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>Incredibly Strange Antifeminist Bedfellows: Kay Hymowitz defends her attackers

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Damn you, you monsters! This scarf does NOT make me look gay!

This is just embarrassing. A bit over a week ago, the Wall Street Journal published a chunk of antifeminist polemicist Kay Hymowitz’ new book Manning Up, which argues that young men today have turned into a generation of immature pre-adults as a result (to simplify only slightly) of excessive exposure to Judd Apatow movies and to young women who won’t let them step up and be real men. The article stirred up quite a tempest in the tea-pot that is the Men’s Right’s/MGTOW world online. Completely missing the antifeminist implications of her argument, manosphere men attacked her for impugning the honor of young men and their video games, and for generally being, to quote a few typical comments, a “bitch,” an “entitlement whore,” a “cunt,” “a fugly tranny skank,” and someone who “on her best day … has a face that reminds me a mule my uncle used to own.”

Now Hymowitz has responded to all this vitriol by penning … a partial defense of her attackers for the Daily Beast. While she notes that there are elements of “backlash” and, yes, misogyny in the rage of the manosphere, she’s quick to equate this manosphere tantrum with the feelings of men in general (as Amanda Marcotte has already pointed out), and to suggest that there are legitimate reasons for the hate. Which apparently have to do with, er, male frustration with having to ask women out for dates. Yes, that’s her real argument. Let’s let her explain:

[T]here’s another reason for these rants, one that is far less understood. Let’s call it gender bait and switch. Never before in history have men been matched up with women who are so much their equal—socially, professionally, and sexually. … That’s the bait; here comes the switch. Women may want equality at the conference table and treadmill. But when it comes to sex and dating, they aren’t so sure.

At this point, Hymowitz launches into a tired old litany of male complaints about the alleged horrors of post-feminist dating: OMG, in this crazy mixed-up world of ours, men don’t know whether or not to open doors for their dates! Some women want to pay their way on dates, even when they make as much as or more than the dudes dating them  … and others don’t!

Men say they have no choice. If they want a life, they have to ask women out on dates; they have to initiate conversations at bars and parties, they have to take the lead on sex. Women can take a Chinese menu approach to gender roles. They can be all “Let me pay for the movie tickets” on Friday nights, and “A single rose? That’s it?” on Valentine’s Day.

As Marcotte points out, Hymowitz is essentially echoing one of the dopiest of manosphere complaints about the ladies, “that they’re all different people, instead of easily controlled sexbots.” Indeed, on many manosphere sites, one gets the impression that women are, or should be, a bunch of interchangeable sperm receptacles, differentiated only by how high they score on a “hotness” scale of 1-10. If you think of women this way, no wonder you’re confused when women have, you know, actual personalities and shit.

But here’s a hint for the angry dudes of the manosphere: once you realize that women are not all the same person inside, you can turn this fact to your advantage, by deliberately seeking out women who are actually compatible with your own personality. Don’t like paying for dates? Then find a woman who likes paying her own way! (Just don’t be shocked if she finds your retrograde ideas about women repulsive.) I know that this may come as a shock to some of you guys, but there are men out there who actually find women’s distinct personalities … interesting. Stimulating. Attractive.

Back to Hymowitz. As strange as it is to see her parroting some of the dumbest manosphere complaints about women and dating — some women want one thing, while other women want something different! some say they want good guys but then they date bad boys! — even stranger is her notion that manosphere rage has its roots in frustrations about dating. Given that she’s not a complete idiot, there are only two possible explanations for this strange conclusion of hers. One, she’s so eager to find evidence for her thesis that empowered women are the root of male immaturity that she is willing to overlook the crazy misogyny of angry MRA/MGTOW dudes because they, too, blame women for their dating woes. Or two, that she has not actually given the blogs and forums of the manosphere much more than a cursory glance. I think it’s a bit of both.

