MRAs and MGTOWers are, as you might have guessed, some pretty acronym-happy people. And one of their favorite acronyms — besides those two – is NAWALT, which stands for “Not All Women Are Like That.” This is a phrase often uttered by people who are not misogynist assholes in response to things said about women by people who are misogynist assholes. Apparently many MRAs and MGTOWers hear this so often that they’ve turned it into a running gag, the “joke” being that in their minds all women really ARE like that.
Now W.F. Price of The Spearhead has caused a tempest in the teapot that is the manosphere by admitting that, in fact, not all women are like that:
We all know that there are good women out there, including some who comment here, in our families, at work and in neighborhoods all over the land, so why shouldn’t we listen to women who tell us this is the case?
Now, Price has not suddenly become a feminist or anything. Indeed he went on to argue that even if not all women are horrible monsters,
a lot of them are, and we have no assurance that the nice girl who is smiling and saying she loves you won’t at some point destroy your life. …
If somebody handed you a revolver with three loaded chambers and three empty ones and said, “go ahead and aim this at your head and pull the trigger — not all the chambers are loaded,” would you go along with the suggestion? Of course not. It would be sheer folly.
And, oh, it goes on. Blah blah blah, men, don’t get married. Blah blah blah, and you good ladies out there better give up some of your rights – sorry, advantages — because the bad ladies abuse them and pretty soon no man will want to marry any of you:
[T]hose women who really “aren’t like that”… are less likely to find a man willing to marry them, and more likely to be used and abandoned at the first hint of commitment. Society at large is increasingly skeptical about the virtues of women, and the word is bubbling up from the grass roots that women are a risky proposition. …
Until the laws are reformed and some balance is restored to relationships, men who care at all about their lives will have no choice but to regard any woman he becomes involved with as a loaded gun pointed straight at him.
So, yeah, this is the same old W.F. Price we know and don’t love.
On The Spearhead itself, the dissenters were at least generally polite. “Nah, sorry Mr Price,” wrote oddsock. “Your well written post cuts no ice with me. All women are like that.” Herbal Essence also challenged Price’s math:
The argument needs to be rejected because nearly all women are enabling the behavior of the worst of them. And nearly all women stand, arms akimbo, as a bloc to preserve female superiority. ..
[I]t’s time that men take off their rose-colored glasses and realize that nearly all women are waging a war against us. For god sakes, our own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters support the female hive mind over their own flesh and blood. (us.)
Over on MGTOWforums.com, the judgment was a little harsher. The commenter calling himself fairi5fair reacted as though Price had lopped off his own dick and announced his engagement to the ghost of Andrea Dworkin.
W. F. Price is just a daisy-picking mangina with a chip on his shoulder imo. Even the woman MRA I knew was probably just using it as a slick way to trap a nesting male.
Bottom line: if words are coming out of a woman’s mouth, she’s a lying cunt. Mr. Price probably wants to believe in some romantic fairytale because he just got divorced and wants pussy again, and doesn’t want to face the reality of his options.
Yes, Mr. Price, you’re going to get your sorry ass handed to you again if you keep thinking with your dick and your heart. Use the brain, moron. Next!
Whenever I run across something this idiotic, I have to remind myself that Not All MGTOWers Are That Astoundingly Stupid. NAMGTOWATAS, for short.
@Plymoth, I seem to remember a recent discussion on the comment threads around here about a link being only as good as its source. Of course, given that it is huffpo, a well known pit of anti-vaxxer (and anti-autistic people) and engery healing nonsense, anything they say about “science” is highly suspect at best. The data on life expectancies just does not back up the idea that it is primarily culturally based, for example, Saudi Arabi has a life expectancy gap no greater than those for north western Europe, though gender expectations are massively different. Kuwait has a lower gap than Denmark. The only countries in the world where males have a longer average life expectancy than females are Swaziland, Afganistan, and Lesotho (high rates of maternal death likely play a big role in creating these outliers). Look at the raw data, there really is not a pattern between the level of gender equality, the level of physical labor (China, for example, has far more physical labor than Western Europe, but, again, similar numbers), etc and the life expectancy gap between sexes (with the exception of the fact that, when one gets down to the really low range in life expectancy, the gap is slightly more likely to be narrow). Do males in every country (except the three exceptions) really tend to take more risks, seek less medical care, drive faster, etc.?
amnesia
Ok, 60/40 split then.
