AntiFeministMedia 2: Women should be replaced by better technology.
Our glorious future
The other day we took a look at a Redditor who calls himself AntiFeministMedia. He does not seem to like the ladies very much. Indeed, in some of the posts of his I quoted, he went so far as to say that women are animals, not humans, and suggested that men should pretty much have the final say in anything involving reproduction (as clearly the women have been doing a terrible job of it).
So one might wonder: why have ladies at all? This is a thought that has crossed the mind of AntiFeministMedia more than a few times. And he’s got some ideas about how it could be done.
As he points out in this comment, men have known all along that ladies is trouble. But now, thanks to superior male brains, we finally have the technology to do something about it. Today, fleshlights! Tomorrow, the womb!
Men have known women are the problem right throughout history, and to deny it just goes to show how ignorant and stupid you are.
Religion’s, culture’s, all have there warnings about women.
And all these things will be known again. The dots will be joined, and its my hope that after this current fuck up of allowing feminism to take root, men will never allow it again.
I actually think its time men went foreward alone. We have the hi-technology now to clone little boys into the future, soon we will have female androids with artificial wombs. Identical to women in almost every way, except for the animal nature…
Women should be replaced by better technology.
Consider the many fine benefits of this plan:
If men didnt have to live in this human-female environment, but instead was guaranteed in having his sexual needs met, and his genes live on into the future, there would be a lot less conflict of all kinds.
This two-party system of male and female has served its purpose (in the most brutal way), we are rapidly approaching a time where things could be radically different.
Tell me more about this brave new world of which you speak, in which men can live their lives free of bitches:
Cloning science and female androids may just solve that woman problem for us.
I wouldnt advocate killing women, certainly not, but a gradual fade-out, allow women to live out their natural lives, while we transition to the new technology.
No need for anything as unpleasant as killing, no. Just the elimination of one gender by the other through a little “fade-out,” like they have in the movies. Nothing objectionable about this, not at all.
If you’ve followed any of these links back to the original comments, you’ll see that AntiFeministMedia, like most truly original thinkers, has gotten some resistance to his ideas — even from the normally forward-looking thinkers of the Men’s Rights subreddit. And a few downvotes!
But some of his comments are so clearly and obviously correct, so pithy and wise, that they get upvotes. Like this one, suggesting that female demand for iPads and mobile phones is one of the central driving forces behind war:
Well its nice to hear her comment that western women themselves have been complicit in foreign wars and the rape of native women by soldiers, so that companies can obtain gold and other precious metals for Ipads and moble phones which women seem to like so much.
Oh you evil women with your iPads and mobile phones! We men are of course immune to the devilish allure of computer technology. Indeed, I’m typing this blog post on an old Smith-Corona Galaxie Portable Typewriter.
Posted on August 12, 2011, in antifeminism, evil women, I'm totally being sarcastic, men who should not ever be with women ever, MGTOW, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, patriarchy, reddit, sex, sexy robot ladies. Bookmark the permalink. 618 Comments.
I’m glad you’re open to refutation, VoiP! I was merely pointing out that the example of Ahmadinejad was not really relevant. The fact that a) the leader of an important (oil-rich) foreign country b) was invited to speak at one? two? universities despite c) being (presumably) universally reviled, does not rebut the notion that in general, 1) people who are primarily known for the content of their ideas, and 2) are universally reviled for those ideas, 3) do not usually get invited to significant numbers of college speaking engagements to expound on those ideas.
So, in order to rebut that notion, I would expect you to post examples of people who:
1) Are known primarily for the content of their ideas; and
2) Are universally reviled for those ideas; and
3) Nevertheless received significant numbers of invitations to speak at American colleges and universities (“significant” = double digits, say 30+).
Is that specific enough for you?
FTR, there are all sorts of other points one could make about Daly that I might even agree with. My only point here is that Daly was a significant feminist (i.e. she was not universally reviled) who ultimately expressed some hateful, bigoted views that mirror the ones that AFM is (justifiably) being mocked for.
I don’t hate Amanda Marcotte, Ami, nor do I understand the significance of your ‘familiarity’ allusion.
Fair enough David, but I still think describing 14 year olds as pros crosses the line, and also his repeated fawning over 15 year olds is indicative of a desire to, at the very least, take base advantage of someone who is less able to defend themselves.
For the record, I am against adults of any gender sleeping with children of any gender. If you are in love with someone who is too young, you can wait until they are old enough to consent.
Sorry, ballgame, but that’s ridiculous. If Ahmadinejad somehow doesn’t count as an example of someone who was invited to speak despite his unpopular ideas this whole exercise is really rather silly.
Also, I’ll make a deal with you. If you can convince one popular MRA to agree to mention AntiFeministMedia every time he mentions Mary Daly, I will mention Daly every time I mention AntiFeministMedia.
