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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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>Vagrant, even if female-on-male rape is much more vastly underreported than male-on-female rape is, and that certainly could be the case, it's still a tiny fraction of the total number of rapes. Men who are raped are far more likely to be raped by other men.
>Gah, my comment got eaten.Purdue Pegboard test of manual dexterity consistently shows better results for women than men:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7661655"Analysis of the Pegboard scores found no interaction or main effect of sexual orientation, but the effect of sex was significant, F(1,63) = 7.01, p < or = 0.02. Regardless of sexual orientation, women outperformed men and this difference remained significant even when a measure of finger size was partialed out."You might also be interested to know that women tend to be much better multitaskers:http://www.herts.ac.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/Women-are-better-multitaskers-than-men.cfmResearchers at the University of Hertfordshire have conducted research providing definitive evidence that women can multitask more effectively than men.Professor Keith Laws at the University’s School of Psychology looked at multitasking in 50 male and 50 female undergraduates and found that although the sexes performed equally when they multitasked on simple maths and map reading tasks, women far excelled men when it came to planning how to search for a lost key, with 70 per cent of women performing better than their average male counterparts.“The search for the lost key task, which involved giving the men and women a blank sheet of paper representing a field and asking them to draw how they would search for the key, revealed that women planned more strategically than men,” said Professor Laws. “I was surprised by this result given the arguments that men have better spatial skills than women.”Professor Laws was also surprised that despite the universal notion that women are better than men at multitasking, their review of the literature unearthed no previous scientific evidence to support this claim.The participants in Professor Laws study, who were undergraduates at the University, had eight minutes to do several tasks at the same time, such as simple maths problems, map reading, answering a telephone caller asking general knowledge questions and showing the strategy they would use to search for an imaginary lost key in a field.
>it's still a tiny fraction of the total number of rapes.Thank you for your response, but again, can we really be sure Female on male rape, is a "tiny" fraction of the total number of rapes? Like I said above, not merely underreporting but also the sheer physical difficulty of proving a woman raped a man as opposed to the ease of proving a man raped a man (again, semen, physical trauma, etc.), along with cultural biases (the whole "men never have sex with women unless they want it" thing) is why I say that when female on male rape is "vastly" underreported, I don't mean "less than half of f-on-m rapes are reported and/or recognized," I mean to say that perhaps less than one in ten–or even one in twenty–are reported and recognized. You might say I'm being an MRA-style paranoid kook, but given the unique pressures a male victim of rape by a female faces, both due to biology and culture, I'm not sure it's that far out.I'm not going to claim that rape is a "male" problem or even that f-on-m rapes outnumber m-on-f rapes or even m-on-m rapes–that would be patently absurd. I simply question yours and triplanetary's assertion that they're a "tiny" fraction of the total numbers.
>Vagrant, as I said before, all forms of rape are underreported. Given that the percentage of total rapes reported that are by women against men tend to be about 2%, even if women-on-male rape is, say, *five times* less likely to be reported than male-on-female and male-on-male rape, the total percentage is still small (10%). Of course, any or all of these numbers could be off, and maybe "tiny" was overstating it, but it's a much smaller percentage.
>More for you, with references:http://othes.univie.ac.at/4130/1/2009-02-18_0609045.pdf"Meanwhile, a great amount of psychological tests that reveal performance differencesbetween the sexes are in use. Women are, for instance, superior in two tasks that require therapid retrieval of verbal information from long-term memory (Loring-Meier & Halpern,1999): the “Letter Fluency Task”, requiring subjects to generate words that start with a certainletter, and the “Synonym Generation Task”, requiring the retrieval of synonyms. Hines (1990)found effect sizes ranging between d=0.5 (medium effect) and d=1.2 (large effect) for thesetwo psychological test procedures. Another task in which women generally perform betterthan men is “Finding A’s”, which measures rapid access to information about words orsubject’s speed of perception. In this test, subjects must rapidly scan rows of words and crossout the A’s. Women furthermore are superior in “Identical Pictures”, in which they mustcompare a target figure with a test figure and decide whether they are identical or not(Halpern & Tan, 2001)."
