by and large they’re a fucking joke. They lost the war, at least in most of North American society.
Far more of a problem for far more people of colour is the insidious subconscious racism – the way that job applicants are less likely to make it to an interview if they have a stereotypically black name, etc etc etc (see this site and many others for examples of how this plays out). And this is the stuff that is perpetrated by people like me, the “hey, I’m not racist” nice white folks. (And by other POCs, for that matter.) This is where the real action is, where the real factors that lead to disparate racial outcomes are. AKA racism.
I think Crommunist has a different take on this than me, but I think there certainly are absolutely-died-in-the-wool-racists who it’s perfectly accurate to call “racist”: they run Stormfront, they go to rallies, they overtly express explicit beliefs about racial inferiority.
But they have so little meaningful impact on most people’s lives compared to the more insidious forms of racism. Maybe a good example would be flat earthers – sure, they’re out there, but worrying about them seems silly in the face of more general problems with obtaining and assessing evidence for beliefs.
I’m sorry. “Nigger” is not—nor has it ever been—a word that denotes black people inferior to white, and “misogynist” does not mean the belief that men are superior to women.
At least, they’re not according to the definitions provided.
First of all, “nigger” is colloquial. It was contained within the English speaking countries, the UK and the colonies in North America. Second of all, it was used to denote black people. Pejoratively it was used to denote stupid black people. Even if you acknowledge the meaning changed over time, it still hasn’t ever meant “inferior to white.”
Thirdly, “misogynist” denotes hatred of women. Not the belief that you’re superior to women. The reason you can make the argument it’s overused — in the same manner as “nigger” (even though I wouldn’t make that comparison) — is that it’s been redefined and co-opted countless times (like “nigger”) to mean whatever its proponents wants it to mean. Besides hatred of women, according to feminist theory there’s several other reasons to consider you a misogynist. They are 1) sexism 2) sexual objectification of women 3) denigration of women [awfully vague] and 4) violence against women. Note how none of these examples describe hatred of women.
Why it becomes complicated for Summers using this analogy is because “nigger” was colloquial, it was contained and used to describe a specific kind – black people. You can say that, for want of a better term, for black people (in the US) “nigger” has become their “pet” word. (Help me out here.) Which is probably why in later years it was reclaimed by the black community, and used now within the community either neutrally or as a sign of solidarity. I doubt misogynist would have that same effect. She has a point it’s way overused, though. I find you’re labelled with it too quickly and usually not for the right reasons. (Not pointing fingers.)
The fact that you had to explain this is revolting.
So, the misogyny-apologist is a tremendous hypocrite. In other news, water, when in its liquid state, continues to be wet.
Yeah try saying that to MRAs! They are the most victimised, beaten down and harried people on the face of the earth according to them… But I get your point.
George Bernard Shaw. Woody Allen. Neither would argue if you called him a misogynist.
Well, since you bring it up: no, you shouldn’t. Besides the issue of tarring someone with a negative label based on one comment, words like ‘stupid’, ‘idiot’, ‘moron’ etc are arguably disablist language, by implying that the problem with the person you’re arguing with is that they have limited mental faculties (rather than that they’re being a prejudiced asshole). I know, I find it hard to avoid those ones as well, but that just means we need to widen our vocabulary, and try to rise above petty insults in general.
When you dehumanize anybody, you are morally inferior. Or at least you’re acting in a morally inferior way.
Besides everything else people have already said on this one, there’s one point which seems so obvious it may have gone uncommented on. For the word ‘misogynist’ to be ‘the new nigger’, it would have to be the case that the word ‘nigger’ is no longer in use. Certainly, that seems to be the implication from the quoted section, which puts the use of ‘nigger’ in the past tense.
But as any black person could tell you, that’s not the case: it may be considerably less acceptable than it was, but black people still get called ‘niggers’ somewhere every day, and I’m not just talking about rap videos. I’m rather amazed that a black person could write a post suggesting that racism against black people is somehow a thing of the past, which leads me to wonder whether the writer of this one is really a black woman at all. (It is, sadly, quite possible: there is a depressing tendency among some successful members of minority groups to deny that prejudice against their group exists, since if they could do it, why can’t anyone else?)
Anyway, the point is, this is always the problem with saying ‘Prejudice A is the new Prejudice B’ – it suggests that Prejudice B no longer exists, which is rarely if ever the case, and is seriously insulting to those who continue to suffer the results of it.
@hexidecima
Someone who considers themselves to be rational/skeptical should consider how likely, or UNlikely, it is, that they are immune to basic social psychology. You might be less prejudiced than most others, but I find it implausible that someone living in and being shaped by a human society would internalize zero of the prejudices of that society.
It’s not about guilt. It’s about identifying prejudices so that you can work at getting rid of them.
Today’s educated, politically-connected, influential feminists do in fact have more power than the average working-class Joe.
Okay, sure, Hillary Clinton, for instance, has more power than the average working-class Joe. But what about the average working-class Joan? Or the fact that Hillary Clinton still faces sexist oppression that Joe does not, and that it makes her situation harder relative to men with similar levels of education and influence. I normally don’t like to throw around social justice jargon unless I’m sure the people around me know what I mean, but kyriarchy seems relevant here.
Well, the actual kryiarchial argument here (as someone who takes that sort of thing VERY seriously), isn’t about people with equal class privilege, and that entirely misses the point. In fact, making it JUST about gender is about as bad as you can get on the subject.
The question is if an upper-class woman has more/less privilege than a lower-class man. And it’s a legitimate question. Personally? I do think that class actually does matter more in terms of privilege than gender, in a lot of ways. And of course, the man does have some privilege in other ways, especially in social circles.
But the point is that these issues all tie together. Women start lagging behind men in pay because they don’t get raises because either women are looked poorly upon for demanding raises or because of social obligations which result in worse “objective” reviews in terms of statistics. This makes women disadvantage in terms of class and economic resources, and a whole lot of other things kick in.
This stuff isn’t easy.
But, the reason why I’m suspicious of certain things (and I’m not alone on this), is that I don’t feel like social justice circles are moving towards embracing complex intersectionalism…exactly the opposite actually. And it’s taken a nose dive, recently.
It seems to me that people want to keep class privilege while fighting all the rest. And that’s not something I can accept.
I’m sorry. The idea being criticised here is that misogynist is being attributed too generously, as they are considered morally inferior. The definition of misogynist was not in question. It’s dishonest you should interpret his/her comment that way. For dehumanising half the global population, does Schrödinger’s Rapist ring a bell? (Which isn’t just sexist, but also racist and ableist. So well done.)
As for misogyny (again, grossly misused), to make the claim our “culture” ignores it or outright celebrate it (an outrageous assertion) you’re going to have to cite some evidence. Otherwise I’m going to have to conclude that that, too, is “absolute bullshit.” (As you so succinctly put it.) Unless, of course, you think you can say whatever you want with impunity.
Well said, and it’s not hard to remember the criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s campaign that would never have been made if she were a man, from the allegations that she never would have been a senator if it weren’t for sympathy over her adulterous husband (Chris Matthews) to criticisms of her “cackling” (Chris Matthews) voice reminiscent of “nagging wives” (Neil Cavuto) to Guardian articles examining her style of dress.
No. Because it doesn’t.
Could you explain this please? Schroedinger’s Rapist is a simple statement that you can’t tell who’s a rapist until they try and rape you.
How is that sexist, racist or ableist?
So, I touched on examples of sexism over Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign in this comment, and linked to an article about her clothing. I Googled “Clinton’s clothes” and found a few more examples of being asked about her clothes (as opposed to, say, her foreign policy positions.)
For comparison, I also Googled “Obama’s clothes” to see how pundits examined his style of dress. Oops, all the first hits are on his wife’s clothing choices.
‘Cause that’s what women are all about, apparently.
She chose AVfM as her writing venue, a community which is explicitly dedicated to misogyny and antifeminism, much like FreeThoughtBlogs is dedicated to freethought. There is some information that one can glean simply from authorship on a commonly themed blog network. FreeThoughtBloggers are atheists. Writers for Cat Fancy like cats. AVfM writers are antifeminist and hold misogynistic views. If they weren’t, respectively, they would write somewhere else. The issues that you bring up with skepticism/the Catholic Church/Republicans are irrelevant because, unlike those groups, AVfM has no other purpose.
I bring up Elam only to illustrate the founding views of this community. Whether Nurdy agrees specifically with Elam on the legalization of rape is beside the point. There is a point at which you do not get to share a stage with someone without taint, because sharing that stage is an implicit approval.
Another flaw in the argument…
“misogyny” means “hatred of women”
“racism” does not mean “hatred of people of color”
It means someone is practicing a specific kind of bias.
So equating the exercise of these labels really doesn’t come out in the wash.
Other than this, Jason is spot on, and has voiced my thoughts on this topic quite well.
Could it not also be that holding and expressing misogynistic ideas is an action that the word “misogynist” refers to? If I play the violin, I am a violinist. If I hold and practice Buddhist ideas, I’m a Buddhist. In the future, I may cease doing these things and then I would not be a violinist or a Buddhist.
Because he*’s not smart enough to figure out those words MEAN something and aren’t magic spells in the “avada kadavra!” tradition?
*~99% odds
…are you seriously trying to tell a black person what “nigger” does and does not mean?
I agree with Jason and was going to post something very similar earlier but my phone was having none if it.
Specifically, I wondered how long you would be able to stomach posting at FtB if Ed Brayton started posting things like this:
(Trigger warning for rape)
On a near daily basis.
And then one by one the other FtB bloggers joined in.
How long could you stomach that? How would you feel about the people who chose to stay in the brave new FtBs, even if they disagreed with Ed about that particular comment but stayed because they agreed with the general rape victim blaming theme?
Even if you agreed with Ed 90% of the time, wouldn’t his saying things like this repeatedly be enough to make you reconsider participating in FtBs? See, you choose to be here and your presence is conditional, I imagine, on a great many things including the fact that none of your co-bloggers are cheering on rapists or advocating stalking feminists to shut them up. I simply do not believe that you would hold yourself to the low standard you’ve allowed for Nurdy. Well I hope you wouldn’t anyway.
If I am wrong and she is there because she is under some mistaken notion that she can convince them to be maybe less misogynistic than they are, ok. But her actual words don’t appear to reflect that. I just can’t think of any reasonable reason to associate yourself with those people intentionally. Not any flattering ones, anyway.
Last, I get what you are saying about guilt by association. But Paul Elam isn’t just a reasonable guy with a few bad ideas or a bad temper or something. He’s a spokesman for a movement who has been rightly characterized as a hate movement! And by hate I mean advocating against rape victims, advocating for the public stalking of feminists he disagrees with (RegisterHer.com?) and other probably more vile things than that. I know you know this, so I’m utterly baffled why you don’t think this should reflect badly on her.
This guy is so far beyond “reasonable” that Nurdy is definitely making a very bad judgment call by associating herself with him. She should be criticized for it and she is responsible for choosing that site as her platform (or one of them, whatever). I only hope that she doesn’t end up on the receiving end of it if she ever wises up.
What does his ethnicity have to do with it, you silly person?
Seriously. “Nigger” is a word, it has a meaning. Because he’s black, he can construe it to mean whatever the hell he wants to because he’s black? Where did you go to school?
Nepenthe:
Feminist.
Holy shit, you’re right. My mileage is at quite a variance with yours.
You’d be hilarious if you weren’t so sad. Nice pile o’ bafflegab, there. Try again, this time with thinking.
Hmm.
Let me put it this way.
Your comment denigrates the school I attended and, by implication via “school pride,” those who attend it now. They are minors, and thus “children,” legally, and would be bothered, even annoyed, by your aspersions if they knew about them.
The world “molest” means “to bother, interfere with, or annoy.”
Would you, thus, find it unobjectionable for me to refer to you as a “child molester?”
I mean, “child” and “molester” are just words. They have a meaning. Right?
And as it happens, they do have a “meaning” and it extends far beyond their literal denotation. Just like “nigger” does.
I am 99.99999999% certain you are, if not white, at least not black, based on pattern recognition. You have no experience with having the word “nigger” brandished at you or facing the systematic discrimination, stigmatization, and rejection with which it is associated. You have neither relevant experience nor enough of a stake to have been expected to try very hard or care very much, so your position on the “meaning” of “nigger” is, at the absolute uttermost end of generosity, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and your attempt to dodge around the reality of connotations of words is either pig-ignorant or deeply dishonest. Or both.
You’re right: Paul Elam is an idiot and Nurdy is unwise to seek his praise, and I don’t just mean that in that he says the occasional stupid stuff. His gaffes alone would make Mitt Romney look intelligent.
However, if ever she “wises up”, the grass isn’t exactly greener on the other side. Over at AvFM, they chide feminists (mostly feminists) and women for something or other, something they consider to be devious, and make good points and mix with their own biased narrative. That article about women in bars by Elam is but one example of the extreme views from that place.
Over here, on FTB, on Skepchick, people chide MRA’s and men for something or other, something they consider to be awful, make good points and mix with their own biased narrative. Same shit, different name. Like the willingess to adopt the incredibly vile concept of “Schrödinger’s Rapist”, as if it’s actually viable to begin with. (To clarify, Schrödinger’s Cat satirizes the theory of quantum superposition, the idea that something can be in two states at the same time prior to being observed, in other words the cat would both be dead and alive (not dead or alive) until you open the box and see.)
Meaning “Schrödinger’s Rapist” makes the claim that a man is both a rapist and not a rapist at the same time until he’s observed. It’s a nonsense idea and one that Schrödinger himself acknowledges is nonsense (or burlesque) with his own experiment, but which is being used as a valid concept by notable feminists to disparage all men as rapists (and not a rapist – at the same time). Frankly it’s absurd. It is also just one example of the extreme views from this place (and Skepchick).
Which of the two is truly “better” in terms of cognitive dissonancen?
Are you unable to understand other analogies and imperfect references as well or just the Schrödinger’s Rapist one? Did this xkcd enrage you? Are you under the impression that celebrity roasts are cannibalistic gatherings and, if you’re not, do you vehemently correct every person who uses the phrase?
PG, if you suddenly lost the ability to type, the world would be slightly better off.
No. No it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any claim about what the man is or is not. It’s not quantum mechanics, it’s not even probability. Stop spitting your nonsensical gibberish everywhere you go. It’s annoying and drags every conversation down.
You have been told repeatedly your interpretation of SR bears no similarity to how it’s used by others or what they mean by it. You have been corrected before. You have been pointed to where you can get a better grasp of what is meant.
You’ve chosen to keep misrepresenting SR. To keep repeating a reading everyone has disavowed. That’s pathetic.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
First of all, that’s a ridiculous statement to make. (Ridiculous: arousing or deserving ridicule : extremely silly or unreasonable.) Second of all, what does it have to do with my ethnicity? The word “molest” wouldn’t suddenly change meaning depending on whom it’s directed to, would it? My comment about the etymological meaning of “nigger” is based on what it was used as, pejoratively or otherwise, and it was just never used to mean “inferior to white people.” It just wasn’t. Mostly (in the US) it was used pejoratively as a racist slur to refer to black people as stupid and uncultured.
I don’t think you know where you’re going with this.
Right. The word “molest” can mean two things. To bother or annoy, as you said, and “to make annoying sexual advances to; especially : to force physical and usually sexual contact on …” It’s not that it “extends beyond its literal denotation”, it’s that it quite literally has another meaning. So thanks for that bit of disingenuity. The word “nigger” also mean two things (colloquially), one is simply black person (from the latin niger and later the Spanish negro, which was bastardized by the colonists to its current nomenclature), the other stupid black person. Words have meaning. More importantly, words do not change meaning depending on who you are, what ethnicity you belong to or whether it’s been brandished at you for systematic discrimination*, which was the damn argument you made in the first place. Quote:
So who is it who’s being pig-ignorant or dishonest here?
*And yes, you can argue that black people would have a better “feel” for it than others, and how they react to it, but that doesn’t change its actual literal meaning, does it? Nor how the people who use it mean it, i.e. stupid black person. You can’t rightly make the argument that a black person, just because they’re black, getting called a “nigger” could construe it to mean whatever the hell they can think of just because they’re black, can you?
Well, that’s a decisive vote for “both.”
Make up your mind.
So you’ve acknowledged that the meaning of a word depends on context.
Baby steps, I guess.
The “literal meaning” is not what is at issue here, and you know it. “Meaning” is the import it carries, and that is what you are actually weaselishly trying to silence criticism of or this conversation wouldn’t even be happening.
Nepenthe says:
Well, it’s not my ability to understand that’s being questioned here. Unlike you, I get what Schrödinger meant with his concept of the cat in the box, while “Schrödinger’s Rapist” is being trotted out as a valid concept, while the author of the concept it’s based on designed his own experiment to be nonsense deliberately to ridicule the Copenhagen interpretation. You also appear to have trouble analysing mild annoyance to anger, as you seem to think that comic would send me into a frothing rage. It does not. In fact, it’s funny, because it has the concept of Schrödinger’s Cat (in this case Schrödinger’s Comic) right in that says the last panel is both funny and not funny at the same time while Phaedra Starling has misinterpreted it to mean a rapist or not a rapist.
—
julian
Then who would keep you in check?
Julian, Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment about what happens when you put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison and radioactive waste and put on the lid. The argument then goes that the cat inside the box is both dead and alive at the same time, until you open the box and see (observe). Phaedra Starling in calling her concept of men as rapists “Schrödinger’s Rapist”, it would have to apply to the same principle. See: Schrödinger’s Comic by xkcd.
In order for Phaedra Starling’s analogy to work, that she considers all men rapists/would-be rapists, then in the spirit of Schrödinger, men would have to be rapists and not rapists at the same time until you observe and see which is which, otherwise there would be no point alluding to Schrödinger’s thought experiment. Especially if you deliberately misinterpret it. The problem is I doubt Starling would have the same awareness as Schrödinger and acknowledge the concept as nonsense and shouldn’t be validated in a sceptical community.
The interpretation of “Schrödinger’s Rapist” in the principle of Schrödinger is to consider men both rapists and not rapists at the same time. If this is not the case, and the concept is merely to consider men as rapists or not rapists but not mutually exclusive, or just men as would-be rapists, then why even call it “Schrödinger’s Rapist” in the first place? Schrödinger’s Cat does not consider the potential probability of the cat being dead or alive, it’s that it’s dead and alive. Even so, if you completely disregard Schrödinger from the equation, the argument that Starling makes are no less savourable. She makes the dishonest case of presuming she’s addressing good men, but contradicts by assuming they shouldn’t grope, assault, murder or commit sexual violence (including rape). Addressing what she says are good men, that respect women, but at the same time think they’re grope, assault, murder or commit sexual violence on women. (Hey, maybe that’s where the principle of Schrödinger comes in?) I’m not sure how best to put it, but that it’s being accepted hook, line and sinker (including you, julian) is no more comforting that men should incorporate the policies of Paul Elam.
Yes, yes. Do you know what I think is pathetic? “Schrödinger’s Rapist.”
Thank you for explaining the original thought experiment to me! Goodness knows that all that school fisiks could never have gotten through my fluffy ladybrain!
But, seriously, that’s what the piece means; it’s not a quantum mechanical thought experiments. Call it Susan if it makes you happy, but don’t keep fucking it up because you’re too concrete minded to get past an imperfect analogy.
Make that “But seriously, that’s not what the piece means”.
Again, you made the argument that “nigger” has a different meaning because it’s directed at a black person. I’m explaining the exact meaning of “nigger” and saying it wouldn’t mean any different regardless of your ethnicity. This is weaselish, according to you. By stating that “nigger” means stupid black person but also reiterating that it doesn’t mean “inferior to white” means, according to you, that I’m unable to make up my mind. No. That just means that the word denoted stupid black person, but not in the sense of deigning inferior to a white person.
If she doesn’t apply the principle of Schrödinger, she shouldn’t call it “Schrödinger’s Rapist” then, should she?
What the piece means? I know what the original thought experiment entailed and how its principles were applied, so when I see the name Schrödinger, I’m going to presume that’s her intent. Especially preceding “rapist.” If she didn’t mean it in the principle of Schrödinger, then what’s the point of calling it “Schrödinger’s Rapist”? That’s why it was so funny to me you linked the xkcd comic of “Schrödinger’s Comic” where the principles of Schrödinger were applied correctly, in that the last panel was both funny and not funny at the same time.
However, according to you (and Starling, too, apparently), this is not how she meant it. Then why allude to Schrödinger in the first place? I don’t think I can stress this enough. I may as well call it Susan for all the good it will do me. But I’ve read the piece and she deliberately (or ignorantly) misinterpret the principles of Schrödinger to mean alive or dead, rapist or not a rapist. And again, she presumes she’s addressing good men but at the same time implores them not to murder or rape. In fact the latter is in bold, telling these hypothetically good men, that respect women, which she establishes many times in her post, to not rape. More than a slight disingenuous.
Furthermore she makes several claims about men approaching her or attempting to speak to her to be rapists, because she just doesn’t know whether they’re rapists or not. (Which, again, is not a principle of Schrödinger.) And because she doesn’t know, the default position is to consider them to be rapists. How charming. Then she makes it very clear, in numbered posts, that her perception of danger — and the assumption that any man approaching her is a rapist — is more important than the man assuring her he’s not a rapist. In other words, her desire to mace you trumps your desire to not get maced because you approached her. So that’s judging prematurely, plus selfish and narcissistic.
Once again this has nothing to do with Schrödinger, but once you read the piece you don’t really consider it meaningful even if it did allude to Schrödinger correctly. And it’s not that it’s an imperfect analogy, it’s that the original was not taken seriously by any means and if you remove the context of quantum mechanics, it’s not just imperfect, it’s stupid. She has simply redefined it to suit her own purposes.
If I could ‘Like’ this comment, I would. Well put.
Christ on a fucking crutch.
This is what Schrödinger’s Rapist means:
It’s a Shibboleth. If you’re upset that that the analogy doesn’t fully capture Erwin Schrödinger’s intent, then fix my email, design a bridge, or STFU. You have no other utility to fully functioning members of society who grok the imprecision of language.
Hows about you compare the oppression faced by the average working-class Joe to that faced by the average working-class Jill? That would be comparing apples to apples, class-wise.
Bernard Shaw would certainly have argued if you called him a misogynist.
The SR analogy simply means a woman can’t know if a stranger is or is not a rapist.
This isn’t quantum physics. It’s not even rocket science. Get a clue.
It’s probably a waste of time, because you’re being wilfully obtuse, but…
The reason why Schrodinger’s Rapist is called Schrodinger’s Rapist is not because men are perfectly analogous to the cat in the original thought experiment. That is, it is not intended to indicate that all men are simultaneously both rapists and not rapists. Rather, the woman is analogous to the experimenter in the original thought experiment – she has no idea whether or not the man is a rapist (=the cat is dead) or not. And she cannot know without putting herself at risk (=peeking into the black box), whether doing this is going to lead to rape or not.
It isn’t a perfect mapping of the thought experiment, but language is malleable enough to accommodate this. Deal with it.
Now, will you please acknowledge this? Will you give up with your stupid fucking horseshit about how this tars all men? Will you explicitly correct anyone who keeps spouting this nonsense?