This shouldn’t be hard. I mean, since you’ve already criticized me for mentioning AntiFeministMedia without mentioning Daly, I assume that in the interests of fairness you’ve been going to MRA blogs and criticizing them for mentioning Daly without mentioning AntiFeministMedia.
caseymordred, is that you?
ballgame: I already mentioned Horowitz. I am willing to bet that a significant portion of the student population at every school Daly went to would have been against her (esp. had they only been told, “she thinks all men are irredeemably evil”).
I do know that Horowitz pretty much never spoke at a school without some people protesting it, and often more protesters than those who attended the speech.
And, as you have already mentioned, there is Coulter, and Meg Whitman.
So, yeah, I think your example is a bit of less than honest.
And have five arms and purple hair and get around only by moonwalking.
Oh lordy lordy. Ballgame and his little friend the False Equivalence Fairy are here to wag their tiny fingers and gently chide us for being so uncivil. Ballgame, you do not fool me. I know your shtick, as I know Toysoldiers’, Hugh Ristik’s, Schala’s, etc. I’d actually prefer an overtly hostile manchild like MrAl over a smarmy creep like yourself… at least you know where you stand with him.
I happen to have a (somewhat) more than passing interest in artificial wombs, along with transhumanism generally, which is enough to coax me out of my lurking. I have to ask, Mr. Futrelle, if I may query into your own personal opinions/policy suggestions, in reference to this:
Just the elimination of one gender by the other through a little “fade-out,” like they have in the movies.
Assuming for the purposes of argument that artificial womb/sexbot/etc. technology advances to the point where it’s cheap and efficient enough to be an effective alternative to sexual reproduction, and taking into account the widespread preference for male babies over female babies in countries such as China and India (and to a lesser extent, admittedly a *much* lesser extent, the US as well), doesn’t such a fade-out seem almost inevitable, at least in certain cultures? Do you think this makes artificial womb and/or sexbot technology problematic in and of itself, that is to say, they will necessarily accelerate the demographic skew towards males we’re seeing in the aforementioned countries and others? Or do you believe these technologies will end up having much less of an impact than folks like AntiFeministTech would like to believe, and therefore aren’t much to worry about, either from an MRA or a feminist perspective?
@Pecunium
“I already mentioned Horowitz. I am willing to bet that a significant portion of the student population at every school Daly went to would have been against her”
Yet I again I’d like to go on record as saying she still DID in fact speak at colleges as did the rest of her ilk. While none of anyone such as AntiFeministMedia has ever lectured at colleges. Do you see the difference?
Also for every, “protester” as you say there was there were women in those colleges who aplauded or simply laughed at how funny it was.
Thats the misandry I speak of thats indoctrinated into society. It’s acceptable these women are allowed to lecture at college while a man with a regendered version of that same rhetoric would never be allowed to set foot in a college to lecture.
@Wanderer
“Assuming for the purposes of argument that artificial womb/sexbot/etc. technology advances to the point where it’s cheap and efficient enough to be an effective alternative to sexual reproduction, and taking into account the widespread preference for male babies over female babies in countries such as China”
And the feminist policy of abortion has now come back to bite them on the ass big time. Do any of you know anything about the situation men are facing in China right now? I think they’re running like a 3-2 male to female ratio. Article after article in China speaks about men living in self imposed dungeons to save money so they can afford a girl. Women in China are literally demanding a man have a house before even considering him as a potential. Men and women both know the score in China. They got real trouble out there.
We’ll have to agree to disagree here, David.
Um, my whole point here is that this would be silly (i.e. Daly > significant influence, AFM > virtually no influence).*
No, I was pointing out that you were mocking AFM for having a specific view which just happened to be one that was mirrored by a significant feminist, a feminist that appeared to have been much more influential as a feminist than AFM was as an MRA. Feel free to otherwise mock AFM without mentioning Daly! You have my permission. :)
* OK, so I checked AFM’s reddit Alexa rank. “Marginal influence” would probably be more accurate than “no influence.” I don’t think he’s going to be invited to speak at colleges anytime soon, though.
Which is precisely the point, katz. People who are known for their ideas and get invited to speak at (significant numbers of) colleges are not universally reviled … so it’s not really plausible to claim that Daly was universally reviled despite speaking at so many colleges. It’s far more likely she was admired by at least a minority of people at those institutions (just like Horowitz, Coulter, etc.).
I heard a speech by Mary Daly at the public university I attended as an undergrad. The speech was at the Roman Catholic student center and I assume she had been invited by the priests there. (Not so surprising when you consider she was a professor at Boston College.) It wasn’t widely attended and about all I can recall of it was a bit where she poked some fun at the male-only priesthood by calling them cross-dressers. After the speech, I overheard a portion of a conversation with one of the priests, where she was in tears, talking about a report of a particularly vicious rape of a young girl.
If this counts as one of the American colleges where she was invited to speak, it wasn’t an invitation by radical feminists, but the priests in charge of the student center. Granted, one priest later left the priesthood and married a former nun, so he probably wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill priest.
