How to spot a feminist
Some feminists can be converted!
Over on Reddit, DoktorTeufel has a problem: he likes the ladies, but he doesn’t like the feminists. Unfortunately, some ladies are also feminists! And therein lies the danger. Naturally, he turns to the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit for help.
I’m just going to come out and say it: I will never knowingly enter into a romantic relationship with a feminist. I do have some female relatives and acquaintances who are feminists … and it’s not like they all wear signs that proclaim I’M A FEMINIST. (Some do.)
Aside from obvious telltales (feminist bumper stickers, etc.) or outright asking them “Are you a feminist?”, what are some discreet ways to ferret out a woman’s views on gender activism without creating an awkward situation? Feminism is a minefield topic, and I certainly wouldn’t broach the subject directly with a woman I’ve just started dating.
Naturally, this being the Men’s Rights subreddit, he received much helpful advice. Celda broke it down for him:
You don’t really care whether she identifies as a feminist or not – you care what her views are.
For instance, does she feel women have the right to force men into parental obligations against their will?
Does she feel women are oppressed in Western society?
Does she think that women make less money than men for the same work?
If yes to these questions or similar, then you probably want to avoid her.
Exactly. Always avoid those with a basic grasp on reality. They’re the worst!
Naive1000 suggested looking for more subtle clues.
Ask their thoughts on “benevolent sexism” if they know what your talking about you likely have a feminist. Just to make sure go into male privilege, it’s the feminists’ most popular talking point. Let her talk about it then you can see what she’s really like. But, there are some women who call themselves feminists, but are really egalitarian: they just don’t know the term.
Memymineown also suggests a subtle approach, and holds out hope that some of the younger feminist girls can be won back to the path of righteousness:
Bring Men’s Rights issues into the conversation subtly. I was talking with my family about Justin Beiber and brought up the paternity charge and no rape charges filed against the woman.
That led into a discussion about how women aren’t punished for rape.
Just do things like that.
But you shouldn’t exclude all feminists. I would say that the vast majority are just girls(I do use that word on purpose) who have been lied to. Once you show them the real facts they will probably come around.
ThePigman, by contrast, urges DoktorTeufel to go for the jugular:
Why do you need to be discrete about it? Just ask her. If she is a member of the cult she will start screaming about the patriarchy, then her head will explode.
It’s true. Pretty much every conversation involving feminists quickly devolves into screaming about patriarchy. Heck, a feminist friend and I once screamed about patriarchy for five hours straight. We probably could have gone longer, but the manager at Applebee’s, evidently not a feminist, threw us out. Sometimes I start screaming about patriarchy when no one else is around, just to keep in practice.
Conversations with feminists pretty much all go like the conversation in the video below, only instead of a cat you need to picture a feminist, and instead of the word “no,” the word “patriarchy.” You can see how annoying that might get, and not just to Hitler.
Posted on January 5, 2012, in antifeminism, antifeminst women, evil women, I'm totally being sarcastic, misogyny, MRA, patriarchy, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 756 Comments.
Was Franklin the one who was sleeping with a slave who was his wife’s sister? I tend to get all those morally upstanding founding fathers mixed up.
@Holly Pervocracy
Everything you just mentioned costs trillions of dollars taken from the population that can least afford to lose any money. If those people retained that wealth those trillion would be used for purchaing power. The problem rectifies itself. If an extra 2 or 3 trillion a year is being spent, products/services will be needed, that equals jobs needed.
How can taking wealth from people ever be “good?” Less wealth leads to less wealth for all. More wealth leads to more wealth for all.
NWO: Care to address the figures I used? The ones based on the more accurate wages/costs.
Care to explain how the women who get that money, and then spend it, are being a drain on the economy? The money they spend, it pays for jobs, and all the other good things you are complaining are in short supply.
I’ll bet mothers buy milk… you might get a raise.
This whole paragraph turns into gobbledygook if you count women as “people” and women’s spending as “spending.”
Giving money to women is “taking wealth from people?”