I sincerely doubt it. Which means that there is little point discussing with you any further, because you’re not discussing, you’re just in love with the sound of your own voice.
“Are misogynists the new N word? Let’s find out!”
Gah. The level of discourse created by MRAs brings us to the point where we are actually having this fucking conversation.
The only decent MRA is a non-existent MRA. I have officially stopped caring how that statement makes me sound. Nothing of value would be lost if tomorrow we could nuke their batshit mythandry (bowel)movement from orbit.
I think you fail at social justice.
You can’t do social justice while ignoring class. There’s a lot of people who need a course in intersectionalism 101 it seems.
This is a perfect example of the begging the question fallacy:
First, consider that “nigger” was used not only to silence opposition but to justify a centuries-long systemic campaign of violent oppression against black people, and second, that “misogynist” is used not to dehumanize opponents or silence them, but to indicate that they have no arguments worth engaging.
People regularly dehumanize all the world’s population minus themselves by shielding the panel at the ATM because of Schrödinger’s criminal.
People dehumanize all the other drivers on the road by checking that the street is safe because of Schrödinger’s reckless driver.
People regularly think that all dogs should be culled when not petting a strange dog because of Schrödinger’s vicious dog.
People dehumanize all people who sell used cars by insisting to check the car for themselves because of Schrödinger’s fraudster.
Clerks in off-licence stores dehumanize young people by insisting to see their ID before selling them vodka because of Schrödinger’s underage drinker.
Where’s the moral outrage about that????!!!!
Actually no, the piece was originally addressed to men who were certain they were not going to grope/assault anyone, but were confused as to why women did not automatically treat them that way.
Just one more thing you got really, really wrong about SR.
Case in point: PG: probably not a misogynist in his heart of hearts, but still spouting misogynist bullshit. He justifies prioritizing his hurt feelings over any woman’s sense of safety by fabricating a “desire to mace,” which is an outright lie about SR.
Prioritizing mens’ hurt feelings over women’s actual physical safety and the measures they take to ensure it is doing misogyny.
Stop doing this misogyny stuff, PG. It’s pathetic.
If black people are not held to be inferior to white people, then why is it necessary to have a specific word for a stupid BLACK person?
Why is that bad? The potential negative consequences from making a false negative (someone is not a rapist when they are) are much, much larger than making a false positive (someone is a rapist when they are not). Do you harrangue anyone at the library who packs up their laptop and takes it with them to the bathroom because they’re taking the default position that anyone else in the library may be a thief?
If I proctor my exams, am I taking the default position that anyone in my class is a cheater?
If I lock my car, or my house, or if I take my purse with me when I leave my seat at a concert, am I taking the default position that anyone in the area may be a thief?
If I don’t tailgate, am I taking the default position that the driver in front of me may be a bad driver and might brake suddenly?
And why are all of these measures considered prudent, but taking the default position that a man might have bad intentions towards a woman is “judging prematurely, plus selfish and narcissistic” ?
Are you nuts?
Nuking them would waste millions of dollars worth of useful electronics. ;(
Compare apples to apples.
If you say have multiple classes, and you proctor one but not the other, what does that say?
If you lock your car in one part of town but leave it open in another, what does that say?
If you don’t tailgate behind some cars, but tailgate behind other cars, what does that say?
SR isn’t a bad concept, on a larger scale. The problem is that it’s being presented in a gendered way that is in itself sexist. It’s a reasonable thing for people to be suspicious of people they don’t know. When framed in that way, it becomes not-sexist.
The same sort of thinking is present in MRA circles as well, although in that case it’s Schrodinger’s Child Support. For what it’s worth I think this is way worse than SR, but one wrong doesn’t justify another, especially when it’s such an own goal.
The child-like concrete thinking is strong with this one.
It is NOT sexist to note that 99% of rapists are men.
In answer to your 3 questions, the first and third indicate that the “you” is a moron, because they cannot have enough information to know whether the class is honest or the car in front of them is being driven by a good driver. They are in a Schrodinger’s Rapist style case where knowledge of the actual state is impossible. Pretending they are not is ridiculous.
In the case of the second question, it could a reasonable thing to do – if you live in a small enough town and your car is cheap enough, you may be able to safely get away with not locking it, and you may know this. That is, you may know enough to not be in an SR situation.
In the case of violent assault by strangers (rape or otherwise), there is a massive gender divide – men do this much more frequently than women. So this is analogous to the second case – there are situations where you can be pretty damn sure that a stranger is not going to assault you (when the stranger is female). So it’s perfectly fine to discriminate on the basis of gender here, where “discriminate” = be wary. Indeed, not taking a gendered approach here would be silly.
Slurs have meanings outside of the dictionary definition, and the meaning is socially constructed. It is the same reason that dollar bills are technically just pieces of paper- their purchasing power comes from a collective agreement of what the paper represents. Any individual disagreeing with how much a one dollar bill is worth won’t easily get anyone else to agree. Racist slurs absolutely denigrate non white people as being inferior, and you would know if you would actually look at how slurs are used against people of color.
What does it say when sexually violent men seek out women specifically to hurt them the majority of the time, but not men? Why is there so much focus on how women respond to sexism instead of on men who initiate it against women?
I have literally no choice in the matter of men deciding to sexually victimize women disproportionately. Absolutely none. I don’t enjoy or want to distrust men in general in public, but I am forced to by the threat of violence. I also know that if I am victimized by a man another set of men will blame me for it instead of the offender. That is an additional layer of shit that I have to navigate. You are telling me that despite the overwhelming sexism against me I am morally inferior unless I pretend that everything is totally fair and equal in the world. My options are to pretend that (to my own detriment), or to consider my personal safety and be looked down on by you. Neither choice is good, and no one has provided a compelling argument about why pretending everything is fair is a better option for women in general. They have only provided reasons that amount to making men feel better about themselves.
Men who are upset about the moral of SR should be upset at other men for making women deal with this terrible situation, not at women for having to choose between a set of extremely limited and totally shitty options.
Interesting, I generally don’t like you for your bandwagoning Brownian but being able to change your mind is a big deal to me so I now have to dislike you less.
I’m with Crommunist on this one.
‘Bandwagoning?’ Uh, okay. Whatever.
Just like blacks should be mad at other blacks for getting arrested and making it look like blacks are more likely to be criminals.
You all fail at social justice. Completely, totally and entirely. Go find some other place to troll.
And by the way, you all also fail in terms of reading comprehension.
What I said is that the core concept of SR is actually reasonable, however it’s something that should be applied to most new social interactions. Rape isn’t the only crime, or even negative action (something in the world, although it’s a horrific one to be sure, (worse than murder in my eyes), the concept behind SR…that you don’t know if a person is a threat or not. Even after you “know” them…you don’t really know.
So it goes.
As someone who has been assaulted multiple times, by people of both genders, I tend to give everybody a wide berth in such situations. I act conservatively towards personal safety.
So, by being all privileged to not understand what other people go through in terms of life, you completely rule out that…you know what? Maybe it’s not just men we should be suspicious of. We really should be suspicious about everybody. That’s your privilege that you don’t have to feel that way.
MRA’s never disappoint in turning everything that happens to them into whining about how feminism supposedly oppresses them.
http://manboobz.com/2012/09/24/new-frontiers-in-victimology-men-are-intimidated-into-buying-women-drinks-in-bars/
karmakin
So, misogynist is the new nigger then?
FFS, that has just been dealt with in the OP
We know that the high conviction/arrest rates of black people are not due to racial factors. Not 99% of those people who mug are blacks.
It’s a fact that I have about zero to fear about a strange woman in the street rape-wise.
Next you’ll be up to claim that it’s sexist that women don’t get prostate cancer.
No actually it is extremely different. The failure here is all yours.
What part of “99% of rapists are men” do you not want to deal with? When it comes to sexual assault, in reality, you’re wasting your resources (time, energy) if you spend more than 1% of your time being wary of women.
This is a test
Please everybody ignore if this appears
If this doesn’t appear, what have I done to be in moderation?
[Don’t blame me, blame WordPress and a 5-hour flight from Toronto to Vancouver – C]
“Ever notice hard line radicals / Can go on star trips too / Where no one’s pure and right / Except themselves… What better way to turn people off / Than to twist ideas for change / Into one more church / That forgets we’re all human beings ”
-Dead Kennedys, Where Do Ya Draw the Line
PG’s problem is that on one side of his(?) argument he takes the POV of the observer, and on the other side of his argument he shifts POVs to that of the cat.
Of course I don’t mean to imply that’s PG only problem.
@Karmakin
Failing to understand privilege in the context of kyriarchy is also failing at social justice. I’ve seen you have that conversation a few times, and each time it doesn’t look like you come out of it with an accurate understanding of what privilege means in a sociological context.
You keep saying that other people here fail at social justice, but before I can believe that you are succeeding at social justice, you’d have to demonstrate somewhere that you understand how privilege works.
I don’t understand how this is hard to understand. o.O
SR isn’t a bad concept, on a larger scale. The problem is that it’s being presented in a gendered way that is in itself sexist. It’s a reasonable thing for people to be suspicious of people they don’t know. When framed in that way, it becomes not-sexist.
The probability that a woman would rape me, another woman, is laughably tiny. Plus, I’m taller than half the women, but only taller than 5% of the men. I’m allowed to take this factors into consideration.
Ian, thank you for discussing this issue, even if it is juicy, crunchy trollbait.
If I call out someone’s comment by saying “that is racist”, I don’t mean “that person is so super-racist that I am nominating them for the racism hall of fame because they have equaled the violence and offensiveness of the great rafists of yesteryear.” And yet, people seem to react as is that is what I have said. IDK if they expect me to just let small “normal” acts of racism slide, and think the fact that I typed a sentence means I think their crime is severe?
I’m not sure why everyone is mega-literal about “misogynist” meaning hatred of women. I’ve seen people be a lot less than literal about the words “homophobia” and “infantilize”.
There are dictionary definitions of “misogyny” that say “hatred or contempt for women”. (Notice that it doesn’t say all women, everywhere.) When I hear someone over-generalizing nastily about women, which happens frequently on MRA sites, that’s clearly contemptuous. To me, slammming someone with the word “c-nt” is also contemptuous, similarly to how racial slurs used down the power differential sound contemptuous.
I don’t really understand reactions like “Oh, she called me a misogynist; that’s so mean!”
Anyone want to translate what you hear/feel if/when someone calls you or your friend a misogynist?
In the olden days, feminists called people expressing negative attitudes towards women (or women’s rights) Chauvinists. Sometime later, the adjective was “Sexist”. I’m not sure when “Misogynist” became popular, but maybe it’s a meme that escaped from academia?
I’m late to the party, but thanks for this post. I’m so grateful when someone can express disagreement with this nonsense with such clarity. Especially when I’m reduced to incoherent rage.
wow. Excellent argument… it just isn’t against what my article was about. but really Great job.
Sexism and chauvinism are not specific to women; sexism can be directed at men, intersexed persons, trans* persons, etc. Chauvinism is basically the (uncritical) belief that a particular group is superior to all others; one can have male chauvinism (what feminists often decry), White chauvinism, Christian chauvinism, etc. Persons who are part of marginalized groups can even be chauvinist – the MRAs occasionally identify actual instances of female chauvinism, for instance (though trans* activists typically have a better hit-to-miss ratio when criticizing female chauvinism in feminist circles). Misogyny is specifically the institutionalized system of marginalization that marginalizes people on the basis of their read and/or claimed identification and/or identity of ‘woman’.
@PG,
Hoo boy, that’s a lot of stupid. Here we go.
No, it’s not. The idea ThoughtfulOne put put forward in the paragraph that I responded to was that “misogynist” and “nigger” were comparable in both their use and the social outcome of said use. That’s a hell of a lot more specific then “overuse”.
I didn’t. Nowhere in the paragraph I quoted nor in my response is there anything about definitions. I really don’t even know why you brought this up.
This has already been dealt with above. Neither fact that women get raped far too frequently, nor the fact that women can’t know for sure who will rape them (if it happens) is sexist. Schrodinger’s rapist is more in line with the fear people feel when they see my english mastiff charging them when they enter the house. Most dogs don’t bite, but its still worth worrying about when a 180lb dog runs at you. Most men don’t rape, but in an alleyway at 3am, or when some guy at a bar keeps buying you drinks and asking you over to his place like you owe it to him (despite you obviously wanting him to leave), its worth worrying about.* And the idea isn’t just about rape, it’s also about sexual assault (groping etc), which can happen in an instant. Seriously. This is not difficult. As for ableist and racist, dude, I’m lost.
I guess I was wrong. Our culture doesn’t ignore misogyny. And I guess I’ve never seen examples of people celebrating it. /stupid
Seriously. Every time this debate pops up, we get morons asking both sides to tone it down, to just let it go. Read the comments. There’s almost always some idiot who tries justifying sexism with bullshit evo-psych. There’s almost always some moron who whines, “What about the men?”.** There’s almost always some moron talking about how there’s more important stuff to worry about (even Dawkins did this one). So yes, women are often told to stop worrying about the misogyny they experience. In other words, to ignore it.
As for outright celebration, yes it’s far less common (as far as I can tell). It still happens.
*Note that the man in the bar isn’t being blamed for being male, but for his entitled behaviour.
**Yes, our society is sexist against men sometimes. Yes, its worth dealing with. No, this doesn’t you get to hijack the debate about women’s equality to talk about men’s.
If this isn’t what your article is about, then you hid your substantive points INCREDIBLY well, and I am impressed at your point-hiding abilities.
Also, I got about a minute into your video before I had to stop and take a breather. Look, if even YOU can’t put the time and effort into expressing a coherent thought, it’s REALLY unfair to expect your audience to do the same. Figure out what you’re going to say and then say it, not the other way around.
Your argument is still wrong, despite your assertion that I didn’t respond to your main point (I did). The use of the terms “misogynist” and “nigger” are not comparable in any way, shape, or form. As I painstakingly describe above, there are elements of power and behaviour that are inextricably tied into one word and not the other. Making the comparison between the two is not only lazy, but a direct reinvention (and betrayal) of the history you’re trying to squeeze into your thesis.
All this is to say nothing of your repeated assertions that people are called “misogynist” for no good reason in order to “demonize” them. While this is perhaps a convenient myth to prop up your incredibly poorly-thought-out position, it shares all of the other characteristics of a myth as well, most notably its nearly-complete lack of a factual basis.
how can you get it backwards on a post about how wrong it is to get it backwards? If you want to use communities of color and crime as a basis for comparison then yer doing it wrong. It would be more like cops being mad at other cops for racial profiling, because it makes it harder to police communities of color. It would be true too.
You seem to have trouble distinguishing between people who make the terrible situations oppressed people have to cope with and the coping of the oppressed people. I am sure in your head it all amounts to choices, each choice made as freely as the others. The two things are not equivalent because groups making an oppressive atmosphere with their actions have genuine freedom to stop doing that. People coping with the situation have no genuine choice to escape it.
The comment you were angry about was a comment on where men should place the blame for the limited options women have regarding interacting with men. You then jumped to a comparison that is intended to prove the exact opposite point. Your point was about where people with limited options should place the blame for their oppressor’s justification of continuing violence (like blaming scantily dressed women for rape). What is there really to say at this point? You obviously don’t understand the problem here.
Heh. You said “taint”
Late to the party, but could it not be argued that when in debates about gender equality, the balance of power is in the favour of your kind of feminist over MRAs and so they could be dismissed with misogynist much like a black person could with nigger in the past.
I’m not saying I have any evidence of that happening or that I have ever seen it happen, just that line struck me as a little odd in the context of discussions on feminism where MRAs are certainly a minority whose opinions are given less credence off the bat. (not necessarily without good reason)
I snickered while I typed it too.
Use the word “creationist” instead of “MRA” and “scientist” instead of “feminist”. The phenomenon is the same. Whenever a creationist inserts their oh-so-well-informed opinions (usually recycled from sites that are mostly fabrications and distortions of fact), they are immediately ridiculed because THEIR IDEAS ARE STUPID. It’s not because they’re being ad-hominem removed from discussions, it’s because their entire position is based on lies and ephemera. They then present themselves as victims of being “expelled” because of scientific “dogma” rather than simply recognizing that their positions are bad and they are being treated the way that people with bad ideas get treated when they barge into discussions and start flinging their feces around.
So no, it could not be argued that way. Well, it COULD be, but it would be wrong.
And I HAVE to curb-stomp you for this:
No. NOT EVEN CLOSE. The phenomena bear only extremely superficial resemblances to each other, and can only be construed that way if you strip out every scintilla of relevant context from both of those words, and also eat fistfuls of mescaline first.
I can go downtown and see both niggers and black people. We all can see the difference.
I have nothing nice to say about you or your racist-ass beliefs. I hope inexplicably bad things happen to you on a regular basis until you die early, alone, and unmourned.
My thoughts on being “a [something]”:
Racism and misogyny are institutionalized cultural systems of marginalization. I interpret calling someone “a racist” or “a misogynist” (and do so myself) as charging that the person supports a system of racism or misogyny. Not everyone who expresses a bigoted idea supports the institutionalized systems in question, and not everyone who doesn’t express bigoted ideas doesn’t support or actively opposes those systems; one can be a misogynist without being a bigot, and one can be a bigot without being a misogynist. It’s the same as, say, calling someone “a communist” – if someone supports an institutionalized system of communism, that person is a communist. If someone supports an institutionalized system of capitalism, that person is a capitalist. Being a communist doesn’t mean one never behaves in ways that might be described as capitalist, it means one supports adopting a system of communism – one can be a communist and still buy insurance. One can be a capitalist and still decry the banks’ derivatives-trading.
Now, it’s entirely possible that someone doesn’t realize that the actual ideas ze is expressing support this or that ideological position. For example, having to do actual useful work for money is a socialist idea, not a capitalist one (capitalism specifically describes a system in which one can make capital – usually money – directly from other capital – money, stocks, securities, bonds, land, a factory deed, a house deed – without an input of labor) and people ingenuously decrying “welfare” and saying everyone should have to work for a living are socialists, probably market socialists (welfare in the form of cash or in-kind payments to anyone able to work is an artifact of a particular sort of market capitalist system, necessary because we can’t guarantee the availability of a job to everyone and particularly not living-wage jobs to a sizable minority – the welfare state prevents revolution on the part of people with nothing left to lose by giving even the worst-off person). People can also maintain conflicting beliefs; it’s possible to be, simultaneously, a capitalist and a communist, if you support two economic systems that are incompatible and manage to maintain the cognitive dissonance. Likewise, one could be both a misogynist and a feminist. With both of these, the cognitive dissonance typically becomes more difficult to maintain the more one learns about and thinks through the impacts of one’s ideologies and behaviors.
The problem isn’t that we’re misusing words that are identity labels to describe people who aren’t e.g. “misogynists” to their very cores, the problem is that people are taking labels used to categorize ideological outlook or behavior and creating essentialized identities out of them. I used to be a misogynist without realizing it; I’m not any more, as far as I can tell, though I almost certainly still hold a few bigoted ideas or attitudes with respect to women as a function of being socialized in a misogynist culture. We might be able to legitimately debate whether someone is “a misogynist” by debating whether hir ideology or ideas really do support an institutionalized system of marginalization.
Fair points all. I would counter that it may be a middle-ground position to say that when someone DOES X Y or Z that is misogynistic, that person is being “a misogynist”. But when we say “soandso said X, and therefore is a misogynist” we are by implication attributing behaviours and beliefs to that person that are going well beyond the singular instance of a behaviour. I, at times (and I hope they’re rare) act as “a misogynist”. I also occasionally act as “a racist”. I don’t think that either of those labels is accurately ascribed to me except in those specific circumstances, and at that point we really are talking about behaviours rather than personal attributes.
And insofar as there is bleedover from “soandso was a misogynist when ze said X” into “soandso is a misogynist and can therefore be dismissed outright”, there will often be, to the third-party observer, confusion and cynicism as to how that term is applied. I had a brief back-and-forth with Amanda Marcotte over Twitter, whose position is that she uses the term “misogynist” to apply to those who defend (rather than merely hold) misogynistic positions. I pointed out that outside a conversation in which all parties are aware of her specific coinage, the word is misapplied.
This is treading dangerously close to a “tone” argument, but I guess it comes down to this: if your intention is to instruct either the person or a neutral observer about WHY a given position is misogynistic (and that is not always the case), then applying it globally is problematically confusing. If your intention is to shut the person the fuck up and send them to the corner to think about what they did (or just get them to fuck right off and leave you alone), then I’m all for calling them pretty much whatever you want. But if we’re going to have the conversation about misogyny, I think we need to focus on the facts and thought processes behind WHY things are misogynistic, rather than just labeling them so and expecting others to piece the definition together post-hoc.
But again – that’s not always everyone’s goal, and I get that.
Brownian- maybe he confused “bandwagoning” with “gangbanging”, what with the miles-long “sex with Brownian” line and all.
No, I’m well aware of the social conventions of the atheoskeptic community, where professions of independent thinking—despite that the very concept is unsupportable given most of what we know from psychology, sociology, and anthropology—are welcomed and expected.
It’s an exceedingly common trait among members of groups that self-identify as outsiders.
Props for not using the terms ‘hivemind’ or ‘groupthink’ though.
So wait… there’s NO line? Because I’ve been waiting for like… a while.
You’re very close, Crommunist.
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Marcotte’s position sounds pretty close to mine (hell, mine was probably influenced a lot by her writing). Here’s the continuing issue I see: we can’t wage an ongoing battle of allowing people who are offended by the fact that their problematic behavior (acts or advocacy for ideology) has been identified and named for what it is to continually hijack and re-define our language. It puts us into a defensive posture where we have to constantly be asking misogynists if they’re cool with the way we’re discussing how problematic their behavior is. That seems absurd. I see it as a derailing tactic (like tone trolling, which you mentioned) – we can’t talk about the issue of a system that marginalizes women because it hurts my feelings that you called me a name that people around me think is BAD!
I agree completely that it helps to adapt tone to audience and aim, and so I try to select my language carefully.
I certainly agree, but, again, I see the “you’re calling me a mean name!” meme applied to basically deny us the vocabulary necessary to discuss this stuff at all. If one is dealing with someone arguing in good-faith, then certainly it’s worth the time to undertake an explanation. I just also expect that were you to convince everyone to stop calling anyone “a misogynist”, then the people who are responding negatively to the label would simply switch to responding negatively to the labeling of their behaviors/ideas as misogynist, at which point we’d need to come up with another vocabulary, repeat ad infinitum. I decided it was a better use of my time to try to convince people to stop internalizing descriptors as essential identities.
Oh, so you don’t have ” racist-ass beliefs?”
Right.
Almost die in a fire and suffer many years of pain.
I at least have the decency to feel bad about them. You’re advertising them as though you’re proud.
Eat some undercooked escargot and shit your kidneys out.