>*five times* less likely to be reported than male-on-female and male-on-male rape, the total percentage is still small (10%)Even going under that number, though (and I implied that it was possible f-on-m rapes were 10 or more times less likely to be reported or counted, due to both cultural conditioning and difficulties in acquiring physical evidence), even if prison rapes are taken into account m-on-m rapes, IIRC, don't represent a much higher number of total rapes either–somewhere around 9-10% of those reported, and probably a higher if non-reported or prison rapes are taken into account, so let's say maybe around ~15-20% of rapes are m-on-m. That's not *much* bigger than an estimated 10% of f-on-m rapes. So if m-on-m rapes are to be taken seriously as a genuine and significant problem–and I believe, to your credit, you've made this point before–it's not really easy to argue f-on-m rapes aren't either.
>Rape stats are usually based on reported rapes and not convicted rapes. So the actual number of the stat is seriously misleading.The claim of 'rape' is often the result of a regretted sexual liaison after a night on the turps. Woman imbibes too much in a club and gives in to the beseechments of some 'handsome' stud, ending up beside him with a sore bum in the morning.Then there are women who simply hate certain men and they find that accusing that certain man of rape is a good way to ruin his reputation.Then there are women who do it to gain compensation. It's amazing what lengths people will go into to get compensated.Then there is no indication that female on female rape and female on male rape are included in these stats (not to mention, DV is more common in lesbian couples than in hetero couples) So it wouldn’t be a surprise that rape amongst lesbian couples is not something rare as rape and DV are supposedly about power and come hand in handAnyway, feminists like to wave around stats in a misleading way (even that they are acknowledgeable to the points I stated) but they hope that these types of points don't get raised so it helps their cause of demonising men and raising the female victim status.Feminists will mislead or manipulate nearly anything just to further the demonization of men and female victim status. It’s a totally sexist notion coming from a movement that’s supposed to be against sexism.
>They would also claim that a man would've figured it out eventually, and the fact she beat them to the punch was merely a fluke.But the same, "would've figured it out eventually" is never afforded to women in regards to men having invented something first; no, it's reasoned that most women are/were inherently INCAPABLE of doing such things as being inventive, rather than acknowledging that women were RESTRICTED from doing such things or for being credited with such (eg., patent laws, laws regarding ownership of property, etc.). I wouldn't be so bold as to say that all or even most or a great many inventions were actually created by women and yet men took credit because they COULD, but that it's not outside the realm of possibility that some women may have had a hand in men's creation of some inventions that are completely credited to men. We will never know because in men's physical superiority trumps all, might makes right creation of reality as has been recorded in written history, women barely even existed at all…. you would wonder where we women all suddenly came from.The problem is, one could argue–as many MRAs do–that the inventive woman was one of those rare ones who thinks more like a male than a female (a commenter at Roissy's would claim she had a high T-level).OR the inventive woman was one of those rare ones who was able to obtain an education outside of "charm school" or learning domestic occupations, in spite of the many roadblocks aimed to prevent this for females (yes, many men were not able to pursue an education, either, but mostly due to lack of finances, NOT due to their sex). Additionally, to be inventive requires the luxury of being afforded time to focus and concentrate on this singular pursuit to the exclusion of other responsibilities, and that's not something that very many women were allowed in any large measure. As John Stuart Mill wrote in his 1869 essay The Subjection of Women:"Independently of the regular offices of life which devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made on him. Are a woman's occupations, especially her chosen and voluntary ones, ever regarded as excusing her from any of what are termed the calls of society? Scarcely are her most necessary and recognised duties allowed as an exemption. It requires an illness in the family, or something else out of the common way, to entitle her to give her own business the precedence over other people's amusement. She must always be at the beck and call of somebody, generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in it."And for working class women? What "idle" time would they have to spare between work outside the home and the daily domestic chores and childcare which were not expected of a man to have to perform.
