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Factchecking a list of “Hateful Quotes From Feminists”

 

Making a list, checking it twice.

Periodically, in the comments here, someone will post a dubious list of “evil feminist quotes” they have found on some Men’s Rights or antifeminist website. These lists are always faintly ridiculous, filled with decades-old quotes from a handful of radical feminists (most notably, Andrea Dworkin), most of whom have been soundly criticized by other feminists and whose ideas have been rejected by the majority of feminists today. The lists also tend to be very sloppily put together. When I’ve gone to check the accuracy of these lists, I’ve invariably run into problems — one quote may have come from a character in a novel, another may be a quote that doesn’t reflect the author’s own point of view, and so on.

Recently, one of the antifeminists who regularly comments here (Cold) posted a link to one such list, helpfully titled “Hateful Quotes From Feminists.” It’s fairly typical of these sorts of lists: many of the quotes are decades old, there are ten quotes from a single radical feminist — yes, Andrea Dworkin — and the list is sloppily put together.

I decided to give this list a fairly thorough fact-checking. And the results were, well, more or less what I expected, which is to say that the list was a sloppy mixture of truth, half-truth and outright falsehood.

The story, in brief: Some of the quotes I checked were indeed accurate — or mostly accurate. But several quotes were simply imaginary, or uttered by fictional characters; one was a complete misrepresentation of what the author was saying; two were paraphrased, which is to say, words put in the mouths of feminist authors by feminist critics; some were from obscure or anonymous sources, and in a few cases it wasn’t clear if those quoted were feminists at all; several were improperly sourced. There were a number of quotes that didn’t specify where they were from, and which turned out to be impossible to check. And then there were a couple of quotes which were not actually hateful at all.

I didn’t check everything in the list, but –if you have the patience for it — let’s go through what I did check, as a sort of case study in the shoddiness of much antifeminist propaganda.

Let’s start off with the very first quote:

“In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies, p. 129.

We’re off to a bad start here. This is not a quote from MacKinnon. The words were in fact written by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, the actual authors of “Professing Feminism,” a polemical book critical of feminism. They purport to summarize the views of MacKinnon and Dworkin, though, as Snopes points out in its debunking of the false quote, both M and D have specifically stated that they don’t believe intercourse is rape. Apparently the quote was attributed to MacKinnon in a column by right-wing columnist Cal Thomas, which is evidently how it entered the land of antifeminist mythology. Somewhere along the line, Catharine had her name changed to Catherine.

Then there’s this alleged quote from Andrea Dworkin:

“Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.”

According to Wikiquote, this quote is quite literally fictional:

The first appearance of this quote is from P: A Novel (2003) by Andrew Lewis Conn as a quote from the fictional feminist “Corinne Dwarfkin”. The original reads “In capsule form, my thesis is that heterosexual intercourse is the pure, distilled expression of men’s contempt for women.” In the slightly altered form given above, the quote is attributed in several books to Andrea Dworkin. Neil Boyd, in Big Sister (2004) attributes the quote to Letters from a War Zone, however, this quote, nor any one with similar phrasing, appears in that work.

Indeed, our listmaker seem to have a lot of trouble quoting Dworkin correctly. A bunch of the quotes are taken from her book Letters From a War Zone, which I happen to own. The first quote I checked was this one:

“The newest variations on this distressingly ancient theme center on hormones and DNA: men are biologically aggressive; their fetal brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself, hurls them into murder and rape.” Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 114.

It’s a weird quote, which sounds a lot like it’s coming from the the middle of a complicated argument. That’s because it is. And when you read what precedes it, it becomes clear that  it’s NOT a statement of Dworkin’s own beliefs. She was in fact summarizing (in her own words) the beliefs of “male supremacist” sociobiologists like Edward O. Wilson. It may or may not be a fair summary of their views, but that’s not the point: it’s NOT what she thought. Later in the paragraph, in fact, she compared these views to Hitler’s.

