>
Wisdom from misterb, aka misterbastard, taken from a discussion on The Spearhead on “Academia and the Politics of Peer Review,” which quickly degenerated from an idiotic discussion about the evils of academia into an idiotic discussion about how women are stupid, selfish and evil. (Isn’t that how discussions on The Spearhead always go?)
Anyway, the wisdom:
I hate to say this. Feminism dumb down society.
Misterb make feminism mad! Feminism stomp misterb!
More wisdom:
In my opinion. Women should never be allowed to hold degrees in soft sciences. And there should be no degrees in regards to soft sciences.
Just because a woman holds a degree to some cheap laden science or bad science. It doesn’t make her smart, but in fact it has an opposite effect. it makes her downright stupid.
There’s different between knowledge and wisdom. And today’s lacks both of them. Only thing she’s good at is being worthless
In another comment he corrected what he evidently saw as his one and only mistake in this final paragraph: “today’s” should have been “today’s woman.”
Yep, that oughtta fix it.
I’m sorry, but idiots going on about their intellectual superiority: always funny. Always.
>And when all else fails, blaming it on an external source, the browser in this case ("blasted firefox"), instead of taking a look inwards and admitting that you might not be the mental giant that you think you are."case in point. I had to set up my sister’s macbook for her. Wow, women are better than men. If women were better than men, how simple is it to set up your own computer. Even a twelve kid can set up his/her own computer."Perhaps he should have allowed his sister to proofread his rants before publishing them.
>Yeah, I'm going to buy that he, and his MRA buddies, are my intellectual superiors. Not. There are some real gems in the MRM. That's for sure.
>I've got a gem from your blessed feminist movement. It's not even the odd comment.http://feminismreview.blogspot.com/2010/10/shameless.htmlIt's an article (with commentary) from a continuing Feministing contributor who proves herself incapable of accepting a miserable loss. It's a shame when people reduce themselves to adult babies in the face of a crushing defeat, isn't it?
>Pot meet kettleIs that comment in reference to the polmic, misandric, ideological, political, pusedo research that is often comes from women in the soft sciences thats used to promote the idea that women are superiour and polemic leglislation for men?If that is the case its the equivilant of a jew saying that germans and american progressives shouldnt have been allowed to produce the pseudo science used to justify eugenics programs.Anyway, here are the google results for "feminist hate speech". They are quotes for the most prominent and influential feminists.http://www.google.ie/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=feminist+hate+speech&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=79df40f910ee39ce
>As for feminism dumbing down society. Heres an article about the sacking and attempts to silence a female teacher who spoke out against the dumbing down of the UK education system feminist political ideology. UKs young children are now bottom of the education league in Europe."….left high and dry by the prevalent ‘all must have prizes’ Left-wing education ideology, which under the banner of ‘equality’ had produced a ‘culture of excuses’ which kept ‘poor children poor’.""Such home truths are practically unsayable in the state sector. Over the years, other educational whistle-blowers have been punished for saying them.Some two decades ago Martin Turner, a distinguished psychologist and expert on dyslexia, was forced out of his job and had his reputation blackened for suggesting that many diagnosed classroom disorders were actually caused by a systemic failure to teach children to read.And around the same time, two history teachers, Anthony Freeman and Chris McGovern, were driven out of their posts in state schools for attempting to ensure that children were taught a proper historical narrative as opposed to sociological, politically correct gobbets.Over the years, all attempts at education reform have foundered because of the refusal by the education establishment to acknowledge the damage being done by the shibboleth of ‘equality’ which has brought the system to its knees."Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1321411/As-teacher-Katharine-Birbalsingh-fired-tell-truth-now.html#ixzz13tBYubNx
>Relevant soft scientists performing an idiotic study and abusing statistics.
>I'm not quite sure how one badly done study discredits all of feminism and/or social science.
