Men’s Rights Redditors agree: “It was empathy not misogyny that kept women from having careers.”
Girl totally protected from the harsh world of work by nice men.
Once upon a time, you may recall, women were denied the right to vote, couldn’t own property, were prevented from having careers of their own. Well, it turns out that all of these pesky “restrictions” weren’t really restrictions at all! They were protections that men provided women out of the goodness of their hearts. Men protected women from the terrible burdens of voting and property-owning and so forth, because they just cared about women so much.
Or at least that’s what a lot of Men’s Rights Activists seem to think, judging from this highly edifying discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
![rogersmith25 325 points 1 day ago As I read /r/mensrights[1] more and more, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the primary female privilege is empathy. If a woman or girl is hurt, people care. If women are kidnapped, there is international media attention. If women are killed, their deaths are highlighted. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, then people will jump in to defend the woman. If women are under-represented in an area, people want to take action to make things "equal". If a man is hurt, it's funny. If men are kidnapped, we hear silence. If men are killed, their deaths are glossed over. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, people will attack the man. If men are under-represented in an area, the president will call it a "victory" (as he did regarding the female majority in colleges). Basically, people are programmed to have more empathy for women than men. 200 years ago, that empathy manifested itself in keeping women safe from harm by having them stay home to raise the family rather than die on battlefields or toil in mines. It was empathy not misogyny that kept women from having careers. Present-day, work is safe in offices, so today we have campaigns for women to earn more money and yet have more "balanced" lives where they can both raise a family and earn an "equal" career and, in other words, "have it all". permalink save report give gold reply [–]sierranevadamike 82 points 23 hours ago wow... as a history major, I never looked at the "repression" of women throughout history as empathy rather than misogyny. I NEVER considered this option.. blew my mind.. thank you](http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/empathy1.png?w=604)
It wasn’t just sierranevadamike who was “blown away” by rogersmith25’s comment: the Men’s Rights mods were so impressed that they reposted it and pinned it as the top post in their subreddit.
Apparently every day is “Opposite Day” on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
EDIT: Here, courtesy of Cloudiah, some more pictures of girls and women protected from that big nasty world out there.
Posted on August 17, 2014, in antifeminism, empathy deficit, hundreds of upvotes, imaginary backwards land, mansplaining, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, oppressed men, reddit, that's completely wrong and tagged anti-feminism, antifeminism, bad history, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 495 Comments.
redpoppy, Hazardous job worker here, I am a feminist and continually astounded by the MRMs complete ignorance of workplace safety, a practice that would lower their men on the job death rate. I might allow an ounce of respect for these fucking children if they spent a moment discussing methods of improving workplace safety instead of blaming women for their imagined problems.
“You’re being criticised for saying things that aren’t backed up by evidence”
No I’m not, I’m challenging the idea that some people believe they have the right to dictate their own perception of reality onto the rest of us, as if they are more qualified to define it than we are. In the lower classes, men often provided protection, financial protection, emotional protection, protection from crime, protection from invading armies. Acknowledging the fact that men and women have been residing together in a kind of mutual symbiosis for centuries and that men were often in a position of protecting women, isn’t complicated rocket science, it’s reality.
QFT
And honestly, I don’t even have any ideological interest in this argument since I’m a womanist, not a feminist. Regardless, I’m tired of people like you who lecture feminists about being dismissive of margianlized women yet ignore the same women you claim to be in support of. I am a disabled trans lesbian of color, and I don’t feel supported by you one bit.
Yeah… especially since intersectionality is the facet of feminism that most WOC and poor (and trans, and etc) critics of feminism think that mainstream (read, white and at least middle class) feminism fails at hardest.
I was a nurse aide for four unhappy months. For minimum wage I got to lift heavy old people, wipe butts, get smacked around and groped (once) by my dementia residents. I got to diaper the one guy because I’d had martial arts training and was good at dodging a punch.
I was bit once as well (fortunately, no teeth, but his gums left me with a bruise.).
I had been exposed to three different bodily fluids within the first week-I found getting thrown up on especially festive. My back hurt most of the time I was there, my bad knee got bad again, and I caught a viral bronchitis the home didn’t bother to tell me one of the residents had. Also, I never knew thrown human feces had that kind of adhesive properties.
…It was the bullying assholes I worked with and the level of staffing that made me quit, though. I was showing up, working as hard and as fast as I could for 8 hours, and didn’t feel that I was providing good care. Or that that was GOING to happen, because I was assigned too many residents. After I gave notice, they actually cut staffing further.