The other quotes from the book are more or less accurate. Words are missing, moved from one sentence to another, verb tenses are changed; they’re very sloppy transcriptions, but at least they aren’t complete and utter misrepresentations of what Dworkin wrote.

There’s also quote from Andrea Dworkin that’s listed as being from “Liberty, p. 58.” Dworkin never wrote a book called Liberty. But I found the quote in what seems to be a scholarly work; it’s evidently from Dworkin’s book Our Blood.

Finally, there are a few other alleged quotes from Dworkin; they don’t have sources listed for them. I found the quotes elsewhere online — but only on dubious “quote pages” and other iterations of “evil feminist” lists. They sound Dworkin-ish, but given the listmaker’s track record I have no faith that they are actually real, correctly transcribed Dworkin.

It’s bizarre. How hard is it to find hair-raising quotes from Andrea Dworkin? Dworkin was so radical that most feminists disagree with her, sometimes violently. You could practically pick a sentence at random from almost any of her books and chances are good it would offend somebody — including me. A number of her writings are available online. How lazy and sloppy do you have to be to fuck up your Dworkin quotes like this?

Let’s now turn to Marilyn French’s famously fictional quote:

“All men are rapists and that’s all they are.” Marilyn French in People, February 20, 1983

Oh, the quote is real — she wrote it — but it is not a statement of French’s beliefs. Nor did it originate in People magazine. It is a line of dialogue from her book The Woman’s Room. Wikipedia, take it away:

Following the rape of Val’s daughter Chris, Val states (over Mira’s protests), “Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relationships with men, in their relationships with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes” (p. 433). Critics have sometimes quoted Val’s dialogue as evidence of French’s misandry without noting that the passage is only spoken by one of many characters in the novel.

Now, it’s true that this sentence was quoted in People magazine — in the issue of Feb 20 1979, not Feb 20, 1983 as claimed. It’s not clear from the rather sloppy People article that this is a line from the book, but it is.

In the article, French notes that the book is partly based on her experience — drawing on the emotions she herself felt after her own daughter was raped.

“Sometimes I felt so violent about it and how the courts treated her,” French admits, “that there seemed no recourse but to go out, buy a gun and shoot the kid who did it, and the lawyers too. I couldn’t help my own child.” Plenty of that rage made its way into The Women’s Room. “I’m less angry now. Being too deep in anger corrodes your interior.”

So, again, it is very clear that the “all men are rapists” quote is meant to reflect a character awash in rage and pain; it is not an ideological statement of misandry.

The “Hateful Quotes” list also contains a bunch of quotes from people I’ve never heard of; they’re obviously not major feminist figures, and may not even be feminists. Gordon Fitch? Never heard of the guy, and can’t find anything about him online.

Hodee Edwards? Never heard of her either, and I can only find a handful of mentions of her online, but she’s mentioned in the footnotes of a Catharine MacKinnon book, and it looks as though she is, or at least was, a feminist with Marxist leanings. But there is no way to even find out what the source of the quote is — a book, an essay, a quotation in a news story? — much less actually find the source and confirm that the quote is real.

EDITED TO ADD: I’ve been contacted by Hodee Edwards’ granddaughter, who tells me that her grandmother never said or wrote the quote attributed to her; while Edwards was indeed a Marxist and a feminist, she was not anti-sex. (The faux quote in question claims that all sex is rape.) Edwards has recently passed away, and her family members have been, the granddaughter tells me, “very distressed to learn that this quote has somehow been linked to my grandmother’s name on the Internet.”

Then there’s Pat Poole:

Melbourne City Councilwoman Pat Poole announced her opposition to renaming a street for Martin Luther King: “I wonder if he really accomplished things, or if he just stirred people up and caused a lot of riots.”

Who the hell is Pat Poole? I looked her up, and yes, she was a city councilwoman in Melbourne, Florida, but I was unable to find out much beyond that. Is the quote accurate? I don’t know. There’s no source given, and I can’t find the original quote online. Is she actually a feminist, or is the author of the list simply assuming she is one because she’s a woman?