Well, at this point it’s been many hours and you’ve managed to post about many other things, but the apparently oh-so-easy to find, non-woman-hating blogs that exist all over the manosphere that no one has yet given an example of has shown up. I so believe you! Your penis tells the truth even when you can’t dredge up even a SINGLE example of it.
P.S. Wasn’t trying to get rid of you, just saying put up or shut up. Please feel free to do either.
It’s pretty funny that ballgame can see my posts at FC, but not here. Dave must have me on “ignore” for ballgame.
I’ve tried to explain radicalism to ballgame, but he is on a mission to prove that Feminism Is Bad for Everyone, and likes to ignore everything that suggests he is wrong.
Here’s the thing that makes Daly’s radical views different to AFM’s: when Daly said that women had been oppressed for centuries, that was actually true. Her radical views were a challenge to accepted thinking. They’re political theory. In Daly’s imagined world, women are free to do whatever they want because they are no longer subjugated.
The MRM says that women are in control of society, and are oppressing men. This is not true. AFM’s belief that women are not people is not radical: it’s old. It used to be accepted thinking. Heck, in some parts of the world, it still is. When AFM says “let’s do without women”, he is talking about returning to a system we know existed. And he wants it to be worse. He wants women to be eliminated.
Both of their ideas are never going to be realised: Daly’s because women will never throw the men they love under the Evolutionary bus, AFM’s because technology is never going to replace biology. (Sorry, geeks everywhere. It’s true.)
Feminists control China? Who knew?
I guess they forgot to mention it in the weekly newsletter.
So what exactly is your point, Ballgame? That every time i quote something noxious from an MRA I should also quote something noxious from a feminist?
Why? I mean, I have literally no connection with Daly. I don’t agree with her views; I haven’t even read more than a few isolated quotes from her writings. True, she’s nominally a feminist, but none of the feminists I like and respect are fans of hers. Numerous feminist blogs have critiqued her quite effectively. I don’t really have anything to add to that.
And seriously, if I tried to quote something noxious from a feminist every time I quoted something from an MRA/MGTOWer/PUAer, I would quickly exhaust the supply of noxious feminist quotes. I mean, how many times can I quote Dworkin and Daly? The manosphere generates oodles of noxious shit daily; there are only a handful of rad-fem blogs that spout stuff anywhere near as noxious at that.
And on the question of influence, well, feminism has been and still is much more influential than the MRM. Should I therefore not talk about the MRM at all? I happen to think that bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of how influential they are. And while AntiFeministMedia isn’t terribly influential even within the MRM, he’s not the only one who fantasizes about making women “obsolete” with technology.
http://manboobz.com/category/sexy-robot-ladies/
Um, no, my point was that you’re just going to add requirements until no one can come up with an example and then go “SEE?”
amandajane5, you appear to have overlooked this comment of mine.
Because prior to China becoming the feminist regime that it so obviously is now, boasting a higher rate of females aborted than males, there was no such thing as, for instance, “The Dying Rooms”.
Yep, feminism is to blame for the situation men are facing in China right now, it has nothing to do with centuries-old preference for male babies.
katz: You grossly overestimate your mind-reading abilities.
Wanderer, it’s gonna be a very long time before homo sapiens can dispense with the genetic variability that X chromosomes provide (a ton, which is necessary for our adaptability, protection against sex-linked disease, and survival). Most of the talk I’ve heard from scientists and medical professionals about artificial wombs has been about how they’ll make childbirth easier for women, in particular infertile or older women. So there goes your theory that women will be disempowered by it; if anything, “SMV” theory will cease to apply to women when artificial wombs become widely available. (Shulamith Firestone was a radfem who widely advocated for this kind of reproductive technology on the Marxian grounds that it would put the sexual means of reproduction squarely back in the hands of women).
I can also state with some confidence that the manpower it would take to run human reproduction on the Y-chromosome plus some kind of lab synthesized X would be implausible in practice. It would also render the specimens born from this arrangement almost entirely unable to exist in the real world. They’d have to live in biospheres or something, where there aren’t natural predators or variable climates.
I don’t know why I dignified that post with a reply, but there it is.
No human being is universally reviled. Even Hitler has fans. Douchey nazi fans, but still…
No human being is universally reviled.
Carrot Top?
For some unfathomable reason, I’m going to answer this question in earnest.
In the first place, it’s unlikely/impossible for artificial reproduction to actually replace natural reproduction, since the natural method is not only (sorta) free, but can happen by accident. Consider adoption: it is a route pursued by very few. And artificial insemination, etc, remain only available to rich nations.
In the second place, you seem to be assuming that women “just are” less desirable, at least in those cultures, but culture is mutable. Girls aren’t valued in India because they require an expensive dowry when they’re married, but absent the reproduction aspect, you can’t expect marriage customs to remain the same.
Third, assuming that the womb-tech doesn’t also make all men gay or asexual, there’s going to be a lot of societal pressure not to make women disappear. Returning to dowries, if women got rarer, more men would want to marry each one, making them more “valuable,” lowering (or eliminating or very likely reversing) dowries, making daughters less of a liability, making women more “valuable;” you get the idea.
