Should gaming be a “safe space” for nerdy dudes who hate women? The Men’s Rights perspective
I’m back from a brief vacation in Migraineland, and thinking about the ways in which Men’s Rights Activists love to appropriate the language of feminism and other progressive movements, usually in ways that are face-palmingly ass-backwards.
Take this recent discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit of the dire threat of “fake gamer girls” invading the “male space” of gaming. The generically named guywithaccount sets up the discussion with this post:
![I want to talk about "fake geek girls" (self.MensRights) submitted 9 days ago by guywithaccount For those of you who don't know about this, there's a bit of a controversy in what I'll call the geek community. Apparently, when women attend geek conventions (that is, those celebrating e.g. video games, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy), some men accuse them of being "fake geeks" or demanding that they prove their "geek cred" by correctly answering trivia questions made up on the spot. Here's one article (of many) that talks about it: [1] http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/08/the-fake-geek-girl-nonsense/ My concern for this issue is that, like anything else that involves gender, feminists and feminist sympathizers are attempting to dominate the discussion and frame the whole thing from a feminist and gynocentric perspective. The prevailing analysis might be summed up as "geek culture is deeply misogynistic, and the people complaining about fake geeks are just sad little losers who hate women." IMO, the geek subculture has provided a somewhat-safe space for many men who have been snubbed by the rest of society, where they are not expected to prove their value to each other by carving notches in a bedpost or exemplifying traditional masculine traits. The increase in mainstream appeal and female participation over the past decade or so threatens the safety and exclusivity of this space, and the backlash from male geeks is a somewhat-predictable response to the invasion of their space. Of course, there are few spaces just for men, and when someone tries to create or preserve one, they're accused of misogyny. I suspect that some of you don't give a crap about any of this and see the whole thing as petty, but realize that it's not happening in a vacuum. I believe it's merely a symptom of the fact that men have almost no voice in gender discussions and their needs are routinely denied or ignored.](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/fakegeek.png?w=604)
Now, there is a teensy bit of gold in this pile of bullshit: the notion of a “safe space,” where oppressed people can come forward and discuss their issues without fear of being talked over or shut down by those outside their group — who have more power in the world and who may not have their best interests at heart (or who may just be Blabby McBlabbypants types).
But there are a couple of giant problems with this notion when it comes to gamer dudes declaring gaming a “safe space” for men. The first is that, despite lingering resentments over being “snubbed” in high school or wherever — evident in the OP and in comments throughout the discussion — these guys are not actually an oppressed people by any measure that really matters.
Indeed, many of them — as tech dudes in a male-dominated tech world — are in fact in fairly privileged positions. For them to claim they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from the evils of “fake gamer girls” is a bit like Klan members claiming they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from blacks, Jews and Catholics. (Which is more or less what Klan members have argued over the years, albeit in less PC language.) No, I’m not claiming that all MRAs are the equivalent of hood-wearing Klan members. Only some of them are.
The second problem with the “game world as safe space for men” aregument is that YOU CAN’T JUST DECLARE BIG CHUNKS OF THE WORLD TO BELONG TO MEN. Yes, men dominate the gaming world in sheer numbers, both as game-makers and game-players. (While women make up nearly half of all game players — 47% — men tend to dominate the “serious” games that many geek dudes claim are the only ones that really count.) But gaming doesn’t “belong” to men any more than, say, novel-reading “belongs” to women — even though surveys suggest that women make up a staggering 80% of the fiction market in much of the English-speaking world.
Yep, that’s right: Women dominate “noveling” much more dramatically than men dominate gaming. Yet you don’t find women denouncing “fake noveler boys” or declaring that the male brain isn’t wired to understand the subtleties of written fiction.
No, in fact men are actively welcomed into book clubs. And my best friend, a woman, has spent much of the 18 or so years or our friendship trying to get me to read this novel or that novel, though over the years she’s only succeeded in getting me to read maybe one or two of her suggestions, which were pretty good, I have to admit. (I do plan to read some of the others, really.)