I think I have been misrepresented here. I am not saying that we should do it to spare the feelings of people who have misogynistic positions. I am saying that we should do it because it orients our attention and focus to the BEHAVIOURS, rather than conflating the messenger with the message. Racism, for example, can be perpetrated in the absence of any malice or indeed even the intervention of a human mind. Systems themselves, institutions, anything really, can have a racially disadvantageous posture. By making “racism” the fault of “racists”, we excuse not only the behaviour of those things we fail to see, but indeed ourselves. My entire thesis in this is that we should be MORE conscious of how these things operate, and assigning blame to individual “racists” is a cop-out, as well as being inaccurate. I do not see a significant difference between racism and misogyny in this context.
I do not doubt that people will indeed duck even this non-personal criticism. It’s not necessarily about them (although I dare say that it’s a more persuasive argument to depersonalize), it’s about US. It’s about recognizing our OWN role in the problem. We otherwise run the risk of letting ourselves be lulled into the security that we are “non-misogynists” and that’s when the problems start all over. Focus on the problem, which is NOT the fact that assholes exist (although that is a problem).
I just realized:
“Misogynist” is more like the new “lobsterback.”
Can’t be; concrete is weak in tension.
Is that like a derogatory term for shellfish that entered the USA illegally?
I’m only aware of its use as derogatory slang for revolutionary-era British soldiers. Do I need to go Google it? D:
You did not understand her video, I did though, and it is something that I agree with! You are taking it a step further in it’s analysis which totally takes away from the subject matter! My thoughts on this is that they are just words, and we give them the power behind those words! In the 90’s when everyone was saying nigger and nigga and all that shit, it was awesome, because, for racists, the word lost power. And now, in the 2000s and 2010s, where everyone is trying to be politically correct, and remove that word from classic literature, and even stop “the niggas” from saying it, they have given the power back to that word. They know that it offends. Instead of trying to edit peoples’ speech, how about teaching people that a word is just a word, and if you let it bother you, then you’re giving that word a power it does not deserve!
You’re a pig-fucking asshat.
But those are just words. So you know… you should stop fucking pigs just long enough to pretend they mean something else.
Yeah, you mean I’m “thinking through the comparison”. Again, just words. Words that mean you’re wrong and I’m right, but that’s clearly beside the point.
In principle, he could probably provide at least a few thousand calories.
Can’t vouch for the taste, though.
Oh he understood it, he also understood that he couldn’t really argue the actual point so he built a staw-man and beat the crap out of it. That’s how things are done around here :D.
Mmm, the hypocrisy is strong in this one.
You know what a straw man looks like? Assertions without support. In your two comments you’ve so far provided… hmm… let’s see… oh my this isn’t looking good for you.
Just for the record:
RACIST : MISOGYNIST :: NIGGER : CUNT
I beg to differ; that difference is only visible if you have your Racist Goggles™ on.
If it’s not a straw man, then it should be simple to explain what your actual point was.
That you haven’t done so thus far is not raising my estimation of the probability that Crommunist’s assessment was incorrect.
Well she does in that godawful video, but even having suffered through that, I was not inaccurate in my initial assessment of her argument. She’s demanding that I stay on her facile, superficial comparison of two words that are TOTALLY not related, not even in the context of that particular usage, and then ignoring the substantive refutation of both her stated and implied arguments.
Basically she’s saying that people use the word “misogynist” to dismiss people the same way that people used “nigger” to dismiss people, and that it’s wrong to do it for the same reason it’s wrong to be racist. Both of those clauses are false, and my post directly addresses BOTH of them. She just doesn’t LIKE that her argument is false, so she’s convinced herself that my post is making this about “misogynist and nigger don’t mean the same thing”, which I am not. What I AM doing is pointing out that a) there are power dynamics that her post doesn’t even begin to address that are relevant to her thesis, and that b) her characterization of people using the word “misogynist” is flawed because people use it based on BEHAVIOUR, not IDENTITY.
I’ve had some time to think about this and you are correct. This isn’t “guilt by association” – the whole point of the site is to be a font of misogyny and anti-feminism. Being there, posting there, is a misogynistic act (although not necessarily because the guy who runs it is an avowed misogynist). It is a space FOR misogyny. I get that now. My apologies for the bad-faith argument on my part.
There’s no shame in admitting you were either in a coma or high as fuck in those decades and so you really haven’t a fucking clue as to what went on.
Political correctness in its midern incarnation began in the late 80s and was already being lampooned in the early 90s. And that ‘use the word until it losses its power’ bullshit dates back to at least Lenny Bruce, who died in 1966. Racist speech sure wasn’t fucking solved then.
Buy a fucking book. Read it.
No, you are wrong. You make an absolute statement that we can all see the difference.
I can’t.
No problem. I couldn’t remember having been naughty here, so I guessed it was something that triggered the auto-moderation
Misogynists are people who hate women. It’s the definition of the word. How can an unfeeling entity, such as a government, institution, etc. express hate for anything?
A government can be racist because it can express beliefs concerning racial superiority. A government can be sexist as it can express beliefs concerning gender superiority. However, to use the term “misogynist” to describe anything that is not a person is inappropriate.
Furthermore, the word misogynist only applies if some one hates women. Nurdy’s point in the video was the use of the word to shut people up is inappropriate. Rather than discuss an issue, many feminists simply label the other person a misogynist. It’s nothing short of ad hominem; it’s pathetic.
She also wasn’t claiming that men are being discriminated in any way comparable to blacks in the past (or even today). Her only comparison was in the use of the words. She was comparing the way the words were used to dismiss dissent from a group being oppressed.
It was far from perfect. Her analogy was risky at best. Her statements were often erroneous. Her message was dead on.
Far more of a problem for far more people of colour is the insidious subconscious racism – the way that job applicants are less likely to make it to an interview if they have a stereotypically black name
“We find, however, no negative relationship between having a distinctively Black name and later life outcomes after controlling for a child’s circumstances at birth”
Well, there isn’t really such a thing as “being a complete fucking tool”, and even if there was, single comments on websites wouldn’t be perfect indicators of whether you fit into that category or not.
But your comment makes it easy to believe in your tool-dom. So, yeah, be less of a tool. (which coming from me is ridiculous.)
I’ve said this upthread, but surely sometimes it’s appropriate to think of people as racists? Sure, often it’s a waste of time, and there are usually more important racial disparities to look at. But you want to take about the fucking grand vizier of the KKK or whatever the hell they’re called, that’s just a racist.
But he’s just so weak compared to systemic hiring discrimination, or unconscious racial profiling by cops, or whatever. So 90% of the time we should be talking about institutions and so forth and their racial impact, but there’s also a subset of cases where racial intent matters, a lot.
You say that people can be misogynist but institutions can’t. OK: Let’s imagine, hypothetically, a government where a majority of the members are misogynist, and act in a way to enforce their misogynist beliefs by passing laws that harm women. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, to call that government ‘misogynist’? Or would you say it can only be ‘sexist’ but not ‘misogynist’?
(Eh, as it happens, I don’t think labels are all that important anyway. In such a case, what you call the government is considerably less important than what it does. Caring too much about labels can distract people from caring about actions.)
Oh come on, you can’t just make that comment and leave it at that. Go on, then: what, pray tell, is the visual difference between ‘niggers’ and black people? Or, to put it another way: what does a black man have to do to avoid getting called a ‘nigger’ by you? I’d love to know.
(That was intended as a reply to Eldin Alvere above.)
It’s sexist, discriminatory, oppressive, etc. That doesn’t make it misogynist. Also, I don’t think there’s been a single government that could be called misogynist. Sexist, oppressive, discriminatory, etc., yes. However, I don’t think there’s a single society that has ever existed where majority of the people actually hated women.
While I don’t think labels are important (in fact, I think they are too constrictive for most situations), I do consider correct use of words to be important. When one is discussing a topic in a serious manner, one must be clear on what is being stated.
For instance, I was recently in a debate about whether it is rape to lie to a woman to get you in to bed. I said it is not because it’s not the meaning of the word rape and to expand the definition to lying cheapens the weight of the word. Rape is an abhorrent act and should be reserved for the specific act it is intended for.
I view words like racist and misogynist to be in this category. Misogynist is not appropriate for people who simply disagree with feminism. A racist is also not appropriate for some one who simply dislikes a particular aspect of a culture or, more obviously a religion.
This sort of stupid, idiotic, moronic dumbassery, with its self-righteous “rise above” guilt trip, is why I’ve decided to back way the hell off from FTB — and give A+ a wide berth.
Yeah, I don’t give a shit at the moment if someone wants to scream that I’m giving aid and comfort to the slimepit. I’ve seen SJ warriorism, and its fundie-xtian-like literalness when it comes to language, play out elsewhere on the web already. Fuck that shit. I’d rather go read some random progressive blog with occasional language fail than deal with the conversation-killing eggshell stepping of an SJW environment.
“In the 90′s when everyone was saying n***** and n**** and all that shit, it was awesome, because, for racists, the word lost power.”
No. This an oft-repeated, dumb-ass argument. I think people are confused by homophobia. They reason that accusations of being a homosexual carried a lot of threat-potential because homosexuality was not talked about. Making gayness an everyday ordinary thing devalued the threat-potential behind being outted as gay.
But the n-word didn’t have power because it was taboo. It was never taboo. There was never a time in the history of the USA where you couldn’t utter the n-word. It was uttered on daytime TV, put in print, spoken openly.
The word gained power because it was spoken. All the time. A black person could be slapped with the word and nobody would so much as bat an eyelash. A white person could dehumanise a black person, profess white supremicists beliefs, take away a black person’s status any time they wanted. And nobody would question it. The n-word was a shorthand way to remind people of this.
Agreed entirely.
This “never call people -ist” attitude reminds me far too much of the pious finger-wagging among certain liberals that we “must be better than they are,” “they” meaning teabaggers and the like, by never calling them names. Because heaven forbid we ever fight dirty in politics, which must be a gigantic self-improvement exercise.
Yeah. That’s gotten us so far in the last 40 years.
Also, guess what? I am better than they are. I fuck up, like all people do, but I don’t go out of my way to fuck up.
I understand the argument about how ordinary people and even good people can’t marinate in a bigoted society without picking up a little of the bigotry themselves. That said, if I wanted to hear about how we’re all sinners, I’d go to church.
The argument also sounds like a less extreme version of E-Prime. You know, there’s nothing wrong with telling people not to use certain slurs or tropes, not to victim blame, and so forth, but if your goal is to get people to use language altogether differently, you’re going to fail. And, as I said to Robofish elsewhere in this thread, spaces that try to do that absolutely kill discussion with their eggshell-stepping environment.
@nurdydee
And, your logic isn’t adding up, even by your own reasoning. If misogynist = n-word, and the n-word lost its power in the’90s by being spoken, then I guess we should all be tossing aroung the m-word left, right and centre, yeah?
“What I AM doing is pointing out that a) there are power dynamics that her post doesn’t even begin to address that are relevant to her thesis, and that b) her characterization of people using the word “misogynist” is flawed because people use it based on BEHAVIOUR, not IDENTITY.”
A) The power dynamics in effect are the ones that allow the word “misogynist” to be tossed out like a trump card with the expectations and social pressure of silencing the other person even if that person’s…
B) …Behavior isn’t actually misogynistic. Nurdy isn’t conveying disapproval for those who call “misogynist” on people who are actually behaving in a misogynistic way. She is talking about when the word is used as if it were an identity; Used in order to shame, ridicule and marginalize any dissenter.
@smhll 31: Jay Smooth has a Ted Talk comparing racism to cleanliness. It’s not all or nothing, racist/not-racist. Having someone point out a racist action should be like someone pointing out that you have spinach stuck on your teeth–both give you the opportunity to improve. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbdxeFcQtaU
It’s a handy fiction for sexists, chauvinists, or misogynists–pick your label, please, so that you can’t fucking wiggle out of it later by quibbling about literal definitions–it’s a handy fiction, this idea that “misogynist” is what you get called when you “disagree with feminism.”
Frankly, when the government tells me that it may force me to give birth against my will, it’s easy to call that government misogynist. My government hates me, or at least hates the idea of my bodily autonomy. When the government defines rape as something that only happens when it’s “forcible,” yeah, it feels rather like being hated by my government.
But tell me, please, you definition-quibblers: do you raise the same concerns about “homophobia”? Do you think that every last one of the people who oppose marriage equality are literally scared of gays and lesbians?
Probably not. Which is why I call you a sexist, or possibly a misogynist. “Misogyny” does not necessarily entail seething, white-hot hatred of every woman. It also means contemptuous indifference towards their fate. Perhaps you’ve noticed–or perhaps not, if you’re a straight white cis male–that from the target’s perspective, active hatred and apathetic indifference are nearly impossible to tell apart.
My suggestion to men who don’t want to be called misogynist is that it’s not enough to just not actively hate women. You have to take active measures to make yourself easily distinguishable from those who do. If you can’t be bothered then don’t fucking whine to us about it–your lack of hatred is not enough to make up for your utter lack of concern.
i have to disagree with the idea that institutions are racist/misogynist/sexist and not people. an institution, company, or government has no leanings one way or the other on its own. while a corporation is legally an individual, it is not a sentient individual. it has no prejudices.
if a corporation has hiring practices that are sexist, those are a result of the humans within or behind the specific corporation. if a law enforcement agency employs racist practices, it is a result of the humans within or behind the specific law enforcement agency.
if a non-sentient entity has leanings in those directions, it is a result of the humans involved in the creation of the practices of that entity. to put the blame on the non-sentient rather than the sentient is to give a free pass to humans to perpetuate the prejudicial acts. racism, sexism, these are ideas held by humans, and the blame for them should be on humans.
and only humans can change these things. a government or institution never spontaneously changes on its own, changes are made by the humans involved. those changes are a lot more likely to occur if the humans are held accountable for the prejudice, rather than attributing it to the rules of an institution they feel they have no control over.
So now “dissenter” (to feminism, presumably) is an “identity,” the same way that being a black person is? Your inability to agree to the proposition that women are people is genetic in nature?
“I was recently in a debate about whether it is rape to lie to a woman to get you in to bed.”
Really? And you’re upset that people are calling you names you don’t like? You sound like a horrible person, with whom I would not want to be alone. Quibbling about the definition of rape is something that active misogynists often do. Sorry, but if you do that, you’re going to ding all of my pattern recognition programs for “misogynist.” If you don’t want to be called a misogynist then you should avoid doing the things that set misogynists apart from the general population, such as trying to convince the class of people who are most often victims of the hate crime known as rape or sexual assault that you, who are a member of the class of people who commit said hate crime, know better than them how to define it.
The instant a man starts talking about “Is it really rape if…” I get as far away as possible.
No and no. This is the logic of the “reverse racism” crowd when they claim that white people are the only group left that it’s allowed to discriminate against. The dynamic that’s happening here is NOT the powerful femistasi silencing dissent with their machinations of power – it’s people refusing to accept bad-faith and fact-free argumentation in discussions about feminist topics. It’s not a power dynamic in any meaningful sense – it’s a KNOWLEDGE dynamic. If you walk into a room of aeronautic scientists and start talking about 9-11 conspiracies, you’re going to get laughed out of the room – that’s not because they’re branding you based on your identity, it’s because you’re talking nonsense and are clearly invested in a skewed version of reality.
This whole “marginalization of dissent” line is bullshit, and I’ve discussed it before. Just because YOU don’t think your behaviour or position is misogynistic doesn’t mean that it somehow magically isn’t. On this thread alone I’ve had both the “I know a nigger when I see one” and “nigger is just a word, man!” arguments pop up. These are both based in a morass of ignorance so deep that it would require a heroic effort on my part to even attempt to rescue them from it. It’s not my JOB to fix everyone with backwards ideas on race, and it’s not the job of feminists to fix every MRA who thinks that men are being destroyed by feminism.
You find me an EXAMPLE of when “misogynist” is used in the way you’re describing, and I’ll volunteer to explain why you’re wrong.
I hasten to point out that even if A and B were true, her comparison would still be flawed for a lot of OTHER reasons. The most egregious one is that while “misogynist” corresponds to a valid construct, “nigger” does not, and the problem with the word “nigger” goes WAY beyond the simple fact that it was used to dismiss people. Making the comparison between the two tries to smuggle in a bunch of other baggage that flatters the MRA’s persecution complex, but bears little resemblance to reality.
Why is it that you do not interpret “misogyny” as “practicing bias against women”?
When I call myself a “misanthrope” do you take it to mean that I literally hate every single person I meet?
For the record:
Being insulted because you are black is in no way equivalent to being insulted and dismissed because you exhibit behaviors that indicate bias against women.
I meant to say:
Being insulted and dismissed because you are black is in no way equivalent to being insulted and dismissed because you exhibit behaviors that indicate bias against women.
I don’t do videos, so thanks for watching that.
Mynameischeese, you are one clever misogynist.
Bravo, Azkyroth. That was beautiful and chuckle-worthy.
@Brownian,
Yo, what’s up, my misogynist?
Oh god. We shouldn’t even joke about it. Because I bet MRAs will soon start trying to “reclaim” it unironically. Ugh.
The fact that my argument reminds you of an entirely different argument really isn’t something I can control, I’m afraid.
Can we all agree that accusing people of trying to silence dissent is the new trying to silence dissent?
You’re assuming that the judgment/label is correct, instead of a intellectually lazy way to dismiss and ignore people you disagree with or just plain don’t like. In that, the use of the terms is similar, which was Nurdy’s point.
Oh, and “anti-feminist” is not the same as ‘anti-woman.’ Obviously.
Amazingly, no matter how many times people say this, it never becomes more correct. They are NOT similar, not even in this facile way.
That depends on the circumstances. If you’re opposed to feminists in an ad-hominem sense, then no not necessarily. If you’re opposed to feminist positions, the line is much, much blurrier. Denying the existence of male privilege or patriarchy or other MRA hot-buttons aren’t DIRECTLY anti-woman, but the belief systems that get built on that denial are almost exclusively anti-woman, since they inherently seek to justify the various social inequalities between men and women as justified (or worse, as non-existent). It’s the same as people who say that racism only refers to explicitly, intentionally-hateful, interpersonal interactions. That itself is not a “racist” statement, but the subsequent positions that spring from such denial almost inevitably create or justify systems wherein racial inequalities are furthered and allowed to propagate.
Wait, you mean that those on the opposite side of an issue might both be convinced that their respective views are accurate?
Well, if that just isn’t about the damnedest clever thing I ever heard, I don’t know what is. Say, suppose you might clear up a question I had about the colour of the sky?
But it seems that any reasonable person reading your comment would think that you are claiming it’s the process of labelling that’s intellectually lazy, Person Who Calls Itself ‘ProudMRA’.
Take your fucking wanking somewhere else, dipshit.
🙁 You don’t get to shoo people off my comment threads, Brownian. Only I may dance.
Dammit. Sorry about that, Crommunist. Once I get in a femistasi gulagin’ mood, I get a bit trigger happy.
I guess Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn here will live to write another classic.
Also, bad me. ‘Dipshit’ should be ‘person currently engaging in dipshittery’.
Ahahaha. Rebuke accepted 😛
@hexidecima:
Getting defensive in response to assertions that we all have some prejudicial ideas in our heads does not help.
Acknowledging this fact and thinking about how we *know* they are wrong and can therefore dismiss them goes much further to abolishing them than does ignoring them.
Why not? Do you deny that hurling epithets such as “misogynist” can be and are used merely as a way to dismiss and ignore people who raise uncomfortable arguments? It’s a horrible tactic – but one co-opted by MRAs as they call anyone who disagrees with them “misandrist”. You don’t succeed in convincing anyone not already in your camp.
Denying the existence of female privilege or other MRA hot-buttons aren’t DIRECTLY anti-man, but the belief systems that get built on that denial are almost exclusively anti-man, since they inherently seek to justify the various social inequalities between men and women as justified (or worse, as non-existent). See? Two can play this game. There’s no substitute for facing MRA arguments head-on.
Even if the label is inaccurately applied, how does that silence anyone? How is it like calling a black person a nigger? It just doesn’t follow.
A word that describes a person’s actual behavior is literally the opposite of prejudice.
The fact that you don’t like having your behavior described says more about the behavior than anything–conveniently, it says exactly the same thing that the person describing it was saying in the first place.
I mean really.
“I’m calling you a nigger because I disagree with you about X but I’m too lazy to come up with a real argument.”
When has that ever happened?
Similarly, based on the utter lack of concrete examples of genuinely good-faith arguments being “lazily” dismissed with accusations of misogyny, I am extremely skeptical that this “I’m calling you a misogynist because I disagree with you about X but am too lazy to come up with a real argument” ever happens either.
And, considering, “You are exhibiting misogyny” IS an argument; it’s a factual description of a person’s belief system. If your inward thoughts are not misogynist, yet someone’s calling you a misogynist, then all you have is a communication problem, which either or both of you can clear up. It’s NOT a slur and I have seen ZERO evidence that it is, in reality, used as such.
In conclusion, fuck you.
Just because MRAs engage in cargo cult sociology doesn’t make sociology invalid as a field.
Well first of all I deny that “misogynist” is an epithet any more than “creationist”, “truther” or “white supremacist” are “epithets”. They are descriptions of behaviours or attitudes. I don’t dismiss creationists or truthers or white supremacists because they raise “uncomfortable” arguments; I dismiss them because they raise dumb ones.
Yeah, except I’m playing chess and you’re playing Calvinball. Your inversion doesn’t describe any position I’ve ever heard anyone take, whether it is applied directly to the forehead or not.
It happens all the time. Is this really a question?
Cargo cult sociology.
Cargo cult social justice.
Sorry, my white privilege is showing. I was just having trouble processing, “I think you’re wrong, so… nigger!” Of course it happens. Just not to me.
It’s rarely that direct (although it can be), but in the same way that women’s arguments are dismissed because they’re so “shrill” or “overly emotional” or “hysterical”, black people’s arguments are dismissed with racialized language, and during the not-so-recent past in the United States, the arguments of “niggers” were dismissed as just that.
As if bigots are somehow a marginalized, oppressed group of people
It’s straightforward moral nihilism. Absent an objective criterion that says “X is right” then any viewpoint is as true as its reverse. Thus, a oppressor can claim that stopping their oppression is, itself, oppression. Most kids make this philosophical great leap forward at around age 14, and some never outgrow it.
“‘anti-feminist’ is not the same as ‘anti-woman.’”
Well, strictly speaking if a feminist is a person who thinks that men and women are equals and should be treated as such, than I see at least three kinds of potential anti-feminist statements:
Men are inherently superior to women.
Women are inherently superior to men.*
Men and women should be treated differently, but not necessarily because one is superior to the other.
Only one of those is anti-woman.
I… don’t think that’s what was meant, though.
*I’m not gonna argue that this comes up much, but it still qualifies when/if it ever happens.
Interesting point Gilielle.
Don’t you think there’s a difference when you use Shroedingers _________ in which the target is an amorphous *them* (could be male/female, adult, child, any race, or orientation) as in your examples versus let’s say:
Shroedingers False Rape Accuser Women in which the target is one demographic (women) and which paints that demographic with negative connotations?
The connotation is that it’s *right* for women to be predisposed to treat men as pervy or threatening before knowing anything about him.
This argument could also be used for white peoples behavior around blacks. According to justice statistics blacks are much more likely to be the perpetrators of violence (against victims of all colors).