And then of course there is the anonymous “Liberated Woman” whose quote ends the list. She definitely sounds like a feminist. We just don’t know for sure if she or the quote are real.

Moving on, I can’t help but notice that a number of the allegedly hateful quotes are in fact not hateful at all. Take, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich’s quote about the family, which is in fact part of a sharply written essay on “family values.” You can find it here.

Here’s another distinctly non-hateful quote:

“Women take their roles of caretakers very seriously and when they hear of someone who’s taken advantage of a child, they react more strongly than men do.” – Kathleen C. Faller, professor of social work at the University of Michigan

Faller, if she did indeed say this, may or may not be correct, but it’s hard to see how this is “hateful.” Women on average spend much more time caring for children than men do and it may well be that, on average, they react more strongly than men. I couldn’t find the quote in question — again, this is because the listmaker didn’t actually provide the source — but her faculty web page is here.

Then there’s this “hateful” quote on religion:

“God is going to change. We women… will change the world so much that He won’t fit anymore.” Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions.

The quote is real; Goldenberg is indeed a feminist theologian. But here’s a little newsflash: There are lots of people in the world, feminist and non-feminist, who do not believe in traditional notions of God. Or in God at all. Nietzsche famously said “God is Dead,” Richard Dawkins says God is “a delusion,” and about 80 zillion internet athiests (many of them not feminists in the slightest) regularly compare belief in God to belief in unicorns, fairies, and Santa Claus.

I checked out a few other quotes on the list. The Hillary Clinton quote is accurate; the source is here.  The Barbara Jordan quote appears in a Texas Monthly article here.

The quote from Catherine Comins — a favorite “evil feminist quote” amongst MRAs — has its origins in a Time magazine article, but it is not actually a quote from her; it is someone else’s summary of what she told Time in the article in question. Nor do we know the full context in which she spoke.

I don’t have the time or patience to fact-check the rest of the list. If anyone out there happens to have time and/or patience, or happens to own any of the books that are cited as sources, feel free to fact check it yourself and post your findings. (EDITED TO ADD: triplanetary has risen to the challenge, and has factchecked the rest of the list, as well as offering some excellent commentary on the alleged “hatefulness” of many of the quotes. You can find the post here.)

The numerous errors in this list — some minor, some huge — say something not only about the creator of this list but about all those who’ve distributed this list without, clearly, bothering to check anything in it .  (Or, in the case of Cold, to contine to distribute a list he’s pretty sure is less than reliable.) Is this the result of laziness, or dishonesty? A bit of both, I imagine.

But I think this list is also a symptom of the tendency of many in the Men’s Rights movement to inflate the evils of their opponents. So many MRAs are so determined to prove that their supposed oppression is worse than that of women, and so determined to blame it all on feminism, that they need to make their opponents larger than life and twice as nasty. Given that the feminism they fight is largely a paranoid fantasy, bearing very little resemblance to feminism as it actually exists in the world today, it’s hardly shocking that a number of the quotes on this little list are fictional — and that none of the MRAs posting this list here and there on the internet seem to have even noticed (or, if they have noticed, to care, or at least to care enough to stop distributing the list). When you’re fighting phantoms in your own mind, the truth doesn’t really matter, does it?

Given how poorly this list held up to my fack-checking attempts, from now on I will consider this list and others like it spam, and delete any comments that  link to them.

If any of you antifeminists still feel the desire to post “evil feminist quotes” in the comments here, you may do so, but only if you (or the list that you link to) provides clickable links to the original sources of the quotes in question.  If you can’t provide a link to the source, I’ll delete it.

When I quote from MRAs and MGTOW-ites and other misogynists on this blog, I provide links to the sources. What’s so hard about that?

EDIT: Fixed links, and a few verb tenses.

If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly* use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.

*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.