I got minimum wage, at the time $7 an hour.
Note, all my coworkers were women.
That is a dangerous, ill paid, and really nasty job.
It’s neither rocket science nor reality, especially if you chose to preference the “men protected women” trope over the fact that most of the kinds of protection you list were mutual protections, in that the woman protected the man as well, and the fact that a lot of the protections that weren’t mutual fell under “men protecting women… from other men.”
How on earth is you saying the majority of that paragraph not the same as dictating your own perception of reality onto the rest of us on this blog?
You don’t even follow your own advice.
And you’re factually wrong. Women didn’t get “financial protection” for centuries – laws prevented women from inheriting anything, women couldn’t open bank accounts as individuals, or take out housing mortgages, or enter many jobs. Those aren’t financial protections, they’re financial obstacles. They’re also a matter of historical record – so it’s not our “perception of reality”, it’s what actually fucking happened.
You’ve confirmed you’re not here in good faith. Fuck off.
So insanitybytes finally stripped away the veneer. Surprise, surprise.
RE: insanitybytes22
Anytime a woman attempts to speak for herself, she is immediately shut down.
…you do realize it’s mostly women telling you you’re full of shit, right? Are they just “not thinking for themselves”? Are they secretly being controlled by male posters here? Is THAT why people pay me money?
In the lower classes, men often provided protection, financial protection, emotional protection, protection from crime, protection from invading armies.
WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE. I SEE NO EVIDENCE. How can I take you seriously without a shred of evidence? Other posters here are linking to stuff, you haven’t. My grandmother was a disabled impoverished woman fighting cancer with six kids. Sure, her husband “protected” her… but he was a pedophile who molested her children in exchange. But hey, what do I know! I’m obviously a wealthy ivory-tower elite who doesn’t know a thing about working for a living! I’m sure he was just totally an exception and that most poor women felt totally equal with their husbands.
RE: sparky
Was insanitybytes22 always a troll?
They stated flat out they were “anti-fem” a while back.
blahlistic…
Eldercare is honestly high up on my list of “Oh God No” jobs for the reasons you listed, and I have nothing but respect for the women (and yes, it is almost all women) who do it for a living, especially those that manage to make it a vocation. But, you know, apparently getting shit on and destroying your back isn’t worth more than minimum wage.
Actually, my grandmother’s personal aide took a side job for about a week working at a eldercare foster home, and had to quit because her back couldn’t handle it. My grandma was rather small, and could walk for short distances and had a wheelchair otherwise, so it wasn’t a problem with her, but it isn’t a job you can keep doing into your golden years, that’s for sure.
The idea that recognizing oppression weakens its victims is odd and insidious.
@Blue Collar Nerd– TRUTH. It has been gone over time and time again here and in other places that they simply don’t have solutions. They just get together and complain about women. If that’s what they want to do with their time? Fine. But calling it a movement and holding pathetic little “conferences?” Is disingenuous and laughable to say the least.
Mutual symbiosis my ass. Men are definitionally the oppressors of women, and nothing more than an artificial class constructed by patriarchy. The vast majority of men in my life have caused me trauma. Nearly all of my friends have also been abused by men. I get along with some men, but most men are horrible human beings. I don’t give a fuck about their “protection” of women.
Laughing my fucking ass off, here. Hi, working class feminist here. Stop trying to dictate your perception of reality onto me, as if you have a better perception of my experiences than I do. And stop trying to use the working class as some kind of idealized prop for your backward-ass ideology. We’re people, not examples.
Men working for wages (a hallmark of the lower and lower-middle classes as upper classes tended to work for salary) often squandered the money:
http://bit.ly/1qiumYE
http://bit.ly/1v6oW7a
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/leisure/pubgambling.html and quote from this:
Angela’s Ashes: http://bit.ly/1makKOu
I was about to say something flip like “maybe that’s b/c the MRA’s are Fox News watchers, and don’t want any of that librul worker’s rights shit…”
…Actually?
+++applies analysis+++
…Hypermasculinity would dictate that being concerned about one’s safety is an unmanly concern.
The MRA’s are all about idealized masculinity and not ACTUAL masculinity.
Actual masculinity really strives to come home with all body parts attached.
They are also all about finding things to blame on women.