Therefore, whites have at least an equal reason to use Shroedingers Violent Black. But, when whites are predisposed to being fearful of blacks (despite having logical reason to do so) they are regarded as racist.
Why should there be the call to set aside likelihoods and “respect everybody” with regard to race, but not gender?
In the same fashion, any person who believes that women do not make good soldiers or cops is considered a butthole, even though he/she may have good reason to believe this.
Is Shroedingers Weak Female Soldier or Shroedingers Incompetent Female IT Professional also not sexist?
Saying “I disagree with you, I disagree with you.” on the internet, or even saying it three times does not cause people to disappear or be effectively dismissed. Neither does the word “misogynist”. It’s not like garlic to a vampire, is it?
I really hate it when people use this argument. White people are NOT victims of consistent, roving, and warrantless harassment in any and all environments at the hands of asshole black people. When black people mug white people, the muggings are not dismissed because the white person “probably deserved it” – to the contrary, it is far more likely that a completely non-involved black person will be arrested than it will be that a white mugging victim will be ridiculed and have his motives subjected to unfair scrutiny (were you walking around with your wallet showing? Had you had anything to drink? Did you give off a “muggy” vibe?) The mere fact of being black does not, in fact, have anything to do with the reasons why there are more reported cases of crime perpetrated by black people. Being black is associated with a long legacy of political, legal, economic, and sociological suppression that men do not as a whole, have to experience on an ongoing basis. The comparison, much like Nurdy’s, leaves out so much relevant context as to make it almost absurd in its wrongness.
To take the point in another direction, I should point out my personal distaste at having anti-black racism, a thing that I have had to face my entire life, used as a cudgel to defend the oppressive group. Especially when that group only seems to care about anti-black racism when it suits their argument to use it, and spend little or no time in combatting it or even discussing it at all. I do not appreciate having my experience used in this way, especially when the person making the argument is so transparently ignorant of the basic facts at play. When white men fail to take steps not to be creepy, the worst case scenario is that they face mild social opprobrium (and often a corresponding heralding at the hands of fellow assholes). When black men fail to take steps to not look threatening, we get shot by cops, homeowners, neighbourhood watchmen, neighbours, you name it. We do, in fact, constantly take steps to assuage white people and appear non-threatening. If you had spent even a minute thinking about this argument before spewing it on my comments thread, you’d have realized that. But of course, people who use this argument never do think about these issues – they’re usually not relevant to the usefulness of anti-black racism as a propaganda tool.
All of this is to say nothing of the fact that you have inaccurately characterised the SR argument. The argument is not that women are entitled to treat all men as perverts until they demonstrate otherwise – this interpretation is a common straw man that is pathetic in its transparency. I am sure that I am missing 9 or 10 other ways in which you’re wrong, but frankly reading your comment as many times as I have in order to refute it fairly has sickened me beyond the point where I can stand to go into it any more.
99% of “weak soldiers” aren’t female. The assumption that women can’t function as soldiers is laughable at best. As for the IT professionals? Yeah, no. Another fallacy. Women are just as capable and the ones that aren’t don’t make up 99% of the the whole that are incompetent IT professionals.
You’re comparing apples and starfish.
On a person note, aside from how factually wrong your argument is, fuck you. Honestly, and with every ounce of sincerity I can muster. Fuck you for saying that.
Crommunist, I think you’ve mistaken the first segment of her video. It was a joke with her acting dumb, and it’s based on the accusations she’s faced of just being a tool of the MRM, or that she’s paid by them, or that they write her articles for her. If you watch the whole video, you’ll see that she stops joking about it and gets serious for the last segment. I don’t know at what timestamp, but it’s there.
Oh. I fast-forwarded through the more painful parts. Definitely missed the joke. Thanks for letting me know.
There’s a poignant hypocrisy that comes with assuming that a woman couldn’t have written that article, or that a black woman couldn’t hold that position. It’s certainly surprising, but the act of denying the possibility of her independence and agency is decidedly not cool. There’s a whole other series of posts that could be written about the denial of “authentic” blackness and how that’s been used against black (particularly) women in the past. I’m not okay with it.
I watched it again for the timestamp. She switches over to her serious voice just after the 3:00 minute point.
I’ve watched the majority of the video. It just took several tries.
Cromunist:
Seriously? You felt the need to say fuck you? I hope you feel better.
I’m not getting into victim shaming, or racism against blacks. I accept that both of those things exist, so right there let’s stop that line.
My point is that some white people *do* have as much or more evidence-based reason to fear blacks as women do to fear men. Yet, when we look to race we declare white fear of blacks wrong. Your whole post literally screams with my point.
If stereotypes of blacks is wrong, then why isn’t stereotypes of men wrong? The way *you* are getting up in arms over blacks being smeared, many people (men and women) are getting upset over the way *men* are smeared. If we’re going to fight stereotypes, then let’s be honest and fight against them ALL.
I’ll feel better when people stop using that lazy and stupid argument.
The mere fact that you accept their existence (gosh massa, you is so good to us!) means precisely dick all when you’re actively contributing to them. Again, fuck you.
If that is indeed your point, then your point is wrong and it is stupid. My whole post specifically refutes your central claim. Your point is invalid, and the fact that you claim that it is in any way demonstrated by my response seriously suggests to me that you didn’t actually read what I wrote.
Timid Athiest:
I don’t deny that most men can’t make the cut in basic training.
But, when it comes to the prevalence of violent crime being committed by men, a lot of pundits will toss it up to “of course men are suffering from testosterone poisoning”, but then want to deny that biological differences could contribute to men being better soldiers.
You can’t have it both ways. My point is that there is a substantially long list in which Shroedingers ___________ would be viewed as sexist against women even when the person stating such individual listings would have a fair evidence-based reason to make that statement.
My point is this is hypocrisy at it’s highest. Let’s fight stereotypes against ALL. Not just persons of color, gay, trans, and women. Men should be in that list too.
If you don’t see anything wrong with Shroedingers rapist, but *do* on the list I mentioned, that tells me your fight against bias and stereotypes has a FUCKING HUGE BLINDSPOTE DUDE!
“There’s a poignant hypocrisy that comes with assuming that a woman couldn’t have written that article, or that a black woman couldn’t hold that position. It’s certainly surprising, but the act of denying the possibility of her independence and agency is decidedly not cool.”
It’s good to know you feel that way. Often women who support MRM issues get ridiculed in an agency denying manner, usually being accused of being brainwashed or just doing it for male approval, etc. That also happens to women who simply do not believe in the various believed-on-faith aspects of radfeminism (shrodinger’s rapist, thought crimes like ‘objectification’, bad debunked stats, etc), even if they have never heard of the MRM.
Crommunist:
So *you* get to be the lone arbiter of what stereotypes are ok and which aren’t?
How nice to be you. Reminds me of the Mel Brooks movie “It’s good to be the king”.
Me personally, I choose to fight stereotypes against all, not just cherry pick.
Yes, that has been my argument from the beginning. You are indeed astute at reading all the words that I’ve written, then deleting a bunch of them and putting in some of your own.
Words cannot express how sincerely I doubt that, considering the cluelessness about racial issues you’ve demonstrated so far.
Oh god. Seriously? “Radfeminism”? Are you ACTUALLY using that hackneyed propaganda phrase? Pretend I’m an adult for a second.
Crommunist:
You’re just a 1 string banjo of delighte aren’t you?
I never stated my opinion of whether people who held these opinions are bad or good, or that these opinions were racist or not.
I stated a simple fact. Blacks have a much higher per person rate of being the perpetrator of violence. That’s a fact. Whether somebody decides to make this fact rule their life and live in fear of blacks (despite the still very very low chance of violence from any given black person) could or could not be deemed as racist.
If somebody is going to let that one factoid rule their perspective and ruin any friendship that they could have had with a black person, I think that’s just sad. It’s embracing a stereotype.
In the same vein:
If a woman is going to let that one factoid (male rape) rule their perspective and ruin any relationship that they could have had with a male person (despite the still very very low chance of getting raped), I think that’s just sad. It’s embracing a stereotype.
You seem to be black and male. Why aren’t you insulted by stereotypes against men too? Do you think you’re exempt because you’re black? On the contrary, any stereotype against men counts double for you.
Let’s fight all stereotypes. Or don’t do what you fucking please. But, please stop acting like I have to build some creds w/you: I don’t.
You find my view lacking. pffft. I find your view dismissive, argumentative and using hyperbole and anger in place of facts.
Fine, be angry.
You don’t believe radfeminism exists? Or do you just hate that name for it?
No, actually. You draw a conclusion from that “fact”, and COMPLETELY EXCISE the relevant context. You also fail to take into account any of the myriad reasons why those stereotypes exist, or the practical implications of your argument. Instead, you focus on a bleating “what about the menz” argument that would be funny if it weren’t so deeply offensive.
Well a) I am insulted by them, and b) I have taken the time to understand the climate from which they have come. They’re part of the reason I’m a feminist – because our societal understanding of gender and gender roles leads us to make erroneous conclusions about what men and women are “supposed” to do. I also took the time to actually read and understand the Schroedinger’s Rapist argument (which you clearly haven’t), which is how I can recognize your counter-argument for the straw man that it is.
No, you absolutely don’t. But if you’re going to use the experience of black men in your argumentation without making any effort to understand the very basics of the phenomenon you’re describing, you’re going to find very little support among people who actually understand racism. Plus, you commented on my blog, dude. I didn’t show up where you work and start demanding you take anti-racism seriously (which you clearly don’t) – you should feel free to crawl right back under that rock you came from. I won’t miss you.
Ah, the hyperskeptical skepticals have landed. Scented Nectar is always a delight. Let’s review for the kids:
SN: “aspects of radfeminism (shrodinger’s rapist, thought crimes like ‘objectification’, bad debunked stats, etc)”
Crommunist: “Oh god. Seriously? “Radfeminism”? Are you ACTUALLY using that hackneyed propaganda phrase? Pretend I’m an adult for a second.”
SN: “You don’t believe radfeminism exists? Or do you just hate that name for it?”
Quick kids: can you find the error in Scented Nectar’s thinking here?
I stated:
“My point is that some white people *do* have as much or more evidence-based reason to fear blacks as women do to fear men”
Crommunist responded:
“If that is indeed your point, then your point is wrong and it is stupid.”
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/tables/oracetab.cfm
Per the bureau of justice statistics:
In 2005 there were 10,285 homicides committed by blacks and 8,350 committed by whites.
Blacks are roughly 11% of the population and whites about 72%. That means that in order to achieve these numbers blacks have to commit murders at a rate of about 7.5 times that of whites.
Again, if somebody were to limit their friendships to non persons of color I think this would be sad. But, my point remains valid that whites have just as much reason to fear blacks as women have to fear men.
If we’re going to fight against race stereotypes, then we should fight against those concerning gender too.
There are indeed radical feminists. None of the things that you describe are “radical” feminist arguments. I’ve almost NEVER seen “radfeminist” applied to actual radical feminists – only used as a propaganda label with the hope of painting mainstream, gender-inclusive feminism (of the kind that I practice) as something dangerous and extreme.
Because when a woman is wary of a stranger she’s obviously ruining any chance she’s ever going to have of having a relationship with a man as a result. I believe I just broke my sarcasm switch.
Do you realize that there is a difference between the two situations? In one the woman is the minority. In the other the white person is NOT in the minority. You aren’t comparing the same thing and on top of that your demand for it to be seen as the same is insulting to black men.
You’re not listening to Crommunist who has already told you what you’re saying is racists as fuck. You don’t get to determine what is racist when you aren’t in the minority that’s being discussed. Period. Game over.
I have only a minor stake in this since I’m a woman. But I’ll be damned if I let another white person get away with this bullshit. I’m calling you out and I’m going to continue to do so until you go away or admit you fucked up and apologize for the racist shit you are spouting.
Cromunist:
If you as a male aren’t upset at Shroedingers Rapist, then why are you upset at Shrodingers Violent Black?
Shouldn’t they both apply or neither?
Please enlighten me why one is offensive and dehumanizing and one is not.
You want to know something interesting? My take on the Tragic Trayvon Martin murder is this:
While everybody is centering on race *alone* I see it as an intersection of race *and* gender.
Trayvon Martin *may* not have been assaulted and murdered if he had been Tom McCooper a white man, but his odds of being murdered would have dropped to zero if he had been Trish Martin (a woman of any color).
Men are 80% of the victims of violent stranger crime. Yet virtually all that makes the papers is violence against women.
It’s this *unopposed* stereotype building of men, and minilization of male oppression that brings forth articles like jezebels in which they mock domestic violence against men:
http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
Get out of the fucking echo chambers dude, and fuck you too.
Crommunist at #16: If you hate the word that much, that’s fine. So that you can get past that to read my points, please substitute any “radfeminism” I have used with “radical feminism”. By the way, I was one during almost the entire 1980s, part of that as the most extreme type of radical feminist, a separatist! I know what I’m talking about when I say my examples are those of radical feminism.
I take it gender-inclusive feminism is simply not the type of feminist who are against trans people. Some radical feminists are against them, but others are accepting. That varies. Most other types of feminists are accepting of trans people too.
Brownian: What is your point? Can’t you just say it?
I did.
I often wonder if Scented Nectar gets tired of being such a repulsive person. Most people would quit after telling rape survivors to just grow a sack but this oozing festering pustule keeps finding new ways of getting worse.
Go fuck yourself.
Julian at #19 wrote: “Most people would quit after telling rape survivors to just grow a sack”
That’s quite the claim. Got a link to where I said anything close to THAT?
Get ovr yourself.
This statement alone shows you to be completely ignorant.
Almost every national estimate of life time statistics for rape puts the number at 97%. Ninety-seven percent of all rape against women is perpetrated by a men. And this seems to hold true no matter what group of men we’re talking about.
Black on white violence? White on white violence is much more common and the territorial brawls between gangs goes in every direction. Unlike with rape there is no history of oppression, abuse or condoning black on white violence. In fact we see the opposite.
Pointing out the reality of rape is not stereotyping. It’s pointing out a fact so we can better try to understand a problem.
“No and no. This is the logic of the “reverse racism” crowd when they claim that white people are the only group left that it’s allowed to discriminate against. The dynamic that’s happening here is NOT the powerful femistasi silencing dissent with their machinations of power – it’s people refusing to accept bad-faith and fact-free argumentation in discussions about feminist topics.”
Nonsense, sir. Having poor or unsubstantiated argumention does not a misongynist make. But calling someone a misogynist is a great way to try and belittle and marginalize what the other person is saying without actually addressing the points. I mean, if those points were done in bad faith and are free of facts, then they should be easy to dismantle. But these individuals tossing around “misogynist” know that it is a trump card, and it functions in that capacity precisely because it has power; The power given to it by a feminist-policy dominated society.
“It’s not a power dynamic in any meaningful sense – it’s a KNOWLEDGE dynamic. If you walk into a room of aeronautic scientists and start talking about 9-11 conspiracies, you’re going to get laughed out of the room – that’s not because they’re branding you based on your identity, it’s because you’re talking nonsense and are clearly invested in a skewed version of reality.”
But imagine that the conspiracy theorist is the one in power and uses a branding to try and end all further rational discussion and marginalize your speaking power in the public eye. That’s what Nurdy is talking about. Calling someone a misogynist may not be based solely on one’s identity. One might not simply look at another and name-call, “misogynist” (although some would be fine looking at someone and calling them “rapist.”) But since the label being used in the fashion that Nurdy is speaking against is not done so due to behavior nor due to knowledge, then what are we left with? It is an “I have the power by social taboo to call you a ‘misogynist’ in order to end all rational discussion afforded you and shame you in the public eye” dynamic. Anyway, the difference between “misogynist” and “nigger” that you’re fussing about really does nothing to dismantle Nurdy’s argument. Sure, those words don’t function EXACTLY the same–“misogynists” haven’t ever been lynched, for instance–but they don’t have to for Nurdy’s point to hold up.
“Just because YOU don’t think your behaviour or position is misogynistic doesn’t mean that it somehow magically isn’t.”
Similarly, just because someone calls a person “misogynist” it doesn’t mean that he or she somehow magically is one.
Julian:
Per the new CDC report on interpersonal violence it shows in tables 2.1 and 2.2 that women’s last 12 month rate of being raped was 1.1% with a projected number of victims of 1,270,000.
In table 2.2 it shows that men’s last 12 month rate of being “forced to penetrate” someone was also 1.1% projected to 1,267,000 victims.
80% of the male respondents who said they were forced to penetrate somebody else stated their assailant was a woman.
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
So, when we expand the definition of rape as being forced to penetrate somebody else, 40% of all rapes are women raping men.
This study does back up your claim that 98% of women raped were raped by men (and 92% of non-rape sexual violence upon women were committed by women), but so what?
Why do white people have a moral duty to ignore the greater likelihood of violence from blacks(7-8 times) and respect all, but it’s okay to paint all men as rapist (at a rate of 49 times greater chance)?
Once again, if a white person lives in fear of POC (or a woman lives in fear of men) I think it’s sad, but I don’t know if that person deserves moral condemnation if they believe they have a fact-based reason for their views (rather than blind prejudice). I’m just asking why so many say 1 is prejudice, and the other is *justified*.
Additionally, it appears when women have access to women’s bodies in the way that men do (by that I mean being alone in intimate surroundings, and the expectation that may try to become lovers) that wome do rape other women.
According to the advocates for stopping lesbian rape in the documentary “She stole my voice” 30% of lesbians report being raped by a woman that was not necessarily her partner.
Even if this is horribly inflated, it seems safe to say that lesbian rape appears to be *at least* on course with hetero rape of women (1.1% for last 12 months).
So, what Shroedingers Rapist advocates are doing is take a human problem (a psychotic fuckhead taking what they want from another person) and turn it into a gendered problem.
It’s not a gendered problem–it’s a human problem. Women rape too, and about equally based on the above stats.
Julian:
Additionally, what you say about white on white violence being more common than black on white violence is true. But you have to remember there are 7 whites to each black.
As I mentioned to Crommunist: blacks were the assailants in 10,300 murders vs 8,400 murders in which whites were the assailants.
This means each individual black is 7 to 8 times more deadly to people of *any* color than each individual white.
I’m specifically talking about people having two similar beliefs: whites fearing blacks, and women fearing men and asking when both have *EVIDENCE-BASED* reasons to support these perspectives why is 1 bad and 1 justified?
Do you have an answer to that which doesn’t involve falsely inflating the perfidy of men?
I’m not saying that they are both justified, I’m saying that both are shitty and sad. I don’t like stereotyping of blacks or men or priests or anybody else. When a news story breaks out of person X doing something bad, I try to remind people that the chance it will happen to you is still tiny, and the chance that somebody sharing a trait w/person X is not a bad guy/girl is 99%.
I’ve already shown that rape is not a male problem, but a human one. Men have nearly as much to fear being raped by women as the reverse.
It’s time to admit we’re all human and no gender has cornered the market on being a fuckhead.
Exactly, Karmakin.
When we expand the definition of rape to include “forced to penetrate” 40% of all rapes are women raping men.
Therefore there should be a male SR *and* a female SR. Shroedingers Male Rapist and Shroedingers Female Rapist.
@Sally #1:
99% per of all rapists are not men. 60% of all rapists are men.
98% of all rapists of women are men. 80% of all rapists of men are women, and the 12 month chance of a man being raped is nearly the same as a women, when we expand the definition of rape to include “forced to penetrate” another person (which as a just society we should).
Read the new CDC report on interpersonal violence.
Wrong Sally,
98% of rape of women is done by men. But only 60% of all rapes are committed by men, the rest is committed by women–with the agreement to expand the definition of rape to include “forced to penetrate” somebody else.
Read the new CDC report on interpersonal violence.
It’s pretty eye-opening.
Tables 2.1 and 2.2 show almost equal victimization rates between men and women.
Just below figure 2.1 it states that men who were “made to penetrate” that 79% of the men’s victimizers were women.
Timid athiest says:
“You’re not listening to Crommunist who has already told you what you’re saying is racists as fuck. You don’t get to determine what is racist when you aren’t in the minority that’s being discussed. Period. Game over.”
Well, I’m male and I’m telling you Shroedinger’s Rapist is misandrist as fuck. As a woman you don’t get to determine what is misandrist when you aren’t a man. Period. Game over.
See how that works? That’s what insane hyperbole looks like.
I’m still looking for a reason why two very nearly identical views have two disparately different reactions from most here:
Whites who have an evidence-based reason to be fearful of blacks who decide to let this factoid run their lives and remain “on guard” against blacks (despite the fact that 99.99% of blacks they will encounter will be nice guys) = bad, fucked up. which I agree with idiot!
Women who have an evidence-based reason to be fearful of men who decide to let this factoid run their lives and remain “on guard” against men (despite the fact that 99% of men they will encounter will be non-rapist) = justified.
Both should be equally reprehensible. Stereotyping is wrong. It should be fought against for all people, including men.
Just because Coughlan said that doesn’t mean it’s true. Please note she denies calling him racist. One thing to consider on that exchange is a long term butthurt over Nurdy’s prior youtube history in defending a female youtuber, a rape victim who was waiting on and involved in the prosecution of more than one of the perps, and this woman was run out of the community after having her personal information (which she asked in advance to keep private) made public and supported by some prominent youtubers for no other reason that to publish gossip. It was very unpopular, somehow, for her to do this terrible thing, defending this woman and the reason it was so drawn out is one of the doc drop promoters is a persistent xtreme-narcissistic type.
Imagine this before you discount the person speaking just because Coughlan doesn’t like her for his own reasons. A lot of people were annoyed by that drama, but in retrospect we can see why it was so protracted.
The next thing to consider about Nurdy’s video is what preceded her making it. I am aware of this because I was targeted by a few of the men who thought it was incredibly important for me to severe the slightest ties they *thought I had with the MRAs. You’d have to have seen Hannibal’s video and heard the alarm-pitch in his voice to know what I am talking about. But some of us are following the plot here.
I don’t agree with her making the comparison she made, but I try to understand why she did, also in light of the sign tearing-down thing that happened to JohntheOther previously.
Your version is absolutely hyperbole, it’s true. I’m glad you realize it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now just admit that your comparison of whites being afraid of blacks is racist as fuck and you’re one step closer to the truth.
In this case, whites are the majority, they are the oppressors. They have no reason or excuse to be afraid when the very system is what causes blacks to do what they do.
On the other hand women have every right to be afraid because men are the oppressors in this scenario and more often than not are the women not only raped but they are then not believed or told they were asking for it.
The power balance is not the same. You’re wrong.
It’s possible this happens on occasion. More often than not, however, it is impossible to marginalize a man when calling out misogynist behavior. Men are not marginalized in everyday society, they are not an oppressed group, especially white, cis, straight, able-bodied men.
Nepenthe:
80% of all stranger violence is committed against men.
When a macho fucktard has a mad-on typically he is going to beat the shit out of a man, as (being a macho fucktard) he will consider women no great challenge–he will liken it to attacking a child.
The idea that there are streets safe for men to walk down that women can’t is bullshit. Typically the same streets are unsafe for both men and women as is clearly proven by the fact that men are 80% of all stranger violence.