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thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>*"selfish, amoral nature of women that MRAs are always carrying on about," that should read. Excuse me.

triplanetary
13 years ago

>MRA's and their methods (methods that are very reminiscent of the early feminist methodsSo what? Using the same methods doesn't make your cause equally valid. Your cause is an attempt to maintain the privilege of the privileged class and keep the oppressed class down in the mud where you think it belongs. Your attempts to reframe that as a noble struggle for male equality (an idea that's laughable to anyone with an ounce of perspective on reality) don't change the facts. Your "methods" are in fact far more reminiscent of every garden variety racist group in history – claiming that the privileged majority is under attack, that the oppressed minority is heinously conspiring against it just by asking for some rights. That kind of stuff.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>I thought you would prefer to have something based on more than my memory of stuff I have read that is at home (I am at work like usual. :D)Anyway-women's brains are more developed then men in communication which means that despite their lack of physical strength they can still accomplish similar tasks as men can.My mom had a co-worker at a steel plant and a woman was hired to do the welding. She was not as physically able as the men were in terms of her strength so she figured out several different methods of doing the same tasks as the men but in a different way. After a while the management ordered everyone to do the same because she was able to do her tasks faster then the men using these methods.This is an anecdotal piece of evidence but it shows that a lack of physical strength does not mean a woman is inferior.Also-we withstand famine better then men do, we have higher fat deposits and lose fat slower then men do.

triplanetary
13 years ago

>Her body, her choice–his responsibility? That's hardly fair.I like how you're pretending that child support payments are equivalent to shoving all the responsibility of childrearing on the father, even though child support payments don't tend to come anywhere close to half the cost of supporting a child.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>This is an anecdotal piece of evidence but it shows that a lack of physical strength does not mean a woman is inferior.The problem is, there's no reason a man wouldn't have been able to come up with that method–one could argue your co-worker's legitimate and praiseworthy accmplishment was made *in spite* of her being female, not because of it. How would "better communication skills" (and MRAs would say this is arguable–the fact that a woman's "communication" sectors of the brain are more developed and they use more words while men are more laconic would indicate that women are simply less efficient; men communicate equally well with less wasted verbiage) have helped in the alternate steel plant method? Again, genuinely not trolling or trying to be confrontational, I don't really know what exactly her job in the plant entailed.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>I like how you're pretending that child support payments are equivalent to shoving all the responsibility of childrearing on the father,For the purposes of argument, let's assume they're really as low as you make them out to be (and they could be–I'm not an expert regarding them, though you'll have to forgive me if I don't just take your word for it; I have about as much regard for your honesty as I do for Cold's). Even if they're low enough as to not be a burden on the man, he's still being saddled with *someone else's* choice. How is that fair or just?

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>@thevagrantsvoice-I think that the answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. In a population as big as the human population the amount of overlap between a trait in any two groups is going to be much greater than the amount of difference.For example, some studies show that men are slightly better at math than women, but the difference was caused by outliers. A few men were geniuses, while the rest of the population (men and women) were more or less equal. That doesn't mean "men" are better at math, but that math geniuses are more likely to be men.http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/07/are-boys-better-than-girls-at-maths.phpThe same thing is true for most sexual differences that become cultural ideas, for example, men are bigger than women. It's generally true because some very large men and some very small women skew the overall results which masks the fact that most men and women are approximately the same size. In my opinion, because of the difference between the statistical model of reality and, you know, real reality, it's important to relate to people as individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses which, very likely, have nothing to do with their sex or gender.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Heck if I know, this is just something my mom told me.Also, remember that guy from 127 hours? Why would women's communication skills be better-they are more likely to have told someone where they were going.