Let’s look at a dangerous job. Roofers.
Where I live there has been a months long campaign asking roofers to “tie one on”. Meaning to secure themselves while working. Because my area is heavily pro-union and rather socialist a manager who asks a worker to do a job they know is dangerous can be brought up on criminal charges.
90% of workplace injuries can be avoided by safe work practices. We have billboards on factories declaring the amount of time accident free. As a factory owner a great deal of time and money (well spent) is used in safe work practices.
All good things and all things that improve men’s lives right? Except I live in Canada which mra’s like to proclaim as a bastion of female centric privilege that doesn’t care about men. Canada is also a place where joint custody is the default and child support payments are based on income on a sliding scale and time spent as caregiver. A person making minimal wage for instance without joint custody pays 150 a month per child, a lot less then they would be spending on that child.
Both my wife and I were at one time paying the max, and frankly it was much less then paying for a nanny, cook, etc for a full-time parent to parent our young children. When they became teens and decided to live with us most of the time it was quite simple to have on paper the amounts adjusted.
About the only thing I could fault my country for regarding mens right’s is having to go back to court to change child support if the income changes. They should simplify the method by being able to prove income change without a court date. I think both parents would gain from that! Certainly those of low income.
But somehow the mra’s compare Canada to communist Russia (not sure how communist Russia was unfair to men over women.. ) as being a horrible place to be a man. Even though workplace accidents are paid for by the government hence the government has every reason to minimize them, even though standard practice is joint custody, even though crazy California type child support payments are all but unheard of, and even though unless your the 65 year old life time homemaker of a wealthy lawyer alimony is not on the table mra’s hate Canada.
I don’t believe mra’s care one bit about the real issues men face.
(and don’t get me started on homelessness and men.. I tried started discussion at least a dozen times on what can be done for homelessness men in the mra community and was simply ignored except for the whole “there are not enough homeless women”.)
I started reading mra boards not because I wanted to, but I was not without my sympathies regarding how men’s lives could be improved by a mra movement. I have seen NOTHING (really nothing) that has pointed towards mra’s caring about their fellow men and working towards change for the better.
anit: I’ve answered that above and as for losing argument, try learning to concede when you used a logical fallacy and were caught in the act. That would give you some credibility. Until you can do that, I can’t take anything you say very seriously.
I don’t know if I should say you are lucky, or not, that I don’t hold to the same doctrine (I mean rally… linking to references to supply a non-biased set of definitions for the things I was saying you did = link-spamming? No wonder you don’t think you should share the non-misogynist MRA sites with us).
Now to the meat of that comment:
You’ve not shown any logical fallacy on my part. Even if I am wrong in my conclusions (which, see above) false /= fallacious (this is probably the big takeaway lesson here, because you’ve done it lots of times, and not just in repsonse to me).
No one has asked you to find one that is free of stupid comments. We’ve asked you to show your work. You said it wasn’t fair to look at “x” group when “y” group wasn’t like that.
Fine, show us the group you think = y.
I don’t claim to know what all MRAs are like. I have said (repeatedly) all the MRAs I can find are of a type. I think (based on years of seeing them, and seeing them be all of a type) that a strong inductive argument exists that this is the case.
Feel free to provide counter examples. All you really need is one.
Yeah but David, what do you expect from a bunch of blokes who are fucked in the head? What they’re good at is bitching, moaning and complaining (Kave’s right)from the safety of their keyboards, but sometimes the absolute shit that they write incites some loose cannon amongst them to commit violence, or climb on top of a bridge and hold a city to ransom. They are nothing but fucking cowardly turds and it is no surprise to me that they feel powerless.
Anit:
I did say, that if I had to decide between genders, as to which form of GM gets stopped first, it would be girls.
But my point is that we don’t have to decide. Localization of the problem (Africa and FGM) would only justify focusing on say “GM in Africa”. That does NOT justify focusing only on FGM in Africa.