Also, the idea that criminals single women out is patently false. Even a great deal of criminals view women as off-limits as can be shown by the fact that in prison the #2 targets of violence after pedophiles are rapists.
Violence against men is a real issue. Men are much more often the targets of extreme stranger violence.
I stick by my argument that Trayvon Martin was not killed *only* because he was black, but because he was BLACK AND MALE.
What’s so hard to understand about this? And you go fuck yourself too.
Dick Coughlan @coughlan616
@srobeachistan ironically NurdyDancing once called me racist simply for making a video attacking a group she was in
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3h NurdyDancing @NurdyDancing
@coughlan616 Hi 🙂 do remember to mention that I did not say you were a racist. and that I made that video when i was a feminist. Dueces.
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2h Dick Coughlan @coughlan616
@NurdyDancing fuck off looney-tune. You’ll have a good future as an MRA brood mare.
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Nepenthe:
I clicked on your three links. I feel bad for all of those people. I don’t think anybody should be targeted for violence EVER.
Just because I have a dissenting opinion doesn’t make me a hateful fuck.
However, is random violence any better? Is it better to have died because of a highway altercation in which a nutjob drew a gun, compared to being targeted for being guy or transsexual?
Since you provided links, here’s one of my own:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/homicide/tables/vsextab.cfm
2005 there were 13,122 homicides of men and 3545 of women.
In other words, men’s lives aren’t all unicorns and rainbows either!
There are very real issues of male disposability going on.
There should be room for everybody who is the victim of violent crime.
Go back and read the CDC report you linked. Check page 24 specifically.
Here, let me quote it for you:
“For female rape victims, 98.1% reported only male perpetrators. Additionally, 92.5% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape reported only male perpetrators. For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators.”
Care to revise your argument in light of your mistake?
@John D, again, go back and reread the CDC report. 93% of male victims of rape report their assailant was male. Of the men who reported “being made to penetrate,” which I’ll point out is a separate statistic from the male victims of rape, 79% of those men reported that their assailant was female. You’ve read the statistics wrong. Do you care to revise your argument in light of your mistake?
You’re equating “victims of rape” with “victims of sexual violence other than rape.” Again, if you check page 24 you’ll see that the CDC report lists those as separate types of assault.
No Athiest,
Both versions are insane hyperbole. I switched the name-tags so that it would be evident. One person does not get to determine the validity of all labels and connotations being used in a 2party (or more) discussion.
I never said I endorsed whites being “on guard” against blacks as a viable option. THROUGHOUT the thread with Crommunist and others I said that a white who lived “on guard” against blacks was sad and misguided.
I was just offering up an alternate option and with that alternate option showing that two very nearly identical perspectives in which both people (whites fearing blacks and women fearing men) had evidence-based reasons for being “on guard” against the target are identical and *both* should be equally shamed.
I’m not advocating stereotypes of blacks moron, I’m trying to (through contrast) show a MAJOR hole in your reasoning that is just mental gymnastics for accepting bias and stereotyping of men.
Both stereotypes should be anathema to a just society: smearing men as rapists and smearing blacks as violent. The only reason I bring that blacks are more violent is to show the parallels between the two opinions.
*Just as* a woman may have *real* reasons to be “on guard” against men her whole life (despite the fact that 99% of men are not rapists) and treats them as rapists by default, very many whites may and can feel just as justified to have the same view of blacks. And these whites would have *DEBATABLY* equal evidence to support those views.
Stereotyping blacks as violent *is* racist, but that’s not what I am advocating. I’m advocating the fighting of stereotyping of men as rapists, and I draw the parallel to show how totally fucked up shroedingers rapist is.
I can see now why “male rights are human rights” is so **DEEPLY TERRIFYING** to some on these athiest forums.
It’s funny that you guys call yourself athiests at A+ and feel the need to tear down posters stating “male rights are human rights”, because you act like I came into your church and pissed all over your alter.
I guess the “free thought boards” is a misnomer. Kind of like the name of the welfare agency got changed to The Family INdependence Agency.
I guess it’s one of those titles that means the opposite huh?
and the vid he was speaking of is one in which I point out that he and a bunch of other middle aged white men were trying to be the overlords of youtube. my point in mentioning their demographic was not to imply that they were racist but that their privilege made them feel entitled to tell me what to do. I was at the time a feminist after all.
Now when i pointed out to him that i did NOT say he was racist he said that brood mare crap. 😀 he’s a great person to trust when it comes to my character. Have a lovely day.
Stakkalee:
No mistake, stak. You just didn’t include the entire quotation.
The next section after your quote reads:
“For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (93.3%) reported only male perpetrators.
For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%).”
Care to revise your argument in light of your mistake?
I think we can look at your current remarks and words to get a good idea of what kind of person you are.
Again Stak, there is no mistake.
The rates of rape for men in table 2.1 for the last 12 months were so low that they were listed with an *.
The paragraph preceding table 2.1 state:
“Approximately 1 in 71 men in the United States (1.4%) reported having been raped in his lifetime, which translates to almost 1.6 million men in the United States (Table 2.2). Too few men reported rape in the 12 months prior to taking the survey to produce a reliable 12 month prevalence estimate.”
However the % rate of responders “made to penetrate” in the last 12 months for men was the same as rapes for women: 1.1%.
Yes, it’s a separate statistic and not called rape in the study, but it is unwanted sex. Force envelopment can and should be viewed in the same light as forced penetration.
Forced envelopment for men had nearly the same number of victims as female rape.
As I mentioned below figure 2.1 the portion talking about gender of assailant for “made to penetrate” states that the assailant was a woman 79% of the time.
I stand by my statement that this means that 40% of all rapes are women raping men with the acceptance that force envelopment is rape.
Stakkalee,
Yes and no. I stated from the beginning that the stat that 40% of all rapes were women raping men was built on the idea that being “made to penetrate” some1 else is rape.
It’s unwanted sex.
It’s pathetic how you’re taking some sort of sick satisfaction from this. You’re out right lying at this point and getting your rocks off doing some ridiculous anti-PC gibberish essays. If you were interested in any kind of discussion you’d try to rebuke the points raised against you but you won’t.
Instead you claim you’ve been strawmanned and your adversary is too much of a coward to contend with your real argument. You don’t explain where he went wrong, you don’t point to fallacious parts of his thinking. You make one response where you “play silly” and basically simply restate the argument he just responded to.
This isn’t the behavior of someone looking to show they’re argument holds water. That they are the one’s in the right. It’s the game B-list politicians play when they want to create a fuss and shore up support with their base.
If that’s what you’re doing, fine. You won’t be the first or last. But do it somewhere else.
@John D, again, as I pointed out below, the CDC is counting male victims of sexual violence other than rape in a separate category. 93% of rapes of male victims are committed by men. Of the men who are victims of sexual violence other than rape, in this case “being made to penetrate,” 80% of their assailants are women. You’re conflating two different statistics. Also, I’ll point out in Tables 2.1 and 2.2 that the lifetime prevalence of women being the victims of rape is 1 in 5, while the lifetime prevalence of men “being made to penetrate” is 1 in 21, and the lifetime prevalence of men being the victims of rape is 1 in 100, or 1.4%. If you combine “male victims of rape” with “male victims being made to penetrate” the number is 1 in 71. So again, you’ve read the statistics incorrectly.
No stak, I’m not conflating anything.
Table 2.1 shows 1.1% of women were victims of rape in the last 12 months projecting to 1,270,000 victims.
Table 2.2 shows * % of men were victims of rape in the last 12 months. But, it additionally shows that 1.1% of men were victims of “made to penetrate” projecting to 1,267,000 victims.
The 1,267,000 male victims of being “made to penetrate” are attached to the 80% female assailant figure, not the 93% male assailant figure.
And to soothe your nerves, according to this study 40% of the rapes OCCURRING IN THE PREVIOUS 12 MONTHS are women raping men, with the acceptance that forced envelopment is indeed rape (which as I said in a just society it should be considered rape).
Also, you are wrong. The lifetime rate for men of *rape alone* is 1 in 71. The lifetime rate of “made to penetrate” by itself is 1 in 21.
Excerpt:
Being Made to Penetrate Someone Else Approximately 1 in 21 men(4.8%) reported having been made to penetrate someone else in his lifetime (Table 2.2).
I’m going to make this a top level post, because I don’t want anyone to miss it.
The problem with your *cough* interpretation of the CDC data, John D, is that you appear to be innumerate. So I’m going to break it down for you.
From Tables 2.1 and 2.2 (I’m using lifetime numbers because penetrative rape of men is rare enough that there aren’t 12 month numbers):
Number of women who have been raped: 21,840,000
Number of men who have been raped (number of men who have been penetratively raped + number of men who have been forced to penetrate): 1,581,000 + 5,451,000 = 7,032,000
Total number of people who have been raped (the sum of the two above numbers): 28,872,000
Percentage of people who have been raped who are men: 24.36%
So, right away we can see that your “40% of rapists are women claim” looks, frankly, stupid. Not only would all rapists of men have to be women, but about 20% of rapists of women would have to be too. (If you want to see how I made that estimate, I can work it out for you.)
Okay, so, now let’s figure out an actual number for percent of rapists who are women, according to these data.
For women who were raped, 1.9% reported that at least one of the perpetrators was a woman. Number of women raped wherein at least one woman was involved in the attack: 414,000
For men who were penetratively raped, 6.7 report at least one female perpetrator. Number of men penetratively raped wherein at least one women was involved in the attack: 106,000
For men who were forced to penetrate, 79.2% report only female perpetrators (a slightly different measure, but we’re really only estimating, so let’s go with it). Number of men forced to penetrate where only female perpetrators were involved in the attack: 4,317,000
Total number of people raped by women: 4,837,000
Percentage of people raped who were raped by women: 16.8%
This is making several assumptions about the data, most importantly that these sets are disjoint (particularly the male victims) and that each rape corresponds to exactly one rapist and vice versa, which is an absurdly poor model, but hey. This is not examining the methodology. Just the numbers.
Try. Harder. (Or brush up on your arithmetic.)
So what is it? Are 40% of rapes committed by women, or are 4.8% of rapes committed by women? And if the lifetime prevalence of men being forced to penetrate is 5.5 million, how is it that the estimated prevalence over the past 12 months is 1.2 million? Have 20% of ALL “forced envelopments” occurred in the last year?
The study flat out stats that lifetime 1 in 71 men are victims of rape, and 1 in 21 men are lifetime victims of “made to penetrate”.
Those would combine to about 1 in 16, the 1 in 71 figure list is for rape alone not an aggregate of all sexual violence.
1 in 16 is a hell of a lot closer to women’s rate of 1 in 5 compared to 1 in 71.
Also, when we look exclusively at the last 12 months the victimization rates are the same between men’s “made to penetrate” 1,267,000 to women’s raped 1,270,000. Of course a much higher % of male victims are same sex (20% vs 2%).
Even accounting for this 40% of all rapes OCCURRING IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS per this report are WOMEN RAPING MEN, when we accept the concept that forced envelopment is rape.
So far, you’ve acted pretty arrogant and haven’t proven me wrong on anything.
Hey, for some more arrogance and numbers, scroll down. And then stop failing.
If you like, I’m sure I could scrounge up a sixth grade math book for you to review percentages and reading tables.
Did I condone lying to women to get them in to bed? No. I did state that it’s not the same as forcing a woman to have sex with you.
Also, thanks for illustrating my point about the misuse of the word misogynist. If I were to lie to a woman to get her in to bed, I would be an asshole but I wouldn’t be a misogynist. Lying to her in no way means I “hate women”. I could have a disregard for the particular feelings of that woman but that would mean I hate women.
You claim I can not speak my mind about a particular topic because of my gender. Yet I am the sexist pig right?
Oh, and 1 more point, women can and do lie to men to get them in to bed. I had that happen on numerous occasions back in my single days.
Your definition of misogyny is worthless if it won’t recognize a society that is sexist, oppressive and discriminates against women as misogynistic.
What makes rape an abhorrent act is the trauma it causes in another. If your definition excludes the pain, hurt and suffering rape causes it’s as useless as your definition of misogyny. Ditto if it becomes about playing games with what qualifies as consent.
Probably a good idea. No reason to trust someone looking for rape loopholes.
Women also rape, kill and kidnap. Did someone say they didn’t? Why bring this up? It has nothing to do with anything.
There’s a serious problem with your analogy. Disagreeing with a feminist doesn’t make us wrong in the same manner that a truther disagreeing with an aeronautics engineer would. Feminist theory is not comparable to aeronautics. One is based on lightly support conjecture and the other is based on demonstrable physics.
Also, your analogy assumes the dissenter is the less educated in the subject. This is not always the case. Sorry but yes, Nurdy does have a valid point. The word misogynist is tossed around far too easily. For instance, just look above. I was called a misogynist for disagreeing with a feminist about the definition of a word.
Not remotely. One is complaining about inappropriate tactics. The other is an inappropriate tactic. If you can defend your stance, you should be able to defend your stance with out resorting to ad hominem’s.
If a theist had made such an irrational statement as you just did, every atheist on this forum would be all over him. You should not hold yourself to a different standard than you hold others.
While you are correct that he is definitely over stating his case, do you deny that there are significantly more cases of women raping men than people generally think? I actually never realized it until a few weeks ago and was shocked.
I also had never realized that women raping men is actually not considered rape in many places in the states.
While rape is obviously a bigger concern for women, it is definitely not a concern only for women and the legal system definitely does favor women in this situation.
“Your definition of misogyny is worthless if it won’t recognize a society that is sexist, oppressive and discriminates against women as misogynistic.”
It’s not MY definition. It is THE definition. Look it up in the oxford, webster, etc. It’s what the word means.
“What makes rape an abhorrent act is the trauma it causes in another. If your definition excludes the pain, hurt and suffering rape causes it’s as useless as your definition of misogyny. Ditto if it becomes about playing games with what qualifies as consent.”
I look at rape as an abhorrent act because of the total disregard for the trauma caused in another as well as the trauma caused. Trauma itself does not imply rape.
“Probably a good idea. No reason to trust someone looking for rape loopholes.”
Again, did I in anyways try to look for a loophole for rape? No, of course not. A person who picks up another person at a bar and lies about being married didn’t rape the other person. What the liar did was reprehensible but it’s not rape.
“Women also rape, kill and kidnap. Did someone say they didn’t? Why bring this up? It has nothing to do with anything.”
When she says I can not speak of my opinion about lying to get people to sleep with you because I am a man, yes, I damn well can point out that she is being sexist.
Hey Eldin, you dirty fucking liar. Yeah, that’s right. You, Eldin Alvere.
See, this is the sort of lies people like you have to tell yourself.
Me wanting to stay far away from you has nothing to do with you being a man.
Anyone, man or woman, who starts speculating about the precise level of violation caused by various means of evading the consent requirement for happy, safe, adult sex, is sending off HUGE RED BLINKING DANGER SIGNS that this person is interested in pushing up against the precise levels of consent that one might be able to get away with without calling it rape. Who the fuck spends time thinking about that? Creepy people, that’s who, people for whatever reason are more turned on by lack of consent than they are by friction or nice healthy consensual play around power dynamics. They happen in both genders but men are more likely to play it out violently.
I didn’t say you condoned lying to get someone to have sex with you. What I said was that you are interested in quibbling about the precise definition of rape, violation, and consent. Is that inaccurate? That’s a rhetorical question. Of course it’s accurate. If you said otherwise, you’d be a liar, but we already know you’re a liar. You lied about this, and you lie about the stats, even when they are right there in front of us and we can tell that you are either incompetent at math or incompetent at lying.*
Fucking liar.
*I shouldn’t be close-minded–perhaps he is both!
In my experience, pointing out misogynist behaviors (I try to stick with the “label the behavior not the person” guideline popularized by Jay Smooth), results in the person being labeled actually shutting up in shame and embarrassment… oh… let me think… oh, that’s right, never.
Has anyone ever actually shut up because they were called a misogynist?
It seems like the world’s least effective silencing tactic.
Misandrist. Men must prove their worth by actively benefiting women or they are misogynists. Fucking sexist.
“such as trying to convince the class of people who are most often victims of the hate crime known as rape or sexual assault that you, who are a member of the class of people who commit said hate crime, know better than them how to define it.”
So… yeah, you did state that I as a man have no right to discuss what is and is not rape. So come again? I am the one lying? It’s right there for everyone to read. Come now. Lets be honest here.
STak:
I didn’t conduct the study. I can’t tell you why the lifetime victimization levels of men are so different from women, when the 12 month totals are so similar.
I have some theories, but considering how poorly the idea that women can rape men is being received here it’s probably better not to say.
Why don’t you email the CDC and bring up any inquiries you have?
Nepenthe,
It’s you who should brush up on your basic arithmetic.
I specifically stated (after Stak’s observation) that I was only talking about the previous 12 month listing of sexual violence from responders.
When you look at the last 12 months it breaks down to 1.1% of women raped projected to 1,270,000 victims and 1.1% of men “made to penetrate” projected to 1,267,000 victims (80% of whom the male victims reported their assailants were female).
1,270,000 + 1,267,000 = 2,537,000 victims. 1,267,000 male victims “made to penetrate” x 80% female assailants = 1,013,600 male victims of female rape.
1,013,600 / 2,537,000 = 39.95% of all rapes in the last 12 months were women raping men.
Eldin,
This type of victimization of men (and the resultant silence among those who supposedly stand for equality) is what MRA’s are trying to put on display.
They are being opposed by nearly everybody for all their own little pet reasons (but mostly, because their critics are arrogant fuckheads who can’t stomach that the world doesn’t work exactly like they preach)
You sound butthurt Nepenthe. You mad bro? lulz
I’d call that math teacher and keep him on speed dial buddy. Check below.
It’s not 40%. It’s about 1/6.
However, the 4.8% is the % of the male population that has been “forced to penetrate”. The problem is you are misreading the information that is being provided and John D is exaggerating his case.
John D, part of the reason is the exaggerations and lies that the MRA uses. The MRA side has valid arguments. However, you guys are just as guilty as the rad fems of exaggerating figures to further your cause.
For instance, you said 40% when it’s really 14-16%. 14-16% is still a significant amount but by exaggerating (lying?) to make your case, you just end up hurting it. Keep to the facts. Reality > ideology. Reality will always win out in the end.
Where in there do I say that you’re not allowed to discuss anything, you dirty fucking liar who obviously thinks everyone is as incompetent as you are?
You said it’s misogynist behavior for me to discuss what I believe constitutes rape because women make up the majority of rape victims and men majority of the rapists.
That’s the same thing as saying I am not allowed to discuss my opinion on that topic because I am a man.
You were very clear about that.
*crickets*
Julian? Um, linkies please to that claim you made about me? Or have you now remembered that you exaggerated (bigtime!) a different situation?
You’re just really fucking stupid, aren’t you?
“I think that’s a misogynist thing to say.”
is not the same thing as
“You are prohibited from discussing this because you are a man.”
All you have is lies, you pathetic piece of scum.
Kinda like complaining about misogyny vs. doing misogyny? One is complaining about inappropriate tactics, the other is an inappropriate tactic.
Are you, like, a compulsive liar or something? Or do you just lie about feminism and feminists? “Disagreeing about the definition of a word” is not what happened, and you were never directly called “a misogynist.”
Dirty fucking liar can’t stop lying.
I find your constant lying abhorrent.
Note that I am not saying that you are not allowed to lie. Just that it’s abhorrent.
So, in other words, to avoid being a “misandrist”, which is OF COURSE defined as “someone who thinks men are thinking, feeling, reasonable adults who don’t have to thrive on hate like MRAs do”, one would have do agree with whatever you say, and definitely not expect respect in return. Because, you’re opinion of men is so incredibly low that the mere suggestion that one could be a better human being equals hatred of all men everywhere.
And I’m sure you’re completely confused why no a single decent person on the face of the earth can stand MRAs.
We get it. You’ve got nothing but racism and misogyny in your “argument” arsenal.
And, diddums, 80% of all stranger violence is committed against men BY OTHER MEN.
And that’s the boring, unimportant part of what we’re here to talk about, right? Because in a discussion about misogyny and racism, the thing we should be discussing is when and how men get raped.
The Oppression Olympics is a stupid game; I don’t see why you’re so intent on playing it. Rape is horrible no matter how it happens or to whom, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not a derailing shithead for changing the subject from how “misogynist is really, really not a slur” to “ZOMG did you know sometimes women rape men?!?”
You want people to take your concerns seriously? I have two suggestions: first, set up a forum that isn’t a cesspit of woman-hatred like A Voice for Men is where you can discuss these issues. Second, stop selfishly derailing discussions of misogyny and write your own blog posts on the subjects that matter most to you.
The Oppression Olympics is such a fun game, because everybody loses!
Any particular reason you are belligerent? Don’t like having point out that you are sexist against men?
Yes, it is the same. It is saying that I am wrong to speak out about rape because I am a man. You are saying that my stating my opinion on rape is expressing hatred for women. Again, it’s all there for everyone to read.
Actually, the topic was about a video claiming that the word misogynist is inappropriately used to shut down discussions concerning mens rights. Your attitude in this thread and your use of the word misogynist is a great example of the meaning of her video. So thanks for that.
Ah, you get the irony then 🙂
So you see why what was stated was sexist then, right?
It’s right there for everyone to see.
Denying what’s plainly there for everyone to see is a rather odd tactic…
Yes, men kill and assault each other all the time. If you think there isn’t any feminist analysis of this issue you aren’t looking very hard (start with Jackson Katz if you need help).
Saying men are privileged doesn’t mean the same thing as “mens lives are all unicorns and rainbows”. This reminds me so much of the current controversy over mitt romney and his comments about having worked so hard to get where he is today. No one is saying his life is easy, just that it is much easier than the vast majority of other peoples lives. That is privilege. It doesn’t fix everything, but it does eliminate many specific concerns.
We all have “privileges” and disadvantages in life.
Oops, meant to go in the thread below this one.
Sally: the fact that 98% of female rape is caused by men is significant.
But, the fact that per this study (based on the concept forced envelopment is rape) 40% of rapes in the previous 12 months were women raping men means there should be a female SR too.
In other words I’m not trying to marginalize male on female rape, I’m trying to *make visible* 40% of victims. SR contributes to their dismissal and lack of services by portraying *men only* as rapists.
This shows that rape isn’t a male problem, *it’s a human problem*.
It clearly has nothing to do with masculinity and everything to do with dysfunctionality.
@ Eldin #5:
No. If you look at the previous 12 month numbers that number jumps to 40%.
1.1% of women report being raped projecting to 1,270,000 victims nationwide. 1.1% of men report being “made to penetrate” projecting to 1,267,000 victims nationwide.
However, only 80% of those men report being “made to penetrate” by a woman. 80% of half is 40%.
If you want to talk about why the lifetime numbers are so disparate against the 12 month figures, then let’s talk about it.
My number is not false because the lifetime figures are different, if I’m quoting the previous 12 month stat and it’s true.
Illuminatia:
Yes, men are the target of stranger violence 80% of the time.
Yes 95% of the assailants in those crimes are also men.
Are you seriously saying that this is a reason to deny victims?
