Dear the Men’s Rights Movement,
I think there’s one issue you and I need to sort out before I go back to my general policy of pretending you don’t exist and/or sporfling when you call me a female supremacist.
Being cheated on and raising your wife’s boyfriend’s kid is not the male equivalent of rape.
Not getting child custody is not the male equivalent of rape.
A woman wearing a short skirt is not the male equivalent of rape.
Having to pay child support is not the male equivalent of rape.
Paying for dinner and not getting sex afterward is not the male equivalent of rape.
A woman saying “no” when she means “yes” is not the male equivalent of rape.
A man getting fired from his job is not the male equivalent of rape.
A false accusation of rape is not the male equivalent of rape.
A woman saying she’s on birth control and then getting pregnant is not the male equivalent of rape.
Getting divorced is not the male equivalent of rape.
The male equivalent of rape IS RAPE.
And every time you say it isn’t you put the lie to the idea that you care about men’s rights at all.
Sincerely,
Ozy
aliarasthedaydreamer
Ami Angelwings
Hershele Ostropoler
Cheradenine
jlandrith
kaija24
2020
noahbrand
Cliff Pervocracy
ozymandias
Shora
sirgabe
figleaf
John Hawkins
No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? 
“A false accusation of rape is not the male equivalent of rape.”
This might be the only one I disagree about. False emprisonment on trumped-up charge could be worse than rape, because you can’t feel guilty about something you haven’t done. But god will you feel cheated by a system meant to protect you. Like being beaten badly by a brother/father/mother.
I’m sure people who are abused more by police to the point they see police as negative (people in sex trades, people of color etc) feel cheated by the system, as if it wasn’t even meant for them, like it was false advertisement. Probably even more so if they got more than just profiled a lot, but actually beaten by them (like that trans woman of color that was beaten on video by police at a police precinct).
Feeling like there’s a conspiracy against you or your group and probably being right, is not a good way to live. As someone with generalized social anxiety whenever I’m alone in public, I know it’s very detrimental to my having any kind of social life.
Hey, Ozy, lemme first say I love you. I really do. You rock. And this list rocks.
But let’s talk about something for a moment, please? I disagree with just one point on your list. I think reproductive coercion can definitely feel a lot like rape. It’s like if a woman consents to sex only if the man wears a condom, and he then takes the condom off without her noticing. If a woman “oopses” a man into parenthood, it’s no better than a man poking a hole in the condom. You take away an element of the consent (safety from parenthood) with reproductive coercion, and you take away an element of body autonomy. It isn’t rape, exactly, but it’s still abuse and it’s still psychologically damaging.
It’s the only one that I can’t fault MRA’s for comparing to rape, because I’ve compared it to rape, no matter if the victim is a man or a woman, for exactly the reasons I listed above.
“A false accusation of rape is not the male equivalent of rape.”
Good post, very clear and I agree with almost everything you posted here. While the majority of the things listed here are clearly issues that we ALL need to acknowledge as important to men, the one I quoted is probably the most touchy. Yes, a false accusation is exactly that. it is not rape. But on the same token, that accusation has far reaching consequences for men that can be just as,or dare I say it, even more damaging than an actual rape.
This is going to sound incredibly heartless and I am all too aware of the horrible reality of what rape does to a person both physically and mentally but, a victim of rape has the choice as to whether or not they make their victimization public. A victim of a false accusation does not have that option. They become a social pariah and in many cases a victim of violence for no other reason than their name appeared in public along side the word ‘rape’. Even when (if) they are exonerated, it is a mark that will haunt them forever. So ultimately, while it may not be equivalent to rape, it is awfully damn close to really make much of a difference.
I agree that a comparison can be made between reproductive coercion and rape. Reproductive coercion is a facet of rape; a male raping a female vaginally has the implied threat of reproductive coercion. Rape and reproductive coercion also have implications not-in-common. There’s a lot of overlap between the two in Venn-diagram sort of way.
I agree with Remi here. If someone consents to sex under certain conditions, and a partner knowingly changes those conditions without the other’s knowledge, that is a form of rape.
If someone were to agree to sex under the condition of a safe word, only to have their safe word ignored, that would be considered rape. And I bet most people say that a man impregnating a woman without her consent is rape. So is a woman being impregnated by a man without his consent. In fact, unwanted parenthood has got to be one of the more severe consequences of any type of sex without consent. That is rape. And it should have legal consequences just like other forms of rape.
And I don’t think being falsely accused of rape is rape. It’s bad, sure, but it’s like being falsely accused of a crime, not sexual violation.
I think Remi has a point there. In fact, if a woman lies about being on the pill (and doesn’t just get pregnant because she forgot to take it), I’m pretty sure it counts as sexual assault under Israeli law, since consent was gained by deceit. If rape by envelopment was considered rape in Israeli law, it would be plain rape. But it is indeed not “the male equivalent of rape” – rape is the male equivalent of rape, and this is just one sort of rape. Unfortunately, there’s more.
Well, being falsely accused of a crime and going to prison is not a gendered issue; women as well as men are imprisoned everyday.
And women as well as men have their lives ruined by this.
And more specifically, both women and men have been falsely accused of sexual crimes, with similar trauma.
I seem to remember the MacMartin Preschool trials involved female staff.
I don’t think anyone is saying this is in any way all right.
It is, instead, an argument about the use of the word “rape” as a touchstone for the awfulness of an event.
And that use is problematic.
But this is a discussion, not of how bad a given event might be, but rather of how we use some words.
At issue here is the difficult terrain between literal speech and metaphor.
Saying that one thing is, or is like, another is a powerful speech act, and is one of the way we communicate.
My love is like a red, red rose… works fine, it tells us something, and no one becomes offended on behalf of roses, thorns, gardeners, and the like, by this use of botanical imagery.
The rose, with all its historical and artistic baggage, is a handy and easily used image, no problem.
This is what figurative language does when it works.
But some things, like the Holocaust or the Nazis, for example, are pretty much not seen as available for trivial use.
So likening being cut from the soccer team to being a victim of the Holocaust will draw responses ranging from snickers to anger, depending on your audience.
Why?
Because the real event is so terrible that such comparisons are read as lessening the actual historical horror.
It becomes a no-go area, and rightly so.
Rape and discrimination are similarly becoming no-go areas.
But because they are current and powerful and shocking, they tempt those who want to exploit their impact.
This is understandable, but – again, like the miffed soccer player, if you try to use them, you will be called on it.
It isn’t a matter of what you are allowed to put into the space X is like rape, because the answer becomes only that rape is like rape.
It is considered extremely tacky at best and viciously cruel at worst to go up to a female rape victim and tell her that her rape is JUST LIKE this totally bad thing that happened to you that wasn’t rape.
Why is it okay for us to do this to male victims of rape?
I’m agreeing with everyone here regarding the reproductive coercion angle. That’s certainly a form of rape if a man does it to a woman, morally if not legally. As far as the false accusation issue goes, I think comparing it to rape is shooting the men’s movement in the foot a little bit, since it perpetuates this idea that men can’t be raped, themselves. It’s kind of like the sex-negative crowd insisting that being ogled on the street or catcalled is rape. It clearly isn’t rape, while it may be unpleasant. Saying it is in order to make a point or try to sensationalize the issue (which is what’s going on here, let’s be honest), only dilutes the influence of the word.
Granted, in false accusation situations, a man may be imprisoned, which could lead to rape. However, creating conditions which increase the likelihood of rape is not rape. Otherwise Cosmo and all those other victim-blaming asshats would be right to say that women should never go outside after dark or without several guards.
In fact, look at this http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=261-269 now go to 266c
” Every person who induces any other person to engage in sexual
intercourse, sexual penetration, oral copulation, or sodomy when his
or her consent is procured by false or fraudulent representation ,,, that would cause a reasonable person in like
circumstances to act contrary to the person’s free will, and does
cause the victim to so act, is punishable by imprisonment in a county
jail for not more than one year or in the state prison for two,
three, or four years.”
So lying about birth control to have sex with someone, or lying about if you cheated on them to have sex with someone, is a crime in California. And a number of other places have similar laws. So when people call such things rape they do in fact have laws to back them up.
On the false accusation: Yes they are not rape. However, a false accusation, any major accusation, not just rape can have a lot of very bad effects. On the high end you got being murdered, raped, or tortured (yes, holding someone down and “beating the crap” out of them is torture). This can happen by vigilantes, or due to the nature of prison ect. A more likely kidnapping (being thrown in a cell is kidnapping for all the effects it has on the victim), property destruction (I don’t care if I lost my house because someone burned it, or because I had to sell it to stay out of jail), and endangerment (jail is dangerous). Although it could also easily just end up being slander.
As we can see this can easily end up with a major degree of badness. It would be in bad taste to get into an argument about which was worse. Yes, its not rape, but neither is murder, or removing someones eyes.
tl;dr version: Umm… rape by fraud is a thing. And false accusations (not just of rape) are a major bad thing.
I’d never quite consciously realised why I was so horrified by the idea of reproductive coercion until Remi expressed it above. I’ll add my voice to saying that it’s certainly rape-like in ignoring a partner’s demands as to how sex is conducted and deceiving that partner.
This whole male-equivalent-of-rape thing pisses me off no end otherwise though. Excellent post, Ozy.
No birth control is 100% effective.
Even a person with a tubal ligation can get pregnant (info about halfway down the page).
I’ve seen the sort of analogies the OP criticizes, and I wince whenever I do. Since rape is placed at the pinnacle of harm in feminist gender discourse, it’s understandable (though still unfortunate) that some MRAs compare crimes against men to rape, as if that’s the only way to emphasize that some harm is really, really bad.
I agree with the folks in this thread that poking holes in condoms or directly lying about birth control is arguably a form of rape. In those cases, the guy didn’t consent to sex without birth control.
There is one particular case where a false accusation of rape can lead to rape (even though it’s not a form of rape by itself): if the accused is imprisoned, and raped in prison.
I definitely agree that reproductive coercion should be a crime for all genders and arguably a form of rape. However, not all cases of someone getting pregnant when they say they’re on birth control are reproductive coercion– sometimes people make mistakes or miss pills.
I was just about to say it, but Hugh beat me to it.
False accusations are not the male equivalent of rape, but if the victim is convicted, then they can lead to the male equivalent of rape, which is … well, rape.
Hugh:
I’ve seen the sort of analogies the OP criticizes, and I wince whenever I do. Since rape is placed at the pinnacle of harm in feminist gender discourse, it’s understandable (though still unfortunate) that some MRAs compare crimes against men to rape, as if that’s the only way to emphasize that some harm is really, really bad.
Agreed.
Its wrong that MRAs try to make that comparison but when rape is often touted as “the worse thing that can possibly happen”. Its not surprising it happens. (And I think this is also part of the reason why people tout false rape accusations as being so terrible, I guess the line of logic is if the crime is horrible then being falsely accused of such a horrible crime is a horrible crime as well.)
Grabbing a man’s penis and putting it in your vagina when he told you no is definitely rape though.
I think that the core issue here is that while these things are not the equivalent of rape, they are not the equivalent of nothing. It seems that this analogizing comes from a feeling among MRAs that their complaints are minimized. Just because individual MRAs are sometimes misogynist doesn’t make MR issues misogynist.
But it *can* be traumatizing to be falsely accused of something, particularly in a climate in which trials are treated as sporting events (note to any Nancy Grace fans out there: Casey Anthony getting off may be a miscarriage of justice, but it does not affect you personally). For some people, being accused is tantamount to being guilty.
However, about false accusations: I don’t know if all false accusations are malicious. The majority of cases of men wrongly convicted that I’ve heard of involved strangers being picked out of a lineup, not acquaintance rape situations.
And here’s where I get potentially a little controversial: there has been a tendency among some second wave feminists to refer to many things that are not rape (consensual sex/pornography/marriage) as rape. It doesn’t make it right for MRAs to do it, but it puts it context.
As an aside, if I was an MRA, I think the top priority would be to end prison rape. If one can’t work with actual prisoners’ rights groups to stop it, at the very least one should call out both the belittling of prison rape in media and the knee-jerk reaction to a male convict being “Well, he’ll get his in prison.” We need to stop that NOW.
@monkey: “As an aside, if I was an MRA, I think the top priority would be to end prison rape. ”
This shouldn’t even be a problem. Its a jail. We have cameras. We’ve had them for a long time. If someone gets raped in prison it should be caught, with video proof, if not immediately, the second it gets reported. Then the perp should get a nice long jail sentence for it. And if the perp was already a criminal segregated from the other prisoners. What the hell people?
@Lamech: You know it’s not that easy, especially when everyone is looking the other way or else tacitly agreeing to it.
Lamech:
The problem isn’t that people don’t know its happening. The problem is that a lot of people either don’t care because they think they deserve it (well at least men anyway) or actively ignore it because they think they deserve it.
@Danny and monkey: Yeah, I know that. Those were the people I was talking too when I said: “What the hell people?”
I think, however, that the MRM “male equivalent of rape” rhetoric does have one point worth considering.
Rape is widely considered “the absolute worst thing that can happen to a woman”. This is of course partially because rape is a horrible and traumatizing experience that can leave permanent psychological damage, but it is ALSO because of an ugly cultural norm that considers maintenance of sexual purity a kind of female prime directive, and which is essentially also the basis of slut shaming.
Very few people would say that rape (whether by envelopment or by penetration) is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a man, even if rape can be just as actually traumatizing and harmful to a man as it can to a woman, simply because the “sexual purity” of a man is not considered particularly valuable (most would hardly even consider it something that *exists*).
By the standards of a dysfunctional culture which has such a standard, it is not necessarily the case that the male equivalent of rape is rape – even though by sane standards, it obviously is.
“Very few people would say that rape (whether by envelopment or by penetration) is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a man, even if rape can be just as actually traumatizing and harmful to a man as it can to a woman, simply because the “sexual purity” of a man is not considered particularly valuable (most would hardly even consider it something that *exists*).”
Absolutely disagree. The reason that rape can be equally traumatizing for men is not because of issues of purity, but because it is often minimized or even erased. So it’s just as bad, but for different reasons.
I would define “rape” and “sexual assault”/ “sexual misbehavior” (or some other such term) as different things, all of which can be serious issues.
One can feel violated, be seriously emotionally hurt or similar with either.
I’m willing to limit “rape” as the NISVS does in their study (see):
Click to access NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
What is problematic is when:
1.) One minimizes the victimization of another as in: “that wasn’t a real rape” or “s/he shouldn’t have been so seriously hurt by ___ because (s/he: ‘s a slut, lives in a bad area, is homeless, …) and in a similar way:
2.) Rape is equated with other things no matter what they are.
Similarly, if some amongst us have paralysis, loss of one or more limbs, mental health conditions (e.g. depression, bipolar, etc.), to minimize such a medical condition – ah that’s not so serious- or to say: my ____ (dyslexia, stuttering, cancer, etc. – I don’t really have these conditions) – is comparable or worse to your ____ is wrong – wrong – wrong.
By all means – say that what you have is painful, horrific or whatever you wish to say, but don’t minimize what others have.
Finally – Rape is Rape – and Men are Raped – as Oxy – you pointed out – which is oft times ignored when we misuse the word or minimize it with others. Rape is a serious violation – period.
Many in the Men’s Rights Movement would have others believe that every time a woman is impregnated when she says she’s on The Pill then she must have been lying, and that the man’s lack of accounting for his own reproductive capabilities is moot. I remember the so-called Roe-V-Wade for Men case we had in Michigan where a woman was informed by her doctor that she couldn’t become pregnant, and that she remained on The Pill for other reasons (many women do), and her boyfriend proceeded without a condom and ended up impregnating her anyway. He tried to sue when he was charged for child support; he didn’t accuse her of lying, mind you (probably because he knew she wasn’t), but he actually believed that since they thought she couldn’t become pregnant then he is exempt of any responsibility … even when he didn’t wear a condom. This is a risk we take, people!
I was impregnated when I was on The Pill. It’s funny because I joked with my boyfriend about how women in my family become pregnant just walking by a man (it seems we do!). We had many arguments about wearing a condom and I even refused sex when he wouldn’t wear a condom (I know, a “painstaking task” a man must do to get sex or whatever). Nonetheless, one time he somehow got the condom all the way down unbeknownst to me and it thus came off when he withdrew. I ended up pregnant which I didn’t even know until I miscarried (very early but scary as hell!). To this day I’m being chased around by collections for the bills which I had to cover myself, and he even refused to be checked out at the hospital with me because he was “relaxing.” As far as I’m concerned, this was not rape. Rape is rape.
I think the MRAs say every issue they address is “like (being) rape(d)” as a way of reinforcing the trope that femininity and thus women and feminist issues are frivilous and silly as compared to important (masculine, and “male concerns”) topics which are all exactly like the one thing they’ll abstractly and theoretically admit happens (unless it’s to a man), which is rape.
Monkey:
Perhaps I failed to express myself right.
I did not mean to say that rape is less traumatizing to men than it is to women – that would obviously and demonstrably be incorrect. Male rape victims have the same psychological damage symptoms as female ones do – and they have to deal with people (and in some cases a legal system) that do not believe that males even can be raped (whereas female rape victims have to deal with people who believe that a woman can be “asking for it”). I completely agree with you.
What I meant to say is that due to the cultural norm of viewing maintenance of sexual purity as important for women (while simultaneously not even defining “male sexual purity” as a meaningful concept – in contrast, virginity in men is shamed), only very few people in such a culture would say that “rape is the absolutely worst thing that can happen to a man”, despite saying that it is the absolutely worst thing that can happen to a woman.
I am not saying that this is right. I am saying that there is a stupid cultural double standard at work that actually makes “the male equivalent of rape” a meaningful term: If one of the cultural duties of women is to maintain sexual purity, then rape is a violation not only of her body and psyche, but of her cultural role as well (consider all the stupid things the Old Testament had to say about rape, for instance). “The male equivalent of rape” is then meaningful in the sense of “forced violation of the male cultural role”.
I am not saying that I accept these standards, I do not. I am trying to figure out why the MRM even operates with a term of “male equivalent of rape”, when it seems so obvious to me that the male equivalent of rape is, well, rape.
“I think the MRAs say every issue they address is “like (being) rape(d)” as a way of reinforcing the trope that femininity and thus women and feminist issues are frivilous and silly as compared to important (masculine, and “male concerns”) topics which are all exactly like the one thing they’ll abstractly and theoretically admit happens (unless it’s to a man), which is rape.”
I’m not a MRA, but I think it would be mostly a reaction to being told “but women are raped more, so your issue (whatever the issue) is moot/has to wait” constantly.
Monkey: That would depend on who you were raped by. If by a man, I imagine society would consider that a violation of a man’s cultural role.
Monkey, addendum:
Actually, I think the reason rape is traumatizing has nothing at all to do with cultural narratives, minimization or any other academic nonsense, rape is traumatizing because it is a gross violation of one’s body, and a complete and utter erasure of one’s sexual agency. It is so no matter what the victim’s sex and gender might be.
The “failure to maintain purity”, “probably asking for it”, “real men cannot be raped” and other bullshit that we then proceed to pile on top of it is just one of the ways our culture makes a terrible thing even worse.
I have sometimes heard people saying that for a woman, being raped is “worse than death” – but I have never heard that claimed for men. And this is precisely because our culture assigns value to female sexual purity, but hardly even considers male sexual purity a meaningful concept.
@Monkey – “However, about false accusations: I don’t know if all false accusations are malicious. The majority of cases of men wrongly convicted that I’ve heard of involved strangers being picked out of a lineup, not acquaintance rape situations.”
Not all false accusations are malicious. there are indeed cases where a victim has a firm and legitimate belief that a person may have raped them. While these cases are problematic for the accused, it is a reality that innocent people are sometimes the victim of mistaken identity. I think what most people would agree on however is that when a person maliciously and knowingly accuses an innocent person of rape, knowing what that accusation will mean for the accused, for many, there is little difference.
Speaking from experience as a victim of both the act and the false accusation, from the same person I might add, for me, the harm done by each was vastly different but I can’t really state that one was ultimately worse than the other.
I find something problematic about stating “And every time you say it isn’t you put the lie to the idea that you care about men’s rights at all.”
There often seem to be assumptions that when a group is advocating something we disagree with, they must be disingenuous. I think it’s much more likely that they are mistaken, than that they don’t care about men’s rights. I’ve heard the same said about “fun feminists”–that they must not really care about women. Clearly folks making that argument should say, “Those feminists care about women, but are mistaken in their methods.” Likewise, I’d say about the MRA folks that they clearly care about men’s rights, but that their methods are flawed and counterproductive to their goal.
Celeste:
I agree. I think they obviously do care about the rights of men, but have some mistaken views on the matter. This is why I am trying to make sense of the “male equivalent of rape” concept, even though I personally cannot see how the male equivalent of rape can be anything but rape.
One difference is that, aside from fearing prison, I don’t think there is the cultural effect of the fear of rape on men that there is on women. Men fearing casual sex probably has far more to do with reproduction than rape, men being uncomfortable or unwelcome in public spaces has more to do with being seen as lechers or rapists than fear of rape, and so on.
Schala says:
January 15, 2012 at 12:48 pm (Edit)
“A false accusation of rape is not the male equivalent of rape.”
This might be the only one I disagree about. False emprisonment on trumped-up charge could be worse than rape, because you can’t feel guilty about something you haven’t done. But god will you feel cheated by a system meant to protect you. Like being beaten badly by a brother/father/mother.
But this isn’t about whether things are “as bad” as rape, or how bad rape is, or etc… it’s that it’s not the “male equivalent of rape” because the equivalent of rape for men… is rape.
It also ends up hurting men because it implies being raped is a thing that happens to women, and plays into narratives that men can’t be raped (or it’s not really a big deal) >_< When ppl use the "the male equivalent of rape is… " it implies that they believe rape isn't a men's issue, men can't get raped, and therefore they need to stretch to find some other comparative. (and yes I understand WHY ppl do it but it doesn't make it right or accurate xD )
While it’s a good remonstration to the MRM, this ends up just being a statement of a tautology, “rape is rape.” I think we can all agree that “rape is rape.” And then we can sympathize with those other things that get equated with rape, and try to fix them.