QFT. (As an aside, I finally looked that up and was mildly saddened to find that it doesn’t stand for “Quite Fucking True”, as my headcanon holds, but for “Quoted For Truth”, even though really it amounts to the same sentiment. I suppose I just prefer my sentiments to be slightly profane :P)
Hardhats ? Fire exits? Fire extinguishers? Safety protocol? Safety inspections? Pfft. That stuff is for women and cowards! /sarcasm
@dustedeste– DUDE, I also thought it meant “quite fucking true.” Guess it doesn’t. Hahaha. :D But, hey. Doesn’t mean it can’t have a double meaning now.
I like “quite fucking true.” It can mean both.
So sayeth WWTH because you know, as a feminist I like dictating my reality to people.
redpoppy – I’m… actually super excited that someone else thought the same thing as me! We’re clearly soulmates! *quantum-connection high five*
Yeah, dunno if I count, being male and all, but I’m a disabled poor feminist fresh out of homelessness. Back when I was more capable of working, I never made more than $11 an hour, and I NEVER got benefits. If feminism were for the elite only, it would have nothing to offer me, but the folks here helped keep me afloat during that time!
But I’m sure I’m just not thinking for myself. Not like insanitybytes, she obviously has TRUE FREE WILL, not like the rest of us sheeple. *eyeroll*
What are you even trying to argue, insanitybytes22? Yeah, a lot of feminists fail at addressing issues that don’t affect them personally. But to counter that, you’re suggesting that everyone fall into patriarchal gender roles because, um, men are natural protectors? What’s your point?
@ wordspinner:
I’d be willing to deal with one alzheimer’s person, incontinence, unpredictability and all…That is a doable thing.
Trying to keep up with 12 of them was a bit much…and it wasn’t SAFE.
They were on high doses of antipsychotics to keep them pacified. Which meant they could get up, fall down and fracture a bone in the blink of a freaking eye. Meaning that it was a matter of time until one of my residents got hurt even though I WANTED to do right by them.
I was walking in the door angry to be there. Not at the residents, mind you, but at the situation.
So I needed to get out.
I mean, others have already fisked this better than I could have, but apart from the facts… Even if this is true, how can men and women have anything like healthy relationships if the reality is that relationships are kind of a protection racket. As Cliff Pervocracy used to say, “Nice gender you’ve got there. Shame if something were to happen to it.”
dustedeste– *quantum high five returned* Among my circle of friends, I’m notoriously bad at acronyms. I always think they stand for one thing or another but I’m usually wrong 80% of the time. So I just gave up and made up whatever meanings I wanted for any acronym. I live dangerously, I know.
Theladyzombie
My grandmother was a brilliant mathematician and she taught calculus in the 50s and 60s. My grandfather wouldn’t let her use her income to pay bills, groceries, ANYTHING pertaining to living expenses. Lest his ego get bruised if he wasn’t single handedly supporting the whole family (four kids, including my dad). I suppose the joke was on him since she just saved it all and donated to various scholarships and bought really expensive art. He relaxed over the years as he witnessed all his sons marrying brilliant women and feminists (like my mom). He married a feminist too but didn’t realize it until late in life, haha. I loved him dearly. He was a very talented photographer and artist. Just a product of his upbringing. I always called him “endearingly sexist” because he had such a warped view of women, but all positive. Benevolent sexism? At least he liked smart women.
redpoppy – What’s life without a little risk? No risk, no reward! Unless you’re, like, CEO of a bank or whatever, but those guys suck.
I wonder what Ms. Independant Woman thinks about lesbians like me who aren’t interested in having any “male protectors”. I’m guessing we don’t exist?
dustedeste– Risk is my middle name! Mild-mannered housewife by day, evil acronym defiler by night!
Eeek! 12, all by your lonesome? No, not safe at all, for anybody.
My grandmother had Alzheimers, and she could literally drink herself to death with water due to congestive heart failure and cardio-renal failure. Basically, if she had too much water, it kept her already damaged heart from beating, and if she didn’t have enough, it damaged her kidneys, and there was no happy medium. She was also mobile to the very end. You see where this is going…
I always wondered how many waitresses thought we were sadists when we stopped them refilling her water at restaurants–probably not the ones who saw us carry her out to take to the emergency room.
Probably already been said (I confess! I’m posting before reading 102 comments) but I guess all those Factory Acts and Mining Acts were aimed at totally imaginary women and children working in factories and mines in the early 19th century.
“When men are kidnapped, we hear silence”?