>Approx. 90% of reported sexual assault victims are women. Of reported sexual assaults with a male victim, roughly 90% have male perpetrators. Which means that only about 1% of reported sexual assaults have a male victim and a female perpetrator. The amount of female on male rape would have to be about ninety times as underreported (not a ninety percent less likely, ninety times less likely) as male on female rape to result in roughly equivalent numbers. @vagrant "…I say that when female on male rape is "vastly" underreported, I don't mean "less than half of f-on-m rapes are reported and/or recognized," I mean to say that perhaps less than one in ten–or even one in twenty–are reported and recognized." Your numbers would actually, by most statistics, mean that men underreported less than women. The report rate, in the US, for sexual assault is about 10-40% for female victims. Which means that, even by the DOJ's conservative methodology, less than half of sexual assaults with a female victim are reported. I would assume that less than half of sexual assaults of male victims by females are reported, due to the fact that there is no evidence suggesting men underreport less than women. I do believe that sexual assaults of men are vastly underreported. I do not think there is a serious reason to doubt that. It is also true, however, that sexual assaults of women are vastly underreported. However, the sheer level of discrepancy that would have to be involved in reporting rates of male on female sexual assault and female on male rape in order for the rates of sexual assault to be anywhere equivalent makes claims of equivalent rates absurd on their face. While there is evidence that men underreport at slighly higher rates, there is no evidence that even vaguely suggests it is anywhere near what it would have to be for equivalent rates.
>All right, I had nothing better to do today, so I went through every single quote and attempted to verify them.My findings:Out of 42 quotes:-4 were either fabricated or deliberately twisted to convey something the author does not actually believe-10 could not be verified-28 were (relatively) accurate quotes and citations-Of those 28, 10 are quotes of Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who does not represent mainstream feminist opinion-Of the remaining 18, only two or three struck me as genuinely hateful, though I suppose that’s a matter of perspectiveI respond to each individual quote on my blog, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to read it all. In retrospect I'm not really sure why I did it.
>But even my cat can figure out that I don's actually mean her harm.Sounds like your cat is a better judge of who means harm than you are, so why don't you ask her if Avenger meant any harm to Josh Jasper?And do a search for "lacrosse" you will find many posts on the topic, with links to specific evidence.Um, no. I found a lot of posts salivating about privilege and calling anyone who was skeptical of the rape charge a "rape apologist" but I didn't find a single link to any kind of evidence that the accused men committed the crime.she;s not basing her opinions on "I'm smarter than dumb ordinary people" as you seem to be in the Goodyear case.First of all, my opinion on the Goodyear case is that I don't believe they engaged in sex discrimination. I never asserted that they definitely did not engage in it, the way that Marcotte asserted that these men were definitely guilty of rape.Second, the basis for my opinion is that not a shred of evidence has been shown to me that Goodyear engaged in sex discrimination. The ONLY reason I have been offered to believe this is that a jury thought they did, as if juries are never wrong. NEWSFLASH: juries are often wrong, and it doesn't help that intelligent people either find ways to get out of jury duty, or get screened out when they try to serve because lawyers prefer easily gullible jurors.Amanda Marcotte, on the other hand, has apparently based her assertion(not just opinion) on the fact that a woman claimed to have been raped by some men and her belief that there is no possible way that woman could be a liar. She totally stuck her foot in her mouth by doing that and her reputation will never recover from that blow.Now you have stuck your own foot in your mouth by defending her and by claiming that she wrote extensively about evidence in a post that you have yet to produce. If you don't produce it soon, you are going to suffer a massive blow to your credibility that I won't hesitate to spread far and wide across the Internet, so I suggest that you get cracking on that.