>It doesn't, nor did I make the claim that it does.There are, however, many awful studies that make up the cornerstone of common feminist arguments, which are plagued by similar problems. But I suppose the feminist would argue that statistical rigor is just part of the patriarchy that opposes them: "The guidelines elaborate on the attitude toward masculinist scholarship and methods by quoting the feminist theorist Elizabeth Fee: "Knowledge was created as an act of aggression—a passive nature had to be interrogated, unclothed, penetrated, and compelled by man to reveal her secrets." Fee's resentment and suspicion of male "ways of knowing" follows a path well trodden by such feminist thinkers as Mary Ellman, Catharine MacKinnon, and Sandra Harding, whose views of patriarchal knowledge and science have quickly become central gender feminist doctrine. Playing on the biblical double meaning of knowing to refer both to intercourse and to cognition, Ellman and MacKinnon claim that men approach natureas rapists approach a woman, taking joy in violating "her," in "penetrating" her secrets. Feminists, says MacKinnon, have finally realized that for men, "to know has meant to fuck." In a similar mood, Sandra Harding suggests that Newton's Principles of Mechanics could just as aptly be called "Newton's Rape Manual."
>I hope you don't assume I agree with any of this bullshit. Or that anyone aside from a small subset of feminists does. (Of course, Sommers is full of shit too.)
>"Of course, Sommers is full of shit too."That so?
>Sommers (and Sraus among others) are whistle blowers at the credible end of feminist research.Daphes Patai is another that speaks out against the pseudo education and dumbing down that feminism is responsible for – "She is a leading critic of the politicization of education, in particular of the decline of free speech on college campuses as programs conform to pressures from feminists and other identity groups".Some of her books -Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies Professing Feminism: Education and indoctrination in Women's Studies Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism "Patai's thesis is that a failure to defend the integrity of education, and a habit of dismissing knowledge and research on political grounds, not only seriously hurts our students but also leaves feminists helpless in trying to defend education against other ideological incursions (such as intelligent design). Only positive knowledge, respect for logic, evidence, and scrupulous scholarship not held to political standards, Patai contends, can lead to a better future. Twentieth-century examples of contrary educational practices have a sordid history, one that has hardly promoted women's rights (or any other human rights)".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Patai
>Dave said:"I'm sorry, but idiots going on about their intellectual superiority: always funny. Always."Yes. This is why your posts in particular have such a high entertainment rating for the rest of us, love.But please continue to keep us in stitches with these examples of your mental prowess.
>@David Futrelle:"I'm not quite sure how one badly done study discredits all of feminism and/or social science."I'm not quite sure how one anti-feminist's badly expressed blog comment discredits all of the men's rights movement and/or its goals and values. But your post here does attempt to do exactly that.
>Not exactly. The comment amused me, so I posted it. It is interesting that no one in that thread, or in this one, actually challenged his idea that women should be banned from the "soft sciences," or his notion that women are basically worthless. I know not all of you actually agree with either of these propositions, but it is interesting how you guys react to posts of mine quoting nonsense from some MRA. When someone points out an example of a feminist spewing nonsense, I say: yes, that's nonsense. And if you look at my published writings you will see I've written harsh critiques of, for example, Dworkin and MacKinnon. You guys, on the other hand, circle the wagon. Even you, John, didn't challenge any of his actual ideas; you just called his comments "badly expressed."
>Oh, and as for Sommers, there are some posts here that do a good job of showing just how she's full of shit. The 3-part series and the "fact checking" one are especially good; the one on Koss rebuts her famous "rebuttal" of Koss' study. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/category/anti-feminist-zaniness/christina-hoff-sommers/
>I dont think a catty blog is a good source,and anyway Koss's findings are replicated when men are asked the same questions, in fact men reported forced rape more often than women. http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdfAnd "Approximately one in six boys is sexually abused before age 16.(Conservative estimate of incidents involving physical contact in U.S. and Canada. See below.)"http://www.jimhopper.com/male-ab/So even if the feminist claim of 1 in 4 is a reflection of reality, its yey again only telling half of the story.Daphne Patai makes similar claims as Sommers about wide spread education failure in feminism."Their research included personal interviews with feminist professors who had become disillusioned with feminist initiatives in education. Drawing on these interviews and on materials defining and defending women's studies programs, the book analyzed practices within women's studies that the authors felt were incompatible with serious education and scholarship — above all, the explicit subservience of educational to political aims.A recent enlarged edition of this book provided extensive documentation from current feminist writings of the continuation, and indeed exacerbation, of these practices. Routinely challenged by feminists who declare that "all education is political," Patai has responded with the claim that this view is simplistic. She argues that a significant difference exists between the reality that education may have political implications and the intentional use of education to indoctrinate. The latter, she argues, is no more acceptable when done by feminists than when done by fundamentalists".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Patai
>Once again I point to specific evidence on something and it's immediately dismissed — without you even looking at it — because the person presenting the evidence is — horrors! — a feminist. It's impossible to have an actual serious discussion if you do this.