Anyway, the fact remains: young children require constant adult attention. It’s gotta come from somewhere, whether it’s the mother, the father, or a childcare worker. How do you propose this be paid for?
Don’t worry, NWO, you can ignore what I’M saying, as silly prattle because I’m just here on a coffee break to shill for the fucking conservative ass randroid Cato Institute’s David Boaz –
“The Cato Institute’s boilerplate description of itself used to include the line, “Since [the American] revolution, civil and economic liberties have been eroded.” Until Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, gave a speech at Cato and pointed out to us that it didn’t seem quite that way to black people.
And he was right. American public policy has changed in many ways since the American Revolution, sometimes in a libertarian direction, sometimes not.”
There are quite a few things to admire in american history, pointing to the real potential for success of genuinely free market policies and a libertarian attitude, (Again, if you read a book, read one by John Taylor Gatto, who is happy to argue against racist delusions along with showing just what the freedom of American society did for those given that freedom, and how it was taken from the priveleged, sure, but also never GIVEN to the non-priveleged in the first place) But there never was a libertarian golden age of freedom we should be thinking about getting back to.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/06/up-from-slavery
@zhinxy
An awesome 4 minute privelege acknowledment from Anti-Moron’s Rights. Yet some people, yea, possibly many people reading here, crazy as that sounds, would rather die than do it over a period of hours, days, months, years. It’s so easy and fun and it’s not making anybody win points on you!
Facing up to our privilege is hard. It took me several years to fully understand mine.
I would never, ever complain that my life is rough because I come from a family of physicians and other high-earning, educated professionals. While it’s definitely gotten me a lot of flack – from exes calling me a “rich bitch” to people thinking I’m an “arrogant c*nt” because I am smart, logical, and direct, which is not an acceptable way for an American woman to communicate – I would say that on the whole, it’s been an immense privilege. While I’ve been financially independent from my family since the age of 21, their station in life definitely helped me get where I am today. My university actually paid me to attend – I got both “kid of a professor” tuition remission and a significant academic scholarship. Working was optional for me, as I received more money from the university than it cost me to attend, while most of my friends didn’t have a choice – for them, working while attending class was mandatory.
In college, I took those $5/hour jobs because I felt it was important for me to get strong in the basics of a work ethic: pride in a day’s wage for a day’s work, showing up on time, respect for your supervisors, following orders. It definitely helped me launch my career. And while I’m worth a salary in the high five figures today, I certainly wasn’t when I graduated. I was only able to earn 19-20K max at that time, in fact. I did lots of 16-hour days, double shifts, side work, and took on extra training and education to get where I am, while enduring sexual harassment at one job and unequal pay for MORE work and HIGHER education in two others. And currently, I’m not working – my last employer deemed me “too expensive” shortly after creating a new position for me and cut me loose to replace me with a worker in her mid 20s who was worth just 40K, instead of near six figures.
What I think is exceptionally unfair is that a college education is, more than ever, out of reach for people whose financial situation isn’t like mine. Tuition at my university was just over 6K per year when I attended, and now, it’s almost 20K. At the exponential rate it’s been climbing, it will probably cost $30K to attend my alma mater in another five or so years. The Millennials in my family – and in my current city! – have not fared well after graduation. Most are facing the prospect of paying off debts while being unable to find work because right now, employers would rather not take a chance on young people. Thanks to the Bush Administration orchestrating the largest transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the top 1 percent in history – and the Obama Administration enforcing those policies – I fear that tomorrow’s young workers, who’ve done everything right, and shown exceptional aptitude, will not get a chance to prove their worth in the marketplace.
I don’t envy the situation NWOSlave and other college students his age find themselves in today. However, feminism is not to blame – crony government and capitalism are. I fear for NWO and other members of his generation. Whether NWO and folks of his ilk realize it or not, the policies I am advocating for benefit them. He and other young men and women like him are, I assume, attending college so that they can lift themselves up out of $8/hr retail and service jobs, and enjoy work in conditions that are not dirty, dangerous, or unstable. That was the dream of college for my parents’ generation, anyway. Unfortunately, the people in power in this country sold our young people’s future up a river, so the “tomorrow” they are working so hard toward may never come.