Just for a bit of understanding black men face far higher rates of being victims of violent crimes. Black men face about 5 times the risk of homicide of white men and 95% of the time their assailant is *another black man*.
Is this also not worthy of solutions because it’s same demographic violence?
98% of breast-ironing is mother on daughter, are you saying we shouldn’t help these victims?
Male victims aren’t undeserving of help because they share a characteristic w/their attacker anymore than black males or women are undeserving of help because they share characteristics w/their attackers.
Be consisten, don’t be a hypocrite.
No Eldin,
I made it clear I was looking at the previous 12 month figures.
When you look at those figures the same % rate of men report being “made to penetrate” as women who have been raped, which is 1.1%.
This projects to nearly equal numbers of victims nationwide (whithin a few thousand). 80% of the male victims reported their assailant were female.
Therefore 40% of rapes as reported in the PREVIOUS 12 MONTHS (when we accept forced envelopment as rape) were women raping men.
The fact that the lifetime figures are different don’t make the previous 12 month figures a lie or wrong.
My point is simple: if women are committing 40% of all rapes, then there should be a female SR and a male SR.
Yes, I do think it’s wrong, and I do think it’s a manifestation of misogyny. So? What’s your point? If you think I’m wrong then I guess we’re even, right? It’s still not akin to me calling you a racial slur.
Also, I’m sure many men would take exception to the idea that dislike of YOUR particular ideas constitutes bias against men, since most men aren’t as obtuse and dishonest as you.
I don’t like YOU. It’s not because you’re a man. It’s because you’re dishonest. Are you claiming that all men are as dishonest as you? Then I guess that makes YOU the person who’s biased against men.
Then why persist with the lie that “there are streets unsafe for women to walk down” with the unsaid presumption that men *are* safe to walk down those streets.
If men are the overwhelming victims of stranger violence (and 50% the victims of IPV) then why constantly always harp upon violence against women.
Yes, feminist *theory* covers male issues, but feminist *advocacy* does not.
Which beliefs a group advocates for says a lot more than the beliefs a group holds but do not fight for.
The lack of advocacy for male victims (and intentional marginalization of male victims of DV) means feminism’s political lobby is just another single demographic advocacy group like the anti-defamation league, latino lobbying groups, and naacp.
In other words feminism’s political arms do not fight equality. They only fight for better treatment of women which clearly includes fighting to make women safer, even though they are already much safer than men. Explain to me how *growing* a safety gap in women’s favor is equality?
John D, I’m sorry that you think SR erases male rape victims, but the truth is that it does not.
SR is an analogy meant to illustrate what the world looks like to women, who are at a higher risk of rape and sexual assault than men, and whose attackers in sexual assaults are men 98% of the time.
That is all.
It says nothing about male rape victims, but that is not the same as erasing them.
Do men routinely take measures to evade sexual assault? If not, why not? If they did, what does that look like? Those would be interesting questions to explore. The fact that SR does not explore them does not mean that it erases male rape victims. It does what it is intended to do: explain to well-meaning men why women are sometimes wary of them when approached in public. That’s all. Rape IS a gendered problem and it benefits no one to pretend that it isn’t. Men who experience penetrative rape experience it at the hands of other men. Forced envelopment is the only type of sexual assault where a woman alone is the perpetrator. Result of biology and cultural factors, I would think, but you won’t be able to solve the problem unless you correctly diagnose it, and pretending that gender does not affect one’s risk of forced penetration or forced envelopment is foolish.
I feel angry at you because yet another discussion has been derailed. I swear, if you ever want to learn about the problems men face, don’t go to any MRA sites, just hang around any board where feminism and women’s problems are being discussed. It’s inevitable that some dude will pop up with yet another WATM derail. I probably know more about men’s issues than most of the dudes who read AVfM at this point, thanks to assholes like you. At what point are you going to realize that not everything is about you and your problems? When are you going to learn that basic human decency entails listening to other people without interrupting? Fuck.
Have you looked at the methodology? Which figure do you think is more likely to be accurate and why? Since you brought this up, I reckon the onus is on you to take these things into account.
Eldin: Everyting you say is sexist, yes. And yes, everyone can see that.
Does it hurt when you pull such huge and astonshingly stupid bullshit out of your ass?
Sally if you can’t see the parallels between Shroedingers Rapist and Shroedingers Violent Black and why they are *both* wrong, then you’re not an equalist.
Sally writes:
“Do men routinely take measures to evade sexual assault?”
When safety measures for women to take are mentioned, this is called victim shaming.
Additionally, how would men know to take precautions against sex assault of women? There are no editorials, PSA’s or anything detailing the *high* risk of being raped by women (in relation to the risk that women are raped by men).
How could men possibly KNOW to protect themselves considering that those who identify as *equalists* on this very board want to bury their head in the sand and shout “no, no, no fuck you” to the idea that men are at 80% the risk of being raped by women as women are to be raped by men?
I just love how people want to dismiss facts, so that even the CDC must be wrong if it shows a nearly equal amount of female on male rape to the reverse.
I’m going to reverse your last paragraph.
You close by saying:
“When are you going to learn that basic human decency entails listening to other people without interrupting? Fuck.”
You start the paragraph by throwing hand over fist excuses why my view doesn’t matter, and dismissals and minimalizations of my statements:
“I feel angry at you because yet another discussion has been derailed. I swear, if you ever want to learn about the problems men face, don’t go to any MRA sites, just hang around any board where feminism and women’s problems are being discussed. It’s inevitable that some dude will pop up with yet another WATM derail.”
What about teh menz? ****THAT’S LISTENING****????
Where is YOUR “basic human decency? Can you point me to where you listened?
Apparently, you have 1 standard for those with different opinions and a much lower standard for yourself.
I imagine that Sally isn’t, as ‘equalist’, much like ‘egalitarian’, is poisoned by assholes like yout rying to pretend that Able Whitey McStraighterson III is the target of discrimination, JUST LIKE BLACK PEOPLE.
Schroedinger’s violent black person plays on racism, which is a thing that exists; the marginalization of non-white people is real. The marginalization of Able Whitey McStraighterson III, not so much. If Schroedinger’s rapist focused on poor men or similar, then there’d be a similarity. It didn’t. There ain’t.
Pointing at the fact that they exist and women take them is not, per se, victim blaming. Insisting that a victim who did not take them but should have, is.
Sally,
This is the very first time the CDC included “made to penetrate” in one of their studies on sexual violence.
Hopefully, this will open a lot of doors into being able to talk about male victimization and female victimizers.
This CDC study and it’s implications are already being talked about in places like the good men project and genderratic.
I have not yet seen it discussed in feminist forums or places like this one.
I have a theory why the 12month & lifetime numbers differ and it revolves around a lot of cultural forces but particularly male internalization of the “man code”.
The “man code” or “man box” as it is discussed by Noah Brand and Ozy of NSWATM fame says (roughly paraphrasing): “men must always be strong, never show weakness, be the primary provider, never desire other men, never back down” etc…
The “man box” or “man code” also says that if men don’t desire sex 24/7 then he is not a real man. The man code actually does a lot to minimalize male victims of female rape because the prevalent consensus of nearly everywhere is: “men can’t be raped, because they always want sex”.
Don’t you think it’s possible for men to internalize this concept and repress the idea that they were victimized and instead “got lucky?”
This view is EVERYWHERE when female pedophiles are talked about whether teachers or not.
http://www.genderratic.com/p/1448/if-it-happened-to-men-2/
Here is a genderratic post regarding a news article from Munich in which a woman who imprisoned men and raped them was able to repeat this 5 times to 5 different victims.
The reason is that the cops kept letting her go, not seeing the rapes as an issue.
In the news article she isn’t even called a rapist, but a nymphomaniac.
Typhonblue reprinted the article reversing the genders to show how misogynistic the article would be.
I’m not a study researcher but I’m thinking that regarding the lifetime numbers in order to compile these numbers the key factor is going to be the older men and women who report having been victimized multiple times.
Trying to plot the risk of somebody’s risk of victimization in a lifetime (to my mind) is going to *pivot* on getting *accurate* information from everybody but particularly the oldest respondents in order to show the risk escalating as one gets older and nears the end of their life.
My theory #1 is that older male respondents are going to have had their formative years further back when the “man box” or “man code” was at it’s peak. In other words these men are going to be the most likely to not see forced envelopment as victimization or to have simply repressed it.
Women can and do also repress rapes, but there are some mitigating factors: a) women have a 40 year jump on rape awareness *targeted to them* and “no means no” campaigns b) the rape of men by women may be more stigmatizing, after all the man code says men are supposed to be the initiators of sex.
Many men faced with their victimization due to the man code are probably way more likely to repress it or (rather than admit they were a victim and “not a real man”) say they were never victimized.
If older men do under report their victimization (more so than women), this is going to soften the numbers near the end of men’s life and totally collapse the curve.
My second theory is that we have been on a 50 year journey from unlocking female behaviors. Women can now be astronauts, fighter pilots, CEOs, supreme court justices and that is a good thing.
But, freedom for women to act in any way they want also includes freedom to be total fuckers. It may be that having freed women to behave more like men, many women are aping the negative male characteristics.
It may be that female rape is near male levels *now*, but wasn’t in the past. Which would also mean that going backwards in time the lifetime risk of F on M rape is not as high, but if trends today persist in the future that risk of lifetime F on M rape (for young men today) may actually be nearly equal to women.
You don’t have to look very hard to see female sexual entitlement.
Here is another genderratic reverse the genders article.
http://www.genderratic.com/p/1899/this-is-what-sexual-entitlement-looks-like/
Here is another female rapey sexually entitled article:
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/asking-for-sex-what-do-you-do-when-the-guy-says-no/
Here is a news article in which a woman admits ripping her ex bf’s testicles off for: REFUSING TO HAVE SEX.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/101006/Ex-rips-off-mans-testicle.html
This is all pontificating but in my view the double punch of probable older male under reporting of victimization + the possibly lower female rates of rape in the past *not* being indicative a young mans lifetime risk *today* could be a very good explanation for the massively skewed numbers between lifetime and previous 12month.
No matter how you hash it, for many reasons I would put money on the 12month result being more accurate.
Timid Atheist,
If you say I have “no right” to be afraid, because I’m a member of the “oppressor” class (whether or not I’ve actually done anything to oppress anyone), “guilty” of setting up the system and therefore “deserve” it if I’m attacked by a member of an “oppressed” class that I “made” do what he does, but you have “every right” to be afraid when the chances of attack are identical, then you’re an amoral piece of trash. Why do you but not me have the right be concerned about personal safety? Yes, maybe my attacker is more likely to be brought to justice than yours because of differences in “power balance”, but that’s no consolation to me as I’m lying on the sidewalk beaten to a bloody pulp.
Bullshit. You’re lying through your teeth. You well know that there are more “axes of oppression” than race, heterosexism, cisgenderism, and ableism. Specifically, there’s class. Not all white men have this power you magically ascribe to them.
Quite a bunch of you on here are hypocrites, claiming to promote social justice and equity while at the same time dehumanizing entire classes of people and judging them “unworthy” of social concern.
Rutee,
Does that mean straight white abled persons can’t fight for awareness of female rape victims?
Or is it only when a pundit talks about victimization of men that he/she must build “creds” with you?
Yes, I am white and straight, but I am not advocating for help specifically for only straight white males.
I am advocating for help and recognition of all males who are victims.
Once, again cracker jack performance by you on “listening” which Sally calls upon me to do, but apparently nobody else.
Please point me to where I said white straight able-bodied men were as oppressed as black, gay or trans men?
You’re putting words in my mouth to besmirch my message.
Why is recognition of male victims so frightening?
Oh right, class. Because being a poor white, able-bodied, straight, cis man is harder than being a rich, black, disable, gay trans woman.
Now that we’ve corrected that. What else you got? Nothing? Didn’t think so, but thanks for playing oppression olympics where you make everything about the poor white dudes because it’s not as if we don’t constantly talk about poor white does and how poor they are and how oppressed by women and people of color and trans* people and disabled people they are. So much oppression for those poor white dudes.
Rutee,
Please point me to where I said that white straight able-bodied men suffer equal discrimination to blacks?
I have only fought against a harmful and negative stereotype against ALL MEN called Shroedingers Rapist.
How does pointing out that men are victims of rape too (from women) = “I always laugh a little when people pretend the problems of dudes don’t have the bulk of attention.”
I’m not demanding the bulk of time and resources, only equal resources for men (all men) where the problems are equal or increased resources/time/attention where men face the majority of societal issues like suicide.
Shroedingers Rapist only besmirches white ableist well-to-do men?
Who said that? POint me to any forum that embraces the use of SR and show me where it says it doesn’t include poor men or black men.
Shroedingers Rapist is a bald faced stereotype against *all men* which many on this board are obviously going through mental gymnastics to accept and still claim they “fight stereotypes”.
I’ll tell you what: when *exceptions* to fighting negative stereotypes becomes the rules, then THE RULES ARE BROKEN.
THE RULES BY WHICH YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS AN EGALITARIAN (happy?) PERSON ARE BROKEN! So therefore, so will your advocacy be, and so will your solutions!
Yes, I am white and straight, but I am not advocating for help specifically for only straight white males.
I am advocating for help and recognition of all males who are victims.
Cracker jack performance by you on “listening” which Sally calls upon me to do, but apparently nobody else.
I just love the double standard that I am supposed to listen and take to heart the “fuck yous” of my critics nodding and saying “oh yeah, that’s deep–I never thought of that”, while the calls for standards isn’t met by any of the (I’m assuming) regulars on this board. lol, you just can’t make this stuff up.
I always laugh a little when people who tell me to listen, prefix that statement about why my opinion and statements don’t matter.
I always laugh a little when people who claim they fight for all victims have exceptions to why they won’t bother fighting negative stereotypes.
Well then Illuminatia:
Please enlighten (or illuminate!) me what your point *WAS* when you said:
“And, diddums, 80% of all stranger violence is committed against men BY OTHER MEN.”
Sure sounds like dismissal of victims to me. If your intent was something else, I’d sure like to hear what that intent was?????
Skeptifem:
I can see how much some feminists fight for male issues:
http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
Mocking male victims of DV, that is so stark raving—-feminist.
You don’t have to actively oppress anyone to be part of that class. It’s privilege and that’s the word I had been using, but swapped to oppressor and shouldn’t have. It muddies the waters.
As for having the right to be concerned with personal safety. Yes, you absolutely have that right to be concerned. But if you’re afraid of someone coming at you because they’re black and not because they’re holding a knife then you’re an amoral piece of trash.
The part where you pretend that it’s a problem for Able Whitey McStraighterson III.
Ah, you’re going to play dumb in the hopes that I am. This might snow job your average, overly-concerned-with-the-majority feminist, and even then I’m slightly doubtful, but good luck if you want to pretend this is your primary concern; it’s blazingly obvious it isn’t.
The essay itself doesn’t single out the poor, or non-white; it has, if anything, more of a tilt against the dominant dudes, but it’s not very strong. I’d say that it’s legitimate to say it doesn’t say enough on this particular subject, even, given the context (because it will indeed be disproportionately applied to the poor and non-white men); maybe a little less racist and classist than average, but not enough to be meaningful.
It’s also blazingly obvious you don’t give two shits about that. None of this was really the focus of what you wrote until I pointed it out. You were blithering on about how it is bad for ‘men’. As an aggregate. You are trying to use the problems of the marginalized to the benefit of Able Whitey McStraighterson III. And for it, you win today’s asshole lottery, wherein I may actually deign to respond to you, today’s lucky asshole.
Now, asshole, ctrl-f ‘Egalitarian’. It’s mostly white, mostly dudes who use it for a reason.
I listened fine. That’s how I noticed you don’t actually give a shit about non-white people.
You’re the honkey who doesn’t care about any minority, so I’d say you have the largest listening problem. It’s not a double standard to tell the people who actually have a problem with listening that they need to listen.
It’s so adorable how MRAs ape feminists whenever they can.
Rutee says:
“The part where you pretend that it’s (it’s being bias against males) a problem for Able Whitey McStraighterson III.”
So, in other words men face no problems BECAUSE THEY ARE MEN, only marginalized groups face problems because of things other than gender?
I’m sorry, the stats prove you wrong.
Men are 35% of college grads, 80% of all completed suicides, 95% of all on-the-job deaths, live 7 years less, and fathers get primary custody 6% to mothers 80% (yeah mothers winning primary custody 13 times as often has *nothing* to do with anti-male bias lol).
That’s nationwide for all men of all colors and all orientations. News flash! Men face systemic bias too! All men are not dastardly beasts and all women are not suffering saints.
Try to see the world past the tip of your nipples.
I can see how well feminism fights for the rights of men:
http://ballbuster4ever.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/on-hate/#more-973
“Of course I had to sift through a bunch of “not a man hater!” graphics to find this lovely pic. Because god knows, hating men is soooo wrooooong!”
http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have
Well, no… rich people still win, no matter the outcome of a specific event.
How would that work? If you are fairly labeled a misogynist and reject the label, you wouldn’t care and would press on and keep talking. If you weren’t fairly labeled a misogynist, you’d try to defend yourself. If you’re labeled a misogynist and you see yourself as such there’s NOTHING that will shut you up. In no case would you say “Yes, you must be right. I am a terrible person and will never speak on the subject again.”
You should dial that back a bit… we both know that class is legitimate, and it is unfair to lash out by being (intentionally or not) dismissive of any axis of privilege. Yes, it IS in many ways easier to be a black lesbian woman than a straight white male, when the woman in question is Wanda Sykes and the man in question is working in a factory for barely over minimum wage. It doesn’t mean we ignore that IN GENERAL men have it easier than women, white people have it easier than everyone else, and so on… but it is important not to dismiss class or any other category outright.
Men who are high school grads, on average, make as much as women who are college graduates. Men with a BA, on average, make as much as a woman with an MA, etc. Even when they work the same hours. .<- have an animated .gif of the world's smallest violin, for your problems as men here. [Ask and ye shall receive – C]
Good save on that qualifier. You wouldn’t want people to look at how masculinity drives men to choose the more lethal methods. It’s not discrimination; women attempt suicide more, they are just socialized to less violent, less successful methods.
And you know this. And you still tried to use it. Because you are an asshole.
Women are barred from most driver positions. I’m shocked – shocked – that stereotypes of women as incompetent mean men have a lock on a somewhat more lucrative job for their education level; much like most dangerous fields.
That one has some evidence as biological, unless we’re discriminating against male specimens of most species somehow.
Considering men win approximately 40% of the custody cases they contest, and that men are primary caretakers of the children *prior* to the divorce less than 6% of the time, you’re right; those stats do have nothing to do with an ‘anti-male’ bias.
In that approximately 40% of the poor, 50% of the gay, 50% of non-whites, etc, are men, yes, they do. Just not for their dudeness.
Ah, the asshole would like to finally show his colors.
Considering that feminists run most of the shit focused on men I’m aware of, and that MRAs do jack and shit except post angry, self-righteous comments, yeah, I imagine you do.
No, you are trying to use those victims as a cudgel against women. Again, don’t be coy.
Nah, sometimes people talk about reverse racism or heterophobia.
Nah, focusing on how long it took you to actually talk about victims of systemic discrimination isn’t putting words in your mouth. It’s looking at what you actually said.
Again, the parts where you focus on whitey mcstraighterson and ignore how things actually differ for trans, black, gay, poor, etc, men.
Incidental note, if you do some research, you’ll see that college admissions, and primary school, are actually heavily biased towards dudes; dudes get more time to speak with the teacher, their problems are taken more seriously, they’re not so strongly discouraged from entering most fields, in college. In primary school, they again get more attention from teachers, their performance is rated more ably even when said performance is equal, they have more of their shenanigans written off… So talking about anti-male bias in education is almost as funny as anti-male bias in family court. You’ve got a shallow view of the world; big surprise, from Whitey McStraighterson III with a persecution complex.
Oh, fucking white people. Watching them jump for joy at the prospect of using the n-word is so fucking tiresome.
Between 6 – 12% of men will admit to raping someone if you don’t use the word “rape.”
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
All men in the US have male privilege. All white people in the US have white privilege. All rich people in the US have class privilege.
Not being rich doesn’t erase white male privilege. Nothing magical about it. Being poor & white sucks, being poor & black sucks more, in general, and this generality is based on actual data.
What if you are poor, black and born with a gifted mind? Are you privileged?
That’s what I don’t like about the focus on privilege.
Also, it’s not that simple. For instance, I am “trailer trash”. I grew up in a trailer court with alcoholic drug addict parents whose best year (income wise) was half the poverty line. Disadvantage right? Except my hippy parents were kind, loving, nurturing, nature loving, etc. They promoted individualism, introspection, philosophy, etc. I wouldn’t have traded my “poor” parents for my friends wealthy parents.
The way we turn out in life is mostly random. There are things that have influences of course and yes, I would agree that being black in just about any country would be a disadvantage. Blacks in Europe, Asia, etc. are viewed negatively just as much, if not more, than they are in America. Does that mean it’s a universally bad thing? Of course not. For some people it actually works out to be an advantage.
Or what about me? I’m 3/4 American Indian (Muskogee/Creek mostly) and 1/4 Scottish/German (1 grandparent is white). Yet I turned out to look white. So do I have white privilege because of the color of my skin or am I disadvantaged because I am a minority? Both?
6% of that study.
Have something showing 12%? The 6% figure isn’t too surprising to me. I had to deal with a lot of incredibly base men when I was in the navy. However, 12% does seem a little higher than I would believe.
I remember my first liberty briefing that I had to give was in Phuket Thailand. I was shocked and appalled at some of the debates I had to have with my men concerning the definition of rape. Many of them wouldn’t be violent rapists but would definitely fall in to the “if she can’t say no” category. 2 of them were later left in China after they were arrested for raping a prostitute.
Women tend to get better grades, are more likely to graduate, and more likely to go to university.
Boys tend to be a bit more out going than girls. I wouldn’t call the teacher giving more attention to the outgoing children an intrinsic bias against girls.
So it’s sexist if a man states that about women but it’s not sexist when a woman states that about men.
There shouldn’t be an SR as it is inherently derogatory. However, I can also understand why some paranoid women can hold that view. While it may be sexist they are correct to state they are 4 times as likely to be raped.
Also, you can’t say men are being raped 40% of the time by a single years statistics. It could have simply been an anomaly or possibly a bad sampling. However, the much more comprehensive sampling was the life time figures. It places women as being rapists at about 1/5 the rate of men (men comprising about 5/6 of rapists).
So while I agree that it is wrong for them to dismiss 1/5 of the victims and 1/6 of the perpetrators simply because of their gender, your consistent use of the 40% figure based on a single year rather than more comprehensive figures is dishonest.
There’s no need to cherry pick here. Use the more legitimate figures. It doesn’t hurt your stance and being more honest in the discussions will be more likely to get you heard.
Did I ever state you called me a racial slur?
So you make a judgement about what I can and can not state based entirely on my gender. Yet you don’t see this as sexist?
I have had a number of women lie to me to get me in to bed. First was a married woman in Chicago. Next was a woman that seemed to be wonderful at first but turned out to have a boyfriend in prison and had a hidden drug addiction; I was simply her entertainment til her boyfriend got out. Then in Japan I had 2 more women who hid their being married from me. In all 4 of those situations I would not have slept with the woman had she not lied to me. I did feel betrayed. I do not compare that to the trauma of being raped. Is this a misogynist opinion? Really?