If you’re a socially awkward guy and want a safe space to discuss that, find a therapist, find a support group. Don’t pick on women gamers and pretend this is somehow your right because you’re oppressed as a socially awkward guy.
Anyway, here are some other dumb comments from the Reddit thread. YetAnotherCommenter warns feminists that they may lose some powerful allies if they continue acting so feministy.
Speaking of nerds who can’t get laid — which we weren’t but which these guys keep bringing up (and identifying themselves as) again and again — guia7ri seems to harbor some lingering resentments from high school, and who better to take that out on than attractive geeky women?
Hey MRAs, if you wonder why feminists sometimes describe MRAs as bitter men who hate women because they can’t get laid, it’s because MRAs like gui7ri so often EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEMSELVES BITTER MEN WHO HATE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.
Meanwhile Byuku blames it all on evil feminists pretending to be geeks in order to make trouble. Because that’s what feminists do.
That’s how they get you!
EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.
Posted on August 20, 2013, in a woman is always to blame, all about the menz, antifeminism, are these guys 12 years old?, bullying, creep-shaming, dozens of upvotes, entitled babies, evil women, facepalm, female beep boop, geek girls, imaginary oppression, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, no girls allowed, oppressed men, reddit, straw feminists, video games and tagged antifeminism, fake geek girls, gaming, geek girls, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit, video games. Bookmark the permalink. 1,189 Comments.
comes from a bunch of cultural things,
And where do those “cultural things” come from? What you want to say is that those “cultural things” are some ultimate cause and are not the product of even further prior causes. This is what is wrong with much of current social science.
(If I want the thing, I can’t get it unless the other person agrees too)
Agreed. So, what is it of which men are gatekeepers that women aren’t (in the long run, of course).
Asher, nobody here buys the idea that women are the gatekeepers of sex, much less your total non-sequitur that men must therefore be the keepers of something else. Holy fuck you’re stupid.
So if lesbians have no sex, do gay man have all the sex since they have so much testosterone?
“No, it does not. And, unlike you, I don’t speculate on other’s emotional states – another intellectually dishonest rhetorical tactic.”
You made speculations about the sexual drives of lesbians. What’s stopping you? :D
You’re all about untestable conjectures, remember?
I can read a 1200+ comment thread and enjoy myself when the argument is, yanno, one where all participants are engaging honestly.
From what I’ve noticed I am the only one who has consistently stuck to addressing the specific claims and arguments of others. Everyone else has engaged in various speculations about myself or argument by insinuation. I am the *only* one in this conversation who has been consistently intellectually honest.
Dear gods, it’s a broken record.
“Dear gods, it’s a broken record.”
No, it’s a special snowflake of intellectual honesty and truth!
So long as that truth fits within a preconceived framework and doesn’t require evidence to support it.
I know I’m supposed to be ignoring asher but I can’t stop laughing at this statement.
He meant to say “consistently boring”, right?
Then what’s your motivation? Are you trying to use us to validate some twisted beliefs in your head? Since it isn’t working, what is your motivation for being here?
Men are the gatekeepers to sex with men. Women can’t have sex with men unless the men allow it. See? Gatekeeping!
“The term “leftist” is exclusionary because it excludes non-leftists. All identities are exclusionary, every single last one of them. What you are doing is relying on current, general sentiments to to establish a notion that some identities are “bad”, in an Absolute sense, but that others are okay. But since your notions of “bad” are simply rooted in current, general sentiments that means that they are subject to change and not some timeless, universal Absolute.”
*has a small screaming fit*
Ok, now that that’s out of my system. In what fucking world does identifying as one thing mean all other identities for that category of thing are BAD? And not just DIFFERENT? No, seriously, because you just fundamentally said that my identifying as non-binary means that binary trans* people and cis people are bad in current sentiments. Which might be your biggest crock of shit so far.