Not so much, slaveboy. Have you met this country?
You really do like licking the boot that kicks you in the face, huh?
hellkell – You really do like licking the boot that kicks you in the face, huh?
Like I keep telling him, he’s obsessed with it. He really is the World Divide and Conquer Champion.
Anti-Morons Rights, NWO is probably pushing 50 from what we can gather.
Truth.
You’re talking to a man who doesn’t want safety protections at his work, wouldn’t want his wife to get maternity leave if he was married, and doesn’t want to get any kind of social assistance if he gets sick or injured or too old to work.
He is all about cutting off his own best interests to spite his face.
Right now, the dirty little secret of child care is that it is subsidized–by the people who work in the field. Their low rate of pay is a de facto subsidy, since most families can’t afford to pay enough for child care to give the workers a living wage.
Call it socialist if you will, but well cared-for kids, like well educated ones, are in the interest of everyone. Kids who are neglected in their early years can suffer from cognitive and emotional problems that persist well beyond childhood.
Yet he tells us we’re the ones blinded by ideology. Everything is backwards in NWO land.
@hellkell
First off, for Anti-Moron’s-Rights, we don’t live in a capitalist country. We live in a socialist/communist country.
How is wanting to end all social welfare programs and returning the wealth to the general population licking the boot that kicks me in the face? I worked a lot of hours this year and paid around 10K in federal taxes which pay for all those social programs.
Would everyone here like an extra 10K? If everyone in around the 40-60K earning area had an extra 10K to spend, that would translate into jobs. For every 4 people that would equal another 40K a year job. Everyone who was willing to work would have a job. The math is simple.
Anti-Moron’s Rights – Short answer – So. Much. Yes.
Slightly longer answer – Well, I’d go about it differently, I think, and I approach from a radical start-over perspective rather than a reformist one, but I’m, seriously, so very with you in a roundabout way.
And as far as doing anything in the current, awful mess, the few labor-friendly policies we do get out of the deal certainly do SOMETHING to benefit us, even if it’s just padding the stick used for our beatings, and that NWO and his ilk are so stubbornly resistant to that in the name of freedom and fairness is about as great a testimony to the amazing ability to distract, divide, and conquer as can be.
…
Oh, and. –
.
“I don’t envy the situation NWOSlave and other college students his age find themselves in today.”
Sadly, NWOSlave is a near-or-there middle-aged man.
Yeah, I know.
Talk about wasting one’s life…
Do you ever plan to get old?
There’s your answer. You invested 10K that you may very well get back in medical care, long-term care, food subsidies, and other payments when you’re too old to work.
(Fair enough, a lot of the 10K also went to stupid bullshit, but that’s not feminism’s fault.)
Hey, imagine if you were married. Wouldn’t you want your wife to get maternity pay? That would be a huge burden off your back!
Pays to whom?
Yet you’re next argument is:
So are the women being paid or not?
Are the women who will be going on maternity leave be paying in on the $80.00 per month or not?
The company now hires a temp for 3/4s of the womans wage for that time = 60K.
Wait, these were people who didn’t have a job before. Now they have a job for 6 months! Socialism is working!
More job created by the socialist state! Yay!
You’re adding 96k when you should be subtracting. These pregnant women, temp workers and HR people are paying in. So that’s 3 more people paying in per year. (4 temps at 6 months = 2 FTE) so that’s another $72k into the maternity pool for a total of $168k. Subtract the cost of paying FTE wages to the women out on maternity leave ($80k as you stated above) gives a net gain into the maternity pool of $88k per year!
Which if you actually knew anything about wages, economy or anything at all related to reality would be, not only taken care of, but have a surplus to take care of those that can’t afford to pay $80/month.
NWO, I am not going to get into an economics discussion with someone who clearly has no idea what taxes are for or how jobs are created. Seriously, shut up. I have more productive talks with my cat.
You must have worked 24/7 365 for you to be paying that much in Federal taxes. <.<
MRA math is always so funny. It’s like Monopoly meets Stormfront.
