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| 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.
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>Cactuar-tamer, thanks very much for your response. I suppose I may have spoken hastily in my earlier comments about MRAs. If you're able to provide a reasoned argument, my praise of them in condemnation of Cinnamon and Elizabeth was undeserved.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.Fair enough. However–and I say this respectfully, again, genuinely not trolling, though I suppose I've been getting more heated here than I should be–one could argue that "a society in which people who are under a certain threshold of ability are restricted." would still be a "patriarchal/misogynist" society because women are simply lower in ability, in general. There'll always be a minority of women politicians because women simply (in general) aren't good at it, same with mathematicians, engineers, and so on. That's how the argument would go, anyways.
>So basically since I have shown some evidence that men and women have different abilities -but I could not prove to you that women are physically stronger, this means that MRA/MGTOW are right?You now believe that women are worthless for anything except babies and lactating. All because women cannot "lift a heavy object" like a man can.Really? See, I would be much more willing to discuss this with you if you were willing to keep it from "women are inferior, men are superior" in physical terms only. Or if you were being serious about being open minded…but you are not. So when you are ready to discuss this open mindedly-then I will bother.Until then, you are merely trolling.
>As an actual female politician Vagrant, I know why women tend to not run for office and instead prefer to remain behind the scenes.
>See, I would be much more willing to discuss this with you if you were willing to keep it from "women are inferior, men are superior" in physical terms only. Fine, then. I can understand the reasoning behind this, so I again apologize–perhaps my condemnation of you was indeed hasty and harsh. The problem is, however, that physical terms are both the most easily measured *and,* in all likelihood, the most legitimate. CinnamonCW herself mentioned it above–the "brain differences" and all that are extremely difficult to pin down, while physical strength and even muscle fiber composition are things much easier to quantify and thus discuss. If this is still trolling, I apologize, but at least it has some basis.
>Forgive the double comment (field too large), but since I've mentioned her, in reference to a couple of her points I forgot to address: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.Well, okay, in that case, why not do the same for other groups? The characteristics of MRAs and MGTOWs–their whininess, anger issues, etc.–are only 'detrimental' or 'worthy of mockery' because of the conclusions you've already drawn. One could argue they're actually beneficial characteristics! If we wish to comnpletely deny any characteristic is beneficial or detrimental, what's the point of condemning anything, as you folks do for MRAs?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? Fair enough–this is, I admit, a critique I have of MRAs, who claim simultaneously that men are superior because they have fewer emotions but men are also superior because they have stronger emotions than women. You were right to point that out.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.I honestly don't understand much of what this paragraph intended to say, and things like "burdan" make me suspect it's not entirely my fault. I don't say this to be snarky; rather I think you may have typed faster than you thought, in this case. We're all a little agitated here, and I suppose I should apologize for that. before I address this, thouygh, could I ask you what, specifically, you meant by "primitively counter-advancement?" After that I'll give you my reply.
>"I can't prevent my child from existing through abortion so I want the right to abandon my child."This will be a huge step forward for fathers being involved in child rearing. Also poverty of children.
>Women have better manual dexterity than men.Women have better lower body strength than men.Women have better balance than men.Women make better snipers than men.Women see in the dark better than men.You want to talk about physical characteristics/things that require certain physical traits? There you go. I, for one, can always tell that the producers want a woman to win a challenge on Survivor when they make it all about balance. And the woman wins most of the time, too. Also, a smaller size is sometimes an asset. See again, Survivor: Challenges that favor a person who weighs less or has smaller feetThe funny thing about using Survivor as an example is that people will tend to see the women–who may win challenges such as this, start fires, catch food, and do everything else–as lesser opponents because they didn't win strength challenges. They, like our quasi-troll here, view women as lesser because they're not as beefy when they may have lots of desirable traits game-wise. (Yes, I watch Survivor. I was a soc major, so I find shows like that interesting. Should I point out in this conversation that when they made it a men vs. women game one season, the women pretty much just won every single challenge until the merge? Didn't matter that the men were big, strong, manly men. The women still were able to come out on top. It was … beautiful.)
>You want to talk about physical characteristics/things that require certain physical traits? There you go. That's actually exactly what I was looking for, thank you. The aforementioned wikipedia article doesn't mention them, but as I implied above, lol wikipedia. If you have a link to any studies or even news articles about those characteristics, I would be greatly indebted to you, but it's not really necessary, I'll look them up myself. Quite sincerely, I thank you again.