“It also ends up hurting men because it implies being raped is a thing that happens to women, and plays into narratives that men can’t be raped”
Not necessarily.
If you believe that women are far more likely to be raped and that kyriarchal culture encourages people to rape them, then when you say “X is the male equivalent of rape” you’re saying that it’s something that men are more likely to endure than women and that kyriarchal culture presents them from defending themselves against.
A woman gets pregnant because a condom breaks or the pill fails? Definitely not rape.
A woman gets pregnant because she poked holes in a condom? She has raped the man.
A woman gets pregnant because she lied about being on the pill? Probably rape.
It’s true that no form of birth control is 100% effective. Yet I don’t think that fact has any bearing on whether or not lying about birth control is rape.
When people have sex with birth control, they are consenting to the small risk that it will fail. Yet they are not consenting to sex under conditions of greater risk that their partner has deliberately exposed them to without their knowledge.
In the case of poking holes in a condom, it’s even worse, because it creates a certain exchange of fluids that was not consented to (only a 1-10% risk was consented to), which is a violation of bodily integrity. I would call this rape.
Even in the case of lying about the pill, the risk of pregnancy gets increased by 10x+. An act with 10 times the risk was not consented to. That’s still arguably rape, but since it doesn’t have the violation of bodily integrity, it could instead be characterized as fraud, or perhaps even human trafficking if child support is sought.
The reason it could be trafficking is because defrauding a man into 18 years of child support without his consent is a form of forced labor (it’s forced because the state will coerce the man into providing the support, and require him to stay in a job with a certain level of income, and he can be thrown into debtor’s prison if he doesn’t comply).
then you should say “X is the male equivalent of rape culture against women”… or something along those lines… 🙂 (if you believe that)
By saying “the male equivalent of rape is… XYZ” it does imply that men can’t be raped… esp since that’s alrdy a narrative in society, it plays into it
“Monkey: That would depend on who you were raped by. If by a man, I imagine society would consider that a violation of a man’s cultural role.”
However, there is more to it than that. The way the “violation of a man’s cultural role” usually plays out is that the male victim is usually shamed further for his victim status. The prison victim is especially referred to as “bitch.”
The only time that male rape victims are taken seriously as victims are in cases like the Penn State crimes. Even then, there was a horrible Jezebel piece about “what if the victims were girls,” that among its many troubling parts included the idea that the reason people cared more about the Penn State crimes was because of homophobia.
@Hugh:
Of course, women are not vastly more likely to be raped, provided you choose a rational definition of rape instead of a sexist one. So using “male equivalent of rape” in that way is spreading that misconception.
I’m going to say, first of all, that Ozy’s completely right: the male equivalent of rape is rape.
That’s not to say other things on the list aren’t bad, or even really really bad. Just that they’re not equivalent.
There are two really good reasons for making the objection, by the way. First, and maybe the biggest one men should think about when considering the question, is that saying anything else is the “male equivalent of rape” is to basically deny that men can get raped, and therefore something else has to be the equivalent for men. Second is that the vast, overwhelming number of people (mostly men) who imagine that this, that, or the other thing is “the male equivalent of rape” probably haven’t been raped as a man (and by definition they haven’t been raped as a woman) and so they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. Either way, to claim equivalence is to betray either cluelessness, insensitivity, or insincerity.
—
Maybe I’m just being too literal minded here but it seems to me that if one was going to try and make comparisons (perhaps in order to construct some kind of oppression-Olympics scoring system?) I’d think the following might be closer to true equivalences.
1) Being falsely accused of fathering a child that isn’t yours is the equivalent of being accused of “crying paternity” by the man who really is the father of your child.
2) Being falsely accused of a rape you didn’t commit is the equivalent of being accused of “crying rape” when you really were raped.
And so on.
Again, these at best less imperfect equivalences rather than good ones but unlike assertions of the form “being raped is not the equivalent of being raped for men” mine are at least in the same ballpark.
figleaf
@Fnord: Which definition would you suggest?
“2) Being falsely accused of a rape you didn’t commit is the equivalent of being accused of “crying rape” when you really were raped.”
If you don’t get convicted and your name is not published in media. Yes. Otherwise you’ve been libeled (your reputation is likely to suffer employment-wise at the very least) and kidnapped, too.
Suppose that DSK really is innocent and that it was consensual sex he had? Well, damage done already regardless. He lost his position of employment and lost his shot at France presidency, on alleged charges alone. Because it got public.
Ami:
“Male equivalent of rape culture” actually works very well.
I doubt the MRM acknowledges the existence of rape culture, however.
@ lowquacks,
I assume Fnord is referring to the decision not to classify envelopment as rape in the recent CDC report.
Hugh Ristik:
No, because that would create the absurd situation that it is possible to be raped while fully conscious, lucid and not even be aware that one is being raped. She has done something terribly wrong (and something that should certainly be condemned by society, and something that her victim should definitely not be held responsible for), but it is something different than rape.
The man was deceived with regard to the circumstances of the sexual encounter. He still consented to the sex itself. This is why that situation is not rape – but obviously ethically contemptible all the same, and should be illegal.
Monkey:
I think the whole ugly Penn State situation demonstrated that culture acknowledges that boys can be rape victims – but men? We still have a way to go there.
Ami:
then you should say “X is the male equivalent of rape culture against women”… or something along those lines… (if you believe that)
Not that that may be your actual view but wouldn’t it be just a part of rape culture? Or are you implying that this is a part of the damage rape culture does to men (in comparison to what it does to women)?
@lowquacks:
I was responding to Hugh’s:
“If you believe that women are far more likely to be raped and that kyriarchal culture encourages people to rape them, then when you say “X is the male equivalent of rape” you’re saying that it’s something that men are more likely to endure than women and that kyriarchal culture presents them from defending themselves against.”
Using “the male equivalent of rape” to mean “something that men are more likely to endure than women and that kyriarchal culture presents them from defending themselves against” implies that women are significantly more likely to endure rape than women (which, per the CDC study, isn’t really true; even going by the lifetime numbers rather than the 2010 numbers), and that female victims of rape are particularly harmed by kyriarchal culture (kyriarchal cultural contributes to the victim blaming of both men and women).
Hence, using “the male equivalent of rape” to mean “something that men are more likely to endure than women and that kyriarchal culture presents them from defending themselves against” perpetuates the erasure of male rape victims. So people shouldn’t use “the male equivalent of rape” that way.
Yes, I was kind of trying to avoid the whole shitfight over the CDC stats by qualifying it with “if you believe”….
@RocketFrog,
This is a definitional debate that I could really go either way on.
The argument for calling it rape would be that he consented to a sexual act that was different from the sexual act that occurred. He did not consent to the actual sexual activity that occurred (sex with guaranteed exchange of bodily fluids).
Giving someone a guaranteed exchange of bodily fluids that they didn’t consent to is certainly a form of sexual assault. I could see a coherent argument about the condom with holes poked case that the sex isn’t rape, but the nonconsensual exchange of bodily fluids is sexual assault. Though actually, that’s a little confusing.
I’m not sure that lucidity, consciousness, and unawareness of rape occurring at the time means that rape didn’t happen. Of course, as a definitional matter, we might decide to only use the word “rape” for cases where the survivor experienced the situation as rape at the time, and avoid diluting it to other cases. Yet there is no reason that we must choose such a definition.
Under a conception of “rape” as “nonconsensual sex,” or even “nonconsensual sex when the initiatior had mens rea,” there is no provision in that definition that the receptive partner be aware at the time that a rape is occurring. There are plenty of cases where we might think that someone has been raped, even if they don’t feel the same way. There have also been examples proposed of women being raped through deception, some of which I find plausible:
If a woman consents to sex with a condom, and the man penetrates her without one, then I think there is a good case to be made that it’s rape, even if she doesn’t realize at the time that he wasn’t wearing a condom. If that’s rape, then a woman poking holes in a condom and having sex with a man is also rape.
Of course, you could take a position that both those cases are a form of fraud and sexual assault other than rape, which would be consistent. But it’s really a definitional matter, and the current definitions of “rape” aren’t significantly specific to force us into one definition or another.
Hugh Ristik:
I view your two examples of deliberate contraception sabotage as ethically equivalent (even if they are not practically equivalent for reasons of biology, the intent of both situations is to defraud another person into becoming a parent, making them equivalent instances of violation of another’s agency), and that they are indeed a form of fraud and sexual assault (given a definition of assault that permits nonviolent assault).
But they are not rape, precisely because the victim (despite being conscious and lucid) has no experience of being raped. Otherwise, we would really have to accept a Gail Dinesish definition of rape, in which people can be “raped” while engaging in fully consensual acts.
In your examples, the sex itself is consensual, but the circumstances of the sex are not. This is, in my opinion, why it is not rape. Whether it is less wrong, more wrong, or as wrong as rape is not something I feel qualified to make judgments about.
When the topic at hand is rape prevention, these issues are completely irrelevant and should not be raised — only rape is relevant. However, rape is commonly used as leverage for other feminist issues, as an example of an abuse women suffer disproportionately relative to men. In THAT pissing match, every similarly vicious abuse that men suffer disproportionately is fair game.
Huh? The reason that Gail Dines-ish definitions of rape are flawed is because the sex acts consented to are definitively non-consensual because Gail Dines didn’t consent to those people having sex under the given circumstances despite not being a party to the act in question. That’s quite different from a party consenting to sex under conditions entirely different from those agreed upon by the relevant parties.
Just because those things are not rape does not mean anyone is entitled to do them to a male for any reason.
Furthermore, who exactly called you a female supremacist?
Who exactly said “Paying for dinner and not getting sex afterward is not the male equivalent of rape.”?
I think you just made that up.
@rocketfrog – “In your examples, the sex itself is consensual, but the circumstances of the sex are not. This is, in my opinion, why it is not rape. Whether it is less wrong, more wrong, or as wrong as rape is not something I feel qualified to make judgments about.”
Huh? How can the sex be consensual if the circumstances are not? Having consensual sex is contingent upon consent of the circumstances. In this instance, consent to have sex is contingent upon the use of a condom. If one party sabotages the condom without the other”s knowledge, consent is no longer a part of the equation as the circumstances in which consent was gained have been changed.
Jesus_marley, I think it’s a little more complicated than that. How do you define “circumstances” when it comes to ‘sex continguent upon assertions made by one’s partner’? I think a lot of people would readily agree that ‘consent based on the belief that one’s partner is using birth control that he or she isn’t really using’ can plausibly be defined as rape. I think many fewer people would agree that ‘consent based on the belief that one’s partner has the income or occupation they’ve claimed when they really don’t’ is rape.
Looks like this discussion is entering into some murky waters. I don’t consider myself a member of the MRM, but as a counter-memo to the Feminist movement, I’d l like to suggest that they de-emphasize the focus on rape as the sort of banner issue that it’s become for womanly issues. I really don’t think it does anybody any good to politicize such a crime even as the definition of rape is broadening from that of a very brutal crime to at times an almost inconspicuous one and even as it turns out that rape of men and women is becoming far more similar than dissimilar. I think that what we’re about to see is a long string of concessions from feminists to men when it comes to the issue of rape, concessions which will paint feminism as coming from an radical, not an egalitarian place. And with the MRM lacking the sort of all-encompassing political banner issue that rape has become to feminism, what we’ll see is a lot of attempts to politicize men’s problems as the equivalent (political banner issue) and a lot of confusion all around about what rape means to these movements.
@dungone: A much better counter-memo would be the exact same thing actually. Various feminist groups have done the EXACT SAME THING, as Ozy is claiming the MRA does.
And on the rape by fraud thing:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=261-269 now go to 266c
Deceiving someone to have sex with them would be criminal in CA. So again depending on jurisdiction rape by fraud is a thing. I suppose some people might not like that, but in the wrong/right state poking holes in condoms to have sex is illegal. (Of course, in CA so would be lying about your infidelity, or your job if it meets those legal requirements.)
@ballgame, it’s certainly a slippery slope isn’t it? What I find interesting is that in another thread, a lot of people were proposing a “therapeutic” definition of rape, one where the victim felt that he or she was being raped by an assailant who did not mean to and was blissfully unaware. But when the victim is unaware, but the assailant has Mens Rea and is knowingly and willingly carrying out a rape? Suddenly people have a hard time swallowing that one. Why?
I think that your comparison shows just how poor our understanding of it is as a bi-lateral issue that affects men and women alike. I think that lying about birth control is rape because it pertains directly to the autonomy of how’s one body is being used sexually and because it has long-lasting effects on a man’s life. I think that lying about one’s income cannot and will not ever be rape because there is no legitimate obligation to transfer that wealth upon having sex and because it is not a valid form of criteria to base consent on, at least in places where prostitution is illegal. I think it’s still not cool, but it can only count as fraud if you actually enter into a contract like a marriage with such a person, where fiscal considerations might have a lot more moral and legal bearing.
@ballgame – I believe the ultimate difference is that in my example, there is fraud as to what acts are being engaged in as they are not the acts that were mutually agreed to. Consent would also be at issue if one party were to deceive the other as to their identity but in your example the deception is one of social status. Ultimately, one’s social status has no bearing on WHO a person is or whether the acts they perform with one’s partner are mutually agreed to, both of which are essential to the notion of consent.
Now that I’ve thought about it some more, I think that reproductive coercion, while a major violation of bodily autonomy and should be illegal, is not rape. (It’s certainly not practicing good consent, but not all times you fail to practice good consent are rape.) Of course, if a survivor of reproductive coercion defines their experience as rape, I’m certainly not going to stop them.
Funny Face King: What makes you think I believe those acts are okay? I mostly (with a few exceptions, like divorce) believe they are Bad Things That Are Not Rape. This is the gentleman who called me a female supremacist (actually I’m “desperately egotistical female supremacist filth” now): http://traitorsofmen.blogspot.com/. The source of the “buying women dinner and not getting sex” quote was Warren Farrell’s the Myth of Male Power.
dungone: It’s perfectly consistent to think that whether something is a rape is defined by the mindset of the victim. Also, I could write an identical memo to the feminist movement with a few wordswaps. (Sex work is not rape. Participation in porn is not rape. BDSM is not rape. Sexual harassment is not rape.)
@ozy: And maybe an addendum to Kim Novak: Using music from a movie scene you were in is not rape.
Seeing this ongoing abuse of the word “rape”, I understand why someone here (IIRC EasilyEnthused) would like to see the word gotten rid off, replacing it with “sexual assault” or something similar which isn’t as emotionally loaded as “rape” is.
My first reaction to this was:
A list of strawman arguments followed by a tautology. Accomplishment=zero. And all that whilst treating the MRA as a monolith (even addressing the movement in person) – which is exactly what people here go mental over when it’s done to feminists.
How about showing us where all these things have been said and by whom and don’t just say “everywhere” because I know that is not true. Also, since the word “equivalent” was specifically chosen (rather than “as bad as”) then I need those examples to use that very wording in order for me to be convinced that you’re no just doing the strawman thing.
Or I could make a list addressed at “feminists” that would look something like this:
Dear “feminists”…
not all men are evil
not all men are rapists
not all men are potential rapists
…
all men are men
” it is not a valid form of criteria to base consent on, at least in places where prostitution is illegal.”
Illegal =/= Invalid
Monkey, Ozy, Lamech, dungone:
“And here’s where I get potentially a little controversial: there has been a tendency among some second wave feminists to refer to many things that are not rape (consensual sex/pornography/marriage) as rape. It doesn’t make it right for MRAs to do it, but it puts it context.”
“A much better counter-memo would be the exact same thing actually. Various feminist groups have done the EXACT SAME THING, as Ozy is claiming the MRA does.”
One very central question here, to me, is to what extent the MRA statements Ozy refer to in the blogpost are shared by a majority of those defining themselves as belonging to the MRM. The loudmouths are very rarely representative. The persons writing the most comments on blogs are often not very representative either. And also, I’m just guessing here, saying that being falsely convicted of rape can be as, or more, traumatizing as being raped is not the same as saying that a false accusation of rape is the male equivalent of rape. I don’t know much about the US MRM. But in my country, as far as I can tell, the opinions cited in the blogpost would not by far be representative of how a majority of MRAs see it.
And if it is a clear minority of US MRAs that hold these views, I think a counter-memo would be fair. Or maybe the original memo was somewhat unfair to the US MRM as a whole, and needs some qualification. But as I said, I don’t know much the US MRM.
But then again, I can’t find the part going something like “Not all MRAs are bad MRAs” anymore in the 101/FAQs (or was it Comment Policy?) section. So maybe they are all bad now.
Yeah, E_W, that was me. It was on Danny’s blog, but he wiped out the comments, it seems.
I studied law and it was my intention to work as a criminal defense or prosecutor – I know a good bit about the letter of the law and the ramifications it has.
My proposal is to remove “rape” as a term and replace it with three “tiers” of sexual assault, based on the likelyhood for lasting physical, reproductive and emotional trauma of the victim. Each tier would be also separated into two parts, Simple and Aggravated.
All the conversations about penetration and envelopment skirt the issue – being raped is a physical violation (an assault) motivated by sexual or reproductive drivers.
My basic breakdown was:
Class 1 Sexual Assault: Using a body part to manipulate or fondle another person’s sexual organs, where skin-on-skin contact does not occur, without consent and for the purpose of sexual arrousal of the victim or perpetrator.
Class 1 Sexual Assault (Aggravated): All of Class 1 with the threat of or use of physical violence in the commission of the act, OR if the above act results in injury that requires medical treatment.
Class 2 Sexual Assault: Using any body part to manipulate, fondle or contact where non-mucose membrane contacts a mucose membrane directly, without consent and for the purpose of sexual arrousal of the victim or perpetrator.
Class 2 Sexual Assault: (Aggravated): All of Class 2 with the threat of or use of physical violence in the commission of the act, OR if the above act results in injury that requires medical treatment.
Class 3 Sexual Assault: Using any body part to manipulate, fondle or contact where mucose membranes of both victim and perpetrator come in contact*, or could come in contact, without consent and for the purpose of sexual arrousal of the victim or perpetrator.
Class 3 Sexual Assault (Aggravated): All of Class 3 with the threat of or use of physical violence in the commission of the act, OR if the above act results in injury that requires medical treatment.
So for some real world examples, if a person restrains another person, then fondles their breasts, buttocks or genitalia over their clothing or underwear, this would be Class 1 Agg.
If a person puts their mouth on a persons buttocks or breast, while not restraining them, that would be Class 2 if they had been told not to do so or a reasonable person would conclude that consent had not been given. Also in the Class 2 bracket would be putting a hand on the penis, vagina, urethra or anus of a non-consenting person.
Class 3 would be any contact of genital-to-genital or oral to genital – penetration would not be necessary.
* Contact: Because condoms and dental dams are not 100% effective, use of these devices would not cause a Class 3 violation to be downgraded to Class 2 or 1.
Really all this post could accomplish is one or more of the following:
1) Provoke and further alienate sensible MRAs from feminism and this blog
2) strengthen people in their belief that MRM is just poorly disguised misogyny
3) make Ozy look cool for playing Captain Obvious with a “rape is rape” type conclusion
4) implicitly downplay those men’s issues mentioned in the list by omitting the very necessary addition that those issues are NOT necessarily less bad than rape and therefore further alienating anyone who cares about them.
This post is not helping anyone but anti-MRM feminists.
Ozy:
“Also, I could write an identical memo to the feminist movement with a few wordswaps.”
A balancing blogpost would be appreciated. A few words in the comment section is not the same thing.
@RocketFrog:
Of course not, at least most of them don’t seem to, much as most of them also denounce patriarchy theory. So, from an MRA perspective, “male equivalent of rape culture” would be “something we claim is constantly oppressing us, but doesn’t really exist in any meaningful way.” Which is of course not what they mean when they use the phrase “male equivalent of rape”, instead meaning “horrible thing that happens, that we sometimes get shamed for having had happen to us, and thanks to cultural narratives [ones usually blamed on feminism by MRAs] are virtually impossible to defend against.”
I was about to make a comment about consent via deceit, but then I read your 4:03AM reply. However doesn’t your view make consent while intoxicated (to any level shy of unconsciousness as the unconscious are utterly incapable of consent) also very much “not rape”, as the sex was consensual, though in different circumstances (being sober, not using contraception) it wouldn’t have been? Or is the difference between having ones judgement impaired by deceit versus having ones judgement impaired by intoxicants all the difference in the world? Aside from the case of deceit always involving a second party with intent to impair one’s judgement while one can always intoxicate oneself, how are they meaningfully different?
Since MRAs are ontopic, there was an AVfM post that was surprisingly not evil (fair warning: I did not read the comments, AVfM comments have a tendency to be utterly horrific, even in cases where the content of the post itself isn’t too bad, so I make no claims about anything in the comments whatsoever) http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/on-trial-for-the-truth/ . I can’t read the language the posters blog is in, so I have no idea if things such as the court judgement mentioned are actually posted there or if they say what is claimed.
Adi:
“This post is not helping anyone but anti-MRM feminists.”
My impression is that Ozys main aim was at MRAs ignoring or belittling males being raped as a problem that needs to be adressed, or that even exists. Had she been target-specific instead of (as I perceive it) over-generalizing in the introduction I would have thought it was spot on and very sharp.
Jo: Well, yes, but most of the times feminism does it are mostly unrelated to men’s rights (“sex work is the rape of women!”), so it’s really not on topic. This is not a blog about Ways Feminism Has Been Fail, Particularly In The Second Wave; this is a blog about men’s rights. I have, however, called out feminism for ignoring the rape of men, most notably in a similar memo to the feminist movement: https://noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/memo-to-the-feminist-movement/
Adi: Absolutely fascinating that whenever I call out feminism for ignoring the rape of men (which I have done much more than I’ve called out the MRM), you are entirely silent about how I’m provoking and alienating sensible feminists from this blog, strengthening people in their belief that feminism is poorly disguised misandry, making myself look cool, and implicitly downplaying the rape of women.