Really? Do these people read the news? The Canadian embassy has had pieces run on it by every newspaper and news website in my city once every few weeks covering the clusterfuck of dual citizen journalists suffering from kidnappings and unlawful detentions, only one of which is a woman.
And the notion that men are expendable (therefore amusing to see injured) certainly isn’t coming from people interested in dismantling obstructive gender roles.
It’s too bad I’m late to the party, but everything I would’ve said to insanitybytes has been said. Must be that feminist hivemind imposing reality… or something…
@AllyS Lesbians, and probably gay men too, are often ignored in “symbiosis” models. For convenience, I would assume, since our success stories can’t be explained by their theory. We’re like the strings in string theory.
Certainly there has been a good deal to criticize in the feminist movement in the past. Certainly it has been less than totally inclusive in the past. But the answer to that is to encourage previously under-represented groups of women (and men) to take an active role and increase their influence in feminism. If the message to housewives, non-college educated women, poor women, and women of color is “stay away from feminism, it is not for you,” then feminism will never become more inclusive.
“When men are kidnapped, we hear silence”?
/sarcasm on
As a great example of the silence and doing nothing, exhibit A: the 52 Americans held hostage in Iran in 1979-1981. Clearly it was because 2 of the hostages were women (see http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-01-2011/iranian_hostage_kathryn_koob.html for the gender breakdown) that the US negotiated (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/11/30-years-after-the-hostage-crisis.html)
And there was no airtime on that hostage-taking, apart from all about the womenz.
/sarcasm off
You know, insanitybytes, there are feminists who’re WOC, who’re working class, and who’re based outside the Anglosphere and the Euro zone. Lots of them, in fact. They don’t appear on American TV because almost nobody who’s not white and privileged gets to appear on American TV. That’s not a feminism problem, it’s an American media problem.
The fact that you are apparently not aware of all the many feminists who’re not white, or who’re working class, or who’re based in India or the Middle East or South America or Asia, though? That’s on you. You should know about those women, but I guess you’re just too damn lazy to go find any activist work that isn’t spoonfed to you by the media.
Checkmate, anti-feminist asshole.
insanitybytes has said before zie’s not a feminist, and now is keen to demonstrate it.
And of course the US is the entire world, isn’t it.
How ’bout you fuck yourself instead of pretending that working-class non-USian feminists don’t exist, eh?
Or how about telling me what my plumber grandfather was protecting my grandmother from? How did getting her pregnant at least ten times protect her? How did he protect her from the sheer exhausting drudgery of running a house in 1930s Australia, with no electricity, hand-washing that huge family’s clothes in a copper, cooking all the meals on an old range, keeping hens and three milking cows and never doing a thing himself because that wasn’t the man’s role?
In short: protection from other men, fuckwit. As in, a protection racket.
Thread: am I the only one thinking Quite Fucking True needs to be said by Stephen Fry?
Kittehserf: Probably already been said (I confess! I’m posting before reading 102 comments) but I guess all those Factory Acts and Mining Acts were aimed at totally imaginary women and children working in factories and mines in the early 19th century.
Imagine how much worse the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire would have been if five sixths of those killed hadn’t been “financially protected”…
These women are apparently not feminists.
@kittehserf– Everything needs to be said by Stephen Fry. But I’m biased like that.
Hey, can somebody Tweet it at him? Please, Mr. Fry, for the good of the internet and humanity in general, we NEED this soundbite.
insanitybytes2
I really hate the passivity of this. As if men being “in a position of protecting women” is without a cause. There were no laws preventing women from owning property or become financially secure herself. No social and legal conventions preventing women from protecting herself. It just happened!
Women were forced into a situation that required “protection.” You can’t just claim it’s symbiotic when women didn’t have a choice. Any benefit women got out that relationship is artificial.
Also Pallygirl, I read some of that page of insanitybytes2’s blog you linked to. Wow, I had to stop at her wistfully remembering back when women were the gatekeepers of sex.
LOL, insanitybytes blog. She and Sunshine Mary should be friends.
cassandra: it’s very LOLworthy and sciency.
When you “protect” me against my will, you’re not protecting me. You’re abusing me. Like literally.
All hail the truthiness. There’s nothing as revolutionary as worshiping traditional gender roles.
I wonder if she can see Russia from her house?
I mean, if she wants to live like that then hey, cool, whatever. But wait! Is that an attempt to impose her morality and ideas about what’s right for other people on them? Funny, I thought it was only feminists who did that.