The list of manosphere sites she mentions in her article bear out the second of these theses — it’s simply cut-and-pasted from her 2008 article Love in the Time of Darwinism, and it’s pretty clear she hasn’t revisited any of them since then. Or, in one case, ever: EternalBachelor.com isn’t a Men’s Rights or MGTOW site at all. but a skeleton site for a web magazine “coming soon” whose only content at the moment consists of photos of buff, shirtless guys (and a page where you can order t-shirts, presumably to keep the poor fellas from freezing to death). I can only guess that Hymowitz meant to refer to the Eternal Bachelor blog, which has itself been dormant for more than three years.(Another site she links to, Nomarriage.com, is also “under construction.”)

Kay, if you read this, please take a moment to peruse some real MRA/MGTOW and related forums, like, say, The Spearhead, and take a look at some of the comments there. For example, this one, about you — which, last I checked, had gotten 33 upvotes and only a handful of downvotes from the Spearhead peanut gallery:

I wish I could reach through my computer screen and punch this bitch. …. this stupid bitch is using the pain of innocent men destroyed by the same misandric system that publishes her shit to make more money and she is probably part of the feminazi conspiracy to appropriate and colonize the growing MRM. …

WTF is up with jewish women? They seem to be the most misandric of all. They demand that baby boys get their dicks chopped off and grown men too, I have hooked up with a few and they all got weirdly gitty knowing I was uncut and then sad when they realized I wouldn’t get chopped up and submit to their version of a sky god. I mean, really, WTF? I haven’t read much into the torah but just scanning the feminists and other feminazi loons it’s is obvious that there are a lot with jewish names. … Really, I don’t get it and am not trying to sound like a nazi but I must be missing something.

Somehow, I don’t think the rage in this comment has much to do with confusion over whether or not guys should open doors for their dates. 

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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Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Walker Tall, I think he is referring to Dwight Yoakam's Twenty Years song.

Amnesia
13 years ago

>"And yet returning America to having a debtors prison for men never seems to be "extreme" to the feminists who pushed for it and continue support it."I wouldn't call it extreme, just laughable that you think anybody is clamoring for a 'debtors prison for men.' Sources?"Tricking a man into supporting a child who is not his, and then forcing him to continue paying for the bastard, is never considered extreme to feminists."If the guy is so sure the child isn't his, why not get a paternity test? It's a little pricey, but most likely cheaper than child support in the long run. Besides, according to the American Pregnancy Association's page on paternity testing, if a couple is unmarried, they have to fill out an Acknowledgment of Paternity form in order to establish the father officially. If this is not filled out, there is no father listed on the child's birth certificate, and the man is not liable for child support.It's not like a woman can get pregnant, claim Joe Millionaire was the father, and start collecting child support payments based on her claims alone.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Bar-simply because one male was wrongly convicted does not mean a rape did not occur. I think you are mixing it up. If a woman reports a rape, a guy is arrested and later it is determined he was not the rapist, does not automatically mean that there was no rape. What it means is the wrongly convicted man did not commit the crime.If you do think false accusations are so prevalent, what do you think is an appropriate punishment for such a claim?Richard-it is standard practice in every court in the US to have verbal testimony. This has been the case for centuries in all sorts of legal forums. And if it was for something like a car accident, you would have zero problem with a person being convicted on the testimony of the witnesses. But since it is a restraining order you think a person's word is not good enough? Are you of the opinion that a person must have a higher burden then even the state does for seeking a restraining order (which are civil, not criminal)? Or are you stating that a person seeking a restraining order must be considered to be automatically lying and must therefore have independent corroborating evidence before an order (again a civil not criminal proceeding) may be issued? Or just a female seeking such order should be considered a liar?