I’ll even grant that you are, in a very pedantic sense, correct that identifying as one thing means excluding other identities in that category from your definition of yourself. And thus, en masse the group identity excludes other groups. In label.
What I will not, ever, grant is the idea that establishing an identity, of any sort, means relying on general sentiments to establish other identities as BAD.
You made speculations about the sexual drives of lesbians.
No, I didn’t. There’s quite a bit of actual research on the human sex drive that pretty much indicates that males are the initiators of the contexts involving sexual activity; men provide the context and women the consent. A couple of months ago in Slate (I think, maybe the DAily Mail) a lesbian caused a stir by admitting that women are, by nature, more passive than men.
“lesbian bed death” About 163,000 results (0.21 seconds)
Ah, someone has said this before – it’s babies, isn’t? Cos all the ladies wants a baby.
Unlike your notion of “bad,” which is rooted in tracing everything back to when we were paramecia and then ranting about how things are going to cause the end of civilization as we know it.
Asher, like many of our trolls, just wants us to fall down and admit how right he is about everything. It won’t happen, and his need for validation from u sis just sad.
Cite a study you silly ass. Don’t point me to a popular news article. I want a study.
“asher is a moron” About 18,300,000 results (0.35 seconds)
Ahhhhhhh… so nice of you to admit what has been obvious to the rest of us this whole time.
The application of moral reasoning involves the application of empathy. You are confusing the tools that moral reasoning uses to be effective and with the conditions for morality. You are engaging in the reversal of cause and effect.
Empathy is the product of morality and not its cause.
BTW, most of the people I know understand this.
“asher is boring” roughly 17 billion result, .5 seconds.
Ooooh anecdote as evidence. And he claims he’s the only intellectually honest one here?
Hey guys, [TW: suicide] downing a bottle of klonopin with vodka is perfectly safe, I survived it after all!
All I know is now I’m never going to hear/read the words “intellectual dishonesty” the same way ever again.
Intellectually honest to God.
All forms of exclusion are the same, right?
I love it when pedantic people are so focused on words that they fail to notice subtle distinctions between ideas. Irony at its finest.
I am just…baffled by this.
Argenti: Benzos are hard to terminally OD from, and I’m glad. You would be missed.
The reason he’s here is because when he acts like this offline people just walk away. Yay captive audience!
(Seriously everyone, ignore him, he won’t go away as long as he’s getting attention.)
“The plural of anecdote isn’t evidence” is so cliche… but it bears repeating.
I’m sorry to say you have made such a poor first impression that I can’t really see letting you spend time with mine.
Oh great, another Baby’s First Philosophy Studies.
Pfft. Please. I can get Love, Blood and Rhetoric; Love and Blood; or Blood and Rhetoric. It’s Blood that’s obviously mandatory.
I call upon Asher to renounce atdevel in all its forms!
Oh ye gods, you’re another boring fella who doesn’t understand evo psych but thinks it’s the answer to everything.
Nooooo, science is the methodology by which we arrive at the explanation that best fits, etc. The explanation is properly termed a theory.
Oh wow, so, like, fifty years or so?
Next you’re going to argue that humans don’t have free will.
Oh great, Dictionary Troll on top of everything else.
Great Glolloping Buddha, not this again.
I’m sorry, it was not obvious to me that Asher was here to Dispense Wisdom. Allow me to kowtow properly this time. Fucker.
Mints on pillows and tiny bars of soap in the bathroom.
In a 4X game.
Sorry, forgot how much I had quoted.
OTOH, I nailed every single one of those blockquotes. Go me.
Lolwhut? In your universe emotional reactions are caused by pseudophilosophical reasoning? Does this apply to everything?
“This thing you are giving me is known as a ‘present.’ Humans exchange these as a way of strengthening social bonds, thus promoting survival of the species. Evolution therefore dictates that I should feel what is known as ‘happy.'”