Lady Victoria von Syrus

>@ Vagrantvoice:Let me try this again. Woman finds out that she is eight weeks pregnant. Woman has two choices: abort the baby or keep the baby. Option A: Woman chooses to abort the baby at 12 weeks. There is no baby and will never be a baby. She is not a parent. Man is not parent. They are responsible for only themselves, because no one else exists for them to be responsible for. Option B: Woman chooses to keep the baby. In 7-8 more months, assuming nothing else happens, there is a new human being brought into the world. Woman is responsible for being a parent to baby. Because there is a baby. She is responsible for providing that baby with food, clothes, shelter and an education – and those are only her legal & most basic financial obligations, not her moral ones.I think I have gained a bit of insight into the MRA mindset by reading your comment. The law cannot compel emotional support, only financial. And it seems as though many MRAs see financial support as the sum total of being a parent. It's not, and it never will be – it's the bare minimum. If she's the primary custodial parent and all he's doing is providing child support, then she is by far the more responsible parent. While he may be making a financial sacrifice, she is also paying her own money, and giving up her own time, energy and resources to be a parent. If a woman carried a baby to term and then insisted that the father assume 100% of the parental duties (forcing him to do things like change diapers, cook meals, put the kid to sleep at night, protect child from injury, give child a good moral foundation, etc.), then you might have a point. But, in fact, the law makes it possible for genetic parents to willingly forego any and all parental rights. That doesn't absolve them of the responsibility of creating another human being. Who is there, in part, because he chose to fuck a woman. He made his choice, but it was before she got pregnant – he could have chosen not to have sex with her, and then none of it would have happened.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>The same thing is true for most sexual differences that become cultural ideas,Is it? In terms of the salient physical differences I described–superior male musculature, cardiovascular systems, etc.–I was under the impression that the differences really were "averages" in the truest sense; the average for men wasn't just bring bumped up by "greater variance" (which would also have meant that there was a higher number of super-scrawny guys as well) but the bell curve for men was *entirely* further to the right than it was for women. Was I wrong? Again, not trolling, just curious. If you have a study that proves otherwise it might be interesting to see it.

triplanetary
13 years ago

>In my opinion, because of the difference between the statistical model of reality and, you know, real reality, it's important to relate to people as individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses which, very likely, have nothing to do with their sex or gender. Nail, head, etc.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>That last post was trolling Vagrant.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>he could have chosen not to have sex with her, and then none of it would have happened.First off, this is pretty much the reason you have the MGTOW people swearing off women entirely. If I'm going to get (monetarily) saddled with some kid I don't want because some other woman didn't want to have an abortion, to hell with it–I'm sticking with my right hand, or love dolls, or celibacy, or whatever. I used to have some sympathy for the view that the MGTOWers were just losers, but now I wonder if they're actually not a bit smarter than I originally gave them credit for. Sure, child support payments may not be "that" onerous (though, again, I'm not going to take your word for it), but I'd still rather not pay them. So fine, you'll tell me, Go Your Own Way and swear off sex with women entirely. But then why do you people keep making fun of the MGTOW/celibacy guys for doing what is BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION the "best" thing for a man to do in these circumstances?The only other alternative I can think of is for either the father of the child or the state itself to have the right to coerce any woman to have an abortion if they so desire–but I get the feeling that suggestion isn't quite what you were thinking of.

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>I don't have a study which speaks to strength differences between men and women, but I do have an opinion. I would argue that humans don't like to work hard if we can avoid it, so we have decided we want to live in a world where we (both men and women) don't have to lift heavy shit all the time just to get by.I'm sure neither one of us can physically move a car, but we can both probably make one move pretty easily. And if a time came when a bunch of heavy shit needed to be moved, we could probably both find a way to get it moved even if I, as a lady, had to make more trips, or use a cart, or enlist the aid of some friends. Because the important thing is the outcome not our inherent ratio of fast twitch or slow twitch muscle fibers.