Bee
Bee
13 years ago

>Random Brother: Sending a man to debtor's prison–you're talking about sending parents who are delinquent on their child support payments to prison? I'm against that–that seems extreme to me–unless there's a compelling reason, like the parent is fraudulently hiding money from their children. Making a man support a child that isn't his? Putting him in jail if he doesn't? I'm against that too, unless there's a really compelling reason why I shouldn't be, given the unique facts of a singular case. So we agree with three out of five of the examples you give of extreme things that evil feminists want and brave MRAs are fighting against. And frankly, in the feminist circles I hang out at, I've never witnessed any support for these three positions you say feminists are fighting for.We part ways at issuing restraining orders off one person's word. I can see much greater harm resulting from requiring greater proof, frankly, and it seems to me that in balancing everyone's needs and burdens, in the majority of cases, issuing the order wins out over not.And we really, really part ways at the false rape accusations. I'll give you this: People who make false rape accusations knowingly and/or maliciously should be punished for filing a false report. The accused should (and does, as far as I know) have civil court remedies available as well. But the typical MRA approach to false rape accusations seems to be that all reports that don't lead to a prosecution must be false: Anyone who later recants, for whatever reason, or who was raped by someone but the wrong person is identified as the attacker, or who is unable to convince a jury of hir side in a xie said/xie said situation–all of those people are LIARS. And that simply is not true.Now, it occurs to me that perhaps you, Random Brother, don't think that. Maybe you're only talking about punishing people who provably have lied maliciously and intentionally. So we're back to being in agreement (more or less) again. But the above is (at least in part) why I don't at all support a general MRA view on punishing those who make false rape claims. As to Heidi Jones, it looks like she was sentenced to a year in prison. So, contrary to your implications, it looks like people who file false rape reports are adequately punished. Did I miss the feminist uprising calling for her release from jail?

triplanetary
13 years ago

>if someone falsely accused you of murder, or pedophilia, and you are prove innocent, is it not appropriate for that person to spend the same amount of time in jail that you would have had you not been able to prove your innocence?No. No it's not appropriate. Which is why it doesn't happen. You don't go to jail for wrongly accusing anyone of anything, though as I've already pointed out, you can be charged with filing a false police report if you report a crime that never actually occurred. But that's not the same thing as identifying the wrong perpetrator. Like I said, this doesn't happen for murder accusations, so why should it happen for rape accusations?Your use of the phrase "prove your innocence" points to your confusion over these issues. If someone accuses me of a crime, I don't have to prove my innocence. They have to prove my guilt. You're getting presumption of innocence all backwards, which explains why you think it would ever be appropriate to assume that any criminal case that doesn't result in a guilty verdict must by extension involve a false accusation.Put it this way: If a woman accuses a man of raping her, and he's acquitted in court, does that automatically mean that the woman deliberately falsely accused him? Of course not. If you start charging women with a false rape accusation every time their accusations can't be proved in court, you're going to discourage women from reporting real rapes. Oh hey, a man raped me, I should bring him to court. But wait, what if there's not enough evidence? Now suddenly I'm a suspect even though I'm the one who was raped.But of course, that's exactly what MRAs want, isn't it? (Yes.)

bar
bar
13 years ago

>"Bar-simply because one male was wrongly convicted does not mean a rape did not occur. I think you are mixing it up. If a woman reports a rape, a guy is arrested and later it is determined he was not the rapist, does not automatically mean that there was no rape. What it means is the wrongly convicted man did not commit the crime."this has nothing to do with the fact that an innocent man is still being accused of rape. also in the case of Heidi jones, the mere fabrication of a rape that did not occur was never questioned. she admits she made up the story.we punish drunk drivers that kill others severely, and they wherent even intending to due harm. we punish them because their negligence causes the death of another while driving drunk, even though they had no malicious intent. and these people can go to jail for years.therefore if a person maliciously (such as the duke lacross or hofstra university instances) accuses others of rape then they should be punished harshly for such a crime. they should be punished as harshly as a rapist.