First off, for Anti-Moron’s-Rights, we don’t live in a capitalist country. We live in a socialist/communist country.
…
We don’t live in a free market country, which may in some understandings, and in different market forms, be properly referred to as capitalist, socialist, (or other things)
More libertarians are seeking to divorce free market economic ideas from the word Capitalism, as they believe that it properly describes not a free market system, but the current system of corporate-state privelege. In that sense, the mixed economy we have is Capitalism, and the free market is something else, voluntary socialism, market anarchism, freed-market, whatever.
I have a real affection for the term Anarcho-Capitalist, but this is probably a losing battle.
*sniffle*
We are NOT in a communist country. That word means things. Socialism does not necessarily equal communism. (Which does not all equal state communism, but you really, really can’t handle the advanced class here, as poor foe-and-comrade blackbloc has to endure the proof of.)
…
NWO –
“How is wanting to end all social welfare programs and returning the wealth to the general population licking the boot that kicks me in the face? I worked a lot of hours this year and paid around 10K in federal taxes which pay for all those social programs.”
Because unless you stop corporate welfare and limited liability and the myriad other ways they fuck us over with our tax dollars, saving the few of our tax dollars they give us to mollify the pain from the beatings is fucking ridiculous, and “saves” us nothing.
Do you really, truly, fucking think that what’s sucking up all your federal taxes is all that DAMN WELFARE!
Holy fucking shit, NWO.
Holy fucking shit.
hellkell – “NWO, I am not going to get into an economics discussion with someone who clearly has no idea what taxes are for or how jobs are created. Seriously, shut up. I have more productive talks with my cat.
You must have worked 24/7 365 for you to be paying that much in Federal taxes. <.<"
…
YOU SHOULD TALK TO MY CAT! MY CAT CURLS UP ON MY TUMMY WHILE I DOZE OFF LISTENING TO AUDIOBOOKS ON ECON, AND IS THEREFORE AN EXPERT, and I discuss it with him ALL THE TIME!
@Holly Pervocracy
“Hey, imagine if you were married. Wouldn’t you want your wife to get maternity pay? That would be a huge burden off your back!”
Do I have the right to have someone else pay for my children?
Do I have the duty to pay for someone elses children?
That extra 10K a year means that if my wife and I each worked for 1 year we would equal the same in savings as taking everyones wealth.
In just personal income tax the State collects about 1 trillion a year. If that money was spent by the rightful owners that would be 1 trillion more product services needed. At a wage of 50K a year 20 million jobs for poducts/services would be needed.
Everyone could easily afford their own child care and there would be no unemployment and no welfare.
Taking peoples wealth = poverty.
People keeping their wealth = prosperity
No matter how you slice it, everyone keeping their wealth = prosperity.
LEARN TO USE APOSTROPHES, STUPID. :D
If NWO thinks that the US is a communist country I hope for his sake that he never goes to Europe.
As far as I can tell, you think no one at all should pay for children, and anyone who isn’t independently wealthy and gets pregnant should starve to death.
Huh? You’d get 20K. Which will support you for maybe eighteen months of very frugal living, if you ever lose your income. After those eighteen months…
Childcare costs about $200 a week and it’s underpriced. 10K/year savings would not pay for it.
“People” really is a very distinct group from “women” in your mind, isn’t it.
“I don’t envy the situation NWOSlave and other college students his age find themselves in today.”
maybe you mean MRAL?
“If those people retained that wealth those trillion would be used for purchaing power. ”
I don’t really want to get in the conversation with NWO, but I wonder, can you buy power in a free market? If so that’s awesome.
USA, a socialist country? Mouhahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa. And communist =!= socialist. I know for some it basically the same insult as Muslim and Nazi, but come on!
Kudos to those of you picking apart the not-econ NWO is spewing. There;s a damn good reason he is a dairy technician and not a guy out there actually Doing Things and implementing his ideas in an active way. I’m just a lowly international politcal/econ MINOR and holy damn dude. Not even close to how it works.
No taxes would be good! Yey! We should be free, and governance should take many voluntary forms, yey!