Quite a few of these comparisons come from Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power; Roissy is one of the big proponents of the “cuckolding is the male equivalent of rape” belief; the Spearhead refers to “financial rape” (i.e. child support) and “divorce rape” quite often; the “women in short skirts is rape” thing was a shoutout to the Manboobz troll of the year NWOSlave, because I like slipping in references that my fellow Manboobzers will get.
Also, feminism and the MRM are reaaaaaally not equivalent movements, especially in the US. The MRM is largely composed of misogynists; feminism is largely not composed of misandrists.
Roissy is a MRA since when?
@Ozy: “Also, feminism and the MRM are reaaaaaally not equivalent movements, especially in the US. The MRM is largely composed of misogynists; feminism is largely not composed of misandrists.”
Erm… and your evidence for this is… what exactly? I could find a bunch of “good” feminists, and a bunch of “evil” feminists. Ditto for MRA’s. I smell buzzwordy psych terms. (Out group homogenization, and confirmation bias mainly.)
@Ozy: “Also, feminism and the MRM are reaaaaaally not equivalent movements, especially in the US. The MRM is largely composed of misogynists; feminism is largely not composed of misandrists.”
Erm… and your evidence for this is… what exactly? I could find a bunch of “good” feminists, and a bunch of “evil” feminists. Ditto for MRA’s. I smell buzzwordy psych terms. (Out group homogenization, and confirmation bias mainly.)
Also whats with the change in the FAQ?
@Ozy, I hope you realize that feminists have been known to apply the “misogynist” label to the entire MRM no matter what the MRM stands for. For example, when MRM campaigns for shared parental custody, feminist organizations such as NOW attack them by denounce all MRAs as misogynistic child abusing pedophile rape apologists. American feminists haven’t exactly been fair in making blanket statements about the MRM. So as far as I’m concerned, a feminists lost their credibility when it comes to pointing out the misogyny in the MRM.
EE:
Yeah, E_W, that was me. It was on Danny’s blog, but he wiped out the comments, it seems.
Just for the record I didn’t wipe them out. I installed Intense Debate and for some reason that installation somehow hid the comments away. I can look in my Blogger Dashboard and see that the comments are still there, just can’t see them.
@ Ozy
So I take it you’ve said similar sentences like the following addressed at feminists?
“I think there’s one issue you and I need to sort out before I go back to my general policy of pretending you don’t exist…”
Show me.
And taking individual comment trolls as exemplary is hardly giving you credibility. And if I’m not mistaken, didn’t you just a few days ago implement the policy that we should not rant about what somebody said in the comments of another blog?
And if I recall correctly, when I was talking about the harm that false accusations can cause (leading potentially to suicide) on that same blog, you came out with a sarcastic remark along the lines of “well don’t say it’s as bad as rape”. Nobody was saying that. We weren’t even talking about rape until you just came and started derailing.
Perhaps you should consider that false rape accusations and actual rape are very different problems caused by very different people in very different circumstances and the suffering, while it can be just as severe is also of a totally different nature. I don’t understand this “well we can talk about false accusations after we solved the problem of rape” attitude.
So you say feminism and MRM are not comparable. I agree though not for the same reasons. MRM are much smaller and far less influencial and not at all funded by tax payers. Also, they enjoy almost zero representation or acceptance in the mainstream. That is the biggest difference. There is another difference and that is that there are proportionately more extremists in the MRM but that has the simple reason that the MRM is today where feminism was in the 50s/60s in terms of acceptance. In those days, feminism was even more extreme than either of them are today. Today’s feminists don’t need to get extreme because of their strong presence in academics, politics and to some extent in the media. Also, many feminist goals have been accomplished while the MRM is still fighting for recognition of the sheer existence of men’s issues. Posts like this one only make it worse.
And if you think that there are no hateful misogynist and misandrist comments on feminist blogs, then you have simply not been paying attention. At least MRAs don’t openly call for extermination of all or most women. And unlike MRAs, some of the most hateful extremist radfems actually have significant influence and respectable positions.
And I still haven’t heard enough apology for it.
MRM, the radical notion that men can be good people.
NWOslave is not exemplary and I never said he was. I threw him in for fun. Would you like to argue that The Spearhead, Roissy and his minions, and Warren Farrell are not exemplary of three different strands of the men’s rights movement? (I count Roissy as an MRA because, in general, I consider anyone who identifies as a member of a particular group as a member of that group. I understand, however, that there have been feuds between A Voice For Men and PUAs.)
As evidence for my assertation: let us take Feministe as a fairly major feminist blog, and A Voice For Men as a fairly major MRA blog.
Feministe’s five most recent posts are:
–A link to the school-to-prison pipeline for POC (which, btw, disproportionately affects men);
–A question about whether feminism and polygamy are compatible;
–A shameless self-promotion post;
–A discussion of whether FGM and breast implants are similar, coming down on the side of “they aren’t the same but they are too close for comfort”;
–A post about the marginalization of Native Americans.
A Voice for Men’s five most recent posts are:
–A post that outlines the oppression against men and suggests that if we do not prevent it violence is inevitable;
–A post claiming falsely that the CDC thinks having sex with a woman who has had even a single drink is rape;
–A post defending a post that says that women are inherently selfish;
–An inspirational post about how men are suffering, particularly from abuse and divorce, but can recover it– I am like 95% sure if it were regendered I’d have to yell at it for saying that men were all abusers;
–A post arguing that “manning up” is stupid and men shouldn’t be shamed if they don’t go in the military– fwiw, I rather agree with it.
In short, Feministe’s top five were 20% about issues primarily affecting men and AVFM’s was 0% about issues primarily affecting women; Feministe showed an awareness of intersectionality, AVFM didn’t; Feministe had two posts I found somewhat objectionable (the polygamy post confused polygamy and polygyny, and the FGM post didn’t show awareness of bodily autonomy), while AVFM had two I found somewhat objectionable (the inspirational post and the post about how violence is inevitable) and two I found very objectionable (the post about rape and the post about women being inherently selfish).
This is why I normally ignore the MRM.
forget “good”. I’m happy to just go with people.
In fact, I don’t even have the hope that any of men’s issues will be fixed in my lifetime. I’ve settled for trying to get their existence acknowledged. Those who have done that best are undoubtedly MRAs. Sure, there’s a lot of misogyny and radicalism but that is unavoidable when you’re raising awareness. You can’t get people to think outside of their conditioning by being sweet and kind. Women did this very successfully and now it’s time to give men a chance to liberate themselves too. We can’t have a “women’s only equality”. Both sexes are tied together. Our future will be either good for both or bad for both – just as it has always been.
Ozy, are you aware that you’re holding MRAs to a much higher moral standard than you’re holding feminists? Or do you think that feminism could have accomplished what it has if it had been without misandry or radical activism from the start? To compare today’s feminists with today’s MRAs is simply not fair. They’re nothing like in the same situation – not even remotely similar. And need I remind people that it was ultimately those cis-powerful-alpha-patriarch men who made the necessary decisions that enabled women’s liberation? I wonder if women’s lib would have even been conceivable without your so called patriarchy.
“There is another difference and that is that there are proportionately more extremists in the MRM but that has the simple reason that the MRM is today where feminism was in the 50s/60s in terms of acceptance”
^This. This is what I’ve been saying all along. Men in this society have no real recourse when they’ve been harmed by women. they get told they’re privileged so they need to just suck it up an deal, they probably did something to deserve it anyway… if it even happened in the first place.
so because wounds men recieve are never allowed to heal, they fester and grow. What once was just what one woman did becomes “what they all do.” and every slight, no matter how small, becomes more “proof” that all women are like this.
And then you get a misogynist.
Want proof? http://jezebel.com/5873726/what-should-you-do-when-someone-you-love-becomes-a-mens-rights-activist
Let me ask you- the guys wife “left him for another man.” now i might be wrong, but that wording suggests ther was some cheating going on. So i have to ask, at any point has this man been allowed to feel anger? I would venture not. Society at large tells men that if a woman cheats, it’s because she’s emotionally unsatisfied with her life. (as opposed to when a man cheats because he’s a total horndog… or, you know, a man.) so it doesn’t really surprise me that the guy has turned out this way. I’ve felt the pullings to the dark side myself whenever a woman done me wrong.
I’m honestly surprised you see any value in a place like Manboobz, Ozy. What good does it actually serve? Near as i can tell, it’s just a gender-flipped version of the Spearhead, and just as vile.
far from simply “mocking” misogynists, Futrelle is actually helping to create them.
Ozy:
From what I have seen so far you do much good regarding mens issues, and personally I see you as a strong advocate for both mens and womens rights (the way I use those words), which I appreciate and admire. I consider myself a part of the international mens rights movement (and also of the WRM). On the Internet and in “real life” I do some arguing against what I consider to be bad MRA views, in I think roughly the same amount as I do against what I consider to be bad WRA views. As I get it you have a fair amount of both contributers, those commenting and non-commenting readers residing outside the US. Which makes this blog an international affair. I don’t share any of the views that you attribute to the MRM, and when I come across them (those I had even come across, three of them in all) in a discussion that I am part of I usually oppose them. The other MRAs I know personally to the best of my knowledge do the same. You, the way it is easiest to read it, attribute those views to the MRM as a whole, without saying “many of” or some such, which was (as I recall it) very recently a direct recommendation to people commenting on this blog.
It would be interesting to see how many of those commenting here self-identify as part of the mens rights movement. Anyone?
I know I do.
And it also never seems to occur to people that when you get radical MRAs that they might be like that for an understandable reason that does not require there to be anything wrong with them. They are probably just normal decent people who have been badly hurt and are now venting – something that, as a man, you cannot do in everyday life because it will quickly cost you your reputation and job. Now I don’t defend or approve of their misogyny but at least we can try for once the road of compassion. The path of ridicule clearly hasn’t worked. Hence Futrelle is unsuccessful (unless his goal is to win a female fan club). It certainly won’t make them go away – if anything it fuels them in their anger because it “proves” to them that feminists don’t care.
@ Jo
I don’t label myself an MRA really even though by definition I am one (a person who advocates for men’s rights). I just don’t like the simplistic labeling of people into neat and tidy groups. I don’t even call myself an anti-feminist – more of a non-feminist as I don’t believe feminism has done nothing good but I also don’t believe it will do anything good for either sex anymore – at least not in the developed nations.
Ozy:
–A link to the school-to-prison pipeline for POC (which, btw, disproportionately affects men);
My experience with feminists talking about this makes me wonder. Did the folks at Feministe acknowledge that bit you put in parenthesis or is this you mentioning it yourself?
lauowolf comes awfully close with the analogy to using Nazi references. However, to say that these complaints are equivalent to being cut from a soccer team is being dismissive of very real problems.
I prefer to consider the left-wing extremists who were chanting “Bush is Hitler!” and the right-wing extremists who are chanting that “Obama is Hitler!”. I’ll say it’s a silly thing to say in either case. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama have started a world war while engineering the systematic murder of 12 million people, so clearly neither of them are equivalent to Hitler.
But, I’d say it’s perfectly valid to say that “this policy is kindof like X, which the Nazis did”. It’s perfectly valid to compare Hitler’s invasion of Poland to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I would disagree with some comparison, but I wouldn’t say that it’s trivializing the NAZI’s atrocities. Similarly, someone might also argue that socialized medicine might set the groundwork for eugenics through health-care rationing, which might be similar to NAZI policy. I would disagree with them, but I think that it can be a valid argument.
Divorce, parental fraud, and the lack of fair treatment in custody disputes are not rape, just as neither Bush nor Obama are Hitler. But, these are extremely important issues and there are valid comparisons to be drawn, just like with the invasion of Iraq and socialized medicine.
@Ozy
Well… Given that the majority of women and men on this planet are heterosexual, most of these fully consensual sexual acts that certain feminists label as “rape” are do involve men on some level.
Frivolous Divorce is okay? The fact that someone can destroy your family for any reason or no reason at all is a good thing? I suppose I’m not entirely surprised, given that your previous post describing how men really shouldn’t dedicate their lives to marriage and family.
Re: Rape by fraud:
How about the situation in this case? I know that no accusation rape was made here, but there is still a parallel here about the whole idea of informed consent.
Feministe can affod to devote “air time” to topics that aren’t specifically feminist because there are literally thousands of other places where feminist topics can be discussed. How many “a voice for men”-like sites are there? Really?
You’re not quite comparing apples to oranges here Ozy, but you are comparing apples to appleseeds and wondering why the seeds arent edibe.
*sigh* I hate my keyboard.
*afford* and *edible*
Oh yeah, feministe. That bastion of inclusion and progressive thinking.
Let me go comment there. Oh wait, how about not . If you’re a man and you post there (and disagree with any female commenters), you’re either “mansplaining”, “don’t get feminism”, or get a one-trip link to another notoriously bad site “finally feminism 101”.
Shit, it isn’t even good from a standpoint of being an insider. I see people in the “in group” flaming each other to death all the time too. You think the comments here are bad (and they can be), but they weren’t a tenth as bad as the shitstorm that got kicked up by Clarisse Thorne’s latest post on Hugo Schwyzer.
The way I see it:
There are a lot of people who posit themselves as feminists when in fact the worldview they have reflects a lopsided view of gender-dynamics, whereas every major evil that a woman experiences is the fault of men, as a class. Many MRA’s have the same world-view, but with the actors reversed in their roles.
To truly deconstruct gender roles properly, I believe it would require a large-scale movement that isn’t marred by the presence of these types of people. I also think that it would help greatly if the membership you saw among that group was close to parity in terms of the gender of the people that joined it.
Blogs like this are a credit to this new type of thinking. However, blogs like the spearhead and feministe are a credit to that old, less productive type of thinking.
That’s why I feel like the distinction of “feminist” or “MRA” matters very little. There are good feminists and bad feminists, and good MRAs and bad MRAs.
What should matter more is the individual action of the blogs and contributors to the discussion on gender. But people seem to instead fall into that tribalistic trap (I know I have in the past), about who the mean, bad, evil guy is in the room.
I wonder how many feminists also consider themselves humanists. Of these I wonder why do you even need feminism? What does feminism offer that humanism does not? There’s got to be something more to feminism than simple equality, no? Is it about a political type movement, advocacy for women’s issues?
I ask the same of MRM people who are also humanists. What is it about the MRM that humanism fails to consider?
And I know that humanism is sort of a concept that is not mainstream. So these questions are not quite fair. I am only asking from a philosophical standpoint.
And for the record I do not self identify as feminist, MRA, or humanist. I ask because I think most people here are not religious, so even if you are not any of these labels, per se, you can still answer. I am not meaning to restrict people by using these labels, I am just trying to ask questions with the vocabulary I have.
I don’t consider myself an MRA or a feminist. I know that if I listed out my beliefs line item and a feminist or MRA were listening to me, they would say:
“See, you’re a feminist/MRA after all!”.
Okay, the First Wave of feminism in the United States was probably when the Native women stood up and fought against the invaders. The Second was probably when women like Sojourner Truth stood up. Also, the Men’s Movement is nothing new either; it’s just new to the internet. So I don’t know why comparing it to so-called Second Wave feminism to excuse it’s hostility and misogyny makes any kind of sense.
What Darque said.
“To truly deconstruct gender roles properly, I believe it would require a large-scale movement that isn’t marred by the presence of these types of people. I also think that it would help greatly if the membership you saw among that group was close to parity in terms of the gender of the people that joined it.
Blogs like this are a credit to this new type of thinking. However, blogs like the spearhead and feministe are a credit to that old, less productive type of thinking.”
A million times this.
debaser:
I refer to myself as a humanist, and consider myself aligned with feminism and the MRM inasmuch as those two movements have views that align with humanism. When their views conflict with humanism, I am not aligned with them.
(Although I am an atheist, I use humanism more in the term of “universal humanitarianism”, as is understood by the term “humanism” in many European countries, not as in the nonreligious “secular humanist” movement. I consider it possible to be a humanist and be devoutly religious, as long as one’s religion does not include some kind of bigot sitting on the Cosmic Throne.)
“universal humanitarianism” is a good way to describe what I am talking about…thanks fort that term
Debaser71:
Humanism is by far a too general concept, to me it is largely a value system. Lots of issues that has little to do with sex/gender. To get work done you need to specify focus. For me my work with mens and womens issues are two of the practical applications of my humanism. There are others, as aspects of my work in health care. There are lots of other issues/focuses within humanism, that I don’t participate in.
@ debaser71
To answer your question (though it was not aimed directly at me):
The biggest challenge for the MRM is to raise awareness of the existence and urgency of men’s issues. Most average people still think that this is a man’s world and that men cannot be oppressed (unless they’re gay or in some other minority). Incidentally, feminists are by far the most vocal about that denial which is why they are a favorite MRA target. Even this very blog has a tendency to focus on non gender conforming men rather than on men as a whole.
It’s not just denial, it’s outright ridicule in many cases. Imagine you bring up an issue that upsets you greatly, and people just laugh at you. Is it any wonder that MRAs are often very angry? They SHOULD be angry. Not being so would be inhuman.
Now to (finally) get to the answer of your question. Given this situation, raising awareness where there is so little, means we must be ready to piss people off, to shake them a little and create some heated discussion with some seriously “objectionable” posts. I just don’t see this happening among humanists or feminists.
Fact of the matter is that men are in a very unusual situation when it comes to gaining any form of sympathy. Men are “supposed” to be the strong ones – those who fix things and take whatever is given to them. They are the ones supposed to defend others and therefore there “shouldn’t” be anyone to defend them. Raising awareness for men as a group, shakes that very notion upon which civilization itself has been built. It’s going to take a LOT of pissing off in order for that to succeed.
Feminists, if serious about equality, should help because equality requires both genders to be free. Perhaps feminists should start by forgiving MRAs for being so angry and nasty and cut them some slack. Perhaps that will result in a lot less hostility towards feminism and a lot more cooperation. I do think the burden of “being the smart one” falls onto the feminists as it is they who are the strong ones and it is they who started the adversarial gender views and the use of “oppression olympics”. Holding it against MRAs that they do the same things that feminists have done in much greater amounts as well as often far more radically, is abuse of privilege in its finest form.
Um… I am perfectly willing to call out the biases in second wave feminism, including but not limited to racism, misandry, classism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia. I mean, Andrea Dworkin’s dead, so calling her out is unlikely to be effective, so I don’t do it very often, but if she were still kicking I’d be still criticizing her. You do NOT get a pass on hating people because your movement is new. You have to START OUT not hating people. That way you don’t have to go through decades of work in order to stop the whole hating-people thing.
Sometimes people might come up with useful ideas and be hateful fuckheads, because people are complicated like that. For instance, Warren Farrell, who said about half the things on this list, also invented the concept of men as success objects, the disposable male, and the word “masculism.” It doesn’t make it okay that they’re hateful fuckheads, but it is okay to steal their ideas and use it to build something better while acknowledging that they’re hateful fuckheads.
Re: Manboobz. I am pretty sure David’s only goal is to be funny and entertain people. I comment there because it’s funny and I’m entertained, and because a lot of the people there are my friends (and are totally ready to call me out on my shit when I do something kyriarchal).
Danny: It doesn’t. But Paul Elam’s posts don’t even begin to mention anything that is a genuine issue and impacts women.
Darque: The feminist movement is notoriously self-criticizing. This is a good thing, because it means that when people are wrong other people will tell them and then we can fix it. I mean, what’s the other option, becoming the feminist borg? o.o
And is your big argument that AVFM will win over Feministe in terms of niceness of comment threads to outsiders?
Jo: I can only speak about the men’s rights activist blogs I’ve read; so far I have not found someone who identified as an MRA whom I found reasonable, except for Glenn Sacks (and I’m not even sure if he identifies as an MRA).
@ Colette,
“Also, the Men’s Movement is nothing new either; it’s just new to the internet. So I don’t know why comparing it to so-called Second Wave feminism to excuse it’s hostility and misogyny makes any kind of sense.”
It’s not about how new or old something is. It’s about where the two movements stand in terms of accomplishment, strength, membership, funding and recognition. While comparing today’s MRM with 50s or 60s feminism was of course a simplification, it does serve to illustrate that MRM is still in a very early stage compared with feminism. If anything, my analogy was downplaying the gap in strength between the two movements.
A more aggressive tone among the MRM is therefore not only justified but essential.
“You have to START OUT not hating people. ”
Everybody starts out not hating people.
I don’t object to AVFM being angry. Be angry as much as you like! I’ve been angry before! I object, because in the top five articles today, on their front page– not cherrypicked or anything– there was:
One that had a premise that was factually wrong (i.e. that the CDC defined any sex after any drinking to be rape);
One that perpetrated the misogynistic stereotype that women are inherently selfish;
One that painted men as all abuse survivors at the hands of women; while it was presumably a sign of solidarity and for rhetorical effect and not meant to convey that women are all abusers, the same is true of passages in Dworkin and MacKinnon that paint all men as abusers and quite rightly we don’t let those slide;
One that said that if men’s rights weren’t granted to men men would be forced to resort to violence, which definitely has that whole “why did you make me hit you?” air about it.
I do not think this is a hard standard: it is not difficult to post things that are factually correct, do not negatively stereotype a particular gender, and do not say violence will happen if you don’t get your way. I do it, like, every day.
No, my argument is that places like AVFM and feministe will (and should) die a painful death. I hate both of those environments with a passion, because they are so unflinchingly, ridiculously partisan in a “gender war” of their own creation. I couldn’t turn to either to provide me an unbiased, even-handed view of some issue of gender.
There’s also a difference between constructive and destructive self-criticism. The feminist movement sometimes reminds me of the republican army circa the spanish civil war – not a unified front, but a loose confederation of bickering factions.
Darque:
Such has unfortunately been the case for progressive movements since the Judean People’s Front fought the People’s Front of Judea.