The problem with this argument is logistical. Basically briget’s point was that FGM is a bigger problem in Africa, with a particular set of side effects, and that MGM is a bigger problem in America and has different side effects. Therefore, a conversation about GM would have to deal with a really diverse set of experiences, which are perpetuated by different peoples in different places and have different effects. And, your argument that this could be broken up into local areas (GM in Africa) is divisive and you argue that divisiveness is bad. My point is that these kinds of distinctions are practical ones.
For example, the process of putting a stop to FGM requires a different set of strategies to the process of stopping MGM – because the message needs to be addressed to separate groups and the reasons (and effects) for each are different.
Too, an important part of activism is trying to mitigate the fallout for social policies (think about homeless shelters – clearly we’d like to stop homelessness but in the meantime we try to make it easier to live in this situation), so the process of helping women in Africa get access to medications to cure the symptoms associated with FGM (such as antibiotics for utis) requires a particular response and set of problems.
My point is that a conversation about GM would get pretty meaningless very quickly. Basically we would get to a ‘yes, GM is bad’, but as soon as the ‘how are we going to fix this’ question is asked there are too many solutions. We have to get specific.
This is just an example, but basically I think that dealing with systematic challenges/discrimination faced by a group require targeted responses if any changes are to occur.
Lyn: I don’t know that circumcision is as large a problem America as it is in Africa and the Middle East. The Middle East has it as a religious obligation, and parts of Africa (which is far from monolithic) have it as a rite of passage.
Both of those are non-infant circumcision, which is more painful, and more prone to complication; even when it’s done under sanitary conditions.
Darksidecat – It’s a little disingenuous of you to challenge the credibility of my source and then argue against it by providing NO SOURCE AT ALL. In any case, I wasn’t referring to HuffPo as the ultimate source or anything, just the first thing I found that talked about a range of different reasons men’s life expectancies are shorter and DIDN’T attribute it to just one reason. But here’s a collection of other links pointing to similar reasons for men’s lower life expectancy:
http://women.webmd.com/news/20060511/why-women-live-longer
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201008/why-women-live-longer-men
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1827162,00.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1018115
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2008/08/07/women_life
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/10.01/WhyWomenLiveLon.html
And, no, none of those articles say risky behavior is the only factor (and neither did I) but they all mention that it is _A_ factor.
Addendum: I know that it is more uniformly present in the US. I don’t know that it’s actually greater numbers.
I can’t say for massage therapy, but I can say for childcare (I used to be an au pair, and have recently been a nanny/default babysitter. Depends on how you define nanny. My job was to look after Justin so his mother could attend clases, study, run the occasional errand/have time with her friends. I wasn’t resident; I was on call).
Being male has difficulties. It’s not possible (or wasn’t) to get a work visa as an au pair of one is male. Not to Sweden, or France, or Norway, or Britain.
People assume you are the parent. If you tell them you aren’t, the women are either confused, or charmed. The men are either baffled (which leads to interesting conversations; for level of interesting which vary from shocked, to interested, to borderline hostile) or outright dismissive, which could also be hostile.
The confused women would often start trying to lecture me about how to do things.
When I try to share my experience with women who have children; even women who know I was an au pair, I am ignored. I can’t say how many times I’ve given a piece of advice, to be ignored; and then seen a woman (who had no children) make the same comment and see it carried out (or responded to with, “Oh, I didn’t know that).
It made the idea of, “mansplaining” crystal clear to me.
So I can see that in other fields, which tend to be seen as, “women’s work) the reactions would be similar.
There is also the fact that when women enter a profession the wage rate drops.
Pecunium: I don’t know that circumcision is as large a problem America as it is in Africa and the Middle East. The Middle East has it as a religious obligation, and parts of Africa (which is far from monolithic) have it as a rite of passage.
I was going off briget’s (much earlier) point – I think she was implying that FGM doesn’t happen in America very often, it is usually practiced elsewhere, where MGM happens in America even if it’s not as widely practiced as it used to be. And there are plenty of tribes that practice GM as rites of passage (some Indigenous Australian groups, some places in Africa and sorry for implying it was a monolith!) – my point was mainly that the process of dealing with all of these different types of GM in all of these different places as well as for different genders needs to be divisive so that activists can provide targeted responses to the specific motivations behind, and problems caused by, GM.