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>I just realized I can totally move a car if it's in neutral and not pointed up a hill, but otherwise my point stands.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>I'm sure neither one of us can physically move a car, but we can both probably make one move pretty easily.Both of us? Unless you're a relative outlier on the right side of the female bell curve for strength, probably not. On the other hand, me and another guy who lies on even the middle of the male bell curve for strength might be able to. This is what I'm wondering about–the averages.I'm sorry to say that our inherent ratio of muscle fibers or whatever is indeed, pretty important. Because, as the MRAs might say–and I confess, it is a position I am increasingly coming to agree with–it's as accurate to say that women are physically inferior to men as it is to say that folks with hearing loss have worse hearing than those with undamaged ears, or that people with glaucoma have worse sight than those with functioning eyes. From what I've read of male-female differences, the fact that, according to Wikipedia, women are only, at most, 60% as strong as men in almost all respects (again, that's what the article "sex differences in humans" states, maybe Wikipedia is trolling me this time) tells me that it's indeed legitimate to claim women are physically inferior to men, in the same way a slow, weak, vulnerable earthworm could be called "physically inferior" to either the larger, stronger (and flighted) early bird that eats it for breakfast or the (much) larger, stronger human who steps on it. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is because I'm genuinely interested in hearing how you'd respond to these arguments from someone who (hopefully) has proven himself to be not quite as fanatical as say, Cold or Wytch, at least.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Why do you call it physically inferior? It is not actually inferior-it is different.Men have greater strength in muscles-so what? Does not help if the issue is communicating a way of moving a boulder.

cactuar-tamer
13 years ago

>Vagrant, not to be antagonistic, but you are starting to sound a little disingenuous about not being disingenuous. Do you have some sort of point?I'm willing to make a pretty good bet that I'm less susceptible to sun-induced skin cancer than most Caucasian-type people out there, but so what? The fact that I have that 'physical advantage' means…what, exactly when it comes to how we should run our society or interact as human beings? What is the relevance of all this physical superiority talk of yours?

CinnamonCW
13 years ago

>“Elizabeth, literally every positive characteristic listed for women there would be taken by MRAs are evidence for their inferiority and civilization-destroying characteristics.”Of course they would! Fortunately, it’s all a load of crap. Any characteristic can be argued as beneficial or detrimental depending on the conclusion you’ve already decided to draw.Plus, all that brain stuff is BS. “emotions, for the most part, are primitive, instinctual leftovers from our barbaric past”Men don’t have emotions? Men don’t express arousal-based emotions more than women? These emotions don’t contribute to these relatively few and far-between inventions by certain men you somehow attribute to men as a whole? “If we're going to excuse the abridgement of someone's rights under the basis of "tough cookies," why shouldn't we go the whole way through?”You mean the way you already are with women and pregnancy, yet continually ignore my noting of such? But the faux-outrage is a nice touch.“The problem is, there's no reason a man wouldn't have been able to come up with that method–one could argue your co-worker's legitimate and praiseworthy accmplishment was made *in spite* of her being female, not because of it.”Ooh, ad hoc rescue! Plus it is your burdan to prove another man would be able to come with said alternative method and not her's to prove he couldn't. But using your same illogic, what's to say another woman wouldn't be able to perform the task conventionally (and primitively counter-advancement, might I add)? Whereas at most women are "60% as strong in most respects" there have been numerous men that have performed the task. Plus your whole argument is based not on the individual, but the inherent capabilities based on beind born a man or woman! So make up your mind.“But then why do you people keep making fun of the MGTOW/celibacy guys for doing what is BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION the "best" thing for a man to do in these circumstances?”Because they could be like the majority of other men in those situations who realized to begin with that A) women are the ones the bear the burden of pregnancy and all it entails if carried to term, and abortion if that is the decision, whereas he does not and will never, B) it’s his responsibility to mind his reproductive capabilities and wear a condom or get a vasectomy if he doesn’t want to worry about children because c) without the sperm, there is no possibility of a baby and men – not women – have semen.Instead, they accuse women of being baby-hungry sperm stealers, and they want to have their cake and eat it too and frame the issue in terms of a battle or “fairness,” like a spoiled child. So it’s FUN to mock them.