@ Ozy,
“One that said that if men’s rights weren’t granted to men men would be forced to resort to violence, which definitely has that whole “why did you make me hit you?” air about it.
I do not think this is a hard standard: it is not difficult to post things that are factually correct, do not negatively stereotype a particular gender, and do not say violence will happen if you don’t get your way. I do it, like, every day.”
Interesting, you criticize the use of rhetoric, exaggeration and factual distortion by using rhetoric, exaggeration and factual distortion.
I know Paul Elam’s position about how things could get violent and you are painting a completely false picture by saying he’s threatening violence. Saying that about him is doing everything you just criticized about afvm.
See that dark spec whirling around in the toilet bowl? That was your credibility.
Besides, how do you know the scenario that Paul describes is not already happening? There’s a lot of violence and hostility in the world perpetrated by men. That’s a fact. Here’s another fact: violence is the language of the weak and the helpless. Connect the dots. If you really believe that men and women are fundamentally the same, then this must mean that all the really urgent gender issues are men’s issues because clearly whatever is treating men and women differently – it’s doing much worse to men.
Jo: I regard my views on gender issues as a proper subset of my general philosophy of humanism.
Adi: Violence isn’t always the language of the weak and the helpless. It’s also the language of people who are in control. It’s the language, in fact, of the violent regardless of their station.
I believe it’s very difficult for people to say “Things could get violent” and not do so in an almost gloating manner. I recall on the eve of Obama’s election, all the people making similar comments about “assassination” because he was black. Their plausible deniability was “Oh no, I wasn’t saying that I wanted this to happen. I was just saying it’s a strong possibility.”
I put forth to you (albeit, with only my personal experience, and no proof), that those who foretell doom and gloom scenarios are, at least indirectly, wishing for those doom and gloom scenarios to occur.
Before you accuse me of being biased toward one side or another however, I submit forth to you any article from Twisty Faster, what, with all the nonsense about us living in a patriarchical hellscape. I firmly believe that anyone who sees the world as such a black-and-white place of terror reveals more about their own inner psychological condition and less about the world itself.
I would like to take this opportunity to identify as an MRA. That said I do hope you will find me reasonable, hopefully non judgemental but willing to stand up against obvious (to me) instances of anti-male bias both committed by radical feminists and well meaning but sometimes misguided moderates. That said, my world view, like everybody else, has been skewed by some Very Bad Experiences and there may be times that said world view colours my perceptions on some rather sensitive issues. I look forward to some lively discussions.
Ozy:
Have just read the memo to the feminist movement. Thank You. Very Good.
“I do not think this is a hard standard: it is not difficult to post things that are factually correct, do not negatively stereotype a particular gender, and do not say violence will happen if you don’t get your way. I do it, like, every day.”
That it is easy for you does not mean that it is easy for others. And it tends to be a lot less easy when you are the underdog and feel pressured into a corner with no way out. And also, in a lot of cases, have a less developed voice to speak with. To oversimplify: They are desperate, you are not.
“Darque: The feminist movement is notoriously self-criticizing. This is a good thing, because it means that when people are wrong other people will tell them and then we can fix it. I mean, what’s the other option, becoming the feminist borg? o.o”
The blog Feminist Critics, and it’s bloggers, despite being careful, polite, logical and having statistics and what not to promote dialogue…is considered a MRA bastion of hatred of women and crying for the loss of male privilege.
I don’t think criticism is accepted if it criticizes certain elements considered fundamental (such as saying men are oppressed as men, or that female privilege also exists). Criticizing porn elements (anti vs pro) is fine because there’s no central doctrine on that really. Debating the presence of trans people within the movement or society in general, also something with factions on either side.
Debating the opening of Men’s DV shelters as funded by feminism advocacy? Nope, not on the menu. Distrationfrom real problems, derailing, whining, misogyny…you name it.
Adi: Let me see if I can rephrase this properly: Paul Elam specifically is not threatening violence; instead, he is saying that if men’s rights does not happen then violence will happen, and that therefore feminists need to put men’s rights as a priority. Even though Paul Elam is not threatening violence himself, he is still using the threats of violence committed by other people as a tool to get his way, and that is Not On.
Jo: With respect, if you cannot regularly post something that is factually correct, does not negatively stereotype a particular gender, and does not say that violence will happen if you don’t get your way, then you should quit the genderblogging field until you learn how.
@Jesus_marley: I look forward to my opinion about MRAs being changed!
@debaser:
“I wonder how many feminists also consider themselves humanists. Of these I wonder why do you even need feminism? What does feminism offer that humanism does not? There’s got to be something more to feminism than simple equality, no? Is it about a political type movement, advocacy for women’s issues?”
I do, and I still see the validity in using the term “feminist” as well. Why? Well, because I have a category of focus, and limited energy. I can’t spend every minute of every waking hour being an activist for every single thing I found unjust in the world, I could call myself a humanist. Unfortunately, the reality of my limitations requires that I stick to becoming really familiar with a few things, and setting out to right them or bring them to the fore of the Great Internet Dialogue. Just as I specify what kind of artist I am by the work I tend to make most, but it doesn’t limit the other things I learn about or dabble in. I support and love animation, but the language I speak best is that of illustration, painting, and comics. Such is the reality of having limited resources.
Jo:
“That it is easy for you does not mean that it is easy for others. And it tends to be a lot less easy when you are the underdog and feel pressured into a corner with no way out. And also, in a lot of cases, have a less developed voice to speak with. To oversimplify: They are desperate, you are not.”
Just because you’re an underdog doesn’t excuse hatred and stereotypes of a particular gender – whether you’re pressed into a corner or not.
@Jo:
I think you’re being unfair to Ozy. She’s written in the exact same way in “Memo To The Feminist Movement” which she linked to, talking about the feminist movement as if feminists all agreed on the stuff she criticised it for. And the funny thing is, while I skimmed the comments there, I saw no one who complained. The only thing that came close was a comment remarking that the statistic Ozy criticised weren’t from a feminist organisation. I didn’t see anyone accusing her of strawmanning either, requiring her to post concrete sources for each specific statement.
The latter is especially ironic because the post, despite being addressed to, and largely blaming, the feminist movement was mainly about how a survey, which didn’t come from a feminist organisation, was wrong, as well as some stereotypes which I have seen way more often among than non-feminists than feminists (unlike this article, which focusses on specific statements by MRAs). If anything, that article warranted criticism for stereotyping, generalising, and misrepresenting a movement (not that I minded that article, I just think the contrast is stunning).
Mod note: Zie, please, not she. 🙂
AB: Internal criticism and external criticism are two very different animals and therefore are reacted to differently.
This is not a surprise
@ Darque,
Your response was an interesting read.
“Adi: Violence isn’t always the language of the weak and the helpless. It’s also the language of people who are in control.”
“Not always” doesn’t sound like a refutation too me – at least not until you say something like “more often not”. As for it being the language of those in control, I cannot see that. Statistically, the further you go down in status the more violence you’ll find. There seems to be an inverse relationship between power and violence in men.
“I believe it’s very difficult for people to say “Things could get violent” and not do so in an almost gloating manner.”
Speak for yourself.
“I put forth to you (albeit, with only my personal experience, and no proof), that those who foretell doom and gloom scenarios are, at least indirectly, wishing for those doom and gloom scenarios to occur.”
I pot forth to you that those who describe other people’s hidden motivations, are probably describing their own.
Alright, I see the point you’re making and it certainly has sense. For the same reason I often wonder why people get so much more obsessed over rape cases than other violent crimes. But it doesn’t help us much because we can never know what people’s subconscious motivations or desires are. Sure there is always personal bias and projection but if we go down this road you’re pointing us to, then we’re putting our own projection up for scrutiny which puts us into a never ending circle of mutual accusation of bias. All we can do is look at verifiable data and try to identify patterns and causes. And one very strong pattern is that which ties violence to poverty.
Also, just because feminist found nothing particularly objectionable in what Ozy wrote, that automatically means men can’t either?
What exactly are you suggesting here?
Darque:
“Violence isn’t always the language of the weak and the helpless. It’s also the language of people who are in control.”
I think we maybe, maybe have a very strange situation. I think the MRM is BOTH a channel for healthy and necessary work with important mens issues, often with much frustration from oppression in how it expresses itself. AND a channel for a concealed desire to reclaim newly lost patriarchal privilege and power. The destructive energies of it enhanced by financial crisis and cultural crisis (the power center of the world moving away from the US and western Europe towards China and India), which raises everybody’s stress levels and thereby their tendencies towards aggressive behavior.
I think it is much more important to look out for bad things trying to piggyback on, or maybe even partly take charge of, the MRM than to keep obnoxious loudmouths in line.
@ Darque
“Just because you’re an underdog doesn’t excuse hatred and stereotypes of a particular gender – whether you’re pressed into a corner or not.”
I’m sure nobody is excusing hatred. but we are asking to try to understand it and (seriously) perhaps forgive it. I know it’s a lot to ask but like I said, the stronger (feminism) should also be the wiser. If knee jerk reactionary dismissal did anything, then most humanitarian problems would have been solved long ago.
@ Jo
Care to share with us what you mean by “newly lost patriarchal privilege and power”?
I don’t think any of us are qualified to assess whether feminism or the MRM is more sexist. There’s just too much bias (Lamech mentions outgroup homogeneity bias and confirmation bias, plus there is also the availability heuristic). Whether someone thinks that feminism commits more misogyny or the MRM commits more misandry depends on what blogs they are focusing on, and how strict their filters for misogyny and misandry are.
If you are a feminist, you are probably more attuned to more extreme MRA blogging, and your filter for misogyny will be very sensitive. If you are an MRA or critic of feminism, you are probably more attuned to more extreme feminist blogging, and your filter for misandry will be very sensitive. (For instance, as Darque observes, the Feministe commentariat can be very hostile to men, and use arguably misandric terms like “mansplaining.”)
It’s possible that there is a difference, but I don’t think that anyone here is qualified to anecdotally pick it up.
@Jo:
Give me a break. Having people say “I’m an MRA” is not the same as supporting you (even if you are an MRA), and having people not identify as MRAs, or not even knowing the MRM exists, is not the same being the underdog or not having a voice. Most MRM viewpoints are not new. And they’re not few either. They’re prominent, and have been for at least a century. Divorce being evil and wrong, women being manipulative and corrupting men, false rape accusations, feminism being oppressive to men, etc., are all old stereotypes, and frequently used in then media and everyday life, and shared by people in power.
The USA has a presidential candidate who openly stated that women should obey their husbands, while no other candidate has made a similar statement about men obeying women, and yet people still act as if sexism against women is gone. Every time I read the comments to an article about gender issues, or see such issues discussed on message boards (even non-feminist and non-MRA), there are always people who bring up the myriad of ways men are discriminated against, while simultaneously acting as if they were the first to ever do so and all alone in their view.
As I’ve said before, I care more about ideologies than movements. And there’s no way the 6000th guy I’ve seen bring up an MRA issue gets a free pass for “being the underdog” just because 5000 of the people who supported him didn’t call themselves MRAs.
Sorry for forgetting the pronoun Ozy
@Jo.
I think your analysis is spot on. I feel that, also, social movements call forth their opposites in society. Because there are plenty of feminists that champion women’s causes primarily, there are now MRA’s who will champion men’s causes to the exclusion of women.
I personally don’t like this, but I do feel that if there is never any gender analysis of “what is fair” in society put forth from a man’s point of view, men will get trampled on. If there is no space for men in feminism (as I hear many feminist voices repeat loudly – “shutting up and listening” does not mean speaking.), then male analysis of gender must live without that framework.
Also, another problem with partisan movements is that there will be people among those movements who (instead of existing to push back against injustices), will simply be there to promote their group. This is the direction that I see the MRM and feminism heading as real inequalities get solved one by one.
@Adi:
That’s an interesting point. The route I’d take on this whole thing is to not “forget” the anger or discrimination, but still work to understand why it exists.
Ease the causes of people’s animosity, but don’t fuel it by justifying it.
What AB said.
Ozy:
“it is not difficult to post things that are factually correct,…”
Oh you mean like from your buddy David?
Most of the crap he posts is completely cherry picked and taken out of context. But it’s okay because he puts a “sarcasm” tag on it and he’s just trying to be funny right?
Because people being upset that men in India being beaten and forcefully ejected *from a moving train* because they accidentally set foot in a “women’s only car” is really just because those cars even exist.
And Men accused of violent crimes no longer entitled to being seen as innocent until proven guilty is all about… well, David doesn’t know, because it’s happening in Australia, which is probably somewhere south of Narnia as far as David is concerned. Something, something, “feminist koalas”
(you did say funny right?)
@Paul:
But finding a problem with someone who uses the same amount of generalisation about both movements (actually, I’d argue the post about feminism was more generalised, because it didn’t seem to refer to especially feminist standpoints as much as cultural stereotypes, which were incorrectly presented as especially feminist standpoints), because the MRM obvious deserves to be shown more consideration is a double standard. Especially from people who’re all about how the MRM is treated unfairly. Not to mention that I have yet to see an MRA treat the two movements that equally.
I believe that was aimed at me, and I was suggesting that people on this board always act as if the MRM is marginalised compared to feminism, including here, but in the concrete situations on this board, it seems to always stir more controversy to criticise the MRM than feminism.
Thanks for the responses.
The word “values” was mentioned and this is a good word that I failed to use before. Darn it! (as a liberal atheist, the word “values” is tainted to me but it’s still a good word in certain contexts…like this one here where no one is gonna go Jesus on me)
I wonder where the values (not personal focus) between the MRM, feminists, and “universal humanitarianism” differ, if at all. Can there really be so much fighting over focus?
All this talk of Futrelle reminds me of a recent post by Toy Soldier where he points out how Futrelle supposedly Godwined someone at his blog (http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/a-dose-of-godwin-style-stupid-v59/).
(BTW I find it odd that so many people defend Futrelle by saying he’s only being funny but I don’t see where he says he’s being funny…)
@ AB
I suggest you read Hugh Ristik’s comment that preceded yours.
I don’t know anyone who says sexism against women is gone. But some (me included) say that sexism against men is widely deemed acceptable in the mainstream. As such, anyone pointing it out is pretty much the underdog. Didn’t Obama say that girls can do anything boys can do only better? Was there as much outcry for that as there was for the example you gave? I doubt it but please prove me wrong.
Not even acknowledging the sexism against one gender makes it much worse. It’s the ultimate form of oppression to deny by default a group the possibility of being seen as victims. It is denying their vulnerability and therefore their humanity which results in denying them compassion. The potential for suffering this can cause is limitless.
False accusations *can* have long-term traumatic effects (mayhaps not to the extent of physical rape, but still…)
Here’s an example from my life: In 2003, I was accused of sexual harassment after a friend of mine relayed some information about a private conversation to our workmates. In less than a day’s time, half of the people in our workgroup rendered me “persona non grata” (between the people who decided that I was guilty and the people who didn’t want to get involved, I had less than 6 “friends” to count on during this time.) I spent 4 days being shuttles between various officers, security personnel and JAGs, during which I couldn’t have any contact with the accusers or the complainant for fear of “coercion”. Finally, after all of the data was compiled and the originator of the complaint had recanted and clarified the exact series of events that led to the complaint, I was “vindicated”. However, this did nothing to repair my reputation (never mind the fact that the people who triggered this set of events put my former friend in the doghouse for giving them “false information”.) In fact, it was the opposite: by not being a predator, I became a potential “victim/retaliator” and our formerly cordial relationship was dashed to pieces.
The best part, you may ask? In 2009, I met a guy who had just arrived at the base. Over beers, we relayed stories about deployments, living overseas, etc. Then we exchanged names and his face went blank. Before I could ask him about his change in demeanour, he said, “You’re ‘that guy’, the guy from my first base. You actually *stayed in* the Service after all that!?” Yes, 6 years after a ribald yet neutral comment between two friends became a relatively minor legal issue (I say minor due to the fact that charges hadn’t been filed), a guy who hadn’t even been in the loop of the issue was able to hear my name and the name of a base and immediately remember that I’d been accused of sexual harassment. Not that I’d been jailed, or on trial, or *even placed in temporary suspension*, but that a girl accused me of saying something rude during a private conversation. I was never punished for my behaviour, I didn’t have my picture posted in a newspaper or online, I didn’t even have to do any type of “community service” (as in showing up in an auditorium to give a public service announcement about engaging in bad behaviour), but I was “the guy who almost got in trouble” in his head. And given the tendency of all people in the Western Hemisphere to vilify convicted predators, do you think that he wouldn’t have spread that information around if I’d been *guilty*?
And as far as false accusations being mostly the result of mistaken identity, well, I’m not convinced. I’ve worked with SARC (sexual assault workers) and medical lab technicians for years. The amount of accused men in cases that turned out to have been nowhere near the “victim” was ridiculous. Ridiculous as in multiple women accusing various men of being rapists (usually by name as well as exact description, sometimes down to tattoos and current haircut), just to find out that the accused man wasn’t in town during the correct timeframe (or the same *country*, as in the accuser was in Germany, the accused had multiple receipts proving that he was in the UK. The less said about the three women who showed up at police stations with visible bruises, just for the police officers to find out that the accused had been in Iraq for months prior to the incident, the better. Well, just one example of a false accuser: young woman arrives at the station, shows off a few bruises and claims that she was raped by a specific guy. She’s taken to the hospital, where the doctor says that the bruises are less than three months old, a figure that fits in with her claim of having been assaulted by an airman two months prior to her arrival at the station. She described the assailant perfectly, down to his pierced nipples and shoulder sleeve tattoo. The German police arrived at our base, all but *demanding* that we release the “assailant” into their custody. Our authorities contact the supervisor of the accused, just to learn that the accused is/was at Camp Victory. The Germans tell the base personnel that the accuser was raped two months prior, the base personnel video conferenced with the camp personnel and learned that the accused had been on site for six months, which meant that the accused wasn’t even on the same *continent* when the accuser’s wounds were made.)
I will note that the majority (75%) of our assaults were either unambiguous or (at the very least) had physical evidence of contact. Also, many of our ambiguous cases did involve the accused and the accuser being in the same area (the percentage of absurdly fraudulent false rape cases was around 10%.) The fact that I remember the most egregious false cases did nothing to prevent me from taking all of the cases seriously as they happened, the cases did teach me to avoid jumping to negative judgments on accused people.
AB this two posts were addressed to two different groups of people. That the first group saw nothing objectionable is not the fault of the second (or vice versa)
More to the point, it’s not the place of the people who identify with the MRM (even peripherally) to criticse the feminism post.
@ AB
“Not to mention that I have yet to see an MRA treat the two movements that equally.”
If there is a publicly funded MRA organization then please show us and then lets see how it measures up to publicly funded feminist organizations. MRA vs feminism in size and influence is like the fruit fly vs Goliath.
@ MaMu1977,
that’s pretty horrific. I’ve heard from people in law enforcement that cases of false accusations happen more easily than most people think. Often they’re not even malicious but just used frivolously – for example as a quick excuse for not being home in time.
As for not being as bad as rape. Can’t really compare. I just know that false accusations can be as bad as anything. No matter how strongly your name is cleared, there is always the “no smoke without fire” aftermath. People have been driven to suicide and so I think it’s safe to assume that the potential harm can be every bit as severe as any other crime. At least rape victims can get compassion whilst false accusation victims are denied that – often even from their own closest loved ones.
I also feel that women who downplay the harm that false accusations can cause are resting on female privilege – because they know all too well that they are safe from such a crime themselves. It’s nothing short of a damn cheek to declare knowledge of how harmful it is or isn’t. Imagine a man saying “well forced pregnancy isn’t that bad so get over it”. Not cool.
Oh Ozy. I love you SOOOOOOO much. You are SO awesome.
But this:
Is just SO “not getting it.” I hope I have some ancient and well-founded respect in your heart because I so desperately want you to get this. Herre-goes:
You can’t have genuine concern for men’s issues – while at the same time chastizing those men who have been hurt worst by it for the way they express their anger, pain and suffering.
Is the way they express this shit problematic? Damn right.
But I’ll bet if you went back before the age where women’s issues were even *remotely* on the radar, those poor women would’ve been saying some god damned “problematic” stuff. But their means of communication wasn’t the Internet. They could meet in darkened rooms and discuss their plans for setting women free – that doesn’t exist for men.
C’mon man. Gay fish.
Ozy, AB:
“I think you’re being unfair to Ozy. She’s written in the exact same way in “Memo To The Feminist Movement” which she linked to, talking about the feminist movement as if feminists all agreed on the stuff she criticised it for.”
I think so too, yes. I apologize. Should have read the earlier post before commenting further. Though I think the MRM memo could be more easily misread. It took me three readings to get the exact meaning of the introduction right. Or maybe it is just that I felt like a target and got less clearheaded.
Ozy:
“With respect, if you cannot regularly post something that is factually correct, does not negatively stereotype a particular gender, and does not say that violence will happen if you don’t get your way, then you should quit the genderblogging field until you learn how.”
It would take more time and energy than I have right now to evaluate what is going on on another blog. If the person is generally lazy or doesn’t respect the subject enough to make an effort I might agree. Then again, that person may have other priorities than you do as to what are the important aspects of a blogpost. Emotionality has its values too, for example. And there is a saying “The woods would be very silent if only the birds with the fairest voices sang”. In most cases I prefer desperate (if that is what he was) people saying stupid things, which at least is some kind of communication, to them being silent. Threatening with violence is almost always a bad thing (like, “If you try to hurt my friend I’ll smack you in the mouth” can be a good thing), and if that was what is was i agree. But sometimes predicting that violence will occur under certain conditions looks a lot like a threat when it isn’t.
@Danny:
I don’t mind Godwinning when it’s relevant. For instance, when someone starts using “with us or against us” rhetoric, I think not bringing up Hermann Göring’s famous quote about that would be doing the discussion a disservice. And likewise, the eugenics vibe from the post Futrelle quoted makes comparisons to Hitler (as the most well-known proponent of social engineering) fairly on topic. Especially because the post is intended as a dismissal, not a rebuttal.