Finally and most importantly, the main issue is how happy MRAs are at the idea of women disappearing, indicating that they’re predicting it out of a vendetta against women rather than actual futurism.
Well, NF4ever, thanks very much for your response. You don’t have to, er, dignify anything further from me with a response if you don’t want to, but if you’d be willing to educate a layman with an interest in this sort of thing a little further, your response does make me wonder about a couple of other questions:
artificial wombs has been about how they’ll make childbirth easier for women, in particular infertile or older women.
I think I’m misunderstanding something here, but above you also mentioned, a very long time before homo sapiens can dispense with the genetic variability that X chromosomes provide (a ton, which is necessary for our adaptability, protection against sex-linked disease, and survival).
If this is true, would children born from artificial wombs have the issues with adaptability and sex-linked diseases you describe, which would result in them being undesirable for older women or others who may have difficulty taking care of them? Or are the X-chromosome problems and the artificial womb issues two separate things? I think you mean the latter, but I’m not sure, which is why I ask.
Secondly,
I can also state with some confidence that the manpower it would take to run human reproduction on the Y-chromosome plus some kind of lab synthesized X would be implausible in practice. It would also render the specimens born from this arrangement almost entirely unable to exist in the real world. They’d have to live in biospheres or something, where there aren’t natural predators or variable climates.
You say a ‘synthesized’ X. Are you referring to X chromosomes that are completely artifical; “made from scratch,” so to speak? I ask because I’ve heard some MRAs ponder the efficacy of making eggs from stem cells rather than relying on eggs “naturally” produced by women. I don’t know that much about stem cell technology either, so I’m not sure if this is any different from what you were talking about or any more or less dubious.
In any case, thanks again for your response.
(excuse me for double posting, Katz posted his comment while I was typing my first).
Thank you for your response as well, Katz. To address some of your points, particularly this one, which I found interesting–
Girls aren’t valued in India because they require an expensive dowry when they’re married, but absent the reproduction aspect, you can’t expect marriage customs to remain the same.
Third, assuming that the womb-tech doesn’t also make all men gay or asexual, there’s going to be a lot of societal pressure not to make women disappear. Returning to dowries, if women got rarer, more men would want to marry each one, making them more “valuable,” lowering (or eliminating or very likely reversing) dowries, making daughters less of a liability, making women more “valuable;” you get the idea.
Has this started to happen yet? As a few people have mentioned before (including, ironically, NWOslave–er, the NWO stands for New World Order, right? Or is that something else?) men in China and India are already feeling a “bride crunch,” so to speak. Have the cultural stigmas against female babies begun to lessen, in your view (i.e a lessening in dowries and so on), or would other factors beyond a relative scarcity of females be necessary to effect the sort of cultural shifts you describe?
No, stupidhead, I ignored it as it was not on topic. I was not asking about father’s rights activists, nor was Holly. We’re asking for these apparently so easy to find that no one’s been able to find one in the seven or so months manboobz has been around “moderate” and “logical” men’s rights advocates or men going their own stupid fucking way. You do know that if fathers actually petition for custody of their children (which does not happen in most cases) they get it half the time. It’s almost like it’s fair! But whenever asked to give examples of “moderate” or our new troll Samuel’s “hurting” men who just won’t post when there are women around, but we should spend lots of time babying them because of…
Still waiting for those moderate MRAs.
Ballgame:
Her reading comprehension and extrapolation are spot on though. Perhaps if you stopped walking around with those goalposts…
Why thank you. He’s a textbook example of the Scott Adams: “You’re just too stupid to understand what I’m saying!”
I have read many MRA and MGTOW posts on many sites. None of them are moderate or logical. Many are just plain nuts.
If it is your absurd contention that people like Glenn Sacks, John Franklin, and Francis Baumli are not Men’s Rights Activists, amandajane5, then there’s little mystery as to why no one has been able to meet ‘the challenge.’
The power went out for 3 hours. I blame feminism xD
I was ABOUT to ask this before feminist terrorist took out power in order to stop men in my area from being able to look at porn online…
Can somebody explain to me the Amanda Marcotte hate? o_O Like the MRAs who show up put her in the same breath as Andrea Dworkin… (in fact sometimes it seems like they’re the only 2 feminists they know xD ). I mean even the WoC who cant’ stand her don’t consider her a radical feminist, or an extreme one. My exps w/ her is about the Seal Press blow up (which is why I dun read her) and one piece I saw in a Canadian newspaper that was v good in response to Naomi Wolf and her victim-blaming crap (when she was defending Assange). She’s never seemed to me (and again I dun rly read her except when she shows up accidentally in my sphere of reading) like a transphobic of nething feminist like some of the 2nd wavers, or some of the rad fems. I mean I would think they’d go after Heart to point to or something…
So why do ppl put Marcotte on the same level as the transphobic rad fems and Dworkin and Daly and etc? :3 I’m srsly wondering cuz this keeps coming up o_O
NWOslave do you believe you (and all adults) should have the right to sleep with a 15 year old?