>Cold, why don't you read the post immediately preceding your latest one. That's the result of the detailed factchecking of a list you posted here, and which you claim to have at least partially factchecked yourself. Then get back to me about the whole credibility thing.Given that you have yet to acknowledge what a thoroughly sloppy piece of work that list was, or to offer even a mild "my bad" for it, I'd say you have very little credibility left on this blog. I have no real stake in the Duke case debate. Based on what I know of the case, I disagree with Amanda Marcotte's take on it. Unfortunately, her blog archives got fucked up and many old posts were deleted, so I can't point to everything she wrote on the subject, and so I can't make any definitive statements about what all she said. Perhaps I should not have spoken so definitively about it earlier. But on the basis of what I've seen on Pandagon, and on my assessment of her seriousness as a writer (high) versus yours (low), I believe she knows a lot more about the case than you know about the Goodyear case. Given that you seem to know precisely nothing about the Goodyear case, I think that's a reasonable enough conclusion. You also seem to have missed at least one piece of specific evidence she mentions in what remains of her posts on Pandagon that says a good deal about the frame of mind of at least one of the players on the night in question. Given that I spent many hours checking a list you posted, I will leave it up to you to find that bit of evidence yourself.If you have any additional issues with her views on the subject, you can take it up with her or of any of the countless bloggers who piled on her about her airport post. I'm not having any more discussion of it here.I suggest you return to the actual topic of this post: that shitty, sloppy list you posted.
>triplanetary, thanks for an excellent post! I will put a link to it in my piece. One minor correction: the Dworkin quotes from Letters From a War Zone that you couldn't find are indeed in in the edition of the book that I've got (paperback, 1993, from Lawrence Hill Books). I assume you have a different and shorter version of the book. (My edition includes the essay that you correctly cite as the source for one of the quotes, “Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality," for example.) Again, thanks for the post. Very very valuable.
>Vagrant: “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.”I’m not sure why my name was brought up here. Care to elaborate?As for some characteristic differences in men vs women… I make use of a rather unexpected source for some of my belief’s… the story of the physical and mental changes experienced by a female to male transgender after completing hormone therapy. After the infusion and integration of testosterone to male levels, the following transgender experienced greater physical strength and toughness/durability/pain threshold, more assertive (but in control), a tendency to channel emotional pain into constructive pursuits, increased concentration, and an increase in risk taking. On the flipside, he has acknowledged an increased difficulty in verbalizing his thoughts (but not overall communication skills), and the typical male stereotype of not wanting to ask directions (I personally attribute this to a willingness and desire to explore, as I myself enjoy finding my own way, but will ask when I’m on a time constraint, but this is projecting myself into this comment). Lastly, he notes a change in his thought process. Not better or worse, just different.It is actually a fascinating insight into biological gender differences, as well as societal perceptions. I believe this because it is an example of the changes that occur to the very same person when male biology is injected into a female. I’d be curious to read the observations of a M>F TG.http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/sir-can-you-help-me-with-this/Vargrant: “I don't deny that male on female rape is a serious problem, I don't even deny that we live in a "male on female rape culture,”Yes, acknowledging any male victimization is seen as the same as denying female victims. At least, in this feminist world. It applies to domestic violence and family court too.As to F>M rape, I tend to point to 40 days and 40 nights as a perfect example. The man was tied to his bed for his own reason’s, His ex girlfriend whom he openly rejected, entered his home and had sex with him while he slept (this could then lead into the male parental rights issue, longer term). By any definition of the word, this is rape. How did the movie play out from that point? The rapist won … what, $10,000 for her criminal act, the male victim was deemed to have lost, inferring he was incapable of controlling his own male impulses, IE his need to have sex… And his new girlfriend deemed him a cheater, and he required her to forgive him. He was raped and he was made the villain, not just by his co-workers and society (deeming him sexed addict), but by his girlfriend, who never gave him the benefit of the doubt, and not once allowed him to explain himself (he simply had to plead for forgiveness.