Protip: When people say “Yes, whatever you say, Asher,” it doesn’t mean they agree with you.
hellkell — yeah, I realize as much, they also don’t tend to make one want to down the rest of the bottle, so yeah. And thanks (this was a couple months before I delurked, so you’d have never known me, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same)
My point, however was that what applies to one person does not inherently apply to everyone (a fact that stands true even for things we’d assume are innate to humanity — eg that your organs are aligned so your appendix is on the right, a very small minority have them all mirrored)
Asher: Now, I ask you, again, what is the complimentary gatekeeping function that is male to the gatekeeping of sex function that women have?
The gatekeeping function of sex. It really is that simple. Person A has the right (contra your interpretation of Bentham) to decided with whom the they have sex.
So too does person B, and C, and D, and on, and on, and on. Each person has that function.
And you can’t claim (historically) that this was a woman’s power: not when she could be married off as chattel. Not when the act of being married meant her husband had the right to force her to have sex if he was of a mind.
And this isn’t a “constant”. Jewish law has recognised, for going on two millennia, that good sex is a woman’s right, and that a husband who doesn’t provide it is divorceable, on that basis (and one who forced himself on his wife [or vice versa] was also divorceable).
Asher: Jared Diamond? Not so much.
Funny, the greatest complaing of Diamond (as a writer of popular science, not to his peer-reviewed work) is that he does a lot of, “this is true” presentation.
The intro to “Guns, Germs, and Steel” has a statement that “primitive” people are smarter than “civilised” people because they have to memorise so much more, in the course of their everyday lives.
This is patently false (it’s a category error), but that sort, “this is what it all MEANS” is a large part of what he does in that book, and in Collapse.
Your case, you are not making it.
Throughout history, most men have not oppressed most women.
The claim is vaccuous, and intellectually dishonest (because you can’t prove it). Most men didn’t have to oppress most women. The society did it for them.
Sort of the way most Northerners didn’t directly oppress slaves. That doesn’t mean slaves weren’t oppressed in the US.
People who are oppressed have no incentive to contribute to the well-being of a society in which they reside. However, women have, generally, contributed to the societies in which they lived, therefore, women haven’t been oppressed.
Spot that fallacy: begging the question.
A: you posit oppressed people have no incentive* to contribute to the societal well-being.
B: Women did so contribute.
C: Ergo they weren’t oppressed; because if they were they wouldn’t have contributed.
But C is predicate on A, which uses C to prove itself, ergo the question has been begged.
It’s really that simple. The idea that all questions can be resolved to one axis of investigation: and that axis resolves other questions is facile. That you seem to think it works that way (and is simple) is why you understand neither science, nor philosophy.
*this is also a weasel, since you imply all incentives have to be postive; slave had no positive incentive to help their societies, but they still did so, but that’s a different rhetorical dishonesty.
I think we need some sort of name for the disease that Asher appears to suffer from. Spock Syndrome? Internet Android Affliction?
Asher: Where does geek culture involve willful and systemic terrorizing of others? Be specific. Cite examples, because willful and systemic terror was the core identity of the Klan – that’s what it was all about.
Fallacy of compostiion, and a lie.
The first, not all geeks are members of the Klannish aspect of the culture. (but for citations, Dear Muslima, and all the crap around Elevatorgate: the harassment, and real world consequences attendant to “Donglegate” Katherine Harris, Anita Sarkeesian, Redheaded Feminist, The Texas Lan Party where the problem of dudes terrorising women was solved by… banning the women, not the terrorising men: shall I go on? Wouldn’t matter, I expect you to hand wave them away as you spirit the goalposts behind another hill).
The lie, is that you are still imputing the fallacy of composition to Dave, despite going on a dozen refutations.
Klan terror was widely-known and if the geek community engages in systemic and willful terror of others then it is logical to assume that it would also be widely known in the general public consciousness.