If not, so you then disavow everything you said before? :3
So, this fella thinks that men are violent because they aren’t getting their sexual needs met.
Well, lets take a look at that. Many a warlord/dictator/conquering barbarian had many many women to have sex with. Didn’t make them less violent.
I know it’s crazy to try and use a logical argument with these types, but I can’t help myself.
The power went out for 3 hours. I blame feminism xD
It’s MEN who make electricity work! And magnets!
It’s MEN who make electricity work! And magnets!
If only we knew how magnets work.
Ballgame, please correct me if I am wrong, but am I to understand that the only moderate, non-hateful MRAs you can think of are three guys? Glenn (hey everyone, let’s call up the donors to a anti-DV shelter to convince them not to donate) Sacks and another guy associated with Fathers and Families.
And the other guy is someone who is never ever ever mentioned by anyone in the MRM online and who is most known for his writings and activism back in the 1980s, and for his long-time association with The National Coalition For Men.
Here’s the group’s web site: http://ncfm.org/
It’s a group that tries it’s best to look reasonable, but it links to some hateful shit, and runs cartoons like this:
Very subtle.
And this:
http://ncfm.org/2011/05/uncategorized/just-lie-doing-so-is-a-womans-prerogative/
And this bizarre rant, attacking the “Woman Industry” and its “operatives”:
http://ncfm.org/2011/04/uncategorized/the-dildo-bandito-crystal-mangum-and-nifong-nuts/
And this, mocking campaigns to raise awareness of DV and rape:
http://ncfm.org/2011/04/uncategorized/what-month-is-it-on-your-feminist-calendar/
And it ran a portion of this blog post:
http://justamanwriting.blogspot.com/2011/06/when-lunatics-run-asylum.html
You might want to scroll on down to the part of the post where he imagines a father “driven” to murder his family by the evil feminists and the family courts:
Ballgame, if these guys are really the best of the bunch, I don’t know what to say.
Poles attracting and repelling … you can’t explain that! Just like the tides!
I’d like to point out that in super-feminist China we also have girls being kidnapped and sold because of the demand for wives.
And then there’s that ultra-feminist paradise India with it’s super progressive ritual of widow burning …
But no, they’re totally fymynyst because there’s a cultural pressure to ABORT rather than just have the girl and neglect her. Abortion = grrrl pwr!!!eleventy-two
Ami, I think they hate Marcotte because she tends to not mince words. She’s a bit acidic and not at all coddling. Her opinions aren’t different from other popular online feminists; it’s more about her tone – the way she says things rather than what she says.
Obviously, there are aditional problems with her stuff: like the race-thing. She also tends to jump to the worst conclusions about people she disagrees with. I don’t regularly read Pandagon anymore because of that (I also disagree with her a lot of pop culture stuff). That said, she got me into feminism back in high school.
So it’s similar to the reason some ppl hate Rutee so much even tho Rutee doesn’t say nething different from other ppl here? xD
I think so, yeah.
Also, apparently she didn’t handle the Duke lacrosse rape thing very well? I wasn’t around for that, but that’s something that a lot of MRAs tend to mention, anyway.
Also, I can name a hell of a lot more than three reasonable and non-hateful feminists, ranging from Melissa McEwan and Sady Doyle to Kurt Cobain and my mom.
And Catiecat from Shakesville! I know her IRL! :D
As far as I can tell, MRAs hate Amanda Marcotte almost entirely because of the Duke Lacrosse thing. She was one of the most vocal bloggers against the Duke guys, and she’s never apologized for it. I don’t think most MRA guys know anything else about Amanda or Pandagon. They turn up in droves to yell about Duke Lacrosse whenever Pandagon runs a post about the MRA movement or the pickup artist community.
Also, Amanda’s funny and blunt, two qualities guaranteed to piss off misogynists.
So, David, a couple of questions:
1. Do you acknowledge that Glenn Sacks, John Franklin, and Francis Baumli are Men’s Rights Activists, and that amandajane5 was incorrect in claiming that my earlier answer was “not on topic”?
2. When I said, “Francis Baumli,” did you interpret that to mean “… and any organization he’s associated with”? Because that’s what your response here suggests. So let me clarify: when I said, “Francis Baumli,” I meant, “Francis Baumli” … not the National Coalition of Free Men, which I’m well aware has tolerated some noxious members. So unless you can show any of those articles or cartoons were penned by Francis Baumli, they don’t address my point, which was: I have not seen Glenn Sacks, John Franklin, or Francis Baumli say or write hateful, bigoted things (though they’ve certainly said or done things I disagree with).
Just as a reminder, my original assertion was simply, “there are … MRAs who say thoughtful, insightful things, and feminists who say hateful, bigoted things.” I never claimed that the MRA movement as a whole was Great Stuff Full of Joy and Wisdom. There’s a reason I don’t self-identify as an MRA, after all.