I don’t think the Australian practices really count; for purposes of this discussion/need for activism, as they are very different in origin (I studied this in one of my anthro course in college). The Australian practice is religious, and uncommon, done by adult men, to themselves.
And it’s horrific, right up there with FGM for violence to the genitals, but it’s not done to the unwilling.
It was one of those things which caused a physical reaction/revulsion/nausea, none of which are common to me (I used to work in ERs).
As for Australian practice not counting for the purposes of this discussion as in a different area – America and Africa are different areas. Plus, I’m Australian so it makes sense to raise it in my context. And, yes it is performed for religious reasons by the willing – but usually at a very young age and sometimes with pressure to do so in order to fit into the group, be a man etc. This is problematic.
And indeed this is my point – GM is very different and is inspired by different things in different areas and for different genders. The reason saying ‘we should just have activist groups that deal with GM and not distinguish between genders’ is problematic is because it would necessarily involve obfuscating those differences. Also, in the context of MRA, much of the criticism of MGM is concerned with the practice in the US on unwilling/unknowing infants. Anit saying that we should talk about FGM in this context, when not much of it happens in the US, doesn’t make much sense in terms of forming actually forming a response to either problem.
Ah – sorry, I just realised I misread the meaning of ‘origin’ in the context you were using it. And Indigenous Australian groups are really really diverse – some of them practiced this a long time ago and then it was young men/boys doing it to be men, and my understanding is that it still goes on in some parts of Australia today. And I’m sure other groups practice it the same way you describe. Again – sorry!
Lyn: As I understand it (and yeah, Australia is big, so it’s hard to say, “australian” in this context and not screw it up), these days it’s not being done by/to really young men, more in the 16-20 range (in cultures where that’s a lot older then it is in cultures like ours).
It’s also not done in complete ignorance, even if it’s being done with some pressure.
It’s appalling, and I’d like it to die out, but as with male circumcision for religious reasons it’s a hard thing to exterminate. The culture will have to decide it’s no linger meaningful. This seems to be happening, but my information is 15-20 years out of date, so I can’t be anything like certain.
I would have thought it would be in everyone’s interest to get rid of Mary Kellet. She’s ultimately making it harder for rape victims to come forward.
That could be the case. I just wouldn’t know from reading the post on the Spearhead. The Spearhead post opens, “Evidently, Mary N. Kellett, chief feminist kommissar of Maine, has demanded that a judge shut up men’s media outlets and activists so that she may more successfully prosecute men on flimsy criminal cases.” It then goes on for a paragraph about how Kellet is the type of monster who would happily work as an assassin for Joseph Stalin. (No, really.)
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that “Chief Feminist Kommissar of Maine” is not Kellet’s official title, that she did not literally demand that a judge “shut up” all men’s media outlets (which would be, um, all media outlets?), and that she is not shooting people on orders from the ghost of Stalin. So what actually happened? I honestly have no idea, because the post doesn’t say. The only link leads to a post on another MRA site that rants for several more paragraphs without explaining what everyone is all angry about. I got so frustrated that I Googled “Mary N. Kellet,” which brought up dozens of posts and petitions on MRA blogs… none of which explained what she did to piss the MRAs off.
Look, I accept that political blogs are going to be slanted toward their existing audience. But when there’s no link to a mainstream or impartial news source, and no information beyond vague rants about a secret plot to have all men beaten and murdered (that’s the substance of paragraph #3), I find it hard to trust a blog as a reputable news source. I know, I’m crazy that way.
That’s my point. There are legitimate problems men face in society, and legitimate conversations to be had about sexism against men. But MRAs seem interested only in airing paranoid grievances and/or violent fantasies against women; any actual political issues are just excuses to go off on a tear. I’m certainly not going to take it on the word of the Spearhead that a particular issue deserves my attention, given that many of the issues that most incite guys on that site are ridiculously petty (hot women refusing to date MRAs), imaginary (the epidemic of false rape convictions, the epidemic of sperm-stealing), or things I don’t consider problems (women being legally allowed to file for divorce, women working outside the home, women having the vote).