False.
The Klan was widely known because it was terrorising a large group of people in very public ways. Even at that the scope of Klan activity is still ignored, and minimised (go ahead, look up the Klan in Indiana, and see that they largely ran the state in the 1930s).
Given that geek/gamer culture is a far smaller, and more geographically amorphous (i.e. lots of it isn’t in a physical space) and that assholes like you will make apologia for them (the same way that whites would say it wasn’t that bad, and if they didn’t like the blacks could move; or fight back), it’s not a surprise that it’s not “widely known in the public consciousness”.
Except that it is. Not so widely known as the Klan, but the crosses aren’t being burned on lawns, rather they are in Youtube comments, and twitterhates. And it’s becoming more widely known.
That people have been looking away doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Asher: For an analogy to be intellectually honest there has to be a large body of similarities between the respective things being analogized. To use both the Klan and male geeks in the same analogy implies that there is a large body of similarities.
Nope. It has to be internally consistent, and have some validity in the scope of the comparison. It was, it does.
Some geeks make arguments similar to those the Klan made. That is true. Saying it isn’t dishonest.
Pretending that it isn’t true, when the logic behind it has been explained (ad naseum) is isn’t just intellectually dishonest, it’s also factually dishonest.
I already explained that and no one even acknowledged it. In fact, the original poster was dishonestly trying to use the dishonest rhetorical tactic of sneaking in equivalencies via a bad analogy.
Unless you count several people who told you why it was structually sound, and rhetorically valid (people like me) as no one, then yes, you are right.
Here, in the real world, where words have meaning and people can scroll up, that sort of gaslighting bullshit don’t fly.
. If an analogy is generally accepted as true then the premises under which it was offered then become accepted as true, as well. For David’s original analogy to be accepted as valid means to accept that there is a large body of functional similarities between male geeks and the Klan.
No. There has to be specific similarity to the aspect compared. There was. YOU, are insisting (in the face of the evidence) that Dave really meant to say things he didn’t, i.e. the gamer geeks are in all ways just like the Klan
He didn’t say that, and to impute he meant it is to be both a liar, and intellectually dishonest (as you use the words).
For an analogy to be intellectually honest in application it cannot just be well-argued but the premises under which it operates also have to be true. Consider the following analogy: wheels are to cars as legs are to horses. This analogy works and is intellectually honest because both cars and horses are things that people have frequently utilized for transportation so there is not a false equivalency between cars and horses.
Don’t be stupid.
1: Dave defined a limited premise. so that is dismissed.
2: Your car/horse analogy has nothing to do with them both being means of transportation. Sails are to ships as legs are to horses. Jet Engines are to planes as legs are to horses.
The transport aspect is immaterial. And legs/wheels is weak. What are wheels? They are the means to make motion easier.
Legs are support, and locomotive engine.
So fuel is to cars as hay is to horses works. Legs/Wheels is disputable (one might argue hooves/wheels, and motor/legs, but the analogies are stretched: and what the horse/car is used for isn’t material).
You really aren’t very practiced at debate against educated people.
Actually this is a poor analogy. Motors are to cars as legs are to horses.
Really, though, from what he’s written, how could interpret it as anything else?
If no one has any rights, then there is no reason for any social contract.
This is a reversal of cause and effect. Clearly, I have a “right” to kiss my wife and I not longer have that “right” at the point she decides that she no longer desires it. “Rights” are an effect of any social contract, not it’s cause, and I am pretty clearly talking about “rights” in the metaphysical sense, not the relative and practical sense.
Certainly, I have the “right” to drive 55 on the freeway and no longer have that “right” if the speed limit gets lowered to 50. This is a rejection of notions of rights being a priori.
That was meant for katz, by the way. Sheesh, you guys post long and fast.
Fallacies are intellectually dishonest argument (that was one of composition).