bar
bar
13 years ago

>@ triplanetry.the presumption of innocence doesnt factor into it.here are the facts.if a woman accuses a man of rape, shes automatically branded as a victim not an accuser.the courts then (without proof that the accuser was indeed raped) take proactive action to treat the accuser as a victim.how do they do this?by using rape shield laws, so that the "victim" does not have her name released to the media, and does not have to face her accuser.meanwhile the accused, has his name released to the media and is convicted in the court of public opinion.having the right to face, and examine the accusations of your accuser, is a necessary prerequisite for a fair trail.also you wrote"No. No it's not appropriate. Which is why it doesn't happen. You don't go to jail for wrongly accusing anyone of anything, though as I've already pointed out, you can be charged with filing a false police report if you report a crime that never actually occurred. But that's not the same thing as identifying the wrong perpetrator."it most certainly is appropriate if the false accusation, can mean that an innocent person may be deprived of their freedom. also you are making the assumption that these false rape accusations are never malicious. you are implying that they are simply mixups. many of them are not.the most famous examples such as duke lacross consisted of a woman admittedly lying about being raped, she has admitted that she lied about it, and so the fact that there is a flaw in our legal system that allows a woman to send men to jail, in such a fashion that only exonerates these men when inconsistencies in HER story prove the men innocent is by definition an act of treating the accused as guilty until proven innocent.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>So you think that if the person convicted wrongly was later exonerated, the accuser should go to jail?And in the Duke La Crosse case, you think that accuser should spend twenty years in prison for a case that was later dismissed completely?

jupiter9
13 years ago

>""will send a man to prison for a few decades"[citation needed]are you kidding me?! really?you need a citation to discern that a false rape accusation, can send a man to prison for a good part of his natural life?"No, we need a citation that a false accusation *will* send a person to prison for a good part of their natural life. Will <> can.There's a big difference between "life isn't perfect" and "life is always unfair." Men going to jail for rapes they didn't commit is a very bad result of a good but not perfect justice system, not a commonplace and premeditated result of a system that is deliberately set up to punish innocent men as a matter of course.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Bar-the woman who makes an accusation of rape has her name shielded from the press for a reason. A person who is raped has been violated and apparently you think she should not only have her name published (with the attendant mudslinging at her name-see the Kobe Bryant rape accusation) but thrown in prison if the man she accuses turns out to be a case of mistaken identity.So if your mother was walking down the street, a man leaps out of the bushes and rapes her, she tells the police, they find a guy who looks like the dude who raped her…he goes to jail, turns out he was NOT the guy…your mother goes to prison for twenty years based on your beliefs here.See why this is a bad idea yet?

bar
bar
13 years ago

>"So you think that if the person convicted wrongly was later exonerated, the accuser should go to jail?"if it can be proven that the accuser was malicously trying to wrongly convict the accuse, of a crime as serios as rape, then yes she/he should be locked away for as long as possible. decades if possible.why?because making up rape accusations, in which the accused can go to jail for twenty years or more, is equivalent to an act of enslavement. the acused is deprived of his liberty, and freedom, which is the definition of slavery.in the duke case, OF COURSE she should spend twenty years in jail, these men arent rotting away in jail right now, only because she was disproven!she didnt have the decency even to admit she was lying about something as serios as rape, which means she was okay with depriving innocent men of their freedom. i cant think of many more evil things than that.

bar
bar
13 years ago

>"Bar-the woman who makes an accusation of rape has her name shielded from the press for a reason. A person who is raped has been violated"there it is you just did it… listen to what you have done.. you have acknowledged that her rape has not been proven in a court of law by saying this:"woman who makes an accusation of rape"then you have in the span of a sentence convinced yourself that somehow it has been proven by saying this:"has her name shielded from the press for a reason. A person who is raped has been violated"she has been ALLEGEDLY VIOLATED.. ALLEGEDLY!in any free and open society the burden of proof rests not on the accused to prove that he did not rape her, but on the accuser (or the prosecution)to show that he did.I have to go for now, but this is the exact reason we need to end rape shield laws

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>So essentially if someone makes a claim, it is shown to be false, they should spend an equivalent time in prison when the accused is not convicted of the offense so we have no actual knowledge what that time would have been but that accuser deserves to go to prison for as long as possible. All because you think making a false claim is worse then rape.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Would you be happier if a woman who makes such an accusation stays in jail (just in case of course!) until the accusation is proven beyond a reasonable doubt or is it okay for her to be let out of jail? By the way-the accuser still has to show up in court. There are zero laws saying that the press has any right to know who does an accusation.