>@Vagrants I'd like to think that I would be considered a moderate who has a small bit of common sense.I do not buy into this woman or men are better at X theory. It goes against individualism (in a non-creepy not Ayn Rand sort of way). The reality is and countless studies have proved that on the bell curve men have more highs and lows regarding IQ while women tend to the middle. This doesn’t mean that there are no female genius or idiots anymore then there are only men who are idiots or genius. The individual is his or her own merit. If you were to say that men were superior you would also have to conclude that men are also inferior. Also, I really hate the feminist line that men should just keep it in their pants if they don’t want 25 years of child support. This is a dogma that really needs to end and is simply akin to just crossing your legs. I understand that single mothers do have much more responsibility then fathers who pay child support, but single mothers do choose to be single mothers. As for the offhanded remark about adoption, I know only too well what happened to girls way back when, but when on the same thread we can realize that what radical feminist’s said 40 years ago is not relevant today I hope that we can discuss adoption in today’s terms instead of histories. Yes it is hard emotionally to bear a child for nine months, give birth, and then hand them into the arms of another family… but women do have that choice and this choice has been made much easier with open adoption etc. I found the remark about adoption offensive. My wife was adopted in the mid 60’s, and I signed away parental rights for adoption when I was 17. It’s not easy to give your child up to another couple when you’re the father either. My wife has met her birth mother and although she was certainly shamed for being pregnant she’s also happy that wife has a wonderful life.
>Hey Kave, thank you very much for your response. Forgive me for saying this, but you definitely seem like a decent, stand-up guy–my kinda guy, essentially. Again, I suppose my praise for the MRAs was distinctly premature, unless you're in their camp (I can't remember, forgive me…is it Kratch I'm thinking of?), lol.Anyways, I've heard about the IQ bell curve, and I agree with that, but what I was wondering about is if the variance was as great for other characteristics as well, specifically physical ones. I was under the impression it wasn't, but if I'm wrong I would be happy to be proven so. According to chocolip there *are* several areas in which women are physically superior to men (variance or no variance; when i looked up "sex differences" and "manual dexterity" the studies I found seem to confirm so), so I do think it's a legitimate question.
>Sorry for the delay in replying, My prior post was eaten and then I had to leave the office. I don't think I can write the whole post again, but my main point was, that from both a practical and ethical standpoint, it is necessary to demonstrate sufficient justification if one is proposing a society in which a large portion of it's members (sentient human beings, I hope no one is disputing that) have had their freedom restricted significantly. Restricting the driving rights of blind people is an example of a restriction that has sufficient justification. It is my position that differences (strength is what you are primarily speaking of, it seems) between men and women, such as they exist, are not significant enough to warrant such restrictions on freedom. To take our hypothetical meritocracy (Let's call it Meritopia) as an example. Even if I were to agree with you and grand that Meritopia would be in effect a patriarchy (which is to say, there would be a minority of women in the unrestricted class) … I think you would find that, whatever ability levels were used to ensure that result, would necessarily result in most of Meritopia's men being confined to the restricted class as well. Most certainly it would be so if the measure were academic, but even for even a physical bar as low as 'lift your own body weight.' the result might be similar: We would find that only a minority of the population as a whole had full freedom. And Meritopia would have hard time explaining the justification for having confined that much of the populace to the restricted class of people. After all, being of merely average strength or intelligence is not something, that, on it's own would result in an individual being unable to participate in or contribute to society. And the Meritopia model here doesn't even take into account the extra motivation that the system would create. Very few women would be /incapable/ of getting to the point of lifting their own body weight, if given proper motivation to put in the effort.