Fallacies involve logical inference and relate to necessary conditions. I wasn’t attempting to draw out a logically necessary inference so the comment wasn’t frallacious. Otherwise, simply presenting evidence for a position would be fallacious, as one presentation of evidence doesn’t exhaust the body of all possible evidence.
Amusingly, it’s the “citations needed” crowd who engages in the logically fallacious reasoning that if something isn’t definitively established in a peer reviewed journal then it isn’t worth considering. THAT is logically fallacious.
AAARGH! I go back for like… 20 minutes to reread the thread and Asher is suddenly back.
@Asher:
I know these are old, but you asked where the cultural stuff came from, implying they came from some inherent aspect of gender. That is wrong. Culture develops over time, sometimes changing quickly, other times settling in and sticking. Women ended up being stuck in the subservient role, the pursued role, the “men ask women because originally they asked the woman’s father” role. It’s arbitrary, and therefore it’s not a good idea to look to culture as an indication of what is correct.
About your slavery point, I wasn’t sure what you meant. I think you’re trying to say that the dynamics of slavery are more volatile and shorter-term than the dynamics of gender, and that’s demonstrably false. The roles of men and women have constantly changed throughout history, from women being leaders and rulers to being subservient to being equals, and they vary wildly both in the past and in the present by location. Even now the role gender plays in your societal position is being questioned and re-evaluated. Pretending that modern day stereotypes about gender are the result of a long equillibrium is… silly.
It is even sillier to make the argument that a long equillibrium is a good indication of what is morally correct or true. History affects the present rather strongly, and oppressed people can get stuck for long periods of time because they cannot get the resources to fight back. A system (like slavery, hence my original challenge), can be stable for quite a while because the people who want the system to change don’t have the ability to change it.
Right, now to find a way to jump back in (assuming Asher’s still around anyway).
I wish I had a right not to be bored. That would be awesome. Imagine if annoying people came with a mute button.
So you do support the Klan (what with slavery being how people lived for much of human history).
That I don’t support the Klan is merely a product of history, not of some a priori set of moral principles.
Says the guy who just defended reactionary lifestyles with an appeal to nature.
I openly call myself a “reactionary”. It’s just a label and the particular application of a sequence of letters doesn’t establish the function of a thing. For example, the function of a horse isn’t determined by the fact that we label it with the letters h-o-r-s-e.
“Amusingly, it’s the “citations needed” crowd who engages in the logically fallacious reasoning that if something isn’t definitively established in a peer reviewed journal then it isn’t worth considering. THAT is logically fallacious.”
If you had solid evidence to support your claim I highly doubt you’d call asking for evidence to be hand-waving.
No one said it isn’t worth considering. We said that it isn’t worth accepting as “truth”. Then again, if you had been properly trained in the sciences you would know why the term “truth” is problematic in science. Probably because that pesky peer-review system means that human beings have to hold theories and ideas tentatively. There isn’t a niche for absolutism in science.
Oh wow, I missed this gem:
I want to make the society I reside in better; therefore, I’m not systemically disadvantaged by society because of a certain trait I have.
This is the dumbest thing I have heard from you in this thread. Congratulations.
How does this
Pro-tip, the hallmark of the intellectually honest is they don’t keep one standard for themselves, and another standard for others.
Follow from this
Says the guy who just defended reactionary lifestyles with an appeal to nature.
Or were you just collecting random notions you hold and throwing them into a single post. Can you give me an example of a standard to which I hold others that I do not hold myself? No, that’s not a request for a link to a peer reviewed journal, just cite a standard I’ve exposited in these comments to which I do not hold myself.
BTW, that is what I suspect you’re referring to and I’ve already addressed it. When I say cite examples I am not restricting it to peer reviewed journals.
Oh, so I wasn’t a real soldier because I didn’t have “sexual activities [which involved] cavorting with [soldiers]“. I’ll be sure to remember that.