But the current system of privelege and no social welfare would be bad! Very bad!
@CassandraSays
Can the military detain me indefinitely without explaination and no due process?
Keep in mind what was just signed by dear leader.
Is my wealth taken under penalty of law?
Can I go to debtors prison?
Perhaps dictatorship might be more to your liking?
Another fallacy NWO keeps repeating is that money given to mothers is just set on fire or something. it gets spent! It gets spent, if anything (since mothers’ expenses are higher and their incomes lower) faster than the incomes of men or childless women. It’s not evaporated out of the economy.
Zhinxy – Yeah… Trying to dismantle a government starting with the safety net is like trying to dismantle a skyscraper starting with the first floor. If your thesis is “with less government people will be richer and not need welfare,” make people richer first.
Zhinxy – Yeah… Trying to dismantle a government starting with the safety net is like trying to dismantle a skyscraper starting with the first floor. If your thesis is “with less government people will be richer and not need welfare,” make people richer first.
…
And the really FUN thing is that you can start by taking away the rich people’s welfare!…
@ NWO
We have these things called dictionaries, and they can tell you the actual meaning of words such as “communist”. You should check it out.
@NWO
I suppose you support full access to abortion services then, so that people can terminate pregnancies that they can’t afford right? Since you’re so against any social safety net, you wouldn’t be heartless enough to want children being born into desperate poverty, or want men and women killing themselves trying to support a family on little to no money right?
@CassandraSays
“If NWO thinks that the US is a communist country I hope for his sake that he never goes to Europe.”
Something tells me he’s not a fan
zhinxy, apart from NWO crazy talk, I really don’t get the basics of libertarianism. If you don’t mind, for example, what would be your response to the problem of pregnancy in the workplace? How would it work in your libertarian utopia?
(if you do mind I understand completely)
@CassandraSays
Can the military detain me indefinitely without explaination and no due process?
Keep in mind what was just signed by dear leader.
Is my wealth taken under penalty of law?
Can I go to debtors prison?
Perhaps dictatorship might be more to your liking?
….
It works in a way, but doesn’t really express how corporatism and the state combine, and Dear Leaders of either party are basically figureheads.
State-Corporate is good, Crony-Capitalist is good, HOLY FUCKING FUCKING STATIST MOTHERFUCKING SHITPILE DOGFUCKORGY FUCKING OH SHIT WE’RE ALL FUCKED, Mixed Economy, Neo-LIberal, Neo-Conservative, Big-Ass Banana Republic, etc…
All good
But no, it’s not Communist.
“If NWO thinks that the US is a communist country I hope for his sake that he never goes to Europe.”
Keep your own lunatics!
@ Shadow
I wonder if NWO owns any furniture from IKEA? That’s supporting communism and misandry, that is, shopping at IKEA.
@Holly Pervocracy
In the childcare scenario a woman @40K a year gets six months leave = 20K
An extra 10K a year for me equals if we both worked a year that’d = 20K.
Also, I’d “get” more wealth, that $960.00 a year that I wouldn’t have to pay into a childcare program.
A man and a woman working for 5 years would each have an extra 50K plus $4,800.00 they didn’t pay into the childcare program. That’s $109,600.00 verses the 20K. Net loss of $89,600.00 in five years.
You tell me how your system of wealth retention is better than mine?
Well, in my system, people can ever afford to have kids.
(Also, you’re double-counting again. That $960 is part of the $10K. Both of which are completely fictional numbers, but I’m just saying.)
In your system, people can’t ever have kids by accident (I hope you’re real liberal on abortion!) and they can’t have kids until they’ve been saving for years, at which point they may be pretty much at the end of the woman’s fertility. And if they’re not rich enough to be paying 10K in taxes in the first place (that’s quite a lot), then they’re shit out of luck for ever having kids. Most couples could never have children in your world, and that’s not a reasonable expectation.
They also can’t have kids because the country has abruptly descended into chaos due to the sudden suspension of all social services and public infrastructure.
@Holly Pervocracy
Is there a “cap” to your system? Like if you make a 100K a year do you get 50K for six months leave?