>@ girlscientist:You state: "@Richard: Marilyn French worked on her her pain and got over it. You guys stew in it and spend your entire lives vilifying women who, for the most part, have never hurt you."1. Feminist women do hurt men. They hurt them by passing unfair and biased laws, pro female quotas, and polluting the environment with their bullshit theories like "a rape culture" and "patriarchy." 2. Who are you to tell men when to get over their pain? Why do you, feminut nation, the people who cause most of the pain get to smirk and say, okay that's enough! 3. I haven't and I'm not going to look through her collection of bullshit works, but I've seen no true apology to men about her statements, so screw her. Girlscientist follows: "Also, that quote was by a character in a fictional work. Or do you also think that J.K. Rowling would casually kill an infant because she wrote Lord Voldemort? . . .By the way, I can't believe that I just had to explain all that. I know that you're trying to argue your case and that you're not above overblowing one detail and to twist it to make a woman look bad, but would it kill you not to use an argument that doesn't make you look like an utter moron?"By your rational the author of the Turner Diaries is not a racist, just someone making characters. You want to try and wrap your little mind around that one? If Harry Potter ended with Lord Voldermort blowing Harry's head of and yelling in triumph, "And that's what happens to worthless muggles and those who would mix with them!" And then the next scenes are of a beautiful, peaceful, muggle free world, then I think some would question the authors message, no? If a writer writes 20 fictional books all about Jews and all have negative stereotypes of jews can one not argue, that maybe, just maybe the author might hate jews? Or can he just spew out, like an empty headed feminist, it's just fiction!?It's amazing how much feminist fiction lionizes women who hate men. But I'm sure that doesn't reflect on the author at all, right?Random Brother
>@ JoeGetting your snacks from your mistresses, Joe?Random Brother
>@chocoWife is at a base level in sales and watches Survivor (she's a real estate investor in a way). I'm not a big fan but I can easily say that the vast majority of her colleges also watch the show. It's the only thing she gambles on. Every season her peers (who are probably 85% men) who are hitting each other rather hard to cut deals enter into a fairly high stakes pool. To an outsider it might seem like pure camaraderie within a rather cutthroat industry, but I swear they get more passionate about whose pick got voted off then who got the best deal regarding work/money. I’m in manufacturing so I just don’t get it, but I do get how someone whose job it is to study how humans think would find it fascinating. I have often thought mra’s should have to watch survivor in order to understand to understand life is not in anyway as black and white as they see it.
>@ SandyIt seems to me she did believe it, at that time. Hell, she may still believe it as she has never apologized for it, to my knowledge. Stating you are less angry does not equal an aplogy for what she said. Also, I don't think that feminist who relentlessly cause men pain should be the ones to put some time table on how quickly men should get over said pain. Random Brother.
>@ ElizabethAnother feminist arrogantly deciding how long we mere men are allowed to be angry for. While her sisters spew forth whole books of misandry. HilariousRandom Brother
>Once upon a time, I got a summer job in the bakery of a local grocery. They hired me basically because I was a big dude and they needed me to stock the freezer with heavy boxes of frozen dough. It turned out that my boss, a woman about half my size, could do the job in about half the time it took me to do it.
>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?In college, I had a Christian friend whose particular brand of Christianity taught that premarital sex was not a sin (since it harmed no one), but abortion was (since it harmed a fetus). As a result, since he was a poor college student, he chose to not have sex with his girlfriend. For him, the risk of a pregnancy occurring, though miniscule, was still real enough for him. He didn't want to be party to an abortion, and he wanted to be able to support any children he had. Though I didn't agree with his decisions (in the sense that I wasn't making the same choices as he), I still respected the strength of his convictions. So if any man thinks that the risks of potential fatherhood outweigh the pleasures of sex, and chooses to abstain or otherwise alter their sex life, I certainly won't judge and mock them. Frankly, I think the "best thing" is to recognize that, hey, if abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures in America and something like 95% of women will have used birth control at some point in their lives, then there are probably a healthy number of American women who *aren't* just out to trick men into parenthood, and who aren't ready to be mothers. Those women? Date those women.But when MGTOWs try to thinly veil their rampant misogyny behind that declaration – yeah, I'll make fun of them for being misogynist asshats (or, more accurately, David will make fun of them and I will enjoy his writing). It's not the actual choice that's getting mocked, it's the whining and the juvenile hatred up for laughs.
>Richard, why on earth should Marilyn French apologize for a comment by a fictional character?
>Oh, and also, if your decision making process involves the thought, "But then strangers on the Internet will laugh at me!" you probably want to give some serious thought to picking new priorities.
>Thanks for your response, Ms. Syrus. The problem is, though, what, exactly, constitutes "rampant misogyny?" If some MGTOWer, as many do, went around singing the praises of George Sodini and Marc Lepine, then yes, that would undoubtedly be "rampant misogyny." But what about an MGTOWer who advises men to avoid women as much as possible because of fears they'll sabotage his condom and/or BC/falsely accuse him of rape/give him an STD/whatever? Now, you might say that false rape accusations are statistically rare/men are statistically more likely to sabotage BC than the other way around/women are at greater risks for STDs, not men. Fair enough. But statistics are just statistics–that something is less "statistically" likely to happen doesn't mean it won't happen at all. So what about the MGTOWs who advise avoiding women because it's a very dangerous proposition (as many of them do)? They're paranoid? So what? "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," as the old saying goes. Misogyny may deserve "mockery," but does the same go for caution, even caution so strong it dives into paranoia?There's also the question of whether or not the MGTOWs and MRAs are actually fulfilling a positive–VERY positive–function; i.e keeping the crazies cooped up on the internet rather than going outside and killing people. So far as I know, George Sodini never had any relationship with the 'manosphere' besides attending a PUA seminar, and Lepine, despite writing a manifesto that reads pretty much like a typical comment you'd find on The Spearhead, wasn't actually a member of any misogyny community. If these guys had the niceguy or mgtow forums available to them, it's entirely possible they would have spent the rest of their lives venting their hatred of women online rather than actually going out and expressing it murderously. No matter how misogynistic the online MRM may be, isn't it worth it if it keeps the crazies satisfied in front of their computers rather than outside shooting people? Why mock them (and possibly inflame them), in this case?