Criticising it for not engaging properly with the article it’s criticising would be a different matter, although I think the part of post criticised by Futrelle which Toysoldier quoted as an example of a good point (“Saying you only do something because of cultural pressure is stupid, except when men say it”) makes an excellent illustration about why it was only worth snark. It’s also worth noticing that Toysoldier does the exact same thing, only quoting a small part of what he criticises and putting it in a different context.
EE said what I wanted to say, but nicer >.>
@Adi:
I’m only answering this because you specifically addressed me. The post you asked me to read (the one posted January 16, 2012 at 8:25 pm which is immediately above mine) does not address what I wrote just below. They’re 2 different subjects. I find it very disrespectful that you apparently only glanced over my post, picked a few buzzwords, and then assumed to know that it was already addressed. Read the post in question and come back to me if you still have an issue. And please this time bother to tell me why a post about whether there was more sexism in feminism or the MRA is in any way relevant to a post which wasn’t about that.
So what you’re saying is that sexism against women is not deemed acceptable in mainstream culture, and that pointing out sexism against women doesn’t make you an underdog?
And yet I’ve heard time again how men are discriminated against and victimised by women. In fact, it’s in the old testament, making it older than feminism by millennia, and it hasn’t gone away.
Hey, people, guess what? Thanks to our shiny new comment policy, complaining about Manboobz is Off Topic.
Right: “I think feminism does XYZBADTHING, as you can see in the case of Manboobz.”
Wrong: “And yet another reason that Manboobz is bad and terrible forever is…”
@easilyenthused:
So when MRAs say sexist shit, they shouldn’t be chastised for the way they express their anger, pain, and suffering, but when feminists (or a woman someone has decided is a feminist this week) say sexist shit, it’s worth making a whole page just to criticise them (Feminist Critics) and turn every conversation even remotely about men’s rights, and many that aren’t, into a debate about the wrongness of feminism? Why, is it because there’s no way these feminists are expressing their anger, pain, and suffering?
Mod note: deleted your second paragraph because of the Don’t Talk Shit About Other Blogs rule. The Feminist Critic bit gets to stay because it is in service of an actual point, not just arguing about which blogs are the worst. 🙂
@AB
I’m sure Feminist Critics bloggers (as in the actual blog owners) don’t condone “MRAs saying sexist shit”, but think that Manboobz and anyone who actually speaks about the MRM is already criticizing the “sexist shit” they say (as well as the non-sexist shit they say).
And Feminist Critics bloggers will often do more than just criticize “sexist shit that feminists say”. They’ll criticize sexist policies that feminists enact, too. And sexist policies that the UN and Amnesty enact under the banner of countering violence against women (like completely ignoring the mass murder of men, or the rape of men, because fund-givers don’t want to hear about it).
They’ll still be called anti-feminist misogynists who are only trying to protect their male privilege. As reasonable as their arguments can be, they’ll never be considered reasonable enough until they stop criticizing the movement at all.
AB: I appreciate you actually putting up some defense other than “oh he’s a snark site, didnt you get the memo?” (I don’t agree with you but that’s apparently neither here nor there around these parts anymore according to Ozy).
Adi:But some (me included) say that sexism against men is widely deemed acceptable in the mainstream. As such, anyone pointing it out is pretty much the underdog.
AB:So what you’re saying is that sexism against women is not deemed acceptable in mainstream culture, and that pointing out sexism against women doesn’t make you an underdog?
Sadly I think you’re both right. At best it might change depending on the venue you’re talking about but I think its fair to say that there are instances in which sexism against men and women are both acceptable (even to the point where some folks will even try to define one or the other out of existence) and any who try to point it out are underdogs. When a person can point out the sexism in either men being pressured into working outside the home and women being pressured into working inside the home and they stand a chance of being piled on with things from condescending dismissal to outright attacks…
Ookay… I’m going to step away from pretty much everything social justice related for the moment because I just realized that I’m too pissed off about unrelated matters and its affecting what i write here and elsewhere, and so i’m going to leave before i post something I’ll regret later.
So… goodnight everybody. I’mma go watch castle
I don’t mind it getting deleted (I was writing that post while the part about Manboobz being off-limit was being posted), but I want to clarify that I didn’t talk shit about anything. I was actually disagreeing with EE about how horrible Manboobz was. Even if positive/non-negative comments about that blog are also off-limits, I’d appreciate it if the edit didn’t make it sound like I was attacking someone in the deleted paragraph.
@AB: That’s a fair clarification. You weren’t attacking anything there, but we decided to cut that paragraph anyway, in accordance with our policy of not having this be a dueling ground to hash out fights from or about other blogs. 🙂
I’m confused…
So it’s okay to bash The Spearhead, but not Manboobz?
I think we need to define what are “men’s issues”. Women that join the feminist movement have a lot of experience with men, Betty Friedan was married when she wrote “The Feminine Mystique”. Radical feminists that believe that all men are rapists had negative experience with men. Normally guys involved in the MRM should be guys that have a lot of (negative) experiences with women – for example, divorced guys. Instead of that is a lot of guys that join the MRM that have very limited experience with women. For example, think about all these Nice Guys that have dating problems. Dating problems of Nice Guys are not Men’s Issues. Women that comment on feminist blogs don’t ask for dating advice, they do that on Cosmopolitan. And then you have the guys that go abroad to find a girlfriend. Again, it’s not a Men’s issue : how many women that comment on feminist blog had to go abroad to find a boyfriend ? And let’s not forget the popularity of PUAs among the MRM – if a guy want to have sex with a Victoria Secret’s model, it’s not a Men’s Issue. Women don’t go to feminist blogs to complain they cannot have sex with Daniel Craig.
I remember reading a few years ago a discussion between a female lawyer and guys from the MGTOW about no-fault divorce ( she had some issues about it ) and after discussing with them she concluded that most of these guys have never been involved in a divorce. She went to their forum and instead of talking about divorce they all talked about women attracted by bad boys and Alpha males. What’s hilarious is that she had a daughter and like many mothers she didn’t like the boyfriend of her daughter so she join the discussion.
And same for false rape accusations, if a guy have been falsely accused of rape it’s a Men’s Issue. If an inexperienced guy fantasize that if he asks a woman out, she will call the cops, it’s not. And same if a guy has no social skills, it’s not Men’s Issue.
Believing that all these things are Men’s Issues just encourage these guys to feel helpless victims and I think it’s one of the reason the MRM is not taken seriously or is ridiculed.
@Ozy: See what you did with looking at the top five posts from the MRA site of your choice? That is not a accurate way to compare MRA’s and feminists. I can do that to an get the opposite result.
I choose RadFem
Post One: Transphobia, and that’s enough criticism for this post.
Post Two: Transphobia crops up again.
Post Three:They don’t generate any original content here, but instead quote someone who isn’t objectionable.
Post Four: Men benefit from the rape culture. Because they make up half of rape victims. Or something. (I think they snuck transphobia in here too)
Post Five: As far as I can tell this post is saying men should dress in high heels. Or something. But it has a side order of men’s culture is of rape. Because women make up 40% of rapists. Both leave a bad taste in my mouth, but no where near as terrible as the other three bad ones.
So 3 posts that are highly objectionable, one that has no new material, and one that I can’t really pin down as to what it says, but leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Now lets look at the most recent five AVfM posts
The most recent 5 are:
One post about a new member: http://www.avoiceformen.com/updates/site-updates/avfm-gets-a-new-team-membr-correction-member/
Two: Post countering on a non-nonsensical** post. (He* does quote something silly that he apparently wrote. http://www.avoiceformen.com/women/real-men-are-disposable-so-says-maria/
(Note: his quote is not the post)
Three: http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/the-silence-of-the-voiceless/ first post you mentioned. It does seem gendered. Although its become a meme in feminist circles of “what about teh menz”, and that it is okay to only focus on the female side of things and saying men should be included is plain wrong. Also I think its saying that men have people especially repressing their emotions.
Four: Obviously problematic http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/women-men-and-the-truth/
Five: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/false-rape-culture/to-rape-or-not-to-rape/ the one attacking the CDC’s definition. I’m not sure if this is wrong-badness, or putting to much stock in feminist posts that essentially say: being tipsy can mean a women is not too drunk to consent to rape. (I can drag one out if you want.) Yes, he looks at feminists as a monolith (but glass houses), and he doesn’t interpret the report well, but people interpreting the report well pretty much never happens.
So the feminist site I found three that were utter crap. One that was no real content, and one that was as far as I could tell non-sense, but seemingly problematic. AVfM I found one obviously problematic, one that may or may not be terrible. One was an arguing post, but nothing problematic. One had no real content. And one that literally has a feminist meme that could be used to dismiss any criticisms of it not being gendered.
*Since I’m lazy this is the gender neutral pronoun.
**If you think people should die for others, please note how nearly every healthy person on the planet with two healthy kidneys, has two healthy kidneys.
tl;dr version: If I look at a feminist and an MRA site, and take the first five posts, I can easily make it so the MRA’s come off better looking. When you argue the MRA’s are somehow vastly worse on the basis of five posts from one site you are doing it wrong. That is called anecdotal evidence. Its crap.
@Danny:
I’d hardly call that both being right, since I never said anything about anyone having a special underdog-status which justified bigotry (at least not in current western culture). I just think the “we’re not saying that women don’t face sexism, it’s just that the sexism against men is bigger, worse, and harder to fight, while sexism against women is really just a bunch of men who’ve been hurt and need more love, so stop getting angry about it” is the exact same stuff feminism is so often criticised for.
And while I know this view is going to be controversial here, I actually think feminism has a better point, given the patriarchal (e.g. men being legally defined as the head of the family) past of most western countries, the existence of current patriarchies, and men still fitting all the official definitions we use about any other group to tell if they’re high-status/dominant (political, religious, and media representation, executive positions, monetary wealth, etc.). I happen to believe that being high-status is not always what it’s cracked up to be, that it can be doubly hurtful for those who fall outside the norm, and that sexism is somewhat more two-sided than most other cases high-status vs. low-status, but I still think it’s a better point.
“Women that comment on feminist blogs don’t ask for dating advice, they do that on Cosmopolitan. ”
Quoted for humour.
Lamech: I tried to argue in good faith by picking the most mainstream, popular MRA blog I could think of– one that to my knowledge had never been called “not a real MRA” by another MRA and that is regularly proffered by MRAs as an example of “moderate” MRAism. I also picked the most mainstream, popular feminist blog I could think of. RadFem Hub is… not a mainstream, popular feminist blog. At aaaaaall. If you have another example of a more mainstream, popular men’s rights blog that you would like to compare to Feministe, I would be happy to look it over. 🙂
@Ozy:
I agree with your list.
However, I’d like to note that the whole “rape continuum” thing is a similar error that many feminists appear to commit, and yet I don’t think that “puts the lie to the idea that they care about women’s rights at all”.
As an aside, I think a lot of people have a gut tendency to view rape as “the worst thing that can ever happen to a person”, and your post (I presume inadvertently?) comes across with a bit of that vibe. I don’t think it’s at all clear that for any given person some of the items on that list wouldn’t be comparably bad to rape, even if for other people the idea seems ridiculous. It depends on the person.
My suspicion is that when MRA’s say things like, “A woman saying she’s on birth control and then getting pregnant is the male equivalent of rape,” they are trying to communicate that the issue is comparably important to rape, that the experience of violation can be comparable, and that rape shouldn’t be privileged as an issue over it. Whether that’s true or not is another matter, but I doubt they literally mean that it is rape.
In any case:
Absolutely. And saying otherwise furthers the view that rape is gendered, which is bad for men. The irony that so many MRA’s do this is certainly not lost on me, at the very least. Then again, many feminists gender rape as well, which is also ironic. So… dunno.
I think angry, hurt people say a lot of stupid things. Including me when I am angry and hurt. And I don’t think that needs to be respected, and in fact I think it is important to challenge (in the right context, of course). However, writing off what such people say entirely, instead of putting on a filter so you can get at the real parts, can be harmful, I think. Not that I’m terribly good about that myself, but just saying.
@Ozy: If you’re getting to define what is mainstream of course, you can make mainstream feminism good and mainstream MRA bad. Here let me choose mainstream things. I would argue that anything that influences actual education programs, how law enforcement happens, and what laws are written. The Duluth Model wins pretty well for mainstreamness, since that actually informs policy, education and the like when compared to a blog on the internet. Do I need to explain why that is terrible? (Just in case they claim that the societal effects of domestic abuse on men is trivial.)
Nor is picking articles that people write and saying one has a higher percentage of bad articles and then claiming they are worse. If group A has a bunch of posts with no real content the no content posts can’t be objectionable, then compared to group B doing the exact same thing with content free posts, group A comes off better. Its a terrible method of comparison.
Finally its still ancedotal, if we look right now on AVfM, and look at the top five posts we the “hard rain”, a post which says rioting is a result of oppression. (I would argue that he is wrong about the rioting and such though, but violence is obviously an appropriate response to many forms of oppression though.) A post talking about a terrible, terrible law. One complaining about abuse of stats. One talking about making the MRA more valuable. And one attacking the CDC’s use of definitions; his biggest flaw seems to be thinking too drunk to consent was based on the sillier claims of some feminists.
no more mr nice guy:
I think you need to define what exactly you think are “men’s issues”. Your examples aren’t exactly a clear definition. I find myself scratching my head and guessing what definition you are trying to use. Beyond saying that the single most important thing that I, a man, will do is to get married and start a family, I’m not even entirely sure what I’m trying to refute.
Nevertheless, I’ll try.
Sure they do!
You know, after all the discussion of stereotype threat, I’ve always wondered exactly why it doesn’t apply to men with regards to emotional intelligence. What you describe as a lack of social skills is very much a men’s issue for that very reason.
Hmm… double post, but “top” is different from most recent… so we have one problematic post, and one post that seems to be maybe bad. I’m sure in a few days there will be a time when I can show no bad posts, either by choosing the 5 recent ones or the 5 top ones. (And note one of the images cycles through 3 posts.)
tl;dr version: Saying the fact that your anecdote is somehow special doesn’t make it better.
P.S. Also on violence being appropriate. Consider being oppressed by armed murderous pirates who just attacked your ship from which you have no escape.Obviously if violence is the only option to defend you and the other civilians its the best one.
If you’re getting to define what is mainstream of course, you can make mainstream feminism good and mainstream MRA bad.
Lamech, zie is letting YOU define what’s mainstream. You didn’t like zir comparison of AVfM with Feministe, so zie asked you for a moderate MRA site that would be a fair comparison. Feel free to suggest one. You don’t like the definitions Ozy’s using, you are being actively invited to provide your own, so long as they are backed up with checkable examples. Is that unfair?
@Ozy:
I agree they aren’t equivalent, but I think informative comparisons can often be made.
A related and (hopefully) amusing anecdote:
I was having a beer with a friend of mine, who identifies as feminist. He was trying to convince me to identify as feminist as well. He referenced many of my attitudes and views about gender issues. He said I already was feminist. He said anyone fighting for gender equality is feminist.
I asked about radical feminists, and gave some examples of radfems that seemed to largely express views counter to (IMO genuine) notions of gender equality, particularly with respect to men. How do they qualify under that definition, I asked. He said that radfems were at least trying to fight for gender equality, even if they are misguided, and therefore they still qualify.
I didn’t say it out loud, but I did find myself amused, realizing that MRA’s (even extreme ones) clearly qualified as feminist under his definition.
In any case, I agree that the MRM in its current state is, for the most part, more analogous to the more extreme-ish factions of feminism, rather than to feminism as a whole. I would argue that the MRM is more-or-less like the radfems of the masculist movement.
I think some men here are WOEFULLY ignorant about how birth control works.
See, birth control is NOT 100% effective. I’ve known plenty of people who took some form of birth control PERFECTLY… and it still failed. Part of this is because every method is inherently fallible; condoms are only something like 86% effective, even with perfect use, due to a large variety of factors such as sizing, manufacturing defects invisible to the naked eye, slippage, etc. Diaphragms and sponges slip, move, and spermicide doesn’t kill everything. In plenty of people, it can also cause irritating rashes and allergic reactions. Fun!
Pills? Depends on the kind. And it depends on uncontrollable circumstances such as personal chemistry, which is ever-changing and inconstant. A lot of OB/GYNs (like so many men I know) seem to think that a birth control pill is some magical pill you take and you don’t get pregnant. It isn’t. There are real, body-encompassing side effects to each one, even if you aren’t in a risk group. Ask me how I know. Because these doctors are so incredibly ignorant as to how “reproductive hormones” affect the ENTIRE body, they tend to neglect to do basic things such as endocrine testing (which alas, so many women can’t afford or access anyways) before prescribing a pill. Endocrine testing is vitally important when using a hormonal method because it can tell you (in part) whether or not the hormonal thing you are taking will work.
For example, I have abnormally high progesterone levels. Giving me a progesterone-based birth control pill will not only fail to make me sterile, but it could kill me by pushing my blood sugar up to dangerous levels. As in, I nearly died on them. Not an exaggeration. Estrogen pills, however, are relatively fine… but* they are still not perfect. There is still around a 2% chance that they will fail because of personal chemistry, PROVIDED that I don’t get sick at any point during the month, which in some cases can render the pills less effective. This isn’t a unique case. This happens with EVERY woman on hormonal therapy, which is what birth control REALLY is. EVERY woman has chemistry that shifts from month to month, year to year depending on stress levels, age, diet, and factors such as whether or not they are prone to GI/intestinal issues or blood clots.
Women are not just clamoring to get pregnant, despite what some men seem to believe. Some of us really, really don’t want kids… but end up pregnant anyways because the method we used failed for reasons outside our control. Whether or not the pregnancy is maintained should be her decision, but you both need to understand that if pregnancy is a possibility, no matter how remote, then you should agree on how it should be handled BEFORE having sex. Are there “coercive” women? Probably. No doubt. But it is NOT the same thing as getting raped. Getting raped is the only thing like getting raped.
Developers^3
Wow, that was a horrible article! But I’m having a hard time telling what exactly it has to do with the point no more mr nice guy was making in that bit you quoted. Could you elaborate or quote the specific bit you thought was relevant? Keeping in mind that women complaining about getting slut-shamed is not the female equivalent of men complaining they can’t sleep with super hot partners… women complaining that they can’t sleep with super hot partners is the female equivalent of men complaining they can’t sleep with super hot partners.
@Cactuar
Walsh quotes a commenter from Feministing who says the following:
Or, “I can’t find a boyfriend who accepts my sexual history”. I’d say this is pretty darn close to the female equivalent of men complaining they can’t sleep with super hot partners. Not quite the same, but I was operating under the assumption that no more mr nice guy was using hyperbole about the whole “model” bit.
I think it’s perfectly valid to extend No More Mr. Nice Guy’s reasoning to the general case: Feminists complaining about dating choices that men make. Consider the article that I linked to earlier. A number of French feminist groups complained about a couple wanted to annul their marriage after the husband found out that his bride was not a virgin. A whole lot of their complaints boiled down to “how dare he reject her for that” and perhaps “it’s not fair that some men value virginity”. Consider how often there are folks complaining about how women go so-called “Alphas” and “Bad Boys”. Isn’t that also “how dare she reject him for that!” and “it’s not fair that women value dominance”? In both cases us third parties are judging one side or another’s reasoning in selecting a partner. In this example, the PUAs are most likely factually wrong, but their attitude is exactly the same as the feminists I mentioned in this case.
Or, how about the general feminist complaints about beauty standards* . How dare men prefer a certain body type? It’s not fair! And so on, and so forth… There are lots of feminist complaints about the desires of men for sex, dating, courtship and marriage.
*To be fair, I think the more moderate feminists (ie, “healthy is the new thin” instead of the fat acceptance groups who want being morbidly obese to be as acceptable as being healthy) are right on this matter.
For some reason, I haven’t been able to post here…tried yesterday (and the day before on a different topic), but found out my post(s) never showed up. Trying again – please keep in mind that this is just a copy of what I tried to post yesterday, so I may have missed some discussion in the interim. Sorry if I’m repeating things.
I’ve been date raped and I’ve had my daughter (home and job) taken from me while false accusations were investigated. Guess which one I hated more? Guess which one I’d rather relive? So no, false accusations are not rape. Sometimes, they’re worse.
The feeling of being powerless is common to both, but the magnitude is different, and when facing false accusations, the feeling of helplessness isn’t a matter of ‘it’ll be over soon’. It’s a matter of watching someone gleefully tear apart your entire life, past, present and future, MRAs are often crazy, vengeful people, but they’ve got something with this one. False accusations can be quite a lot worse than rape.
In addition…everything figleaf said [a while back]. I agree with all of that,
@Noah: “Lamech, zie is letting YOU define what’s mainstream. You didn’t like zir comparison of AVfM with Feministe, so zie asked you for a moderate MRA site that would be a fair comparison. Feel free to suggest one. You don’t like the definitions Ozy’s using, you are being actively invited to provide your own, so long as they are backed up with checkable examples. Is that unfair?”
How about Fathers and Families?
Two: Another post talking about over-billing
Three: Talking about a demand for investigation of DV advocates. (Apperently they help people defy court orders.
Four: A loophole in the law.
Five: Commenting on a study talking about damaging boys education.
O objectionable things. But in case you say its not an MRA, since they decided to not use a name that is constantly attacked…
Anyway how about mensactivism.org? It is the first thing that google spits out for men’s rights.
The top five posts are:
Link to Australian project to get women jobs I think?
Link about cruise ship
Link about how chivalry is not dead, but still active in world.
Link about gender bias in court system
Link to commentary about California getting rid of the Commission on the Status of Women’s, and how it truly wasn’t needed especially when compared to the status of men and the lack of an equivalent group.
0 things objectionable I saw. And it tops the google search and I suspect google has a much better idea of what is getting traffic that either of us.