The whole deal about “MRAs who never say hateful, bigoted things” was a (somewhat mild) goalpost shift from Holly, which I took up because at that point in the conversation I was still assuming a good faith discussion was possible here. And she asked for “examples,” not a comprehensive listing of sufficient length to convince the Man Boobz commentariat that they’ve been totally wrong about MRAs all these years, and that they actually poop rainbows. Had those been the goalposts, David, I would have demurred.
And if this whole “Find me 10 good MRAs!” schtick is to continue, we’re going to have to first come to a mutually acceptable definition of what an MRA is (i.e. do only self-identified MRA qualify, etc.).
There was also a big thing about her allegedly anti-Catholic statements.
She made some joke about God’s holy sperm impregnating the Virgin Mary in one of her posts. When she was on John Edward’s campaign sometime later (and apropos of nothing, what the hell? I was rooting for that guy!), professional victim Bill Donohue of the Catholic League got wind of it and made a big stink.
Personally, as a not very big fan of religion, and Catholicism in particular (being an ex-Catholic myself), I couldn’t care less.
That was a goalpost shift by Holly, but I think it was her trying to lower the bar… she’s not asking for amazing, thoughtful MRAs, just ones that don’t say hateful things :3 She’s always said her challenge was a low bar, so I dun think it’s her trying to make it difficult, but easier xD
Oh I just noticed that you were confused about my thing about you and Marcotte :3
It’s just that I didn’t know you were Clarence. Now that I do, things you said make sense is all :3
Oh and just for fun about the OP :3 (cuz I was teh bored)
http://priyankasblog.com/gender-gap-in-mobile-phone-ownership/
http://www.mobileactive.org/files/file_uploads/ICTD2010%20Blumenstock%20et%20al.pdf
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-only-business-men-use-cell-phones-more-than-women
http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/2010/03/cell-phone-ownership-by-age-gender.html
it seems to be that cellphone ownership is equal in the US, and more men use it in developing countries, and men use cellphones more in general xD
So… why does he seem to believe that only women use cellphones? xD
Huh???
I’m not “Clarence.” If you’re talking about the same Clarence who posts over at FC and NSWATM on occasion, he and I do strongly see eye-to-eye on some issues … but we have profound disagreements on others. (From what I can gather, he’s an economic libertarian, while I’m a democratic socialist.)
That may very well be, Ami. I wasn’t assuming ill intent on Holly’s part. I do think the shift does make the challenge harder in one way (i.e. the whole ‘trying to prove a negative’ thing), but I can see how it’s intended to be easier in others.
Oh! I misinterpreted Ellish’s comment xD I thought she said you were the same person. She was saying that you’re both from the same place and now you’ve followed him here xD
My apologies :D
You just sound v similar xD
But I have never heard him speak on economic libertarianism! :D Or you on democratic socialism xD
For what it’s worth, while I emphatically disagree with Ballgame on many things, he does often seem worth talking to. I mean, I think he holds positions that are sexist, but as far as I can tell… I’m trying to figure out how to say this. Sometimes when talking to MRAs or anti-feminists or whatever, I get the sense that they’re always a bit icked or irked or whatever at the whole idea of ladies and the blech involved with currently talking to one and things like that.
I think ballgame is wrong about what the current state of events is, and what equality would or should look like. But I think he would actually like equality to happen, which is to say, I think he would genuinely like gender oppression, in whatever form it takes, to stop.
One’s mileage inevitably varies on these things… Personally, I find Amanda Marcotte a much more reasonable feminist than Melissa McEwan. But I wanted to say.
And hey, maybe Ballgame disagrees with my summary of his position… I don’t think so, but it’s always possible I’ve been reading him incorrectly.
For me… and again, one’s mileage varies on these things… one metric for whether someone is sincere is what happens when you find common ground that is genuinely common ground. Are you both able to go “yay, common ground!” and use that as a way to see each other’s humanity? Or does the existence of the common ground itself get used as a discursive tool to try to hurt the other person?
For instance, I get the impression that ballgame appreciates that the stance of most feminists at Alas is that routine infant male circumcision is morally wrong. (I think our conversations at this point are trying to feel out the edges of whether harm reduction is more legally important than philosophy [I'm a harm reduction fan] and where the line of bodily autonomy for infants should be set.) The first responses I ever got from anti-feminists when I posted on Alas about the wrongness of routine infant male circumcision was that I was either lying or somehow coopting a male issue (one that we’d been called on to talk about, but apparently actually talking about it was bad…?). Those orthagonal reactions–lying, coopting–meant that we weren’t actually talking about the issue before; the issue became less important than whatever anger or disdain or whatever the poster was feeling toward me, either personally or as a member of a group. And it can be hard to distinguish antipathy aimed toward a group–and I’m sure there have been examples of both–but when there’s a systematic, routine response from group of individuals A that professes to care about issue B, but when issue B is brought up by a member of group C, drops issue B in order to impugn group C…
Well, anyway. It seems to me ballgame argues in good faith and demonstrates through his actions that he does not bear antipathy toward female commenters for being female commenters.