Thats gonna up the price of the “childcare” costs of course. Who’ll pay? The guy or girl making 20K a year?
CAn I “opt” out? Can anyone “opt” out?
Shit, man, you tell me. Your answer to “who pays for childcare” so far has been either:
A) “The couple, assuming the man feels like paying in, and assuming they’re able to save up the totally reasonable sum of $20K a year.”
B) “No one, but you also can’t get an abortion, and you can’t refuse sex, sucks to be you.“
Sure. Quit your job.
But if you’re making money off the US economy, you’re making money from US mothers. You owe them back.
@Holly Pervocracy
This is “your” system that you want. You tell me?
Don’t try to divert back to me. You’re the one that gave me the old “see, if you pay for maternity leave it’ll all be better.”
So tell me. Make it better.
The “feels like” part is the key phrase, as NWOslave is staunchly apposed to child support payments.
*Opposed, goddangit!
@Holly Pervocracy
What about fathers. They’re working. Work is fantastic and homelife sucks? Are we back to that?
Tell me your system for maternity leave I wanna hear it. I’m sooo stupid rememeber.
I want details, costs, caps, opting out.
@Holly Pervocracy
How much “money” am I making off of US mothers?
@NWO
You will find that most feminists are actually fully supportive of paternal leave and stay-at-home dads. You seem to be sidestepping the question about abortion however, and we eagerly await your feelings on this matter
What does the “NWO” in Mr Slave’s name stand for?
Noxious, Whining Obsessive?
New World Order. But your definition works too.
@Shadow
Maternity, paternity. Who cares. I want cold hard numbers.
How’s Social Security working out, shall we run with the same plan?
@CassandraSays
And I certainly hope that he denounces any of his friends who may ask for a vodka when he’s out not drinking with them, or he mjay fuck around and find out he’s in bed with a commie-lover!!
NWO, I’m not an accountant nor an economist, and I’m not going to construct an entire system of maternity leave, that applies to everyone, right here in front of you in a blog comment thread.
I will just say that having some sort of system is a hell of a lot better–for fathers as well! think about it!–than your alternative of “pregnant women who aren’t independently wealthy should just um, something, something.”
That depends. How many of your clients and their customers were raised by mothers?
“New World Order”.
NWOslave is a conspiracy theorist who believes himself to be a slave of the Illuminati. No, really.
@NWO
Since I’m not knowledgeable enough about economics, I’m leaving it to those who are. However, abortion?
Does he go in for David Icke’s reptilian alien stuff?
Even if we go by the pathetically low cost of $960.00 a year. and a woman gets 20K for 6 months maternity leave. Over a 40 year period of time 2 people father/mother pay 80K, meaning every man/woman would need to have 4 children between them to recoup their wealth.
Somebody that isn’t you is profiting from your wealth.
ps @hyperdeath
I’m loving the progression of your gravatars and eagerly await the demolition of DOOP!!
“If my wife calls, tell her I said .. Hello”
Nah, it’s all just boring “international *cough*Jewish*cough* bankers” with him.
@Holly Pervocracy
Raising a child has nothing to do with “profit.” Is that how feminists think of children? Burdens and profits?
Says the man who wouldn’t have a job if his customer’s mothers hadn’t raised them. Every cent you make (except that paid in by people raised by single fathers or two-father households, I guess) is profit off mothers’ investments.
Well, they ain’t free.
Seriously, what’s your plan here?
Say a woman who isn’t independently wealthy, who neglected to save up 100K before activating her uterus, gets pregnant. WHAT NOW?
Mothers never buy milk in the US.
@Holly Pervocracy
Always the mother and never the father? Didn’t you youself regail us with a story of your abusive mother and your supportive father? What? He doesn’t get any credit now? Are fathers invisible even if they “have” to work to support you? Did he work for a living to support you?
Lets make this clear once anf for all. Nobody “wants” to work.
Home>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Work.
@NWO
Burdens no. Expensive yes. In fact, you will be surprised to find that raising children is expensive for non-feminists too. Really they are.