>Lady V: 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.”Have you considered the fact that not wanting to become a father may have had less to do with it then the fact that he would have had absolutely no say in the final decision to abort/not? If abortion is a sin, and one goes to hell for committing sin’s (but not for being a father), why would you put yourself into a position where you could go to hell for someone else’s choice? I suppose if he thought this way, he was a misogynist too?TriP: “But as there's no matriarchy that creates opportunities for systematic abuse of men, men being raped by women is pretty rare compared to its opposite.”Feminism has filled that role, with advocacy for things like battered wife syndrome justifying homicide, even in mutually abusive relationships, and relationships where the man is too dead to counter unfounded accusations of abuse that have no proof.Elizabeth: “It is also going to become illegal or already is Vagrant-secretly recording your sexual encounters with a woman, even in the interests of preventing a false rape accusation could lead to other charges.” I’m pretty sure it already is illegal if both parties do not consent, to record sexual acts. Combine that with Jessica Valenti’s attempts to have the presumption of innocence replaced with a presumption of guilt, in rape cases. If this was to happen, and simply the word of a woman, with no proof whatsoever, could put a man behind bars… how would a man prove his innocence? Especially if he actually had consensual sex with her (and thus, doesn’t have an alibi of being someplace else)? Honest question, as this is something a prominent feminist is actually trying to make happen, and the answer to this question may be required by men in the future.David: “Actually, I don’t spend a lot of time on any MRA sites other then two. A voice for men (which I see as full of anger, but not hatred), and http://news.mensactivism.org/ , which is simply a collection of news stories, to which I often reply to the comments section of the news stories themselves, and see many hateful misandric responses far more often then hateful misogynistic ones. Largely this is because I don’t find the anger helpful (AVFM has a lot of intelligent commentary worth reading, despite the anger, IMHO. As you don’t like MRA’s in general, and have personal vendetta against Paul specifically, I don’t expect you to agree.).
>"I suggest you return to the actual topic of this post: that shitty, sloppy list you posted."I thought the topic was about ensuring any claims of what others say should include a source that can be followed. But when cold asked for that very thing from you, you deflected and turned back to the list. A list that is, by TriP's own assertion is 2/3rds correct, and 1/4 unverifiable by her (which is not the same as being wrong).
>Funny, you normally have no problem with comments going off on long tangents. When you suddenly declare that you won't have any more of one, I think that's a pretty solid indication that you were just pwn3d. It's not the first time you've reacted this way to such pwnage either. Now back to that topic…28 out of 42 is two thirds of the list that is confirmed to be accurate, and of course I never claimed that it was 100% accurate. It's the most well-known publicly viewable complilation of such quotes at this time and was intended as a brief illustration of how feminists demonize men, in lieu of a massive link spam. My credibility is about as intimately tied to it as yours is to the sites you link in your "Good Stuff" section.My seriousness as a writer is determined by the writing situation and this blog doesn't even pretend to be high-brow.
>@ Kratch: Yeah, the rape scene in 40 Days and 40 Nights was not treated as an actual rape. I was appalled when I saw that scene – I had been really liking the story up until that point. However, neither was the rape scene in Observe and Report treated as an actual rape. When it comes to Hollywood, mainstream movies (especially comedies) have a pretty bad track record when it comes to dealing with the topic of rape. So why don't you, your allies, me and my allies all join forces for this issue? Surely this is something we can agree on – rape is a serious topic, and deserves more than to be punchline, or, even worse, the setup to the punchline. Let's devise some way to let Hollywood know that we're sick of rape not being treated seriously, no matter who it happens to.
>Observe and protect at least got some (a lot here in Toronto) press coverage objecting to that scene. I don't remember hearing a peep regarding 40/40. And by all means, champion male victims of rape, please (though i think that time would be better served on male DV victims), but you will see just how hostile feminists can get when you try to help and acknowledge men (such as the above comments that equate acknowledging male victims to denying female victims… as if acknowledgement of victimization is a binary equation)
>You said: "Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from." Women are the MAJORITY of child abusers. Their targets are often their sons. Do you "understand" that, David? Only women have a need for "rage"? There are other things women do to oppress men, but I can address those, later.