>The article you have linked to begins by mostly agreeing with what Christina Hoff Sommers has said:"Sommers cites a second recent textbook, The Penguin Atlas Of Women In The World, which repeats the same error. And she’s right — it is an error. (Although, as I’ll show in a future post, Sommers’ counter-claims are just as false.)I think this is the strongest of Sommers’ claims. Sommers is right to say that “false assertions, hyperbole and crying wolf undermine the credibility and effectiveness of feminism in general.” And many errors could easily be avoided if authors just checked primary sources — something that professional writers and academics should do routinely.Within feminism, there’s sometimes too little skepticism regarding statistics and news stories which emphasize harms against women. We’ve created a culture which does a rotten job of self-correction."Keep in mind that I brought Christina Hoff Sommers into the discussion not to cite any of her "counter-claims," which the blog author asserts are false without analysis or refutation, but rather to demonstrate the poor quality of feminist research. The centerpiece of the author's disgareement concerns the Koss study. Absent in this discussion is any analysis of a very strange caveat about the findings of Koss' work:"Only about a quarter of the women Koss calls rape victims labeled what happened to them as rape. According to Koss, the answers to the follow-up questions revealed that "only 27 percent" of the women she counted as having been raped labeled themselves as rape victims. Of the remainder, 49 percent said it was "miscommunication," 14 percent said it was a "crime but not rape," and 11 percent said they "don't feel victimized."Am I to believe that approximately 3000 college aged students chosen for the survey were deemed too stupid to realize whether they had been raped or not? Am I to believe that only feminist researchers with a political agenda can ferret out the truth?The blog author goes on to state that the Koss research is sound because it is cited much. This does not defend the research on its own merits whatsoever. It's like saying the racist research supporting the conclusion that black people were a lesser species was sound because it was academically popular at the time. Good arguments/studies/analyses stand on their own merits and should be analyzed based on their indivdual merit; this sort of argument is like an ad populum – well of course the Back Street boys are excellent musicians, just look at how many albums they have sold!
>Moreover, the blog author unwittingly buffs Christina Hoff Sommer's arguments regarding how feminists have largely corrupted the academic institution (and at times government agencies) by bringing up the fact that the Koss study has been a cornerstone of two "major studies conducted by the Federal government." If you think academics or the federal government are immune to bias, well, as the blog author says, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. Here's mine, based on a substantial review of scholarship in linguistics and language ideologies.More towards the end of the article, the blog author states:"This is the central dishonesty of Sommers’ thesis: She claims her work shows that feminists “as a rule” have “reckless disregard for the truth,” but most of her book concerns matters that an honest person could easily disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers about.5"Am I to believe that one (poor) objection to the small bit on Koss demonstrates sufficiently that the "book concerns matters that an honest person could easily disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers about?" The author doesn't even go on to LIST any such matters, merely stating as a matter of fact that they exist. Her conclusion is based on a strawman: "Sommers has to frame all her disagreements with mainstream feminism as feminist lying, because that is the basis of her case against feminism. If she admits that reasonable, honest feminists can disagree with Christina Hoff Sommers, she loses her claim that modern feminism consists of “a large body of blatantly false information… at best, misleading –- at worst, completely inaccurate."The basis of her case against feminism is a thorough review of feminist literature and the effects of millions of dollars of feminist advocacy; the weight of her analysis does not depend upon calling "mainstream feminism" a bunch of lies (hell, she readily admits from the get go that she is talking about a small minority of "feminists" who have seized power of the movement FROM the mainstream and taken it to the fringes!). Sorry, but I am not yet convinced that Sommers is full of shit.
>Clarification: There were some difficulties posting my comments (my internet connection is horrible and times out sometimes) and I had to rewrite it like three or four times (which also explains why the racism thing comes up twice – I only meant to mention it once but due to having to rewrite the comments etc I lost track of myself). I forgot to mention that I selected the "Truth and Lies" article to examine because it seemed to be the one most pertinent to our conversation. In the future it would be polite if you linked directly to the specific articles you would like examined.