>Vagrant, and Lady V, I don't make fun of MGTOWs for wanting to be celibate. There's nothing wrong with choosing a celibate life. You don't see me making fun of monks, do you? I find them fascinating because of the strange mix of lust and loathing they feel towards women, and their inability to shut up about the women they are allegedly going their own way past. If they spent time on their forums talking about things they like doing by themselves or with other dudes, like, I dunno, reading books, or playing with model trains, or fly fishing, or Buddhist philosophy, or, hell, flower arranging, I'd say more power to them. But they spend hours and hours a day just talking about how evil women and feminists, and "manginas" are. The only time they talk about Buddhist philosophy is talking about it as a way to try to control their boners. Hating women IS their hobby.
>@vagrantThe main physical benefit women have as a norm seems to be balance and the storage of fat, but outside of a secluded island I doubt this is beneficial in the modern or first world. But the same can be said for strength. It would be interesting to understand why it seems that evolution gave women better balance (fat storage is easy regarding childbirth). I believe the greatest modern “up” women have (as a group) is the ability to learn languages. I remember a poster on a mra board mocking a beauty contestant because she said she was fluent in four languages, this is not unheard of at all in cultures outside of North America.My own personal experience is: 95% of my workforce are immigrants with a vast majority being men. My interpreters are 95% women, most of them the wives of my workers. I can conclude that women learn a new language much faster then men.However there is the individual. When we travel my wife is less then useless regarding communication. She’s great at making money, but not even passable at communicating in a different language. Most people have a mix of what we consider to be male and female traits.
>@ triplanetarytriplanetary said: ". . .Two key points here. One, French's anger wasn't based on the actions of one man. It wasn't just the rape – it was the treatment her daughter received from police and courts, the whole system that's supposed to protect people and provide justice. French didn't feel that her daughter was receiving justice."How is this different from a MRA screwed in court? triplanetary continues: "Given the rape culture that we live in, that's likely."Not this fiction again. There is no rape culture!triplanetary: "She saw her daughter suffering at the hands of the entire, patriarchal, rape-excusing institution, so her anger is far more justified."Why? Why is her anger justified, when others who have been destroyed by feminst rulings and feminist judges, when their anger is somehow not justified?triplanetary: "Second, the anger and bitterness of MRAs varies with regard to motivation, but it's always aimed at an imaginary version of feminism."No. It's not imaginary. Patriarchy is imaginary. The rape culture is imaginary. triplanetary: "Feminists don't believe the things MRAs say they believe, and they don't oppress men the way MRAs say they do. And our society is not pro-feminist or pro-woman in the slightest, not legally or by custom."Feminists don't promote anti male laws, pro female quotas, and dubious studies, like the SuperBowl Sunday violence link? Really? Then how else do they oppress men? Also, this country is pro woman like there is no tomorrow.triplanetary: "So the anger and bitterness of MRAs is irrational, unlike the anger of French, who tried through legitimate means to find justice for her daughter and couldn't."As I said before another feminst telling men what is acceptable for them to think and feel, typical. triplanetary: "Demonizing feminists, and making up all sorts of scary stories about how they want to systematically castrate the male population, is sexist. MRA claims about feminist misandry are factually bullshit, so we can only assume that you're lashing out in anger at feminists for daring to stand up for women's equality in a society that has a long, long history of patriarchy. We see this in every arena – racists make up stories about rape-hungry blacks and gold-hoarding Jews, patriots thrive on propaganda about enemy nations. When your criticisms of a group are vacant of truth or facts, it's because those criticisms spring from hatred."So when a feminist, say Jessica Valenti, calls for the presumption of innocence to be overturned in rape cases and MRA'S complain and call her for being the irresponsible feminist bitch she is, it's actually because we are lashing out at feminsts for daring to try and be equal? Really? You really believe that swill? JesusRandom Brother
>Vagrant, Sodini was actually connected to the PUA community, or at least to a pickup guru (who sort of came along before the PUA community as we now know it evolved). He took seminars from Don Steele, who specializes in older dudes who want to hook up with much younger women.