>"Women are the MAJORITY of child abusers." This is not true, if you define abuse in terms of rape, assault, or murder. If you define abuse in terms of neglect, where only the primary caretakers are liable (by defintion under most laws), then yes. However, this is not because male primary caretakers neglect at lower rates (they do not), it is because women are primary caretakers at vastly higher numbers. It is also worth noting that the US does not distinguish between poverty and neglect, and that neglect statistics do not often distinguish between 'chronic' and 'acute' neglect. By this standard, a child who has no coat for the winter because their parent does not give a crap and one that does not because the parent is homeless are treated as equivalent cases. A three year old who drowns when their parent leaves them alone in the bath for a few minutes to answer the phone is counted the same as a child who is starved to death. Also, leaving a young teen at home alone may or may not count. Allowing your eight and twelve year olds go to the store at the corner alone together can count. Trying to commit suicide while your child sleeps can and has been charged as neglect. A caretaker can even be charged with neglect due to "failure to protect" from the other parent or family member's abuse. This means the abuse victim is charged with neglect as the result of their abuser's assault of a child. Being beaten in front of your child can even count as neglect. Neglect is a pretty amorphous category. ("Their targets are often their sons"-there is no evidence that female neglect perps target males more, most of the discrepancy in death rates comes from intentional abuse and homicide which have males as the majority perps).@Kratch, I actually agree that rapes of males are not treated seriously. However, rapes of females are not treated seriously either. The differences in regard to rape culture, however, are not just numeric distinctions. They are narratives about the the notion of people deserving to be raped, policing of behavior on the notion that you deserve to be raped if you are in public (or in a bar, or are drunk), the level of control of these media formats (both films mentioned, Observe and Report and 40 days, have male writers and directors, news and film is a heavily male dominated industry, particularly at the top levels), and a number of other social factors.P.S. don't scapegoat trans people. The pop psychology of cis people about trans experience pisses me off.
>@thevagrantsvoiceThanks for the link.
>If you have any additional issues with her views on the subject, you can take it up with her or of any of the countless bloggers who piled on her about her airport post.I'm not having any more discussion of it here.I'm going to boldly interpret this to mean that I can still comment on that piece of "evidence" you mentioned since that's not an "additional issue" to what has already been discussed. So without further ado:You also seem to have missed at least one piece of specific evidence she mentions in what remains of her posts on Pandagon that says a good deal about the frame of mind of at least one of the players on the night in question.If you are referring to this post then no I did not miss it, but apparently you didn't read it carefully. See, the email in question is timestamped AFTER the party in question, and therefore reveals nothing about the frame of mind of that player DURING the party. More fail on your part, David.Furthermore, it was almost certainly a joke, and unlike you I can actually supply a compelling argument. See, if you're going to murder someone, it would be REALLY FUCKING STUPID to advertise that fact to a bunch of your teammates. So, this was nothing more than a very, very tasteless joke, much like Shaenon's "I'll punch you if I find you" comment at which you have expressed no objection. It is NOT evidence that he actually raped anyone, not by a long shot. So, you fail yet again.You claimed that Marcotte wrote about EVIDENCE and did so EXTENSIVELY but you can't supply one iota of proof, thus making a complete hypocrite of yourself. Of course you can delete this comment, but it won't help you much because I just downloaded this entire page and will be circulating it as I see fit for your embarrassment. If you're not accustomed to dealing with that kind of embarrassment, I'm sure Amanda can provide you with some moral support.
>Cold, I un-spam blocked this comment, but like I said I'm not discussing this topic with you any more. You can "circulate" whatever you like. I'm really not sure why anyone else would be interested in our debate here. Just quote me accurately and don't misrepresent what I've said. At this point, however, you are deliberately being disruptive, and if you continue on this path I will ban you.
>"Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from.Are most feminists rape victims? I don’t think so. If you claim that they are, please provide some proof.Only a true feminist bigot would believe that men don't have a right to have a complaint about men's issues and then totally accept women/ the feminist movement to whine, whine, whine 24/7 365 days a year for 60 odd years.Only a true feminist bigot ignores the fact that men have issues too.David, you really and truly need to get that little head of yours out of your ass.I am just curious, what made you favour women so much? Why so much favouritism? What made you into such a raven feminist bigot? What made you discriminate your own gender?