>@David Futrelle:How do you reconcile this statement of yours…"The comment amused me, so I posted it."…with your blog's statement of purpose?"This blog offers a critique of the Men's Rights Movement and anti-Feminism generally…"Based on your blog's stated purpose, pretty much anything that you post on this blog can plausibly be interpreted as a broad swipe at the validity of the entire men's rights movement. Otherwise, to remain consistent, you would need to modify your blog's statement of purpose so that it's clear that not everything you say is a broad brush attack on the MRM.As far as whether I agree with or must challenge every oddball commenter out there, how is this my responsibility? But for the record, since you seem concerned about my opinion, I'll give it. I disagree with the statements made by the commenter named "misterb":"Women should never be allowed to hold degrees in soft sciences."Women should have every right to obtain worthless degrees if they insist on it. No one should stop them from attaining such… ahem, "achievements." They should be free to pursue whatever educational dreams they have, so long as they take personal responsibility for the eventual consequences. Personally, I believe that our society emphasizes credentials way too much, foolishly assuming that educational credentials necessarily imply competence."And there should be no degrees in regards to soft sciences."Since I don't believe in restricting free speech, I wouldn't use the law to prohibit any privately-funded institutions from crafting whatever curriculum they prefer. But I do agree with the sentiment that many so-called "soft sciences" are of dubious worth.Try to remember that the Internet as a whole is a cesspool of opinionated keyboard warriors, and this is the case no matter what issue is being debated. Whether it's Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Linux, or Wii vs. PS3 vs. XBox, or sports nuts advocating for their various teams, or feminists or anti-feminists, somewhere, somehow, there will always be a minority of people who hold unconventional or politically incorrect views (including those who express such views poorly). It's foolish to insinuate that pandemonium and anarchy will result if each and every offensive comment is not systematically run down and challenged. Moreover, it's hubris for you to expect the people who you are attacking to take on such a task on your behalf or for your benefit. It isn't their job.Now on a moral basis, in my opinion it's reasonable to hold the owner of a blog or Web site accountable for tolerating incendiary rhetoric. But at the same time, it's unfair to conflate a blog owner's respect for open discussion into some kind of endorsement of each and every commenter's views.
>On Mary Koss: I've read her 1-in-4 study. It can be read in its entirety here:http://www.dvstats.org/pdf/rape/koss-1988.pdf
>So the poster who is the subject of David's article, while expounding on the oh-so-obvious superior intellect of men over women, remains blissfully ignorant of his own far-less-than-superior command of basic English (one of the basic skills he further states that the education system should be focusing on) and, in true MRA form, the irony of it is ignored in favour of reactionary tactics designed to deflect rather than introspect. But by golly those nasty feminists better be introspective and circumspect rather than taking a defensive stance! And obviously, feminists DO take pause for introspection and circumspection, as Eoghan points out in his posts referring to feminists criticizing the methodology of other feminists. So Eoghan doesn't simply dismiss specific evidence when it is presented by feminists…..well, so long as the feminists who are being critical of other feminists are toeing the MRA line. Feminist criticisms of self-identifying feminists such as Christina Hoff Sommers, however, are not to be taken seriously, even though quite a few of Sommers' conclusions have since been proven to be flawed.I've seen other (wish I had saved the links!) knee-jerk reactionary responses to the supposed feminisation of the education system, researched and written by academics, that although devised to be pro-masculine, in actuality make an excellent case for why men should not be leaders of industry never mind entire nations. For instance, the supposedly feminised education system has the audacity to expect males to be 'naturally passive like females' (just one of many long-held self-serving male myths about the nature of females) and be able to sit and focus on something like reading for more than five minutes, rather than letting "boys be boys" and exercise their "natural activeness" expressed by acting out. Men can't focus on a task for more than five minutes, and yet we trust them to be leaders of our countries? I'm sorry, but some of the proposed antidotes to the education system failing boys, based on the paranoia of boys becoming feminised (which itself is rooted in misconceptions and myths about the innate natures of males and females), will only result in doing a further disservice to boys, especially those who ARE studious and may prefer to quietly read versus partake in more boisterous activities.
>John Dias,Thanks for the link! I tried a brief Google search to find it but could not.
>John, I think you missed the part of my blog description where I mentioned mocking.