Where did I claim to speak for all men? I stated you are making a claim about what I am allowed to speak about as a man. I stated that was sexist.
I’ve read your blogs. You are intelligent, articulate, and a capable of making incredibly cogent arguments. Why then do you behave so belligerently and dishonestly here? It makes you come across as base, ignorant and biased.
Eldin,
Your view that the lifetime figures are “better” is a subjective view.
By that reasoning I guess so is my view that the 12month is a superior statistic.
Look to my response up thread to Sally regarding why I believe the 12month stat is more accurate.
Regardless, it doesn’t mean I am mistaken (as Stak kept insinuating) or an idiot as nepenthe wanted to paint me.
I’m willing to bet that if the 12month stat showed *less* female perpetrated male victimization that *most* regulars on this board would be arguing that the 12month would be the stat to use.
Also, according to advocates trying to stop lesbian rape in the documentary “she stole my voice” it is reported that 30% of lesbians reported being raped by a woman who was not necessarily her partner.
The evidence is building that men are not all nasty beasts and women are not all suffering saints.
We are all of us just human trying to make our way the best we can and many dysfunctional people of both genders do horrific things.
Uh, it’s not actually a subjective view. It’s statistics. I don’t mean to appeal to authority but ask any statistician and he will agree with me on this. While I am not a statistician, I do teach the basics statistics as part of my job. While I’m not an expert, I do know this much.
Rutee:
Most of the stats I posted about men are the same metrics used to show widespread black disenfranchisement. Except of course that blacks have even more disparate numbers.
Since you so handily discount these stats against men and *in the face of them* call men privileged, does this mean blacks are *EVEN MORE PRIVILEGED* because they dominate these stats even more strongly than men?
Or does it mean you’re committing the most extreme confirmation bias of anybody I’ve ever seen?
lol, just totally un-fucking-believable.
Eldin,
I’m not a statistician, but your remark that statisticians would unanimously agree that the lifetime would be better doesn’t ring quite true.
That supposition to me seems conditional. For instance, if there is explosive growth in a behavior, making a lifetime compilation of risks of responders who have experienced this behavior from others in previous decades (when the behavior was much lower)is not going to give an accurate reflection of a young persons risk *today and forward* through his lifetime.
My understanding is that violent crime from women is at (and has been for quite a few years) on double digit % increases.
Also, in my reply to Sally I mentioned the extreme psychological conditioning of men who were born and raised in the 40’s and 50’s who would have extreme views of manhood, and may never be able to cope with the idea that they were raped, and instead of admitting that “weakness” (both that they were overpowered and that they didn’t want sex = not a real man) would convince himself that there was no rape, because he actually wanted the sex and “got lucky”.
No, I’m sorry. The idea that lifetime *is always better* is not true. That is conditional.
I believe the 12month is more accurate, because it will mostly be younger men who have a less rigid definition of manhood (i.e. they will not put themselves in the “man box” and will be able to admit their victimization).
It’ll be fresh, in their memories and won’t be diluted with years upon years of a man convincing himself that he actually wanted it, because real men always want sex.
In order to accurately gauge lifetime risk, the older men (the ones most in the “man box”) would be pivotal in this equation as they would be the lynchpin necessary for drawing the curve of increased risk as one ages and nears death.
If these men are (as I am hypothesizing) at *extreme* risk for underreporting, then the whole curve caves in.
Yes, of course you can look at recent data for trends. However, a single year is not a trend. Compile figures over a longer period of time. Show that the rate of women raping men has fairly consistently risen over the last decade or so. Then your claim would have more weight.
Citing a single year as being indicative of a trend is erroneous. Citing a single year as being the norm when the normative figures is also erroneous.
Yes, there has been a decline in violent crime against women. That’s one of the reasons I do not disagree with the feminist movement. I don’t agree with some of their views but the feminist movement has addressed serious issues in society.
The problem with MRA’s is not their official stances (usually) the groups tend to attract radicals (as do feminist organizations) and those radicals can bias the norm of the organization (as is what happens with many feminist organizations).
Yes, male rape is under reported. Hence why victimization survey’s are much better than simple convictions or reports. However, that is also true for women. Many women are ashamed of having been raped and will hide it even from themselves. “My boyfriend didn’t really rape me, he just misunderstood me”. I saw this A LOT when I was living in Japan. Rape is far more prolific in Japan than it is in America but women in Japan almost never report it.
Like I have been trying to point out to the feminists here, these things go both ways.
Please do not put words in my mouth. I never used the word “always”. There are times when using a single year’s figure is apt, but they are few.
While you are correct that the figures may be biased, you can’t assume that they are and then everyone else to simply agree with your unfounded assumption. You wouldn’t accept such assumptions from a feminist; they won’t accept such assumptions from an MRA.
Dude, have you grown up as a girl? Have you seen studies of students in classes? You will learn not to be outgoing to the teacher/professor when the professor treats you as a nuisance for trying to learn. Sociology: It’s a thing.
I *could* focus solely on the effects of socialization on the girls, but even when they behave like the boys, the boys get more attention. It’s almost as if we’re in a sexist society or something.
You ignored the key points. Non-white people do not get paid more than white people for lower education, because men are the privileged class, and black people are not. Most of the other statistics don’t apply, so you’re just blatantly lying.
Can you read for comprehension? I told you why those statistics don’ tell the story you want them to. Those reasons don’t apply to non-white people, where the statistical patterns hold (white people attempt and commit suicide waaaaaay more than black people)
If that were the case, you’d have a much stronger case to put forward than just screaming confirmation bias. For instance, you’d try to demonstrate that those lethal jobs aren’t high status for their education, or that men are more frequently primary caretakers for their children (Spoiler alert: that’s the criteria courts decide custody on). As is, you’re just yelling confirmation bias.
That you cling to your false truths? Nah, I believe it easily.
For that matter, all else being equal, dudes have unparalleled access. They are far, far more likely to be interviewed, and then hired, with equivalent qualifications. Non-white dudes have every damn incentive to pad those qualifications. Further, we, again, have studies of how things play out in class for non-white kids. Those studies don’t show the non-white kids being pampered by the teachers and showered with positive reinforcement and attention. You’re looking at the result, and not how it comes about. White dudes have every systemic bias in their favor, in practice (because yes, those statistics give pause, and should. And then I looked at the causes, and I had to laugh at the ‘plight’ of white men.)
If this is true, then it logically follows that the only reason we have words like “racism,” “classism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “ableism,” and so on, is because of a malicious conspiracy by an extremely powerful secret cabal of people who for some reason wished to make people believe the lie that race, class, sex, sexual orientation, and physical capabilities have powerful effects on a given person’s quality of life.
Liar.
It’s right there for everyone to see, yet you are incapable of quoting it.
Because you’re a liar.
Everything he says is sexist? No, I wouldn’t go that far. But the two main points he brought up in his first post in this thread–
1. It’s totes okay and important to find areas where you can not get consent for a sexual encounter but not call it rape or sexual assault and
2. It’s really unfair that he got called a misogynist for doing this
do contribute heavily to the sexism that pervades our society.
See, asshole? That’s the truth. That is what you’ve been lying about. You weren’t called a misogynist because you quibbled over the definition of a word, but because you quibbled over the definition of consent when it comes to sex.
Your willful ignorance as to how these niggling arguments over what’s really rape and what’s not rape and what’s “rape-rape” and what’s “forcible rape” are major contributors to the disproportionate victimization of women in sexual assault.
It was sexist when Whoopi Goldberg did it and it’s sexist when you do it.
The other study involved, interestingly enough, military men, and I believe it is also on that same blog.
Strangely, I don’t really feel like jumping up and running errands for a dude who consistently lies about what I said.
Stating I lied doesn’t mean I lied. It’s possible I misinterpreted what you stated but you actually confirmed my interpretation. So nope, I didn’t lie. You believe I shouldn’t speak about what is and is not rape because I am a man.
It’s 13%, which is why I didn’t find it. I wouldn’t consider that sample to be remotely comparable to the general public. The worst people I have ever met in my entire life was while I was in the navy. Working with such people was incredibly depressing and it’s why I got out of the military.
The 6% is more likely.
You misunderstood what I stated. I guess it’s not my fault as I wasn’t explicit and assumed the reader would understand what was implied.
I was born looking white. That’s not something I control. I was born in a very low income family. That’s not something I control. I was born in America. That’s not something I control.
Who we are as people is random. It’s a collection of a bunch of previous events and the subsequent follow on events. This in no way implies that race, as one of those factors, has no bearing on how you turn out. My point is that everything is a factor on how you turn out.
For instance, I currently enjoy a fairly high income. However, if I hadn’t joined the military and been stationed in Japan, I wouldn’t have met my Indonesian wife and moved to Indonesia. If I hadn’t moved to Indonesia, I wouldn’t have fallen in to this line of work. Also, if my wife hadn’t coached me before the interview, I wouldn’t have landed the job. If I wasn’t naturally good with numbers, I wouldn’t have been able to impress my employer enough to hire me despite my having no qualifications for the job. Etc.
So yes, discrimination of all types occur and it’s a bad thing. I laud everyone championing equality and contribute financially to such causes. I just have a problem with a focus on “privilege”.
“You sound like a horrible person, with whom I would not want to be alone. Quibbling about the definition of rape is something that active misogynists often do. Sorry, but if you do that, you’re going to ding all of my pattern recognition programs for “misogynist.” If you don’t want to be called a misogynist then you should avoid doing the things that set misogynists apart from the general population, such as trying to convince the class of people who are most often victims of the hate crime known as rape or sexual assault that you, who are a member of the class of people who commit said hate crime, know better than them how to define it.”
Yes, I can and I already have. You don’t have to use the exact words I said for it to be a fair representation of what was stated. You state that it’s misogynistic of me to discuss a particular thing because I am a man.
“You sound like a horrible person, with whom I would not want to be alone. Quibbling about the definition of rape is something that active misogynists often do. Sorry, but if you do that, you’re going to ding all of my pattern recognition programs for “misogynist.” If you don’t want to be called a misogynist then you should avoid doing the things that set misogynists apart from the general population, such as trying to convince the class of people who are most often victims of the hate crime known as rape or sexual assault that you, who are a member of the class of people who commit said hate crime, know better than them how to define it.”
😉
Sorry but you said it. If you wish to retract the statement, that’s fine.
You are correct. I will retract my previous statement. Thank you for the correction.
If girls are treated so poorly in American academics, then why do they out perform boys in American academics?
Sorry but when girls are out performing boys, I have difficulty sympathizing for the girls.
While you are correct about there being a systemic advantage for white heterosexual men, you are incorrect to simply dismiss the plights of a large swath of them that are disadvantaged or suffering. That would actually be discriminatory. You would be punishing some of them simply because the system benefit many others.
There ARE legitimate male issues that are generally ignored by feminists activists. I am not saying that feminists don’t care about issues concerning men, I am saying that many(most?) feminists dismiss them as you just did.
^ In which you pick and choose which figures presented to you in research are to be dismissed, based solely on which figures happen to conflict with your opinions. If it seems wrong to you – declare it wrong!
Actually, I am dismissing it because it was a sample of only US sailors. I don’t doubt its results at all. I wouldn’t have questioned it if it had been twice that as that would have matched my experience in the navy.
For it to be valid as a claim for the US male population, it needs to be a proper sample of US males. Do you have a problem with my reasoning here?
Elam is on record stating that, were he on a jury for a rape case where the rapist is male and the victime female, he would knowingly, with premediation, vote “not guilty” even if he thought the man was guilty.
His extreme hatred for women made him stupid enough to admit in public that he would lie, when specifcally duty bound NOT to lie.
He has no crediblity. he is merely an unhinged hate-monger.
@John D, I wanted to come back and apologize. I did misread the numbers, and using your expanded definition of “rape” your statistical analysis is correct. I still think you’re wrong about the meaning of those numbers and about your interpretation of Schroedinger’s Rapist, and as Eldin pointed out, equating a single year’s numbers (especially the first year those numbers have been gathered) to a trend is of limited utility, but again, my apologies. It seems like the CDC needs to put more thought into how they structure this survey before they use it again.
That’s true, and I have no argument with that. But I don’t accept it sucks worse to be rich and black than poor and white. Or rich and female than poor and male. At least not a priori. There’s no reason why one aspect of privilege is more important than any other. (Though it definitely does empirically suck worse to be black and male than white and female.)
But my issue with “white men are not oppressed and are not marginalized, they have power” still stands. They are not oppressed because they are white, or because they are men, true. However some of them can be and are oppressed because of other things, which result in them, too, becoming marginalized and without power.
Then why did you say 99% aren’t rapists to start with?
Fair enough. Your comment reads a lot better with “privileged” instead of “oppressor”.
Carlie,
Eldin didn’t. I’m the one who said that.
But if we do some extrapolation from the cdc 12 month previous data it breaks down like this: of the 100% rapes that are happening 50% are against women by men, 10% are against men by men and 40% are rapes of men by women.
If it is true that men have 80% the risk of being raped by a woman that a woman has of being raped by a man, then it stands to reason that 4.8% of women are also rapists.
Eldin,
I find it interesting that you feel you have to move the goal posts by travelling across the pacific to point out that Japanese women vastly under-report rape.
I don’t have enough information about Japanese culture to rebuke the statement about Japanese women far far under-reporting rape (my sense is you mean far more greatly under-report it than U.S. women). I will take your word for it until I see some studies.
It’s impossible to say how much US women under report rape in terms of alerting authorities or in anonymous surveys.
However, one thing that is analogous is that both US men and Japanese women are 50 years behind US women in getting rape awareness and “no means no” *targeted at them* being talked about.
So, if cultural circumstances exist for Japanese women to be *much* more likely to under report rape (compared to US women)even on anonymous surveys why wouldn’t that also be the case for men considering rape awareness *targeted at men*(from hetero sex w/women) is VIRTUALLY NONEXISTENT!
It just may *now* be blooming on sights like the good men project and genderratic. I would say this one *now* but I haven’t seen anybody give a terribly large shit about male rape victims.
As I said, this is the first time “made to penetrate” was included in the cdc’s sexual study. New studies may reveal more.
I contest that the 12 month is more reliable for the reasons I posted.
When you add together the lifetime figures from the CDC report of men being penetratively raped 1 in 71 and being “made to penetrate” 1 in 21, that comes out to 1 in 16 chance in being raped (by somebody of any sex).
One in 16 is a hell of a lot closer to women’s 1 in 5, than 1 in 71 that was shown in previous CDC studies that didn’t cover made to penetrate.
That means that men face 1/3rd the lifetime risk of being raped that women do. That’s still a hell of a lot of victimization revealed with the addition of 1 simple question.
Will people on this board still continue to say that rape is a gendered problem if men 1/4 of rape victims?
Good luck getting anybody on this fucking board to give a shit about these male victims. Regulars on this board obfuscate, minimize, excuse and deny even issues where men dominate like the fact that 80% of all successful suicides are men.
Your views of mra’s are invalid. There is no fudging of any numbers that I have seen. Whereas the minimalization, denial and dismissal of male victims on boards like this one is very real and open for all to see.
I have one last comment regarding the disparity between the lifetime and 12month figures for men.
If men truly do have 80% the risk of rape by women that women have of rape by men and the lifetime totals are due to under-reporting, then using simple math would mean 80%(of men’s “made to penetrate” being female assailants) x 20% of women’s lifetime risk of rape (1 in 5) would mean men’s lifetime risk would be 16%.
From my stance I’m willing to concede that men’s lifetime risk of being raped by women is somewhere *BETWEEN* 1 in 25 (4.8% lifetime risk of made to penetrate x 80% female assailants = 3.8%) and 1 in 8 (the 16% rate I mentioned earlier if you assume the 12month totals for men are correct and men are under reporting in lifetime totals and men actually have 80% the chance of lifetime rape that women have, in consideration of the disparity between lifetime numbers and the 12month.
Additionally, using the same method mens chance of being raped by a person of any gender would be between 1 in 16 (1 in 71 for penetrative rape and 1 in 21 for “made to penetrate” regardless of assailant gender) and 1 in 5 (since men’s responding of made to penetrate and women’s rape were both 1.1%).
Anyone got a mirror?
Brownian, maybe Crommunist should moderate more heavily to remove the people he disagrees with.
That is, after all, exactly why bloggers moderate.
I mean, I don’t mean to put your own dipshittery on display, as you suggested to heavily moderate dipshittery of which you yourself were involved in to prevent that kind of thing, but I’m just saying. It could be a novel idea.
And to Crommunist, you can’t deny that misogynist on this blog — and elsewhere — in relation to feminism is being abused and misused way too often, much like a racist epithet. In almost every conversation relating to feminism where women have been put down in some way, it comes down to the determination that it’s because they’re women.
Which sounds very familiar to another similar conclusion, and anyone who should question their situation with either humour or scepticism is labelled, whether it’s correct or not, a misogynist. Which, by the way, before feminist theory redefined the word, meant the hatred of women. However, even if you don’t hate women, objectify or otherwise discriminate them, you can still get labelled a misogynist. And once you are, the chance of further conversation is shut down, vis a vis Brownian and Sally Strange in this thread.
Of course, Brownian could just be exercising a form of hyperbolic whining, and the only reason he can’t stop laying turds on the inappropriate keys in a Tourettes-laden diarrhoea is because someone cried into his beer.
If you had asked me how I arrived at those numbers I would have been happy to respond in an equally civil fashion, rather than presume that I was an idiot.
As I mentioned to Eldin. I am willing to concede that female rape of men is *between* the two stats: between 1 in 25 lifetime and 1 in 8 lifetime (extrapolating women’s 1 in 5 chance against the 12month prevalence of men being “made to penetrate” by women).
However, even using the lifetime figures as presented in the CDC when you combine male lifetime chance of being penatratively raped (1 in 71) and male lifetime chance of being “made to penetrate” by any gender (1 in 21) this combines to about 1 in 16 men will be raped in their lifetime.
That’s a hell of a lot closer to women’s 1 in 5 chance than has been shown in previous CDC reports.
*Even* using the lifetime figures men are 1/4 of all rape victims. Will this be enough to open the door a crack to talk about male victims (and to talk about rape in gender neutral language when addressing awareness and solutions).
Or, will this be like on the job deaths (95% men) and completed suicides (80% men) and destitute homelessness (90% men) in which no matter how badly men are victimized it will still be okay to hate men and claim “they have all the power” as long as the person stating it exempts black and gay men?
As if a white man never was abused as a child, never becomes depressed, never gets assaulted, never suffers DV.
Thanks for the apology, but I’m not going to hold my breath for regulars on this board to take a *real* look at men being victimized *for their maleness* instead of using confirmation bias to say only men of color and gay & trans men are oppressed because of their additional statuses other than being male.
The only good thing I have to say about my experience on this board is that I haven’t been banned yet.
At least if the regulars on here give a beating, they can take it too so I have to give the nod to Crommunist in that regard.
I wholly anticipated that Crommunist figured I was a hateful idiot and was only allowing me to post so that I would hang myself.
With each newer and better argument I made of why it helps all of us to look at male victims (when and where it is warranted) I totally expected to be banned. If we expect to raise a better crop of men who practice sympathy and empathy, it is first necessary that those men *received* sympathy and empathy in their lives. Treat men in monstrous fashion and you will create monsters.
I just can’t believe the blind rage and hate that some on this board reserve for white men. And it truly is hate, not revenge or justice.
Hey Crommunist,
I’ve got a mirror, did you need to borrow it to check something on yourself?
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Suicide_DataSheet_2012-a.pdf
Excerpt:
“Suicide among males is four times higher than among
females and represents 78.8% of all U.S. suicides.”
Hey Crommunist,
I’ve got a mirror, did you need to borrow it to check something on yourself?
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Suicide_DataSheet_2012-a.pdf
Excerpt:
“Suicide among males is four times higher than among
females and represents 78.8% of all U.S. suicides.”
I’m not ignoring men that are disadvantaged; quite a few men are poor, non-white, gay, etc.
Not really. Feminists cover the ways patriarchy harms men, and run the only male shelters for various victims I’ve seen. MRAs don’t do shit but post angry comments.
I dismissed what are predominantly fake issues for a variety of reasons. The only one that was real was men completing suicide more, but the reason that’s completed and not attempted is because women choose less lethal suicide, because they’re less violent. Would you like to examine how masculinity in our society teaches men violence? Because it doesn’t just harm others. Along with the related policing, it directly and indirectly hurts men.
Oh wait, no, you just want to use an issue to try to criticize feminists. Because you don’t care about men’s issues either, you just want a cudgel.
Incentives, partially. Again, dudes get paid as much for less work and no debt. They’re far, far more likely to be hired than competitors on level playing fields, and given that they’re paid as highly, they probably still beat competitors on playing fields that ‘should’ be stacked against them.
I suspect, but can not claim to have studied, that the way anti-intellectualism plays out amongst boys vs. girls has something to do with it. It’s there in both genders, at least in the USA, but it’s done in different ways, and possibly ones that stick less among girls.
I’m familiar with Elam. I hung out on Manboobz until the site owner went insanely heterosexist. Skipping for joy at every excuse to use the n-word is by no means just an Elam thing.
Shorter PG:
I’m not a misogynist, I just think bitches ain’t shit! Also Brownian is a big poopyhead, so there, nyah!
Translation: PG gets banned from every blog he visits because he a dishonest bigotted troll.
Hmm, I wonder why you received the reception you did, not just from me but from most everyone else? Could it be because you derailed a conversation about misogyny and the N-word to talk about your pet issue? Could it be because you continually misunderstood and mischaracterized the concept of Schroedinger’s Rapist, even after it was explained to you? Could it be because you deployed a simplistic and racist characterization of crime and criminals to make your point?
Don’t fool yourself – when you came onto this post you did so in an uncivil fashion. The fact that you received incivility shouldn’t be surprising. And remember, civility isn’t just about How you say things – it’s about What you’re saying, too.
No Stak,
I didn’t derail anything.
My reply was to comments Regarding SR. My point is simple: all stereotypes should be fought against. I actually kept my comments on point ever since I first responded about SR.
If a person is going to roll out a line of excuses of why they don’t have to fight against *certain* negative stereotypes (which to it’s bones that is what SR is I don’t give a shit what anybody says) then that persons view of “fighting for equality” is seriously flawed and they need to do some serious introspection over why they would believe such a thing.
As far as nurdy dancings youtube point I would say this. I get her point that misogynist (I really get tired of spelling that word) is *silencing*, but there is no way it has nearly the same loaded connotations as the N word.
I’ve argued about Israel’s politics on USAtoday, I’ve argued against what the GOP did wrong on boards, I’ve argued against what Bill Clinton and Obama have done wrong, I’ve argued about why we need tougher borders *and* why we need strong unions and collective bargaining.
I’m not a 1 trick pony–I’m all over the board in my politics. I’m 46 years old and (used to) read the paper everyday and most of my beliefs are evidence-based, not knee-jerk reactions.