bar
bar
13 years ago

>@ elizabethif it is shown that the accuser did so with malicious intent absolutely.and yes false rape accusations are a worse crime than rape. it is much worse of a crime to imprison an innocent person. its a form of modern day enslavement.i consider enslavement to be a worse crime than rape.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>No it is not a modern day enslavement. It is a very bad thing but it is not enslavement.And what do you consider malicious intent? You just said you wanted the Duke La Crosse accuser to be sent to prison for a very long time, yet there was no evidence provided to the press or you personally that she did this with malicious intent. What evidence was provided was that this was a very disturbed young woman mentally and she needed some psychiatric help. So either it is malicious intent or you think all women deserve prison time for making an accusation that may have been found later to be inaccurate.

bar
bar
13 years ago

>"No it is not a modern day enslavement. It is a very bad thing but it is not enslavement."it isnt?-accuser knowingly makes false rape accusation-innocent accused goes to jail, where they are deprived of the freedom to leave.. they are falsely imprisoned. that is a form of slaverymalicious intent would mean that the accuser, knowing that no rape occurred, still upheld the accusation.the duke lacrosse accuser knew from the beginning that she had never been raped, and still continued to accuse them. she eventually recanted, but this does not matter, as any period of knowingly continuing to make false claims, is an attempt at depriving an innocent person of their freedom.

zbutterscotchpudding
13 years ago

>People don't serve that long for rape. Found this in wiki really quickly.Prison sentences for rape are not uniform. A study made by the U.S. Department of Justice of prison releases in 1992, involving about 80 percent of the prison population, found that the average sentence for convicted rapists was 11.8 years, while the actual time served was 5.4 years. This follows the typical pattern for violent crimes in the US, where those convicted typically serve no more than half of their sentence [1].It's the stigma that is issue with even being accused, though. The accused should also be anonymous. But I personally believe that sex crimes against sex workers should carry a slightly stiffer penalty to raise awareness about that problem. And men can joke to themselves about where they're going to shove broomsticks. And any worker even coerced into doing one fucking thing extra or not on the menu on a porn shoot can sue the company or exploiter into bankruptcy…ahhh my perfect world.

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>There is definitely a problem, but the problem is not with people who believe they have been a victim of a crime; it's with the justice system as it currently operates. When people are accused of crimes, not just rape but most serious crimes, they are not treated as though they are presumed innocent. If they do not have a ready source of $$, they will probably wait in jail for quite a while before their trial, they will most likely be represented by inferior council, they will be pressured to plea bargain by prosecutors who are more concerned with clearing cases than with discovering the truth. Even if they are later found not guilty, they will have most likely lost their job and be in debt for the cost of their defense. It would be interesting to see the MRM get behind the judicial reform movement, especially since the injustice mainly affects men. I think y'all could get a lot done. There is an excellent book about this, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, if anyone is interested.

notanmra
13 years ago

>Hello David.Remember me: your "favorite critic" of the MRA/MGTOW garbage?I am curious: Did you hear Darth Elams crap radio show last night, and if so: what did you think of it?Playing games does not make you childish David. Adults have been playing games since games were invented: scrabble, yahtzee, sports. The fact that the modern era has "games on TV screens" does not make playing them childish.Randomly stomping in a mud puddle while shouting "weee!": that makes one childish.That was related to a comment you posted previously. You seemed to consider yourself childish simply because you play video games.