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>First, both of us can easily move the car by pressing the gas pedal.But to your broader point, how do you square living in a world where it is "better" to be strong with the fact that there will always be people, most likely other men, who are stronger than you? Do you want them to decide what you get to do by virtue of their physical prowess? Are you scared, when you're walking down the street minding your own business, that some stronger gentleman might decide your time would be better spend working in his garden or whatever comes into his mind at the moment? You probably don't think about it very much because we have collectively decided we don't want to live in a society where stronger people get to do whatever they want. There are, of course, some people who don't agree, rapists, wife beaters, people with "anger control" problems, but those people are stigmatized for a reason; they are not abiding by the essential compact of civil society. Or, I think the answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. I'm about to get off work, but if you reply I will be interested in reading your response tomorrow.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>Why do you call it physically inferior? It is not actually inferior-it is different.A man born without eyes is not "inferior" in terms of his ability to see things to someone with eyes–he's merely 'different?' A deaf man is not 'inferior' to someone with working ears when it comes to hearing things–he's merely 'different?' No, it seems to me inferiority and superiority are perfectly legitimate when it comes to describing men and women as well.Men have greater strength in muscles-so what? Does not help if the issue is communicating a way of moving a boulder. The problem is, as I said above, the female "superiority" in communication is arguable–it's possible men are just as good communicators as women, they're simply more efficient at it. Men can communicate AND move heavy objects. Women can "only" communicate, if they can even do that. If there's nothing or only a very few things in which women are even on par with men (aside from childbirth and lactation), this seems to indicate, to me, that the MRA position is correct. Women *are* the inferior sex, and society should be organized around that–the "oppression" of women becomes nothing more than an acknowledgement of that biological fact. If you're going to claim women are "oppressed" for being treated as inferior when they actually are, you might as well claim blind people are "oppressed" when we forbid them from flying planes, or quadripalegics are "oppressed" when we forbid them from serving on the battlefield.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Yep-you have crossed over into trolling.Basically you think women are inferior and nothing we say will change your mind. Unless of course we beat you up.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>You mean the way you already are with women and pregnancy, yet continually ignore my noting of such? But the faux-outrage is a nice touch.Perhaps I should reframe a point in another way: if abortion is available to a woman while she's pregnant and she makes the choice not to take it, the man should either have the right to abdicate any paternal support or coerce her to have an abortion. How's that for taking into account the unique misfortune of women being the ones who have to bear the weight of pregnancy? The man should pay for it if he requests she have it, of course. It'll still be cheaper than even small child support payments in the long run, I'd wager.Instead, they accuse women of being baby-hungry sperm stealers, and they want to have their cake and eat it too and frame the issue in terms of a battle or “fairness,” like a spoiled child.Perhaps so, but if they manage to convince other men to follow them–to not only get vasectomies, but avoid women entirely–it seems they're doing legitimate work. I agree that they're a whiny bunch, but if their whininess is enough to get a few guys to stop and think whether or not it's actually a good idea to have sexual relations with women (and perhaps any other relationship as well), I'd say they deserve praise rather than mockery,So it’s FUN to mock them. You're really a wonderful advertisement for the MRAs and MGTOWs, Cinnamon. God damn, you've done more for their cause with that one comment than Cold ever did with all of his. Congrats.

cactuar-tamer
13 years ago

>Except, women aren't /incapable/ of doing any of those things in the same way blind people are /incapable/ of driving safely. It's very a bad argument.Even that argument in itself doesn't advocate for a society in which /women/ are restricted, but one in which people who are under a certain threshold of ability are restricted. And you'd still have to justify the restrictions.

thevagrantsvoice
13 years ago

>Basically you think women are inferior and nothing we say will change your mind. Unless of course we beat you up. A pity. I would have very much liked to have been proven wrong. Perhaps someone else will make the attempt. Accuse me of trolling if you will, ironically enough. It proves what MRAs have told me time and again–when a feminist can't defeat your arguments with logic, she (or he) will resort to shaming, accusations (whether of "trolling" or "misogyny"), and anything but an actual refutation (masked behind an empty call of "but there's nothing to refute! :'( )Again, congratulations. I've argued against Cold and other MRAs on here many, many times, as our host can attest. I now regret doing so. When he made this blog, I wonder if he actually intended to win more converts for their side. If he did, I wouldn't say he's succeeded just yet, but boy is he coming close.