P.S. I still think AVfM wins with compared to the Duluth Model. Because that model is terrible. Do you now see why anecdotal evidence is terrible?
@AB – I’d reply to you RE: Manboobz but I’m not sure I can do so without violating the comment policy, so that may have to wait for another venue.
What I think this discussion boils down to is “The violence of the oppressed is not the same as the violence of the oppressor.”
If you take the traditional Feminist concept of Patriarchy – to feminists the MRM is a group of men, the “oppressors” and their *violence* is seen as, well, the violence of the oppressors. The RadFems who say misandrist things and want to see men wiped out or suffer (*violence*) is the violence of the oppressed. Simple as that – it’s OK because we’re a member of the oppressed group and you MRAs are the oppressors.
This narrative has two major problems in my opinion:
Firstly, Patriarchy isn’t the rule of “men” – it’s the rule of “Patriarchs.” Of Fathers. Of *powerful men.* Not all men are powerful – not all men are patriarchs. Men who fail to fit hegemonic norms are definitely not patriarchs.
Secondly, If you view the situation through a Post-Feminist lens, then actually, Feminism, with its ability to lobby, massive international support networks and decades and decades of activism – is the one with the gender-activism power – the “oppressor” if you will (I know it sounds absurd but hear me out) – and to male gender egalitarians who think believe that men’s issues (not patriarch’s issues, mind you) need better recognition in gender discussion – we view ourselves as the “gender-activism oppressed.”
That’s why I’m more lenient towards MRAs who say ridiculous things. They are the gender-activism oppressed –
Not to mention – men who are willing to cry out in pain are obviously failing at being patriarchs. A “real man” would never go online to proclaim his “butthurt” about how hard it is being a “man!” Those lady feminists on the other hand? You know how women are … always complaining.
A group like the MRM is being rejected by the Patriarchy for not being “man enough” and at the same time getting nothing but scorn from the One True Movement for Gender Equality. Can’t you see how that’s a really, really bad place to be? And the people who are willing to endure that difficult position are probably going to be driven by anger, rage and all the other motivations that have driven revolutionaries since the beginning of time?
Lamech: All right. There’s one men’s rights activist website that a cursory glance does not show anything particularly objectionable on. 🙂 Mostly because it seems to be a news aggregator that does almost no commentary. I mean, for all we know they’d be shooting problematic shit all over the place, Otoh, for all we know they’d also be not shooting problematic shit all over the place, so I don’t think it proves anything one way or the other.
The Duluth Model isn’t a blog, though. It’s definitely comparing apples and oranges to compare a blog to a chart.
Now I want to do a proper sampling of men’s rights and feminist websites… hmm…
EE: Call me weird, but I think violence in any form is both immoral and impractical (except in a few limited circumstances, such as self-defense). And also that, while many misogynistic MRAs hurt (a truly extraordinary number of MRAs had abusive second-wave feminist mothers), I know lots of people who have managed to be hurt and not hate people of a particular gender.
Lamech that’s ship story was of a ship that hit an iceberg and when it came time to go to the life boats the crew actually declared women and children first. The death toll was nowhere near as high but it is modern example of Titanic style chivalry.
And yet its listed as a Boob site…
@Ozy: I don’t mean actual violence. I’m a pacifist.
I was talking about the occasional fantasy I’ve heard about killing off male sperm so only women are born – or even someone hinted that they wish women’s make-up still had cancer-causing ingredients in them.
So more of “I would experience Schadenfreude if XXXX group of oppressors fell down from their great height and made a splat on the ground” rather than “I want to climb up there and literally put a bullet in the head of each XXXX oppressor.”
EE: Okay, no, I’m against that too. People are NOT allowed to be bigoted against people under the banner of social justice. Period.
There are some times it’s more understandable– survivors, for instance– but it’s never good.
@Developer^3
As I already said in the post you’re replying too, these things aren’t really equivalent at all, whether or not the model bit was hyperbole.
I am entirely willing to accept that slut-shaming is the female equivalent of virgin-shaming, or other similar behavior towards men, but you are stretching the “general case” too far.
Such a comparison also rankles because it plays into the ridiculous idea that women don’t value or desire hotness in a partner, and men cannot be valued or desired for being hot, so we have to choose something else as a hotness analog when thinking of an equivalent.
And finally, like poisonous body-image, slut-shaming is every bit as much and maybe more, a societal problem that deeply effects many people and needs to be combated. It is about far, far more than getting dates, and you don’t do yourself a service by reducing the desire to have perfectly normal adult relationships without stigma to a supposed petty desire to control men’s preferences.
And for the record, I don’t care if men (or women!) date based on looks. Broadly, it isn’t a problem on an individual level, and to the extent that it is a societal problem, it calls for slow, cultural solutions that can’t be affected by haranguing men about being shallow.
@Developers^3
I think you need to define what exactly you think are “men’s issues”. Your examples aren’t exactly a clear definition. I find myself scratching my head and guessing what definition you are trying to use. Beyond saying that the single most important thing that I, a man, will do is to get married and start a family, I’m not even entirely sure what I’m trying to refute.
For me “Men’s Issues” are specific problems that men’s experience as gender. They are not fantasies of inexperienced men. As an example, the guys in the manosphere are constantly bitching that fathers don’t get custody of children while most of them don’t have children. For example F.W. Price of The Spearhead said that he got custody of his children after divorce, which is a proof the system is not so unfair for men even if there can be problems. Yet the Spearhead crowd (most of them don’t have children) continue to bitch that the system is horribly unfair for fathers and F.W. Price encourage them.
In the same way the obsession for cuckolding and false paternity. It’s much more rarer than what they say in the manosphere and when it happens, the woman herself usually doesn’t know who is the father. Yet according the guys from the manosphere (they never experience it), it’s widespread and all these women deliberately lie to their lover so that he raises the child of another man.
You know, after all the discussion of stereotype threat, I’ve always wondered exactly why it doesn’t apply to men with regards to emotional intelligence. What you describe as a lack of social skills is very much a men’s issue for that very reason.
If a guy has psychological problems approaching women, it’s a psychological problem issue, not a “Men’s Issue”. The guy need to hang out with people that have the same psychological problems he has and specially with guys like him that have found a girlfriend or seek professional help . If a woman is want to recover from drug addiction, she will hang out with other people like her to recover and seek professional help, hanging out on Pandagon and blaming patriarchy will not help her.
@no more mr nice guy
“As an example, the guys in the manosphere are constantly bitching that fathers don’t get custody of children while most of them don’t have children.”
Why should it matter if they have children? That’s like saying I can’t complain about human rights abuses elsewhere in the world because I’ve never personally been oppressed by my government.
If you don’t believe that there is any discrimination in custody battles then you can debate it in one of the open threads. But saying it’s wrong to complain about a social justice issue just because it dosn’t affect you personally is the hight of ridiculous.
no more mr nice guy:
I am no MRA, but it seems to me that what you are doing here is arguing against solidarity.
It is possible to support – and even devote considerable personal resources to – causes that do not affect you personally. For instance, most members of Amnesty International have never been victims of human rights violations, and yet they too “constantly bitch” about human rights violations – and I believe that they (we) are right to do so.
There are many good reasons to criticize the MRM, but that some of them stand up for causes that they are not personally victimized by is not really, in my opinion, one of them.
“The guy need to hang out with people that have the same psychological problems he has and specially with guys like him that have found a girlfriend”
So right there, you advocate he hangs out with PUAs who have girlfriends.
So with the custody situation are you saying that even though the bias is gender based in cases the existence of men who get custody is proof its not a mens issue?
As for paternity I think what makes it a mens issue is the callous way men ate treated. Such as in cases in which its apparent that child support orders are more about hoking “a man” responsible rather than “the man” responsible.
As to
“For example F.W. Price of The Spearhead said that he got custody of his children after divorce, which is a proof the system is not so unfair for men even if there can be problems.”
~90% sole custody to the mother is pretty unfair for men, not just small problems. Finding the ~10% of fathers who get sole custody and saying “see, it’s not so bad” is not proof it’s not unfair.
The same way finding people who have not been raped is not proof that rape doesn’t happen.
@Cactuar
What about my desire to find someone who shares my values? Is desire for a to find someone who shares my values is a “societal problem” that “needs to be combated”? That’s the problem I have with sex-pozzies: They may say that they respect all desires, but they seem to actively be working to eliminate people like me from the face of the planet.
The woman I quoted was talking specifically about an instance where she was romantically rejected. Because the guy she wanted didn’t want to date her. Because she was rejected. She wasn’t talking about any sort of broad societal problem beyond that. Which I think is the point that no more mr nice guy was making. The calim, as I see it is that MRAs are whining crybabies for complaining about their lack of romantic success, therefore no one takes them seriously, but no one uses feminism to complain about their lack of romantic success. I think that this specific comment is a perfectly good counterexample.
Perhaps, but I don’t think this matters for this argument. The claim wasn’t “feminists don’t think men are hot”, the claim was “feminists never complain about their dating lives or the preferences of men in the name of feminists” .
And seeing your kid 4 days per 28 days isn’t shared custody (that’s 14% of the time). Shared custody to me is 40~60% custody with one, and 40~60% with the other. At this point, if it’s 50/50% custody, there should be no child support either side (and yes, I know at least of one case where parents have 50% custody, and the father pays child support anyways).
Presumption of shared custody unless abuse or unfitness can be proven (and if it’s the case, it should be proven, mere allegations won’t do it) should be the default, with sole custody only happening in cases where it’s actually warranted.
Defaulting to “primary caregiver preference” is bound to give undue preference to mothers, who are pushed by gender roles into it, while men are pushed away. Mommy blocking (no, no, no, it’s not how you do it, see, THIS is how you do it) and being called a babysitter or “mommy’s helper”, along with abyssal paternity leaves, is not helping one bit in changing that.
@Danny:
Are we reading the same site? That article was specifically about how there was no order on the ship, and many people pushed everyone out of the way in order to save themselves first. A mother told in the article about how she had to fight hysterical adults to hold on to her 12 year old daughter, and expressed how she “couldn’t believe it, especially the men, they were worse than the women”. Other accounts about that ship tell about men pushing pregnant women out of the way to save themselves. Hardly the modern Titanic story you make it out to be.
Custody and the merits of sex-positive feminism are off topic. Take it to the Open Thread, guys. 🙂
There was actually just an article in response to the unfortunate cruise ship tragedy that discussed the “women and children first” trope. Apparently whereas it was documented on the Titanic and a disaster before that (where it was believed to have originated, IIRC), it otherwise exists in theory more than practice. Apparently, based on survivors and witnessess of disasters, selflessness is common and most people tend to prioritize the disabled, children, and elderly, and men and women both want to remain with their families. I’ll post the article to the next open thread.
Ozy, I was posting as you were posting. Sorry!
Comments tl;dr.
However, the point is that this phrase: “The male equivalent of rape” is problematic in it of itself. It positions the female body, and maybe implicitly the vagina (although you can be raped anally or orally, that’s clearly not the point of the phrase), as the “normal target of violence” by trying to find ways for which men might find a sort of vague “equivalent” (that will of course not really be accurate, it’s just “the closest” one can get.) It vaguely suggests that “Rape” only happens to vaginas, and this sort of has a gross scummy feel to it because maybe ownership of a vagina means you should expect to be raped, or something. maybe.
Needing to find a “male equivalent” of rape suggests that men can’t be, in fact, raped, so we need to do some weird mental gymnastics to find something that feels like rape (but isn’t) , because otherwise “there’s no way Teh Menz would ever understand!”
@RocketFrog,
Actually… I would posit that the reason you don’t hear that claim for men is because men do not talk about being raped. When they DO talk about being raped, it seems to be a sort of thing so horrible they can’t even contemplate. There doesn’t seem to be a narrative of “man rape– you know you liked it!” like that of the Rape is Love trope. While rape of women comes up frequently in the cultural dialogue, whether it’s discourse or TV/Movies, I don’t see the same being true for rape of men. (Or how about, “Corrective Rape”? That also has no translation over to male bodies.)
@noahbrand
Continued…
@Ozy
I’d say that custody is very relevant when other posters are making the claim that the MRAs have few valid complaints of actual men’s issues.
Discussion continued here :
@ari: “Actually… I would posit that the reason you don’t hear that claim for men is because men do not talk about being raped. When they DO talk about being raped, it seems to be a sort of thing so horrible they can’t even contemplate. There doesn’t seem to be a narrative of “man rape– you know you liked it!” like that of the Rape is Love trope. While rape of women comes up frequently in the cultural dialogue, whether it’s discourse or TV/Movies, I don’t see the same being true for rape of men. (Or how about, “Corrective Rape”? That also has no translation over to male bodies.)”
Umm… there is a similar trope focusing on male victims. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeIsOkWhenItIsFemaleOnMale Males getting raped is often treated as a joke.
@EasilyEnthused:
First off, by many definitions of violence, it’s not. Not unless they act on it, and in that case, I can think of far more men killing women in a way reminiscent of MRA rhetoric than the other way around. And secondly, no one here is saying that this behaviour is OK (and if they are, please point it out), but you and others seem to suggest it’s somehow more acceptable for MRAs.
Actually, the term ‘patriarch’ means “the male head of a family or tribal line”. If you mean that not all men were the heads of a family (such as the case of men without a family) or otherwise in a position of power, you’re right. Some men didn’t have families. But a society in which all leaders are men as the default, barring certain circumstances where no suitable male can be found, is pretty much male-dominated. You don’t say that the existence of white peasants (or white trash, as it’s called today) means things were even close to equal between the races either.
OK, so you do think bigotry ans violent rhetoric is more acceptable when directed at women. Not because the consequences are any lesser, but because it’s called something different. Just one more example of privileged MRAs are for not having a known name.
Men have always complained about women and the plight of men. Read old anti-feminist material and tell me it came from poor, sensitive, powerless men. Read old accounts about the declining state of manhood, or the dangers in letting women make decisions. There is nothing unmasculine about it, and it doesn’t take the least bit of courage.
A group like the MRM are frequently the ones to complain about how men are emasculated, masculinity is vilified, and society is feminised (or sissified). They’re the “Men hunted the mammoth/built civilisation” and “women are taking over our spaces” dudes. They’re the ones who suggest it would be better if the benevolent patriarchy came back set everything straight. Some of them bring up legitimate concerns (albeit in a horrible way), but I have yet to see any of them who don’t blame their troubles on women’s empowerment.
@Ozy:
Quoted for agreement.
I remember taking a walk with a female friend of mine a while back, and I was telling her about a radfem I had recently been interacting with online. I was venting about all the problematic crap this radfem was saying, and her behaviors toward me and other commenters, etc. etc. But I was also excusing her behavior, pointing out that she had suffered a lot of sexual abuse in her past, so I couldn’t really fault her for it. It just sucked, was all.
When I said that, my friend got this really intense look in her eyes. She turned to me suddenly and said “No! That does not excuse her behavior. She’s an asshole, and she is responsible for her behavior.”
I was really surprised, and the rest of the walk was kind of awkward. A couple of days later this same friend revealed to me that she herself had experienced a lot of sexual abuse in her past as well, and that’s why it bugs the hell out of her when people let these other women off with excuses. She finds it to be extremely disrespectful to herself and also to other women that aren’t assholes despite similarly speckled pasts.
That was a really big eye-opener to me. Ever since then, I’ve often viewed that kind of writing-off of asshole behavior due to previous abuse as disrespectful to my friend. People don’t get a free pass on being assholes or bigots just because they’ve suffered in the past. That goes for MRA’s, it goes for feminists, it goes for men, it goes for women, it goes for DV and rape survivors, it goes for everyone.
Definitely agree. We’re all human, and trauma does affect us. And especially recent(ish) or on-going trauma is going to be something that people may not have well under control.
But even survivors, past a certain point, oughtn’t be treating people in a bigoted fashion, or at least should recognize that it’s their own issue, not the issue of the people they’re having bad reactions to. If someone’s best friend was brutally murdered in front of them by a black man, I can understand some racial bigotry as part the earlier stages of the trauma. It’s not right, but it’s understandable. But if two years down the line they’re a vocal bigot? Sorry, no excuse. Same goes for gendered trauma.
To be honest, as a man, I’d rather be raped (yes, by another man) than being duped into raising another guy’s child.
Mod note: You… do realize that women can rape men, right?
@AB:
You’re right – but we live in a society that says “real men” should be willing to resort to violence and be willing to die for what they believe in. As a pacifist, this turns my stomach. But when you look at the commonality of violence among men vs. women without taking into account our society that practically celibrates male physical violence, you’re not looking at the big picture – you’re handwaiving an entire movement because of the tactics they use. I can’t say this enough: it is possible to abhor the tactics being used by individual members of a group while expressing sympathy for their cause.
And to make it further clear: the behavior is not “more acceptable” but “more understandable.”
No, of course not. But you wouldn’t call a Monarchy a Democracy because, theoretically, the peasants could make requests of the king, right? The vast, vast majority of men will not be CEOs, Politicians or great leaders. But a societies’ leaders are not just people with political or economic clout. You are dismissing the power that wives hold in modern households – there’s a reason “If mamma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy” is still being said while “Father knows best” is only said with a heaping dose of sarcasm.
In my house, my mother made the rules. In all but one of my friends’ homes, it was the same way.
I said I am more lenient – meaning less likely to call them out and spend time coming up with theories for what evil lurks inside of them that they would say such terrible things. That is a far cry from “acceptable.”
RE: Old anti-feminist material:
I generally ignore requirements for me to read great amounts of material before I’m allowed to hold an opinion – not because I don’t want to be informed, but because I don’t have enough time.
I will throw you a bone on what I HAVE read. I read the history of the term “Masculist/Masculinist” and was saddened to see that the author was an anti-feminist. However, one of his central tennets has come somewhat true – which I call the “Girl Power” Feminism movement. I can’t provide links because of the SOPA blackout, but the gist was that some women would take advantage of the benefits of women’s liberation while still attempting to hold onto its privileges. GirlWritesWhat has an excellent video blog that outlines this perfectly:
http://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat#p/u/6/vp8tToFv-bA
(I would also, strongly encourage you to listen to her video about “Angry misogynists!”)
In case I haven’t made it clear, I detest this mentality – but it is not a core belief among MRAs. This is a core belief of anti-feminists – many of whom join the MRA (the enemy of my enemy) but whose belief system is not mandatory for participation in the movement.
To echo Ozy, misogynist MRA men don’t represent the men who have been hurt the worst. They’re just the men who are misogynists, who are no more or less likely to have been hurt by the male role than any other man.
In my house, my mother had a MLA and my father – a very hard worker, one of the first in his family with a college degree – was a doctor who dreamed of being a restaurant owner. Several separate times my mother was started on a career track in one library system or another — including at one really high-status university — when she quit her job and moved to be with my father as he bounced around the continent looking for a job situation that would make him happy. (It wasn’t involuntary job-hunting driven by unemployment — my father’s skills as a college professor and a doctor made him very employable — it was a search for contentment).
I don’t resent my father for wanting to find a career that made him happy. But my mother’s career was sacrificed again and again for my father’s career search, and in the end she ended up managing his medical practice. Economists who have studied this find that this is a pretty common pattern; wives quit their jobs and move to benefit their husbands’ careers far more often than vice versa.
In my parents house, both of my parents made the decisions. My mother “made the rules” in the sense that she made most of the immediate, hands on child-raising decisions, but my father participated too, and when it came to big decisions — car-buying, what Temple to attend, etc — they decided together. Now that I’m old enough that my friends are having kids, it seems to me pretty obvious that both parents make decisions in those households, too. I can’t imagine what a household in which only one parent ever makes decisions while the other just meekly obeys is like, and it would be very surprising to me if such households are anywhere near as common nowadays as you’re implying.
@Ari: zblockquote>When they DO talk about being raped, it seems to be a sort of thing so horrible they can’t even contemplate. There doesn’t seem to be a narrative of “man rape– you know you liked it!” like that of the Rape is Love trope. There doesn’t?
You’ve heard (among other things) the “joke” about the man who goes a-bear hunting, haven’t you?
@EasilyEnthused:
Society also tells us that men shouldn’t hurt women (and children), but these men seem perfectly fine with ignoring that little part. Not to mention that experts I’ve seen talk about a lot of this violence ascribe it to an inability to handle not being in control, not a desire to fight for what you believe in. And considering how often it’s motivated by the rage of ‘uppity’ women not knowing their place, I find that a lot more plausible.
The CEO-defence, how predictable. Head of the family. I already said that in the previous post, head of the family. Not CEO, but head of the family. I’ve mentioned this so many times before, but every time, people pretend like it was about CEOs, because they love that argument (and I can see why, it’s so nonsensical and strawmannish that it’s impossible to argue against because it makes no sense). Head of the family. Or just in a position of authority, which doesn’t have to be a great leader but can be everything from being partner in a law firm to running the local burger joint.
Both of my grandfathers wielded an authority which would fuel the MRM for a decade if any woman was discovered behaving similarly today. And one was a mason and the other a plumber.
I probably am, but mostly because that power almost always seems to come from working in that household. More women than men are the primary caretaker of their children, which means they’re more likely to be the ones to set the rules. More women cook, which means they’re more likely to decide what to eat. More women clean, so they’re more likely to actively demand cleanliness from the rest of the family, given that they’re the ones having to deal with it. More women do grocery shopping, so they’re more likely to decide what to buy.
Not to mention that it usually takes a lot less for a woman to be perceived as (overly) dominant. It’s a bit like people are often prone to overestimating the number of female pronouns or female characters described in a text, not because there are many of them, but because the presence of female pronouns/characters is considered so unusual that the brain overestimates their significance. A lot of the talk I’ve heard about women being dominant in the home describe completely normal behaviours which wouldn’t be considered out of place if a man did it.
But again, because they don’t have a well-known label, their plight is more significant. Considering how often I’ve seen people milk anti-feminism for all it’s worth, even against non-feminist women who would have been lucky to be as free of labels as the MRM, I think it’s doubly ironic that they’re even being rewarded for their favourable position of not having to be dragged down by labels. It makes me wish I had a social penis to deflect criticism that easily.