He’s not an MRA, but I guess you could say that I’m sort of submitting him as the reasonable feminist critic. Which is not to say he’s never said anything hateful–I haven’t read/don’t remember everything he’s written, and hey, if you write a lot, periodically some of it’s probably going to sound shittier than you intended–but I trust him to come honestly to the table.
FWIW, my read of Schala is that she is sincere as well, just hard to have a linear conversation with.
Ballgame, sure, I’ll accept that those 3 are MRAs. But again, you’ve got two guys associated with Fathers and Families, one of whom has behaved questionably in the past in that DV shelter incident, and another guy whom I’ve never heard of, who is never ever mentioned by MRAs online today, and whose claims to fame (such as they are) come from stuff he did in the 80s.
No, I can’t blame him directly for the crazy shit on the NCFM website, but I also can’t see why a “moderate” MRA would want to associate himself with that shit.
I’m not demanding that you give me a giant long list or anything, but three dudes? Really?
The other guy that always gets mentioned is Pele Billing. I haven’t read enough of his stuff to judge him. He’s also sort of marginal to the online MRA, rarely gets linked.
Proving a negative is impossible if it’s about proving that there’s no god, for instance. Or proving that you’ve never ever taken steroids. xD
But showing a non-hateful MRA isn’t quite the same. (you can use “non-hateful” if you want :3 ) :]
She’s not asking for verbal or private communication. :] If she was, that would be “proving a negative” she is just asking for an MRA whose public writings do not contain hatred against women (or, presumably trans ppl, PoCs, disabled ppl, etc) :3
and I don’t think nebody here has responded to you with “well maybe there are writings we haven’t seen that are hateful!”
That’d be the proving a negative fallacy xD
Excuse me, in editing I lost part of a sentence:
” And it can be hard to distinguish antipathy aimed toward a group–and I’m sure there have been examples of both”
It can be heard to distinguish antipathy aimed toward a group from antipathy aimed toward an individual–and I’m sure I’ve experienced examples of both, since I am not sugar and spice and everything nice–
and after that, I meant to go on to talk about antipathy toward groups.
No, that doesn’t work quite that way, ballgame. If Holly was asking for those that don’t think hateful things, that would be impossible. But it’s just asking for one that doesn’t say hateful things. Holly also usually only checks as far as the first page or two if it’s a blog for said hateful things, as well. If you propose something, and she doesn’t find hateful stuff on it, you’re good!
Also, the first thing that comes up for Google when i search for Francis Baumli is a link to his bio on NCFM, which also says “Francis Baumli, Ph.D., is one of the longest standing members of NCFM”. And it only takes until the fourth listing to hit something entirely unrelated (a grave marking for Leo Francis Baumli). I can’t at all speak for David or Holly on this, but from where I’m speaking that seems to be most of what he’s associated with. And one would hope that someone who is so concerned for equality and rights would not wish to associate so strongly with an organization that endorses opinions such as those linked by David.
I am crazy late. My apologies for mucking the thread up with my lack of refreshing.
I think, at this point, we can agree that there are people who call themselves MRAs who are not asshats. However, the online “manosphere” seems to be a hotbed of anal millinery. I think we might declare the Original Manboobz Challenge passed, and create a Revised Manboobz Challenge (i.e. find a manosphere blogger who is not a nutjob)– given that the manosphere is what David usually covers anyway.
And I’d like to second Mandolin’s opinion of ballgame. I have a soft spot for Feminist Critics, partially because they like NSWATM so I’m biased, and partially because they’re vaguely thoughtful and cite their sources. Basically, they get the Ozymandias Award For Not Being NWOSlave. :)
@Holly (from waaaayyyy back) I DO wonder how he would react about trans women/girls, since they would still crop up even w/ his XY cloning idea xD
And all these things will be known again. The dots will be joined, and its my hope that after this current fuck up of allowing feminism to take root, men will never allow it again.
o_O
“Allowing” o_O How does he think feminism should have been dealt w/? xD
(I realized I hadn’t actually responded to the OP, so trying to drag things back on topic :3 )
@NWO do you think I get invited to speak at colleges? :D
Oh, and there’s always the corrolary to the “are there reasonable MRAs” that comes up, which is “are there unreasosnable feminists”…
I still <3 I Blame the Patriarchy because… I think Jill is amazing at getting at truth orthagonally, and I still read some of her entries as thought experiments rather than literal dialogues… essentially, I think if we're trying to find reasonable position B, but society is currently at unreasonable position A, then I think sometimes Jill writes up position C. Not as a suggestion "let's go do c" but as a way for showing some of the weird assumptions inherent in position A, in a way that's more effective than just describing them. She's–in my opinion–an extremely powerful writer (on the prose level, I mean, she's amazingly sharp) which is what makes this possible. And I think she conveys her subtleties by using humor and metafictional devices. Her blog has a bit of performance art in it.