richard
13 years ago

>@ triplanetarytriplanetary said: "Actually, we do consider it "extreme" in the sense of "an outlier situation that doesn't happen nearly as often as you'd think if you were just going on how much MRAs whine shrilly about it.""What does that have to do with whether the situation is fair or not? Oh, nothing. Just an attempt by a female worshiping mangina to muddy the waters. trip said: "What's the problem with restraining orders being based on this, exactly? If somebody doesn't want you contacting them, don't. If you plan to respect their wishes in that regard, the restraining order won't hinder you; and if you don't plan on respecting their wishes, the restraining order was necessary."Are you fucking daft? What if the restraining order based on nothing includes where you work? What if you work in the same office? Where you live? Are you supposed to up and buy a new home just like that? How is that a harmless thing in those cases? trip: "I have yet to see a single MRA explain why rape accusations should be singled out in this way."Rape? You mean the crime so devestating that they allow "victims" to remain anonymous to protect themselves, a rarity in our justice system? You really aren't smart enough to grasp the difference?trip: "There are already laws in place to cover things like filing a false police report, slander, squandering emergency resources, etc. And despite MRA claims, women have been charged with filing a false police report in cases related to rape in the past.If it can be conclusively proved that no rape occurred at all, women can be convicted under existing laws for filing a police report. What MRAs really want is for every rape charge that doesn't result in a guilty verdict to be flipped around into a conviction of "false rape accusation" against the rape victim, which is complete lunacy. If my house gets broken into and I accuse you, and it turns out you didn't do it, I'm not going to get charged with anything. Why should a rape case be any different?"1. You shouldn't claim as fact that person X broke into your house when you don't know that for sure.2. Rapists are the lowest form of life in most prisons. Many men accused of rape in prison are the targets of rape attempts. Deliberately placing someone in a place where there is a high likely hood of them being raped seems to me to warrant a severe penalty not the slap on the wrists and probation that most false rape accusers get. Random Brother

richard
13 years ago

>@ walkertall: "Probably because it's obvious why. They're guilty of it, or are so afraid of women that they think some from their past will accuse them of it, therefore every.single.rape.accusation must be assumed to be false. Or else they might have to grow up."See Heidi Jones.

Elizabeth
13 years ago

>Bar-anyone who has access to a dictionary knows that slavery is very different then someone who was not guilty of a crime and was convicted anyway.And if you are saying that being falsely accused of a crime like rape is worse and deserves more severe punishment then a person who actually commits the act, then do you also believe a person who claims, falsely, they were burglarized by a person should go to prison for an equivalent time? In the Duke La Crosse case, you are again, assuming without having been there, that the woman was maliciously pursuing this. The prosecutor involved who reviewed the evidence stated "Our investigators who talked with her and the attorneys who talked with her over a period of time think that she may actually believe the many different stories that she has been telling.And in reviewing the whole history, there are records under seal that I'm not going to talk about, but we believe it's in the best interest of justice not to bring charges, and we have made that decision, as well." Yet you want to chuck her into prison for the next twenty years or however long a person not convicted of any crime would have received because without knowing all the facts the prosecutor knows, you think she is guilty and think a long prison sentence is appropriate.So apparently you would be fine with throwing a woman in jail until such time a conviction for an accusation of rape is made. That would certainly teach her!

Hide and Seek
13 years ago

>@notanmra: http://xkcd.com/150/

triplanetary
13 years ago

>it most certainly is appropriate if the false accusation, can mean that an innocent person may be deprived of their freedom. also you are making the assumption that these false rape accusations are never malicious. you are implying that they are simply mixups. many of them are not.You act like I could just point my finger at someone, accuse them of a horrible crime, and have them imprisoned just because I don't like them. The legal system doesn't work that way. The police won't so much as arrest them without probable cause. Then a judge and/or grand jury has to decide that there's enough evidence to warrant a trial. These safeguards exist to protect people from false allegations. So there's no need to toss people in prison for making incorrect accusations, whether deliberate or not (and the near impossibility of telling the two apart is another reason that would be a terrible idea).I certainly don't think that most false rape allegations are "mixups." Rather I think most "false" rape allegations aren't false at all but just cases where there wasn't enough evidence to convict, prompting the MRA to jump all over the situation and accuse the woman of being a malicious bitch without any reasoning beyond that she has a vagina.