OK, then think of what you know about the old testament. Woman being responsible for the original sin. Delilah using her feminine wiles to destroy Sampson. Potiphar’s wife falsely accusing poor innocent Joseph of raping her when she can’t get her way with him. Evil Jezebel leading poor king Ahab into sin. Women corrupting men everywhere.
These are not new sentiments. The idea that women are dangerous to men, vain and selfish, and that men need to control women, not the other way around, for society to function is not new. The theme of men being lead astray by women, emasculated, oppressed, and tricked into serving their (women’s) purpose is not exactly revolutionary. And expressing these views is not going against the patriarchy, these views are the patriarchy. The very foundation of it.
I think making a distinction between anti-feminism and MRAs is only slightly more useful than making a distinction between anti-patriarchy and feminists. Many of the core tenets of the MRM are about reversing the harm they think is done by feminism. Even when they’re at their most egalitarian, actually trying to reverse a traditional male role, such as in the case of children, they still go about it in the most patriarchal and anti-feminist way possible.
They hardly ever advocate for more parental leave to men, or anything else which could give men the opportunity to do more female work, but they’re all about power, to the point where a majority of AVfM commenters defended mass murderer Scott Dekraai, who had more than equal access to his son, yet demanded that the court grant him “full decision making authority” (sounds pretty patriarchal if you ask me) and went nuts when they settled for equality instead. It’s like every time their interests could possibly align with those of feminists, they turn around and try to make the issue feminism’s fault instead.
“Mod note: You… do realize that women can rape men, right?”
Did I deny that somewhere in my comment? I just wanted to keep away all the “but women don’t rape men as frequently as men do” and other rationalizations. Since only rape is comparable to rape, according to the blogger, being made to raise another man’s child would be worse than rape in my opinion.
Mod note: …yes they do. Rape by envelopment, the most common type of rape of men, is overwhelmingly done by women on men.
@AB:
You bring up Head of the Family while ignoring the climbing rate of single-parent households, which are overwhelmingly run by mothers.
I don’t see how I can realistically defend against yours and Barry’s anecdotes – except with more anecdotes – and that won’t get us anywhere. But even if you consider that men might make household decisions on where to live, if the mother is spending the majority of the time directly tending to the needs of the children then she will have the greatest influence over the next generation of people. Take it from me, the childhood survivor of psychological abuse from a “second-wave Feminist” mother. (Scare quotes for the obvious retort that “she wasn’t a real Feminist.”)
I can’t really respond in a meaningful way to “a lot of the talk.” But I don’t want you to think I didn’t read it.
What I’ve *personally* experienced is that often tend to find men who can “perform” dominance to be sexy – but after being in relationships with them, expect him to be submissive in matters of decision-making that don’t align with her wishes. I’ve seen my friend’s girlfriends and wives do it, and I witness it regularly in my own relationship.
Men who fail to become submissive in ways their wives want can/will be cast aside because they are “too controlling” or something. The same thing happens with men who are attracted to their wives submissiveness and then later become “bored” by her. Or, a man could like his wife’s submissive appearance but be turned off by her dominance in the relationship and claim she “turned into a bitch.” We see this narrative all over the board.
This is the last time I’m going to respond to you if you keep changing my words. I have never said the plight of men is more important than women. I challenge you to find those words.
I know what you’re doing, AB. You’ve already decided I’m “the enemy” and are trying to paint me into the pre-determined picture of the MRAs you hate. Cut it out.
If you think that I think the plight of men is more important – every single thing you’ve read that I’ve written has been tainted. I can’t have a conversation with you. Maybe you’ve been triggered by something I wrote, or maybe you’re having a bad day. Maybe you just like to lump people into groups – I dunno.
I’m not sure what to say – do you expect me to argue that women haven’t been treated and portrayed poorly since the dawn of time? Well I’m not. But that has nothing to do with how men are being portrayed now and if Patriarchal concepts of gender roles are the only ones doing them harm. I call myself a post-feminist because I believe that Feminism hasn’t done enough to free men and women from traditional gender roles.
Fine, I’ll go along with this. You don’t have to respond to anything I’ve said above, but if you do take the time to reply, I just have one question:
Do you think that men have been harmed by feminism beyond the removal of undue privilege?
@Xakudo, I think you make a really good point. However I think it’s possible (and even a good thing) to understand how a person’s past has shaped their opinions and actions without letting it excuse them.
I’m worried that we may have wandered too far from the topic, but I can’t resist responding….
EasilyEnthused, my anecdote about my parents is matched by a lot of data (for example, and another).
It sounds to me like no matter who is making the decisions, you’re interpreting it as the woman dominating the relationship. If you witness Schroeder giving in to Lucy on occasion A but not on occasion B, I might say “so they’re both making decisions.” And you might say “no, on occasion B, Lucy was just allowing him to perform dominance to be sexy, and really it aligned with her wishes, but on occasion A Lucy was the one making the decisions, and that characterizes the entire relationship.”
I know you didn’t ask me, but my answer would depend on what “men” means. I’m sure some individual men have been harmed by feminism — e.g., someone falsely accused of rape, or even of sexism, whereas in a society that never had feminism that never would have happened.
Do I think men as a class have been hurt by feminism (beyond undue privilege removal)? No, I don’t.
Did you accidentally reverse “men” and “women” in this sentence?
Yep, sorry. Fixed.
@Barry
I don’t mind you commenting or answering questions I’ve asked other people. If I think I’m getting overwhelmed by too many sides, I’ll say so. I’ve disagreed with you enough before, but that said, I have always enjoyed your input.
Maybe I’m dense, but couldn’t that Peanuts example apply both ways? If we accept that men are expected to be dominant and women are expected to be submissive – we already know that our gender system punishes people who fall out of line – so the flip side of AB’s complaint that a woman gets called out for not being submissive is that men get called out and rejected for not being dominant enough.
Is that unfair to women, as it seems AB implied? Only if you value dominance over submission – which I do not. Submissiveness is also the freedom from responsibility, among other things. Denying this benefit is patriarchal to the core.
I read what EE wrote and I am having an incredibly difficult time figuring out where he said something that sounded like that.
That’s a mighty big claim. I guess that depends on what you mean by “men as a class.” If feminism harmed all but one men in the world, that would probably not constitute a class to someone, or would it? So do male victims of DV who are refused shelter because they are men harmed by feminism as a class, or do they not constitute a class? It also depends on what you mean by “feminism,” whether it’s things in feminist theory that are just a theory that can never be implicated in actual wrongdoing, things that feminists themselves do, general trends in our society that are indistinguishable from trends in feminism, policies that feminists support, actions by women that feminists excuse, or merely dissent that feminists have silenced. How many times have we heard prominent feminists refer to father’s rights activists as the abuser’s lobby?
Commenting Note: If you would like me to let you through first-time moderation, your name should probably not be “AB is a lying cunt.” Thank you.
What’s that psychological principle that tells us that if you say, “don’t think of a black cat” the person thinks of a black cat? Or if you don’t want people feeding the ducks then a sign that says, “don’t feed the ducks” only places that activity into someone’s mind.
Ozy, in your writing you do this a lot. It sort of irks me. I know it’s not deliberate but one should be aware of backlash effects.
When I talk to my kids I try to speak in the affirmative, what I want them to do, not what I do not want them to do (within reason, of course) precisely because of this concept.
Yeah, well, I was mostly just amused at the person with the name ‘AB is a lying cunt’ who is apparently completely unaware of why I would possibly not want to have them comment on my blog.
While I do think that feminists default to the woman=victim,man=abuser position* and then depending their intellectual honesty drift toward a more even approach, it is not fair to say a lack of DV facilities for men is solely their doing. Honestly, I don’t think the really rabid MRA crowd sincerely believes that women raping/beating up men is a real issue. Their focus tends to parallel more mainstream preconceptions of abuse (government welfare, gold diggers, child custody, paternity fraud, etc.).
* At least when discussing broad policy, they may be very sympathetic to individual cases because most feminists are usually decent human beings.
EE, I tend to favor relationships in which both partners are decision-makers. I don’t want either women or men to be generally predominate decision-makers in heterosexual relationships — and at least in my friend group, it’s not normal for one person to dominate all decisions.
Ozy, thanks for that note! I’ll pick my sock puppet name more carefully next time. :-p
Dungone, whose handle always makes me think of Pogo.
You’re seemingly under the mistaken impression that before feminism, there were lots of shelters for male victims of DV, which all got destroyed by evil feminist ravagers. In fact, shelters for male victims of DV didn’t exist before feminism, and feminism has neither destroyed them, nor prevented MRAs from starting and building their own shelters.
In my area of the country, nearly every domestic violence shelter provides services for male victims, although often that service is a place to stay in a hotel rather than a place to stay in the shelter itself. Every one of those shelters was started by feminists, and is run primarily by feminists. Is that a perfect situation, or one that can’t be criticized? Of course not. But given the choice between imperfect services provided by feminists, or no services at all, what feminists have contributed is self-evidently a net positive.
There is a sense, of course, in which people really are silenced — or intimidated out of speaking — by the prospect of unfair or harsh criticism (or sometimes, any criticism). However, that’s hardly something unique to when feminists speak; it potentially happens anytime anyone criticizes, including when you criticize feminism. I think it does make sense to be concerned with that kind of “silencing,” and to create particular forums in which various views are not silenced.
But I don’t think it’s meaningful to say “feminism has harmed men as a class because some men may feel intimidated out of saying their views because they don’t want to be criticized.” That seems to me to be bending over backwards to find sins to damn feminism for.
@Solo, let’s start with the law. If you run a domestic violence shelter that receives government funding, which many do, then it is your legal responsibility not to discriminate based on, among other things, sex. The argument that it’s men’s own fault is rather preposterous if one acknowledges that discrimination against men exists. If it exists then the argument sounds a lot like an argument that black people don’t have equal job opportunities because they don’t try as hard and, after all, most of the jobs were created by whites.
As far as the “rabid” MRA crowd, I think it’s really troubling that you would say that a man who wants the right to spend time with his very own child is “rabid”. I don’t read very many MRA websites, but the ones that do, do care about DV. I see article after article lambasted for writing about women who attack their spouses without referring to it as DV. Actually, for the most extremist MRA people that I know of, they seem to find that opposing VAWA is a cause du jour because it is such a discriminatory law.
“Honestly, I don’t think the really rabid MRA crowd sincerely believes that women raping/beating up men is a real issue. Their focus tends to parallel more mainstream preconceptions of abuse (government welfare, gold diggers, child custody, paternity fraud, etc.).”
The problem is the precedent that is set. In a sort of handwaiving of “DV is mostly male on female violence, thus if we fix that, the rest (if there’s actually any) will follow”, which prevents measures for male victims, that are then seen as removing from female victims.
And well, movement for equality, meet half the population not having service, with stuff you lobby and have lobbied for, and you being contented (not trying to change that). Even accusing people who do try to change that of trying to steal the funding of shelters.
I mean seriously, the accusation on the case of VRR vs Kimberly Nixon will be that “How dare Kimberly tried to sue a rape crisis shelter!!” rather than focus on the bigotry of the shelter themselves and them going to court rather than settling on the side of good sense (you know, not discriminating against trans people for their transness).
Also Duluth Model. Archaic, ideological-based, useless, and utterly based on man=bad and perpetrator and woman=good and victim/innocent stuff. And it’s proponents are who, you think?
@AB,
On the subject of being head of the household, the study summarized in this article claims that women are more likely to be sole decision-makers than men:
It probably took a lot of MRA activism for that to happen, anyway, which contradicts the whole premise that MRA types really don’t care about DV. But I suppose that these are male-only hotels, following the same exact logic that female abuse victims should be isolated from men? I doubt it. It’s kind of like having a coed sports team that requires the women to go change in their cars because female locker rooms don’t exist. Would that be a net positive because we wouldn’t have sports facilities if they hadn’t been built for men in the first place, or a net negative because the sports facilities were built during an era of discrimination against women? Frankly, I find it really hard to believe that in the era when DV shelters got started that DV was that much worse for women than for men. In fact, I heard a story that one of the original women who worked on DV shelters was ostracized from the movement because she tried to let in men (someone could perhaps help me out with a citation?). Men have been seen as violent oppressors of women for a very long time, in fact, going back to the era of Temperance and Prohibition when women’s rights activists were among the crusaders in favor of going dry. Their logic was that men were spending money that should go to women and children on booze and then coming home to beat the wives. People didn’t really view men as victims of harsh economic realities, class warfare, poor working conditions, etc. So it’s no surprise that when the DV movement got started, men’s needs were largely ignored as well. If you look at the broader societal attitudes towards mens’ issues over the past 200 years, it’s no wonder that the men never got around to building their own DV shelters.
@dungone,
Separate, but equal, right?
You’re thinking of Erin Pizzey, probably. In this 1999 article, she reported:
AB:
Are we reading the same site? That article was specifically about how there was no order on the ship, and many people pushed everyone out of the way in order to save themselves first. A mother told in the article about how she had to fight hysterical adults to hold on to her 12 year old daughter, and expressed how she “couldn’t believe it, especially the men, they were worse than the women”. Other accounts about that ship tell about men pushing pregnant women out of the way to save themselves. Hardly the modern Titanic story you make it out to be.
As I recall the point of question was of mensactivism.org’s mention of it (when someone was using it as a comparison to a feminist site I believe). And their mention was of the idea that “women and children first” is still considered acceptable protocol in an emergency. But I’ll bet there was similar panic on the Titanic as well. Now if there were mention of doing something about the unruly men that would be one thing. But “women and children first”? And I wasn’t trying to make it a Titanic story, I was said Titanic style chivalry.
Ozy:
Commenting Note: If you would like me to let you through first-time moderation, your name should probably not be “AB is a lying cunt.” Thank you.
This shit here right here? Not cool. The majority of us here that have disagreements with AB are able to do it on civil terms. Get yo mind right (whoever you are).
@ Hugh R. and Dungone,
Yeah, what a ridiculous feminist that was in this thread, who brought up the hotel rooms and claimed that separate is equal! And that shelters that provide vouchers are perfect and beyond criticism! Stupid feminists. What an asinine thing for that feminist to have said.
By the way, I have friends who have done, or do, shelter work. These are people who — unlike, I suspect, their MRA critics — are actually spending time directly helping battered people (mostly women but also some men). They’re mostly radical feminists, because that’s who a lot of the people willing to do that work is. It’s really really REALLY fucking hard work. It’s not rewarding. The people you’re helping are often at the low points of their lives and may not be easy to work with in a lot of ways. And there’s not nearly enough resources, so on top of it all, you spend a lot of time telling people who need help that you can’t help them.
It is. REALLY. hard. Soul-crushing, might be a good term.
It’s approximately 200 billion times harder than, say, sneering at shelters because they primarily help women.
I agree with you. Separate is not equal. The shelters should provide equal services, without regard to sex. Security problems are real, but should be solved. But nothing either of you are doing is going to bring that about.
The day I see MRAs supporting battered men the way that feminists support battered women — either by making your own network, or by making partnerships with existing feminist networks and saying “we’re going to put in the hard work and lobby congress and raise the money so that existing networks can expand their services for men without cutting off their already existing and horribly overburdened services for women” — is the day I will respond to MRA sneers at existing help networks with something other than contempt.
@Barry,
If Erin Pizzey’s account is correct, then it appears that some feminists have created a one-sided portrayal of domestic violence that underestimates the rates of violence towards men.
You may well be correct that the “net benefit” of feminist shelters towards male survivors of domestic violence is positive. However, it looks highly probable that there are groups of feminists who are promoting incorrect information on the rates of male victimization, which makes it harder for society to take the problem seriously.
@Barry, so what you’re saying is, besides the snide non-sequiturs, ad hominems, broad generalizations, and appeals to authority, you’re not actually helping yourself, either?
What’s interesting to me is that you’re admitting that feminists are illegally discriminating against men and you actually believe that the proper resolution isn’t to criticize them for it but to start a brand new DV shelter movement for men and have them get their own money from the government so as to not interfere with the sexist practices of DV shelters ran by radical feminists. And you stick to your story even when confronted with the historical fact that the first DV shelter in the world was started by an anti-feminist woman who wanted to shelter men and deal with abusive women but was kicked out of her own organization by feminists who didn’t want to do that?
@Hugh Ristik, what really bugs me is the way in which the misinformation about male victims goes hand in hand with denying support for men. What Barry doesn’t seem to understand is that if the government gives money to a non-profit organization that helps abuse victims, then that organization must help out abuse victims regardless of their sex. There’s no such thing as, “oh, well, we worked really hard to get money from the government for women, so get your own!” There’s no such excuse as, oh, well, feminists were the ones who did all the work so why should any of those public funds go to men? That’s called sexism, pure and simple. As far as I know, my tax money goes to finance DV shelters and it’s all well and good, so I don’t want them to discriminate against anyone. And confronting people who feel otherwise is doing something about it, I think. For Barry to say that I shouldn’t have a say in it is absurd.
@dungone,
Btw, have you seen a reference that it was Pizzey who wanted to let in men? Maybe that was someone else.
To play devil’s advocate for a minute, I am not sold on the idea of housing male survivors and female survivors in the same location. I don’t know how well it has played out in organizations that have tried it, but given that so much DV is reciprocal, some people in shelters are probably violence-prone themselves. Not only would female survivors be around violence-prone male survivors, but male survivors would be around violence-prone female survivors.
Yet female-only shelters do discriminate against males, which is a problem. Another possible solution might be to require shelter organizations to open two locations: one for women, and one for men. Unfortunately, this burden could too onerous. However, perhaps federal funding could mandate two locations for single-gender shelters, and provide enough money for both once it was received.
@dungone,
Under which statute? I was thinking Title IX, but then I realized it only applies to education.
Right, this attitude has always seemed very callous for. Why even focus on female-only shelters in the first place? I can think of a few reasons:
1. The belief that male survivors and female survivors are best segregated. This is an empirical question that I don’t know the answer to.
2. Having more experience counseling female survivors. Is counseling a male survivor of DV really so different from counseling a female survivor? I don’t know.
3. The belief that domestic violence is vastly male-on-female, perhaps buttressed by second-wave feminist ideology, leading to gender-selective empathy. This sort of ideology could contribute to believing that female survivors must be separated from male survivors. Gender-selective empathy, the belief in a large gap in prevalence, and a belief that male-on-female violence is worse than female-on-male could contribute to specializing in counseling women, and believing that counseling women is greatly different from counseling men.
@Hugh – “Right, this attitude has always seemed very callous for. Why even focus on female-only shelters in the first place? I can think of a few reasons:
1. The belief that male survivors and female survivors are best segregated. This is an empirical question that I don’t know the answer to.”
I wanted to weigh in here. I actually believe that men and women are served best with having a segregated support structure at least with respect to accommodation. There is always going to be a percentage of people, that will prefer male or female only space in which to feel safe. Even if that space is a female or male only common room in a larger communal structure, some people are simply served best by having that option. Unfortunately, A quick search in my local area has turned up no support services for men experiencing DV. the best I could find was 2 shelters catering to the homeless and men recovering from addictions.
“2. Having more experience counseling female survivors. Is counseling a male survivor of DV really so different from counseling a female survivor? I don’t know.”
I don’t know the answer to this one either. On it’s face one would think that people suffer the same physical, emotional and mental trauma associated with being abused, yet men also suffer the further stigma of gender shame for being abused when clearly, that is something that a Real Man would never experience. I can’t say what the myriad issues are for women who experience DV in terms of their counselling needs but while there would obviously be some parallels for both Men and Women I think there are some significant differences that are faced by each as well.
“3. The belief that domestic violence is vastly male-on-female, perhaps buttressed by second-wave feminist ideology, leading to gender-selective empathy. This sort of ideology could contribute to believing that female survivors must be separated from male survivors. Gender-selective empathy, the belief in a large gap in prevalence, and a belief that male-on-female violence is worse than female-on-male could contribute to specializing in counseling women, and believing that counseling women is greatly different from counseling men.”
The biggest thing about the abuse industry that pisses me off is the insistence that since the higher proportion of reported DV cases are male on female, that it somehow invalidates the smaller number of reported female on male incidents. Without digging into the reality that reports =\= actual incidents, Dare I say that ultimately, it doesn’t really make a God damned bit of difference if there are 2 abused women for every abused man or 5 or 10. They ALL deserve equal support regardless of the numbers. They ALL deserve to be recognized and validated and told, “You are worthy of our help and love and we WILL help you.” Unfortunately, too many people are being left out in the cold.
@Hugh Ristik, I think I’m going to have to issue a mea culpa on the law issue. I screwed up a whole bunch of stuff in my head on that one. I’m thinking of employment practices, which may still apply to cases where DV shelters refuse to allow men to work there. I know that would violate the law… just as the Faith Based Initiatives violate the law when religious organizations that receive funding only hire from within their religion. Both get away with it.
I thought Pizzey wanted to provide care for men, or at least she said so in not so many words. What I got out of her is that she wanted the DV community to recognize that both men and women can be abusers, which was apparently enough to get her kicked out of the organization she started. One of the policies she was against was refusing to shelter male children over the age of 12. So at least we could say that she’s more in favor of helping men than contemporary gender separatists. Plus when she wrote about women abusers, she said that they are in need of more love and care than anyone else in order to heal. At least that’s how I understood it. So that’s about all the evidence that I can offer to say that she wasn’t inherently against men nor in favor of demonizing abusers… but yeah, it’s not 100% for certain.
Dear Oyz,
thanks for womansplaining how men are supposed to feel about things that are either quite strawmanish (“A man getting fired from his job is not the male equivalent of rape.” “Getting divorced is not the male equivalent of rape.” WTF?) or will most likely never apply to you.