Anyway. I only read comments there intermittently, and often I only hit the really HIGH CONTROVERSY threads where people are being jackasses about trans people. But I've been perusing some recent threads and the comments have been… um. They lack the zesty, crazy cock carousel imagery, but they don't lack the periodic eliminationist rhetoric. And it's skeeving me out. I don't know if the threads have always been like that, or if I'm thinking about eliminationist rhetoric differently after seeing it pulled out of context here, but it strikes me as gross and not okay.
Is IBTP central to the feminism? Manifestly no–most of their ideas are being pulled from the edges of previous movements.
Do other feminists criticize the foul bits of those ideas? Yes. I just wrote some rather long rants about Sheri Tepper.
But I think people looking for obnoxious feminist quotes are better off pulling from comments there than they are picking up stuff from nuanced-and-sometimes-bizarre thinkers like Dworkin. Pulling Dworkin quotes out of context changes their meaning. RandomCommenter saying "the world would be better without men" is unambiguous. Or the recent comment thread where a biologist dropped in to correct some facts about insects and people told her to bugger off because science was patriarchal.
I'm sure they'd say they're joking? I hope they would? Some of them…?
Anyway, it's not funny. And I do see it, in practice, used (by heart & crew mostly) to bully male feminists.
Of course those women are peripheral, and to steal a quote, jaundiced eyes are cast upon them. So I'm not sure I'm really making an *argument* here. Maybe sharing a frustration.
Holly wrote :Also, he’s not accounting for the fact that unless you do commit some sort of atrocity, women are still going to have access to reproductive technology (and plain old-fashioned reproduction), and that might put a bit of a monkey wrench in your “the next generation will only be men” plan:
Holly good point, Nowadays women do not need men I have remarked about this before. As a result of feminism “women do not need men!”. Generally speaking, women now can be independent and support themselves without a man, Moreover, Technology has made it where a woman does not even have to have relations with a man to be pregnant.
One MGTOW guy that recently emailed me stated for years he was very very shy with women. He felt that in our society the onus is on the man asking the woman out, risking rejection. What about the onus being on the women. Even feminist women while they are call for gender equality they still traditionally want the man to take the risk and pursue. I mean have any feminists on this board asked a man out?
Basically, this guy was writing to me he felt that since he my be handsome on the outside,he is introverted and shy. So with Fembots men will not ever have to risk rejection again. They can just get a fembot.
I guess with fembots in the near future Men will not need a woman. If a male is horny he could just get a female robot. Even if a man desires romance and companionship and love -he could still use the robot in his fantasy. Men will not need women anymore. I am not saaying it will eliminate relationships and marriage.Of course not, there will always be people who desire relations with the opposite gender. It will just remove a large percentage of available single men to date, I am talking primarily about The USA and The Wester countries. I realize in China it is a different story. But in America in a few years with the rise of the fembot, this will lead to the shortage of available men in America.
Furthermore, With with less men in colleges, some men(not all) making less money these
days, the fact that more men than women are in prisons, and the increasing number of gay men (It is “chic” to be a gay man these days”, I am not criticizing, I am just observing. Hence the “Fag Hag” label, there could be a severe man shortage in America. I just read an article that in the New York City there is already a slight man shortage.I hope it does not happen but there will be a marriage crisis less available men=,less marriages in this country.
Fembots are part of this decline in available single men.
. Even feminist women while they are call for gender equality they still traditionally want the man to take the risk and pursue. I mean have any feminists on this board asked a man out?
XD
How do you know what feminists want? xD Do they email you too?
You do know that women are attracted to people too? And standing around looking cute will not get ppl you want to ask you out xD
As for feminists on this board asking a man out. I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one xD (I was even asking ppl advice on asking out a guy I liked a bunch of weeks ago xD I must have forgotten to email you that. )
Also, just b/c women do not ask that particular guy out does not mean that we don’t ask guys out xD
and the increasing number of gay men (It is “chic” to be a gay man these days”, I am not criticizing, I am just observing. Hence the “Fag Hag” label, there could be a severe man shortage in America.
Wait, are you saying that straight guys are becoming gay b/c it’s cool? xD
Ozy42: that’s a very low bar you’re setting.
I can’t give ballgame and his site any tick of approval. They look alright when you just glance over them, but I visited FC regularly for a few months early in the year, and I can tell you, their hearts are not in the right place. I was puzzled by their “feminism is doing it wrong” slogan, and entered into discussion to clarify their position for myself. I came to the conclusion that the site was deeply misogynistic and irrational. They don’t welcome discussion with feminists as they claim. After failing to either get pissed off and leave, or lose my temper and make untoward remarks, I was placed on moderation “not as a punishment, but until we figure out what to do with her”.
Mandolin: your complaint is that you don’t like the things radical feminists say. Guess what? Lots of people don’t like the things radical feminists say. Radical feminists are in the business of saying stuff that challenges accepted thinking. When on the InterNet, they are having a conversation between themselves. Why is it important that you are a part of the discussion?