Every time I open a forum on ______ or criticize something it always ALWAYS starts with “smear the messenger” tactics.
If I complain about dubyah (and god is there a lot to complain about. I hate both parties a ton, but feel marginally more aligned with the GOP and that guys is one dumb fucker) “you’re just a pinko communist democrat, I don’t have to listen to you!”
If I complain about Obama or Clinton “You’re just a redneck teabagger, I don’t have to listen to you!”
If I complain about stronger borders I’m a racist, If I mention male victims I’m an rapist etc.. ad naseum.
I would put the word misogynist in the sense that Nurdy is saying in the category of words which typically mean a person who gets (rightful* condemnation and ire based on their shitty actions, but in the case she is saying it is thrown around without proof.
I would put it in the category of:
Rape apologist, rapist (love being called that because I dared to talk about male victims), bigot, racist, homophobe, loser who can’t get laid & is angry at women etc…
You just gotta love it.
Actually, I suppose education is an issue for dudes in the same way suicide is; neither indicates systemic bias in context, but there’s something to solve there. Which doesn’t change that men receive every benefit of institutional bias in schools in spite of this.
Except men aren’t stereotyped on these grounds. Your ‘point’ is to attempt to reaffirm that yes, actually, ‘white men are the new super discriminated against group’, in direct opposition to the OP.
Worry not; this much is obvious, in the way you’ve chosen to try to co-opt actual issues.
Your persecution complex remains hilarious.
Ignorance is not a trick, so I’d say this is accidentally accurate.
You say this, and yet you also characterize your response here as such. It’s almost as if you’re a dishonest egotist.
Holy shit, you are a fucking asshole. I’m not surprised you put misogynist in those categories, though, because you are a fucking asshole. Yeah, I’d say aside from ‘loser who can’t get laid and is angry at women’, the similarity is real, you’re just warped and think these things are used trivially.
Odds and Bodkins, that’s a reply to this:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2012/09/24/misogynist-is-not-the-new-nigger/#comment-81091
Oh, and yeah, you did derail. Notice how few of your posts are about how an asshole misogynist trying to claim that ‘misogynist’ is the new n-word.
Rutee,
That is a falsehood.
Men do not get paid more “for the same work”.
Studies have shown for the last 15 years that when the choices men and women make is examined carefully that women make less because they put a higher priority on working 9 to 5 indoors and out of harms way and for companies that put an emphasis on things like health care and childcare. When women make the same choices to put career first, they make as much or more than men.
Additionally, you don’t see a connection to men w/no college degree outearning women w/no college degree and the fact that men are 95% of on-the-job deaths?
These aren’t male and female segregated jobs. Women (on balance) *could* make the same choices that men do and choose to be roofers, commercial fishmen(person), sewage workers, construction workers, but they don’t.
This wage disparity between non college men and non college women isn’t a GIFT to men. It is something earned by working overtime, relocating, working outdoors, working near danger (such as cave in risk, or near dangerous chemicals). Please stop making it sound like men are being given a free ride. It’s a liars game.
Why do men make these sacrifices (yes they men do sacrifice for women)?
Because men have internalized the societal message that if he isn’t good at provisioning for others (particularly women) that he is worth nothing, just as women have internalized if she isn’t beautiful she has no worth (and therefore most women engage in the cosmetics arms race to increase their worth).
In other words people have the gall to act “surprised” when women put pressure on men to be earners, and men actually do that by whatever means necessary including sacrificing their bodies.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7088747&page=1#.TxRL328S0SI
In this story a mother who becomes the breadwinner feels resentment at man who was laid off who is doing the hands on caregiving to the kids. If the caregiving role is so much more noble and exhausting shouldn’t she feel proud of him?
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/mothers-hanker-for-husbands-of-wealth/story-fn6t2xlc-1225985339082
“Mothers hanker for husbands of wealth”
This article on twin studies of mothers in UK and Australia
state that “if finances permitted, most would choose to be full-time mothers” (looking for men to shoulder the burden of providing the material needs)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3318366/Wealth-is-key-for-marriage-study-claims.html
According to this study women place a premium on mens wealth.
In other words the fact metric that shows non-college men outearn non-college women isn’t a measurement of *privilege*, it’s a measurement of men’s willingness to *sacrifice* for the women in their lives, even destroying their own health.
Men aren’t women’s oppressors, men are women’s emancipators.
Wait a minute, you’re comparing females raped to males being made to penetrate directly? Even given that the following is part of the definition of “made to penetrate”?
Seems to me that given this definition you should be comparing “rapes” plus “attempted rapes” to made to penetrate.
Should also bear in mind that rapes of women are woefully underreported, which is part of why you’re full of shit.
If you think simply observing “there is no way for women to know ahead of time which men are rapists and which aren’t is “treating men in mounstrous fashion” then you are in cloud cuckoo land. If you think that “blind rage and hate” is being directed at white men then similarly you’re simply not living in the real world. White men get treated fine here when they don’t engage in apologetics for rape and racism.
This is quite true. You’re certainly not speaking for me, Eldin.
Ah, I see the rape statistic *did* include attempted rape. My bad.
@danielle:
Does that mean I’m no longer full of shit?
chuckle
Again you mischaracterize Schroedinger’s Rapist. It’s not a stereotype, regardless of how much you refuse to acknowledge that. It is a colloquial explanation of how women are unable to know if a man is or isn’t a rapist in the absence of context. Nor have you “kept your comments on point,” you’ve introduced irrelevant facts like crime statistics and you’ve insulted feminists and many specific individuals on this thread. You’ve given as good as you got, and you’ve stuck around even when the owner of the blog made quite clear that you and your derailing were unwelcome. The fact that Crom is gracious enough not to ban your ass doesn’t change the fact that you have acted as a self-important, entitled fool. If you are attempting to advance the cause of “men’s rights” or foster discussion you’re doing so very badly. Instead, it looks as though you simply want to scold people for not being as “enlightened” as you.
Rutee,
If it was derailing to debunk SR, then it’s also derailing to advocate SR.
So the original post I was responding to was just as derailing.
Or should people be able to spout about anything as long as they agree with you, but when some1 refutes one of the side topics (because they disagree with you) “ewwwwwww you’re derailing”
That’s just incredibly dishonest and inconsistent.
You’re a despicable, lying piece of shit.
From the brother of a female construction worker, you’re a repulsive human being.
Fuck yourself, you dishonest shitbag.
Not being stereotyped? It’s called Schrödinger’s Rapist and it’s being addressed to supposedly good men. All good men, of every ethnicity, meaning it’s not just sexist but also racist as well. Not being stereotyped in that way? Are you people incapable of seeing past your own bias? And are you really calling him an asshole because he’s objecting to stereotypes, in this case where all men — even supposedly good men — are rapists? -facepalm-
Can you at least refrain from calling people assholes because you disagree with them?
I know Brownian and Josh, Official Spokesgay have the urge to call their opponents (among other things) little shits at every turn, but it doesn’t mean you all have to follow suit.
The below response was meant to Rutee Katreya.
PG displays yet again his ignorance of the concept of Schrödinger’s Rapist.
Several years ago, a woman using the name of Phaedra Starling introduced the idea of Schrödinger’s Rapist:
Ever since then, misogynists like PG have been complaining about being called rapists. What these misogynists don’t understand, or more likely don’t want to understand, is nobody can tell if they’re rapists or not until they start raping. Until then, women can’t be sure about any man and many of them take precautions for their own safety.
Rutee, what about men reporting less than 1% of rapes? Is that not a problem?
What about many states in the US not considering it rape when a woman rapes a man? Is that not a problem?
What about women as likely to abuse men but the police almost always arresting the man? Is that not a problem?
What about men being forced to pay child support to women who raped them. Is that not a problem?
What about a disproportionate amount of effort and resources dedicated to breast cancer when prostate cancer kills more?
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/prost.html#incidence-mortality
Etc.
I haven’t seen any feminist movements to address these issues. I have seen feminists movements to help minorities, both sexual and ethnic minorities, but I haven’t seen them address any areas where men in general were getting shafted to the benefit of women.
“1. It’s totes okay and important to find areas where you can not get consent for a sexual encounter but not call it rape or sexual assault and”
Except that’s not what I said at all 😉 I had stated that calling lying to some one as raping them diminishes the meaning of rape. I stand by that. I have been lied to by numerous women and do not consider any of those encounters to be rape. Betrayal is the correct word in that instance. I trusted them and my trust was betrayed. Betrayal is not the same as rape.
So my experience as a man doesn’t matter right? I am not able to voice my opinion about having women lie to me to get me to sleep with them and whether it constitutes rape because I am a man right?
Sorry but you making a decision about what I can and can not discuss based solely on my gender IS SEXIST. I am sorry that you have your head stuck so far up your feminist blinded ass that you fail to see that. Yes, sexism can go BOTH WAYS.
I am completely with in the right to discuss any topic I see fit to discuss. If what I state is wrong, attack what I state and not my gender.
If this logic was applied to ANY other demographic, you would find it appalling right? Hence the constant analogies.
Also, SR fails in that the overwhelming majority of rapes are carried out by people close to the victim. The man following you down a dark alley late at night is a very small portion of the rapists.
While I believe everyone should always be reasonably cautious, I do find SR to be a bit offensive. If a woman wants to think poorly about me because I am a man, she is free to do so. I am also free to point out that it is discriminatory.
Describe how you are being discriminated against. If you say SR is discriminatory then you have to explain how it is. A concept you find mildly insulting does not equal discrimination.
It won’t let me respond under Eldin at home (usually just come here at work). However, this is “Eldin” from above. I’m going to take this from 2 different angles. First, the definition of the word.
First, let me point out that discriminating is not innately bad. The word simply means to distinguish between things. However, it is generally considered bad when it is used in this context. That is, when you are using characteristics of an individual to stereotype them or characterize them with out knowing them. For instance, if I see a woman showing a lot of cleavage and thigh and then think she is a “slut” or maybe even think she is a prostitute, I would be completely out of line, correct? Yet, that’s effectively what SR’s rapist is doing.
I’ll be following this up with another post to try it from another angel.
[Unless you want your brain melted from stupidity, I strongly recommend against reading this deep and dank forest of bullshit – C]
Before I do this, I want to clarify that I have absolutely no idea about what black “gangsters” (or whatever) are like. I haven’t lived in the states for most of my adult life so my “stereotypes” will likely be way off. However, the point should still be clear.
SCHRÖDINGER’S ROBBER
African American men, thank you for reading.
Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect white people. You like white people. In fact, you would really like to have mutually respectful friendships with white people. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that white person—that white person isn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter white people.
So far, so good. Mister white man, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, friendship: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.
Now, you want to become acquainted with a white person you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that white people are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, an African American man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for white people, it is. When I hang out with African American men, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?
So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this African American man mug me?
Do you think I’m overreacting? African American men are 12 times more likely to commit robbery and it’s the most frequent violent crime. I bet you don’t think you know any robbers, but consider the sheer number of robberies that must occur. These robberies are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion(no clue what to put here, just assume it’s analogous :-P). While you may assume that none of the men you know are robbers, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every robber commits an average of ten robberies (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of robberies in the population is still a little over one in 40. That means six in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Sixteen who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice African American man who wants nothing more than companionship and friendship, are not this robber?
I don’t.
When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Robber. You may or may not be an African American man who would commit robbery. I won’t know for sure unless you start assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of African American man—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.
Fortunately, you’re a good African American man. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the white people with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.
To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some white people, particularly white people who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those white people do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to befriend them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. White people are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.
The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.
This means that some African American men should never approach strange white people in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a white person cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with internet meet ups, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a white person who will appreciate them.
Are you wearing a hoody? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange white person.
Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a white person and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a white person in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the white person’s ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this white person be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.
On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the white person is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.
The third point: White people are communicating all the time. Learn to understand and respect white people’s communication to you.
You want to say Hi to the white person on the subway. How will the white person react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because the white person’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for white person to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Robber. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win the white person over with charm or flattery. Believe what the white person’s signaling, and back off.
If you speak, and the white person responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, the white person’s saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary African American man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”
On the other hand, if the white person is turned towards you, making eye contact, and the white person responds in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to the white person, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.
The fourth point: If you fail to respect what white people say, you label yourself a problem.
Etc.
It gets in to personal details after that. At that point it would require a lot more work on my part (and I’m generally lazy) to make it “work”. As a note, the figures I pulled up were from the first google search that returned demographics on robberies:
http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn_loury/louryhomepage/teaching/Ec%20237/racial%20stereotyps%20and%20robbery.pdf
My rough mental calculation likely wasn’t too accurate but it doesn’t need to be for my point to get across. SR is sexist, paranoid, and unrealistic. The reality is that the 6-7% (department of justice says life time figures for women for rape and attempted rape is 7%) of women that are victims of rape (or attempted rape) are overwhelmingly raped by people close to them, not strangers.
I don’t really want to state more on my opinion of this as I am not a woman and shouldn’t really speak about what I women should and shouldn’t think. However, I am confident in stating that SR is sexist.
Crommunist, mind elaborating on why you think that was “bullshit”?
I was using it as an analogy to SR in an attempt to show how such language is inherently insulting towards men. I also view it as insulting towards women as it paints women as being irrationally paranoid. However, as I am not a woman I can’t really comment on that.
If you believe I am wrong, please, enlighten me. I am genuine in this request. The main reason I discuss things on the internet is to learn what I don’t know and to try to correct my ignorance. If you can explain why women being paranoid of men is not comparable to white people being paranoid of African American men, I would greatly appreciate it.
Brownian:
If I had said that no woman ever in the USA was employed in construction, then you’d have a point.
But, that’s not what I said. I said that women (on balance) don’t enter these dangerous fields (like construction).
There is a simple saying: “the exception proves the rule”. Just because you found a rare exception doesn’t mean you’ve proven wrong the rule “women rarely enter construction”. I would hope you’re smart enough to know that there are always exceptions.
Just because you are related to a female construction employee does not mean the field is 50% female.
In fact the bureau of labor statistics actually pegs female employment at 2.3% in construction.
ht tp://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.pdf
Look to page seven, one quarter the way down the page at the title “construction and extraction occupations”
It is shown that these industries employ 7,125,000 employees and 2.3% are women.
No I am not lying. Am I a piece of shit person?
Well, I would say that somebody who feels so *threatened* by a differing opinion that they need to start calling people names fits that bill a hell of a lot better than I do.
I just find it incredibly duplicitous among feminists and others to think that men have no constraints upon their behavior at all (particularly that women have no agency to affect male behavior).
For some students of humanity it goes much deeper. The value of women is in their body. But the value of men is in their provisioning for women. In the post you resopnded to I posted 3 studies showing the mercenary nature of (a good chunk of) women in how they choose men–and these men are boiled down to assets.
And everybody has the gall to “act surprised” when this nature of women to expect provisioning of men actually bears fruit in men willing to risk health, life and limb to secure female companionship.
And then, feminists pick exclusively $$$$$ to measure this gender dynamic to show EXCLUSIVELY male privilege.
When measured instead in extra stress that kills, and the 95% male rate of being killed or injured at work an objective person can see that calling this *privilege* is TOO SIMPLISTIC.
Not to mention lifetime ailments like blacklung or exposure to chemicals, or debilitating injuries (like breaking your back or knees). In other words the tendency of non-college men to earn more than non-college women is *both* male privilege and male oppression.
I love the way Chris Rock says it: When a man sees something he likes he says: “wow I really like that! I have to find out what I have to do to get that!”
when a women sees something she really likes she says:”wow I really like that! I have to find out *who* I can get to *buy* me that!”
Turning a male oppression into male privilege when talking about the wage gap has to be one of the most clever and most duplicitous tricks I have ever seen.
This is why men can dominate in ridiculous ratios over women *both* the top and BOTTOM tiers of the power pyramid.
I have never seen anybody anywhere state that a woman was a deadbeat for failing to provide for an adult able-bodied male. Have you????????
But, the view that men are deadbeats for failing to provide for women is EVERYWHERE!
Again quoting Chris Rock, he talks about women can’t go backwards economically (in boyfriends) and talks about the joy of women when they date for the first time a man with: his own car, his own apartment, and a man that travels and that a woman will refused to go back and date a man who lacks those things.
For men it is “get rich or die trying” in which thanks to (a good chunk) of women seeing men as a means to an end, men have to take enormous risks to secure female companionship. The male role is a total craps shoot. Either rise to the top and receive the accolades of everybody and be a “good” man, or washout and become the invisible male dredges of society who receive no help.
The bottom rung of the power pyramid is littered with millions of “washouts” at the male role (in much greater numbers than women). But, because we falsely believe that “all men” have agency and are never victims these men are rarely helped by the social safety net.
If you read PIT (point in time) homelessness surveys in which cities and counties go around and count all the homeless, the chronic destitute homeless are usually 80% to 90% male. But, the clients in transitional housing (i.e. who society seeks out to rescue w/the social safety net) are women. So, it’s mostly women in shelters, and it’s mostly men on the streets.
Vulnerable and victimized men (white, black, latino, native american, asian, gay straight and trans) who are depressed, uneducated, impoverished are invisible to most people. Women are allowed to ask for help–because they are viewed as powerless and in need. Men who ask for need or (dare) ask for help are called whiners and mocked (white as well as men of color).
This dynamic is played out over and over: education (fuck who needs to help men/boys they have all the power), mental health when men commit 80% of suicides (fuck men), on the job deaths, divorce court mother bias, victims of crime.
Again and again the social safety net is reserved for women–because it is socially acceptable for women to be victims. Women are viewed as having no agency, so people don’t have a problem with helping them. Men who are suffering are seen to have been dumbasses that got themselves into that situation since “all men have agency”.
This is MALE OPPRESSION. And it doesn’t only affect gay men, trans men, or disabled men. If also affects white men.
This male oppression is worse for the more marginalized sub groups. But, the simple fact is there is *both* male privilege and female privilege. There is *both* female oppression and male oppression.
Stak,
You said:
“It is a colloquial explanation of how women are unable to know if a man is or isn’t a rapist in the absence of context. Nor have you “kept your comments on point,” you’ve introduced irrelevant facts like crime statistics and you’ve insulted feminists and many specific individuals on this thread.”
I refuse to accept an idea that says:
it is okay for women to obsess over male rape (despite the likelihood being very very low in any single interaction with a man) and live in suspicion during all male interaction *regardless* of credible evidence of men’s comparatively greater threat (versus coming from another woman)
for the same reason that I and many others refuse to accept the idea that says:
it is okay for whites to obsess over black violence (despite the likelihood being very very low in any single interaction with a black) and live in suspicion during all black interaction *regardless* of credible evidence of blacks comparatively greater threat (versus coming from another individual white).
It is stereotyping. Look at the versus I wrote above. The concepts are I.D.E.N.T.I.C.A.L.
Next, when I mention the bad some feminists do A) I almost always use the qualifier “some” B) relaying misandric feminist webpages like jezebels mocking male dv victims isn’t an insult, unless you believe that what they said is so bad that it’s an insult to simply quote them.
Isn’t that the point? If you expect mra’s to oust Elam, shouldn’t you expect feminism to eject their haters as well?? C) what I have said isn’t slurs, but simply quoting the hate of *some* feminists and doesn’t hold a dim fucking candle to what really are unproven slurs directed at mras. If you want to moderate, then moderate–but moderate EVERYBODY, or is seeking fairness also an insult? lulz
Lastly, I have *returned* insults at individuals. At least be fucking consistent dude. You’d have a damn point if you had even once called any of my profanity laden detractors ONE DAMN TIME for insults or language.
You haven’t.
Be consistent, don’t be a hypocrite bro.
Again, “bro”, a mischaracterization. No one has said that Schroedinger’s Rapist causes women to “obsess over male rape,” nor that they “live in suspicion during all male interaction.” No one but you, “brah.” Schroedinger’s Rapist is, again, a colloquial explanation of the brief mental calculations that many women perform when interacting with individual men, and it is extremely context-dependent – in other words, taking into account all available evidence, despite what you claim, “my homie.”
And by bringing in outside links to “some feminists” like Jezebel and Ballbuster4Ever (which I’ll point out you didn’t qualify, you called it “feminism” as though it were a monolithic thing) you muddy the waters, derail, insult, and troll. Yes, troll. I’ve avoided using that descriptor for you, “dude”, because I hadn’t seen the necessary component of “doing it for the lulz,” but I see now you’re taking great pleasure in continually LYING about Schroedinger’s Rapist, so I feel comfortable using the term now. You are a troll, “girlfriend.”
I don’t expect MRAs to oust Elam, “dawg,” because the MRAs that I’ve seen are just like you – entitled and self-important, unconcerned with actually advancing their “cause” (as though men as a class are opressed in some way WORSE than others; all else being equal, it’s better* to be a man than to be a woman or trans) and intent only on furthering a laughably hateful misunderstanding of how stereotypes of masculinity form. Paul Elam seems like a fitting spokesman for *your* cause. Paul Elam speaks for *you*, JoJo.
*Not a value judgment, just an observation of cultural attitudes.
Stak, I am unable to know if some one is a mugger. I am about 10 times as likely to be mugged as a woman is to be raped. I am about 30 times more likely to be mugged than a woman is to be raped by a stranger. I am 3 times as likely to be seriously injured while being mugged as a woman is to be raped. (just to clarify, I am not stating any of this is comparable to being raped). A man in America is about half as likely to be murdered as a woman is to be raped. A woman is 4 times as likely to be raped and a man is 4 times as likely to be murdered.
Sorry but it is unreasonably paranoid. I can understand a woman having gone through a traumatic experience causing her to be paranoid. However, that doesn’t change that it is irrational paranoia. It would be comparable to me going around stating that everyone must pander to my paranoia. I feel sympathy for any one who has such an irrational fear. If I am aware of their phobia’s, I would of course respect their wishes and not approach them unbidden (with in reason). However, to request that everyone behave as if everyone else has the same phobias is simply retarded. Not everyone has the same fears that SR implies. Countless women have already stated as much.
Obviously, I can’t speak for women. However, I can’t imagine that women are generally irrationally afraid of men.
OH REALLY? Fiddle dee dee! A person who uses anti-black racism as a cudgel wants me to teach them about why their fucked up retrograde ideas aren’t correct! I can be certain of this because you said you were GENUINE! This certainly sets you apart from all the OTHER people who have used this line of “reasoning” in the past and then turned into belligerent assholes when someone attempts to show them why their assumptions are wrong. None of THEM ever used the words “genuinely interested”.
Buddy, if you were genuinely interested, you wouldn’t have waited until AFTER you penned this BS. You would have said “hmm, having never faced anti-black racism in my life, maybe I should learn something about it before I start invoking it as a comparison to white men. I wonder if there are any differences? Maybe I should look it up before I completely embarrass myself and look racist as fuck!” But you didn’t do that. So no, I don’t really see any point in me holding your hand and “enlightening” you. This is the fucking internet, chum. Look some shit up.
I’ll leave you with this thought. What’s the difference in outcomes between a man who fails to not look non-rapist enough, versus a black man who fails to not look “suspicious” enough?
Also, I am closing down comments on this thread because it’s hit 400 and quite frankly y’all are starting to annoy the shit out of me.