What Barry doesn’t seem to understand is that if the government gives money to a non-profit organization that helps abuse victims, then that organization must help out abuse victims regardless of their sex. “The government gives money” to many non-profit causes via grants of various kinds. If you run a non-profit that serves the community, especially if it is aimed at an underserved portion of the community and are willing and able to put in the time and effort to identify a funding opportunity and submit a grant application, your non-profit can also receive government funding, at the local, state, and federal level. Having been through this process, however, I can attest to the fact that like many government processes, it is quite byzantine and laborious to find the calls for proposals, read the reams of instructions, find and fill out all the various forms, write all of the required statements, assemble all the documentation, and craft a detailed budget and justification, and other requirements, and then submit to the proper agencies for review. C’mon, if the stupid “abstinence only/if you have sex the Baby Jesus will ruin your life in punishment” people can get millions in funding, then gender issues/social justice folks as smart and articulate as the ones here should be able to successfully apply as well 😉
@EasilyEnthused:
You’re ignoring what I’m talking about and what you responded to. My first assertion was: “I actually think feminism has a better point, given the patriarchal (e.g. men being legally defined as the head of the family) past of most western countries [snip]” At no point did I say that current western societies are patriarchal (or there would have been no need to mention ‘the patriarchal past’) here, but even if I had, your assertion was that “Patriarchy isn’t the rule of “men” – it’s the rule of “Patriarchs.” Of Fathers. Of *powerful men.* Not all men are powerful – not all men are patriarchs.”
In other words, you weren’t talking about whether or not current society is a patriarchy, you were claiming that only the most powerful men had any undue power in a patriarchy. And that’s insulting. If you don’t want to talk about whether being head of the family is a position of power, don’t respond to a post that was specifically talking about societies where men were legally defined as the head of the family.
Not in a patriarchy, where the father gets to set the norms and rules the mother is required to uphold. And now that we aren’t legally in a patriarchy any more, it’s about time men put just a fraction of the energy they use on trying to win custody cases into participating in raising their children.
That’s funny, because I often hear the opposite, that women always try to change men into going along with what the women want, but then they become tired of it if the men are too complacent. I also see that your experiences include both dominant and submissive behaviour in men, and yet you ascribe both behaviours solely to female choice. Very PUA. Also, I can’t help noticing that the behaviour you describe (being attracted to strong-willed opinionated individuals, yet often trying to make them complacent anyway) is common in men too.
I talked to a woman who admitted she always stepped very carefully in discussions with her boyfriend, because too much of an open challenge would make him hostile, but too little opposition would bore him. My own father have said that he fully expects to lose most conflicts in the home, because my mother is more stubborn than him and much more invested in these decisions, and he knew and expected that when they married, but at the same time, whenever there’s a decision he really cares about, he always gets at least an equal say.
I’ve noticed I do the same, I like when a strong-willed and competent man can make the decisions I don’t care about, but when I’m invested in something, I rarely let myself be dominated. Only when I do this, I’m an overly dominant manipulating harpy, proof of female dominion, while my father is obviously a victim of female oppression. Funny how that plays out.
No, you just that whatever men experience, it’s bad enough for them to make their bigotry understandable, but the sexism women experience is no excuse for them. Sorry, but that’s the logical consequence of what you’re saying.
Again you’re turning the conversation away from the topic. The topic was your claim that MRAs are less masculine men who don’t like hegemonic, patriarchal masculinity. You were saying that the MRM opposed the patriarchy, and that the men in it spoke out against patriarchal gender norms. I’m saying that they’re speaking out in favour of patriarchy, because pretty much all of their claims about men and women harken back to the foundation of patriarchy. They’re usually practising hegemonic masculinity, and they aren’t, they’re not arguing that they should be free of it, they argue that it’s women’s fault for not letting them be the (hegemonic masculine) men they have a right to be.
Not to a bigger extent than they and everybody else have been harmed by the social revolution of the 60s and 70s. Tearing down old social norms means tearing down a lot of security. My parents are old hippies, and even though they’re among the most socially progressive people I know (and that’s by Danish standards), they sometimes miss the old days. My dad’s old choir once refused a free trip to China because it meant accepting a sponsor and thus supporting capitalism. His football team was called the Football Association for Marxists and Leninists (and he’s still not ashamed of them). He got thrown out of a church choir for showing up in faded jeans and a raincoat. And even he thinks the bible thumpers in his family have a point. But that doesn’t mean I think they were wrong to demand social change.
I think there are pre-feminist concept which are still going strong today, and taken out of their original context, they can be more one-sided than they use to be. But if you ask me directly, I don’t think feminism is responsible for things like domestic and sexual violence against men being taken less seriously, or for men having fewer resources to deal with it. Neither do I think feminism is to blame for men not getting as much custody of their children during a divorce.
I will concede to the MRM that if you don’t think sexual assault is a very big problem, the added risk of being falsely accused of sexual misconduct to due to a bigger tendency to believe the victim and a lessened stigma against reporting probably outweighs the benefits, at least for MRAs (but then again, I saw a guide from the Spearhead about how to avoid being ‘falsely’ accused of rape, which was almost identical to guides on how to not rape (e.g. be careful about having sex with drunk or crying partners), and even if the motivation is only to avoid punishment, not avoiding to hurt your partner, I’ll take it over indifference any day). But that’s about the only thing I can think of, and even that has the potential to be beneficial to men.
@Danny:
Easily Enthused:
AB:
The way I read this, according to my experiences, you’re talking about the same thing here and not opposites.
If it’s something you don’t care about, he doesn’t need to be all that strong-willed and competent, right?
@Hugh Ristik:
The survey is based on self-rapport. Not that it completely invalidates it, but it’s worth taking into account, especially because I’d already mentioned that it was my experience that women exerting the same influence as men were often deemed more dominant. For instance, I’ve talked to several Americans who say that car dealers tend to always talk to the man in the couple, which indicates that he’s usually the one they have to convince in order to make a sale. And yet the only complaint I ever hear is about the stereotype of it, not the origin of it, which seems to be that men are usually the ones having the most say in which car to buy.
There’s also Barry’s studies showing that women are more likely to be willing to migrate with their family and accept setbacks in their own career and if it means benefiting their husband’s. I think migrating is a pretty huge decision, and so is buying a car (though perhaps more in Denmark than the USA). And if you’re willing to believe the self-rapport of the study, the men let the women make decisions about the home because they believe they’re more knowledgeable in that area, which is probably true.
And finally, there’s the area of interest. I know from experience that when someone agrees to go along with what another wants, it’s often because they don’t care as much. For instance, my father doesn’t care a lot about which colour the pillows in the couch are, so my mother bought some and placed them on the couch without asking. But he does care about which car to drive, so he got an equal say in that. When my mother wanted a caravan/travel trailer, and my father didn’t, they agreed that he’d get a golf membership in return (which as of now as probably been more expensive). When they bought kitchen appliances, my mother had the most to say. But since my father started to do an increasing amount of the cooking, he became more insistent that my mother’s preferences (which were often based more on decorative concerns) weren’t working, so their new stove is one he specified.
In that way, influence follows interest and investment, and whenever my father becomes as interested and invested in something as my mother, his influence rises comparably. But on a survey, my mother would probably come across as overly dominant because of how many minor decisions she makes which my father don’t care that much about, and my father often treats her that way in public. This lead to an interesting incident where I brought up how male complaints about female dominance in public are often independent of how dominant they are at home. The women started to say that men always complained about women making all these decisions but “we know they really like it”, which caused my father’s jaw to drop.
To the women, it was very obvious that when men never bothered talking to their wives about being bothered by an uneven distribution of power, but were always laughing about it with other men at parties, there were only two options: Either the men were indirectly trying to change their wives behaviour via public ridicule and turning other men against her, or they were pretty satisfied with the arrangement and just liked to joke around. Since they couldn’t imagine the former (I can, since my abusive ex used that technique), they defaulted to the latter. I think my father was pretty surprised at how him joking about my mother’s dominance got interpreted by different women.
Anyway, I sincerely doubt researchers were able to come across many major decisions during their recorded conversations, since those kinds rarely come up more than once a year, so what we’re talking about is day-to-day decisions, usually concerning an area where women tend have more interest and investment. And the men didn’t report feeling forced to go along with what the women wanted, but rather that they trust their wives choices (again, in an area where she usually has more experience), and that they want her to be happy more than they want to win the argument.
It’s awfully sweet (if it wasn’t because they’re furthering harassment and discrimination of women by helping to portray them as oppressing harpies who needs to be taken down, but I’m willing to believe they’re not doing it on purpose), but as long as men are not more involved in the house and family life, and don’t seem to be feel pressured to give in to their wives, I don’t think it’s quite the problem it’s made out to be.
Talk about having your cake and eating it too! I have found myself in exactly that double-bind so many times and with so many women. What’s interesting to me is when women make poor choices that they later turn out to regret, but if you try to reason with them into making a different choice, they accuse you of being a domineering asshole. I’ve noticed that it takes years of effort before some of the women I’ve gotten to know deprogram themselves from this bias against advice from men and actually allow themselves to participate in a good-faith discussion about decisions they have to make.
@AB:
RE: Patriarchy
Ok, I see what you’re saying now (it took me a few reads to get it.) I agree, that society’s history encouraged dominant men and rewarded subservient women.
Hey, I’m with you. Did you read some of the posts here about men who are not-so-subtly suspected of being pedophiles because they are alone with a child? You might think this is backwards, but I think we’re going to have to stop seeing all men as potential pedophiles before men are going to feel comfortable taking a greater role in caring for kids.
I’m not an MRA. I don’t expect to see fathers awarded joint custody 100% of the time. What I DO expect is to change the narrative of our society from:
“You’re a man who enjoys spending time with children? What are you, a pedophile?”
to:
“You’re a man who enjoys spending time with children? That’s unusual, but refreshing! Good for you!”
I realize that the second reaction is becoming more common – but it’s not going to happen overnight.
You’ve mentioned a few times that you notice a concensus among you and your female friends regarding men and housework – I won’t begrudge you an anecdote, I’ve used them too.
But it turns out your anecdote is not only true, but it also hurts your case:
Time magazine recently published a story about research that showed that while men are helping out more around the house than ever before, women’s opinions on how much work men were doing around the house hasn’t changed along with the trend. Wow! Talk about a thankless job!
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2084582,00.html#ixzz1jvLm79As
Finally, quoted for truth:
Then,
@EasilyEnthused:
And that’s all I meant. I find it more understandable to classify women as oppressed and men as oppressed because it has historical precedent (and still happens around the world). I don’t believe the distinction is as useful today, though having a patriarchal past definitely still has an effect, but I can better see how it came about.
I think it needs to go together. You don’t say that we can’t start aiming to get more female engineers before all sexism in that field is gone, because then nothing would happen. I think having a well-adjusted neighbour who’s a stay-at-home dad, or is at least often seen caring for his kids, does a lot to dispel people’s suspicions that there’s something fishy about men who care overly much about children. Or seeing dads about groups of chatting moms at a café. Seeing fathers as the liaison between the home and school on equal footing with mothers. Hearing men at work talking about having to go home to take care of the kids. Etc., etc..
A visible campaign to get more parental leave to men could spark debate, get the ugly opinions out in the open to be refuted, send a message that fathers were more interested in parenting, and of course (hopefully) give the fathers who want to take parental leave a better opportunity to do so. Unlike the constant demands for more custody I see everywhere, it wouldn’t have the implication of being about power, or about taking children away from their primary caregivers, it would be about giving children even more care. I’m not saying you’re wrong to be angry about the implication that paedophilia is a more common motivation for men to want to be with children than paternal instinct, I’m just saying a man with a baby carriage is worth thousands of words about fathers’ rights.
I don’t recall talking about female friends who thought men did less housework. I was talking about men doing less housework in general. And your study doesn’t refute that, since it doesn’t mention the amount of housework, only that the combined paid and unpaid work of the sexes was roughly equal. It even said “men were not doing the same amount of housework as women”. So it actually refutes your point. If a woman married to a carpenter started to visit him at work and spend her time telling him which shape the chair he was working on ought to have, she’s interfering with his business (unless the chair is for their own home), but if a men starts telling his wife which kitchen appliances she’s supposed to get, despite not doing much cooking himself, he’s interfering in her business.
I don’t think there’s anything oppressive about the person doing the work around the house having the biggest say in how the work around the house should be done. I would like for more married couples to split things more equally, or reverse the roles a bit, and hopefully there’s some negotiation taking place no matter what. But as long as women are doing most of the housework, and probably spending most time around the house too, I don’t see the harm in them making most of the decisions about how best to do their work.
I think I can agree with you about the background, but that’s about it. From what I have experience, if anything, being a man talking about sexism against men is made easier, compared to being a woman talking about sexism against women, precisely because the MRM is less well-known as a movement than feminism.
MRM notions about sexism against men (women lie about rape all the time, women always get everything during a divorce, women are nagging and domineering in the home, women ought to give sex to a man according to what he deserves and not how attractive he is, men being portrayed as humorously clueless is a huge injustice, feminism is bad, etc.) are perfectly mainstream and acceptable to express, and at the same time, expressing them don’t mean you have to answer for what the Spearhead wrote last week. In comparison, women are routinely labelled as feminists and expected to answer for what Andrea Dworkin said 30 years ago. Not a position I’d like to be in (but sadly, I am).
This is part of what I’m talking about, and I think feminists do to when they mention ‘the tone argument’. If a woman (not going to distinguish between women and feminists here, because few people except feminists do) says something problematic, and the response is “I expected better of you, so I’m not going to listen to your point, and will instead focus only on how wrongly you expressed it”, and a man does the same and gets the response “I don’t agree with the way you said it, but I’m going to let it slide because I can’t call you a feminist, so I’ll just focus on your point and agree with you”, that’s hardly fair.
@Flyingkal:
Actually, it’s the other way around, but you’re still proving my point. I mentioned having similar preferences to my father, and the first thing people insinuate is that I’m unreasonable in a specifically female way. Never mind that my father is pretty much the poster boy for the sensitive man letting himself get dominated by his wife (he even referred to himself as an omega-male, before having heard of anything but alphas and betas), when I behave that way, it just proves how demanding women are. PUA-logic at its finest. 😀
EE, ““You’re a man who enjoys spending time with children? That’s unusual, but refreshing! Good for you!””
Saying, “You’re a woman who enjoys working? That’s unusual, but refreshing! Good for you!” would be condescending trash. Why is it any different to say it to a man about children?
Is this a micro-aggression?
C’mon, debaser.
In our society seeing a woman working is nothing out of the ordinary – and enjoying her line of work is nothing special.
If you really want to flip it around, try a field like computer sciences. It *is* objectively rare to see women in that field – and those trailblazers who do it should be encouraged by our society, thereby breaking down gender expectations.
It doesn’t matter if it’s compiling code or changing diapers.
Saying, “wow that code was very well written” is encouraging.
Saying, “wow for a woman, you code well” is insulting.
I am currently a stay at home dad but before that I worked in IT. I’m not a trailblazer and neither were the dozens of women working in my department.
The part that really gives me a lot of trouble about this is that at the extreme end of things, the safest environment that we could possibly put a person into is a straight jacket in a padded room. When do you stop telling men that they should have to cross to the other side of the street because they are Schrodinger’s Rapist when they see a woman on the sidewalk and when do you say that it’s up to the woman to get acclimated back into reality? I don’t think it’s necessarily a choice that the victim should have in the matter, if they want to get better. I think that getting someone to overcome irrational fears is a very big part of what therapy should provide. I feel that from what I heard about DV shelters, this is not something that they necessarily focus on.
In addition to the points that EE made about this statement, I would like to add that it’s also about time that women stop pressuring men to provide for the family financially so that men can have the time and energy to develop a thriving relationship with their children.
@AB, your preferences as a woman have no bearing on the preferences of your father. If I your father wanted a woman who cleans the house naked in a pair of red stilettos, I bet you would be singing a different tune.
EE, I wonder if that time-use study accounted for the length of time that people spend commuting to work. Men are typically known for having a longer commute than women in order to get to better-paying jobs while living in communities that have good schools and better housing. I could imagine raising a family in a 1 bedroom apartment in New York City with no dishwasher, no washer or dryer, and having a 15 minute walk to work. Or I could live an hour away in a nice house in Connecticut with all the bells and whistles plus better schools. So in this case, if a man spent 2 hours per day commuting and his wife spent 20 minutes extra to load up the dishwasher, then according to the study, women would still feel like men are not contributing enough. The alternative, I think, is that both of the parents would potentially spend a lot more time performing chores and there would be even more pressure on men to earn more.
@debaser71:
Saying “You do X well for a woman” is also not similar at all to saying “It’s cool that you’re a woman and interested in X”. Girls and women tend to get the latter all the time if they’re into something typically masculine, just read Ozy’s account of being a ‘cool girl’.
@dungone:
Yes they have. If I’m labelled a demanding bitch for having much the same preferences which get my father labelled a pussy-whipped mangina, something is wrong with the way we (or in this case, you) judge female dominance and male submission.
AB:
You were talking about a specific ship which wasn’t the Titanic. The ship from the article had no protocol of women and children first. You post makes it sound like the guys on that page were commenting about actual men dying because someone had implemented a policy of women and children first, when in reality, the article was an example of how the “women and children first” protocol which MRAs are always bitching about (or more often, gleefully use as an excuse to argue for the oppression of women, exactly as it was always used) is no more, and when men are in mortal danger, they don’t feel any stronger need to put others’ lives before their own than anyone else, quite the contrary.
I’ll agree that I shouldn’t have said protocol but rather attitude. Now as for what my post makes it sound like there was only one comment on that post so I don’t know where you got the whole “actual men dying” bit from.
And the “women and children” first attitude has not quite been so much about men feeling the need to put the lives of women and children above their own but rather an expectation that they do that (as a part of being a real man of course) put upon them by other people. Its one thing to think highly of a man that goes out of his way like that, its quite another to shame a man because he doesn’t go out his way like that.
I’m not sure exactly where you are going with this, AB, but it can’t be good. I can’t wrap my head around the way that being controlling and manipulative is supposed to be the same as being a pushover. It’s sort of like saying that we shouldn’t criticize someone for being greedy because there exists another person who is bad with their money. They don’t cancel each other out somehow.
@AB:
I don’t get what you mean with “the other way around”.
I thought you were talking about how the decision-making were made in the interaction between you and your boyfriend, or any other person for that matter. Not how the same decision-making process were judged in comparison to other people’s decision-making process.
@Dungone:
Yes, I know there’s people who seemingly hands over responsibility for decisions, just to be able to keep the liberty of critizing it later, should it turn out to be a less-than-optimum decision. And I’ve also done my share of dealing with such people.
But as I said to AB in my last post, that’s not what I thought we (or sie?) were talking about.
@Flyingkal:
The part of my post you initially quoted and responded to in a pretty judgemental way, indicating that it was an especially female and unreasonable preference, was a part where I compared myself to my own father. You didn’t quote the part that preceded it, talking about my father, but it should be pretty obvious that “I’ve noticed I do the same” must refer to a comparison with someone.
And given that I was talking about male preferences in that post (and how they weren’t that different from female preferences), I wasn’t prepared for it being interpreted to mean “I have this preference which is so typically female and never ever seen in men, and it’s exactly as unreasonable, destructive, oppressive, and badwrong to the poor men in my surroundings as dungone has always accused my sexuality of being. So please, take a shot at what I have repeatedly said is the most triggering aspect of posting here, implying that most female sexuality (and mine in particular) is just fundamentally wrong and unacceptable, and that only men need to be told their sexuality isn’t abusive, and give dungone an opening to proceed harassing me about it”.
If I’d known it would be interpreted that way, I would have made sure to clarify that when I talked about my father’s choice about whom to marriage, and then proceeded to talk about my own preferences, starting with “I do the same”, it was to be taken to mean that I did the same as my father, not that I did the same as some girl-goblins that the reader had invented in their own head. Here’s the relevant quote btw:
Notice how I both started and ended with my father. That’s because he’s the comparison here. The point being that he’s a typical pussy-whipped mangina omega-male, whose wife makes most of the decisions at home. But only as long as he’s not as invested in them. The house they live in is the house he said to buy, the car they drive in was chosen by mutual agreement, he’s approved of every loan they’ve taken, he started picking out kitchen appliances after he’d begun to do most of the cooking, etc. He’s currently in a losing battle about what to name their Roomba, but that’s hardly a major decision.
My mother does make most day-to-day decisions (the kind which is often misleadingly labelled ‘major decisions in the home’ on surveys), but that’s because she’s opinionated and stubborn, and that’s part of what my father seem to like about her. Not to mention she simply cares more about the colour of the couch pillows and bedsheets than he does. And as I said in that post, I take more after my father than my mother in that regard. Stubborn and opinionated people are great (at least in one-on-one interactions) because they help me circumvent my indecisiveness and get stuff done, but I always make sure to get a minimum of equal say in subjects I’m invested in, at least for close friends and lovers.
And ironically, I found out that the down-side of that kind of arrangement is that not all stubborn and opinionated people work that way, and that some of them will become so used to being dominant all the time that they have trouble adjusting to me suddenly putting my foot down. So in order for me to get my say when I really want it, I have to become more dominant in day-to-day interactions, getting people used to me as someone who speaks her mind and have strong opinions, because otherwise, my usual complacency could establish a pattern of being dominated which is fundamentally unsatisfying to me and makes me less attractive to most of my surroundings.
But when I found that out, I realised it the pattern I disliked was caused by my own behaviour, and I started to change myself. When men who’ve been dominated by their wife for years because they’ve allowed and pattern of dominance to emerge, often motivated by their own lack of interest and investment, which they find increasingly hard to break when something matters to them, they seem to react by concluding that they’ve been unwillingly emasculated by a tyrannical harpy and they need to become a ‘real man’ again to put her in her place.
All us women who’ve had to become more opinionated and out-spoken because we realised no one was going to do it for us just disappear in their world-view. And when we finally do speak out, we’re part of some collective feminazi attempt to oppress their manhood, not people who’ve gone through the same they have.