Not sure what the percentage of the lifers who are in the military but for many people in the US military their tour of duty is not central to their identity – I’ve had two brothers who did two to three year stints in the Army and they don’t consider it central to their identity, at all. For lifers, there is a label that their wives actually take which is “soldier’s wives”, so you’re simply incorrect on facts. Over time, the wives of male soldiers do take on a social identity distinct from women in the general population. (no, I doubt there is a peer reviewed article establishing this).
“BTW, that is what I suspect you’re referring to and I’ve already addressed it. When I say cite examples I am not restricting it to peer reviewed journals.”
Your hate crush on peer-review is most unbecoming, Petey.
Defo not letting you play with my babes now, for rizzle.
Gonna go groove to baby nautilus for a while now.
Objection: asked and answered.
Except the answer was just a rehash of the initial analogy and didn’t bother to address my objections. An intellectually honest answer would involve addressing my specific objections. One very salient and realistic objection to David’s analogy was that people are going to, over time, impute the harmlessness of male geeks to the Klan. That’s one side effect of the poor use of analogy.
Asher: I already addressed this. The act of establishing identity is an inherently exclusionary one because it excludes the things that are different.
And you are wrong. Yes, Identification is a way of defining things which are unlike. It’s not, “and so nothing which isn’t like this can ever be like this”.
Social taxonomy isn’t biological taxonomy.
Geekdom is a set of traits focused on a shared interest. Nothing in that requires the peope who share that trait to have dicks.
So your definition fails to describe the thing, and is rejected. It lacks truth.
If you look at David’s original analogy in the context of current, practical experience of the average person his analogy can cut another way. Most people have encountered a fair number of male geeks in their lives and probably no Klan members.
How do you know this? I rarely see people who run about declaring the Klavern to which they belong. What they may not have encountered is an open Klan Member. One of the interesting things about the terrorising geeks (see Jane Austin and the £5 Note) is they hide. When the are outed the deny.
Which makes it easy for weaseling cowards like you (too afraid to look at the mess in their own culture) to deny them).
What you are doing is relying on the current general social sentiments involving Klan members in order to make a specious equivalence between the Klan and male geeks. *
What you are doing is pretending to know my motives/thoughts.
What I am doing is comparing a specific activity, to another specific activity. I see parallels (the violent rhetoric, the specious logic, the false declarations of inherent different, the secrecy) and pointing it out to others.
Is the one groups shameful, yep. Guess what, that makes the other group shameful. I’m not ashamed to compare violent misogynists to violent racists.
Why? Because I want to get rid of both.
You, however, seem to think getting rid of the former (through shame and disapprobation) is wrong.
Which makes you a shitty person, who countenances evil in the world.
Liar
Asher: Unlike every other commenter, here, I specify the exact reasons for using the label of intellectually dishonest
Liar. I’ve been quite specfic (with quotations and everything) when I say you are being dishonest (intellectually, factually, morally).
So you can add that to your list of hypocrisies.
I argue for my positions and most others, here, do not.
Wrong again, you assert them, and get offended when we don’t accept them, so you reassert them; even when your former assertions have been shown to be lies (see the whole, Dave saod geeks were “just like” the Klan)
“There’s this moronic sentiment out there that women regularly and systemically receive abuse on the internet just because they’re women.”
It’s not moronic, it’s true. Men don’t get the same volume, nor the same categories, of abuse.
You should have your tongue ripped out
What women-hating trolls really believe
@Asher:
Please please please clarify this. Do you not have a set of moral principles that exclude the klan and simply don’t wish to be a social pariah, or was this just horribly worded?
Lots of racists and sexists think this way:
“Amusingly, it’s the “citations needed” crowd who engages in the logically fallacious reasoning that if something isn’t definitively established in a peer reviewed journal then it isn’t worth considering. THAT is logically fallacious.”