Given that the link I did showed how she’s anti-abortion, she’s not just trying to impose her perceptions of reality on others, she’s also trying to impose her view of what medical procedures should be given to women.
Fuck off away from my, and others’, healthcare options.
For starters, here he is saying “I like titties.”
I find it legitmately triggering when people (especially men) say things about all men being benevolent protectors of women. Because that exact same excuse was used on me to justify all of the domestic abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) I endured at the hands of men, the only difference being that it was also transmisogynistic. I was silenced and treated like an object, no matter how obvious it was that I was traumatized and distressed. So this argument is really personal to me. I’m sorry if I came off as really angry.
hellkell, yup, and she’s probably a part-time turkey farmer as well.
@katz– My life is now complete. Thank you for that!
@AllyS– I don’t know you personally but that won’t stop me from giving you internet hugs. *hugs* I’m sorry you had to endure such terrible things.
@Ally: I didn’t read your comment as being really angry. That said, when someone like the latest troll flounces in and says something offensive (like the benevolent protectors meme, which is fucking offensive on many levels) then you have every right to be angry in your comments.
You have every right to be angry at your end of the computer as well, just in case you were wondering if you had the right to feel your emotions. You sure do, and that is another thing that abusers try to take away – our rights to feel what we feel, so we end up questioning our emotional responses (was I too upset without grounds, did I upset the other person, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so cross, etc…).
If you’re anti-abortion then don’t have one. Not sure why you think your opinion has anything to do with what other people do with their bodies, though.
The protector meme pisses me off as well. My father was the controlling “over protective” type. He literally did just about everything for me. As you can imagine, it hurt me far more than it ever helped me. I’m 32 and I’ve never held a job for more than 3 months. Hell, I’ve only ever had ONE job. To be fair, I’m also dealing with depression/anxiety. Still, I feel so ashamed at the fact that I always feel so helpless and lack practical skills. I have a “protective” father to thank for that.
Note that anti-abortion post also reveals she hates trans women (as well as cis women who are incapable of pregnancy):
Yeah, thank you for your support, insanitybites. You make a great “LGBTQ ally”.
I have never wanted or expected a male protector in my life. Yes, I love it that Mr K is very protective of me, but I feel the same way about him. It’s not only lesbians or asexual women who don’t expect or want a man in that role (or any other). It’d be lovely to be shielded from potential poverty, but relying on a man to do that? Leaving out all the other issues, it’s not smart. Not smart at all.
Seven billion and counting and it’s a “culture of death”? Seven billion despite the fact that most pregnancies miscarry naturally?
That is fucking hilarious!
The only culture of death I see is the one causing runaway climate change.
Apart from anything else, the “men are our beloved protectors” theory has a teensy bit of a problem in that, OK, so who are they protecting you from? Oh, look, it’s men again.
Check out this gem:
Yeah, because bodily autonomy isn’t about being able to make choices about your body – it’s about literally controlling all bodily processes at will like some kind of different lifeform.
Stating the fucking obvious here: women wouldn’t have needed male protectors if they had been able to inherit, use financial systems, hold down jobs, and had a egal system that recognised and punished crimes against women. The protectionism was an inbuilt feature of the oppression.
FFS.
I interpret MRA and anti-feminist labels as meaning “I have no idea about any of the subjects taught at universities and I will pull things out of my arse” aka they show the other person is an idiot.
In other news, GWW is now pulling the trick of demanding citations from people arguing against her, when she’s already provided statements with no citations. Just wow, there’s no learning opportunity that isn’t ignored.
That “culture of death” comment is hateful to all women, including the ones who can get pregnant and give birth. Being told that the reason your life has value is because you can serve as an incubator is not a compliment.
@Ally: I read that bit as slut shaming, because clearly only sluts sleep with men and have unwanted pregnancies.
Aaaaaand here’s a really creepy and triggering article about misogynist men (which includes sympathy for PUAs): http://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/of-misogyny-and-madness/
Excerpts: (TW for suicide and misogyny)
So, um, that last bit Ally quoted, does she realize that she quite clearly stated that PIV sex is a bodily violation? Better be careful there, conservative lady, the men you’re desperately trying to pander to won’t like that at all.
So what if an abortion is damage control, an unwanted pregnancy can be very damaging to a woman’s life.
But your life only has value while you are an incubator. Once you’ve had your baby, if you’re poor, then you should starve. If you are poor and childless, don’t have children until you can afford to feed them.