Your trying to validate your opinions by silencing your critics for being critical. Those who favor EvoPsych, for instance, go this route. “I know I’ll be criticized for not being politically correct, but I read a non peer reviewed study that said women don’t like sex. That conforms to what I want to believe in, so I’ll support it. Peer reviewed studies disagree with this, so I’ll claim peer review in somehow intellectually impure, because, blablabla, I’ll pull some whacked nonesense out of my ass.”
Cassandra: I like Spock syndrome.
If by “aware” you mean “supplied at least as much as half the required labor to feed/clothe/sustan the family” then yes.
“Income” clearly implies an socioeconomic environment involving large-scale societies and large amounts of production of economic commodities. Yes, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that women have always contributed roughly half of all labor required to make society function. It’s just that the specifics have involved significant differences in labor roles.
Oh god what did citations ever do to Asher. (Note, Asher, if you say quite a bit of research you should link, or at the very least, say what research you’re using).
Omilords, it’s on google it must be true.
No, actually. You do not have a right to kiss your wife. I do not have a right to hug my sister. You do not have that right. FFS this is not hard. You do not have rights over other people…
I shall borrow your terms: Saying that Dave, in the OP equated male geeks isn’t intellectually dishonest. It’s a lie.
This is like you saying red is blue and blue is red. That’s exactly what he did. Either he needs to show how male geeks are functionally the equivalent of the Klan or retract the analogy.
The second half of your assertions is also false. It’s not a lie; it’s a rhetorical device (I recommend Aristotle for a better grasp of how to use them), specifically Hyperbole.
This is truly hilarious. The actual hyperbole in this conversation is David’s original analogy. It is not hyperbole on my part to point out his hyperbole.
BTW, I’ve actually taught a uni course on Greek philosophers
It is Pell! If only, then at least we could get David to banhammer his tedious ass.
Asher, stop willfully misunderstanding the Klan reference and fuck off.
Oh god I sincerely hope not. I’d feel bad for your students.
Oh right, forgot about this one!
Asher, remember my whole rock climbers thing? The reason I brought it up is because, even if like-minded people tend to have sex, that sex is no part of the definition of their inclusion in the group. Maybe avid rock climbers do tend to have sex with other avid rock climbers; maybe this is a statistical fact. But it plays no part in determining if someone is a rock climber; that is solely based on whether they like and do rock climbing.
To put it in non sex terms; suppose I am an atheist. Suppose I do not go to any atheist conventions, have no atheist friends, have no sex with other atheists, and in general do not make my religious beliefs known. Does this make me a fake atheist? No. Inclusion under the label “atheist” is a result of my beliefs.
Therefore, saying that geek girls are fake because they don’t have sex with other geeks is painfully false, and ironic(?) considering that geeks stereotypically don’t have sex with anyone.
If it’s Pell, I’m impressed, he usually hits his Froth setting much sooner.
I feel bad for Asher’s student’s. I bet all his overheads were 8pt. font too.
Asher — I see you have chosen to ignore my refutation of the idea the identities being exclusionary inherently means other identities are labelled bad by society at large.
pecunium — you’re just like the four and out crowd, this is news to me!
Asher — way to ignore that plenty of lifer // career soldiers aren’t married.
@CassandraSays
Have you spoken with his Darkness?
Whoa, sorry for the apostrophe abuse.
We care.
saraheliza: I dropped the Dark Lord an email. The stench of sock is overpowering.
No one here thinks these idiots don’t want any women in the world.
The original claim made by someone (maybe you?) is that the particular subset of male geeks want “everyspace” to be woman-free. Their words. Well, “everyspace” would be exhaustive of all places in this world, therefore, no such place would exist where women could be. That would be a woman-free world.
See where using hyperbole get you? The original commenter should have acknowledged that male geeks want a specific and limited environment without women where they can be geeky in the manner with which they craft that identity. Your issue should be with the first commenter who made the “everyspace” comment, not with me. The lesson is … avoid hyperbole.