Maybe whatever case Mary Kellet prosecuted represents a serious violation of human rights. I wouldn’t know, since it’s presented on the Spearhead in the same fact-free, overemotional, misogyny-soaked tenor as everything else. I notice you haven’t bothered to explain why I should care, either.
No I do not Tit. It was a rude comment about women’s biological functions that you knew was rude before you typed it.
NWOslave-you have one example of women shaming men about war. I said tend, not all. Learn to read.
Shaenon, from what I understand, Ms Kellet is a prosecutor in Maine who handles the prosecution of sex crimes. I checked Maine’s State Bar website but did not find anything involving a complaint against Ms Kellet. So if she was as horrible as they claim she is, this would be where the complaints would be filed but apparently if they have filed one, it has been dismissed without merit.
Maine’s Board of Overseers
Poster
Nope it was a joke that some thought was lame, others probably smiled. Obviously you didnt. Oh and by the way, yours didnt even qualify as a lame joke, it was just intentionally insulting.
Shaenon –
I posted a description of the case the MRA’s are talking about, as well as a link to the Maine Supreme Court’s decision on this thread on the previous page at May 15, 2011 at 11:47 am. I hope it helps!
You assume I was joking Tit. I was not. You are as what Sally, myself and others have pointed out. Men really do put themselves at risk at greater numbers then women do. And in general men start wars more so then women for various reasons.
T4T, it’s never a good sign when you have to repeatedly explain why a joke was funny and argue that other people “probably smiled” at it. Not a good sign. But keep working at it, and I’m sure you can develop a better sense of humor!
And in the meantime, I have this sense that those of us who didn’t find your comment to be a joke are not going to be convinced by more comments from you defending and explaining it. Might as well drop it and move on to better and brighter things.
titfortat: It wasn’t a joke. It was a dig. Defending an insult (and really, couldn’t you come up with one of your own, instead of a tired old retread?) as a joke, and demanding that other’s need to get a sense of humor (which is another veiled insult) is old, and pathetic.
“Man up” and own your words. Fly your freak-flag proudly. We won’t think any less of you.
T4T: Okay, now you’re just driving me crazy. The apostrophe key is right next to the semicolon. You hit it with your right pinkie. Seeing as we’re communicating in English, if you won’t use the apostrophe when it’s needed, you can’t blame us if we don’t think much of us. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt you to try.
@ Pecunium
You’ve done this several times now and it’s getting tiring. You quote me out of context, criticize a lack of rigor and quietly forget to mention what I was responding to. If you really think I’m lacking so much, then surely you don’t need to resort to such tactics like the following Here’s the shortened conversational thread that you cut into:
1) The original statement was something like “women are valued less than men in society”. I think it was Lovelace who wrote that but it doesn’t matter.
2) I gave a detailed answer, contradicting that statement, based mostly on the expectation of self sacrifice of men and, unlike people were falsely jumping to conclude, I was NOT referring to dangerous jobs or any other form of voluntary sacrifice. I finished that response with a very powerful question: “How does any unfairness measure up to forced self sacrifice?” That question remains unanswered (though I admittedly haven’t been reading all posts since).
3) The only response I got from Lovelace was essentially “you just don’t understand male privilege”.
4) Then I answered this: “Try not to be patronizing. I’m very willing to learn and I appreciate when people honestly point out mistakes in my reasoning. But you will have to go to the effort of pointing them out properly and not just saying “you just don’t get it”.
Much later you only copy and paste part 4) and answer with this:
Not proven. When specific failures of logic, and reasoning, have been pointed out, your response was, “no, I didn’t.” You have failed to show that, in fact, you didn’t. Mere contradiction isn’t argument (e.g. see above, re tu quoque ad hominem and the shifting of goalposts)
So to sum up your actions: You took a small piece of what I said to someone else (not you), leaving out everything else, and then you criticize me for not including something that you didn’t paste along with that piece. And on top of this, you say that the person I was talking to has “pointed out specific failures of logic..” when all they gave me was summed up in 3).
What a despicable way to debate. And, even if you come back saying it was an honest mistake, I wouldn’t believe it. I know I could only make such an enormous blunder if I was heavily biased and determined to mischaracterize the other person. And from all the supposed flaws that you claim to have found in my reasoning, this beats everything I might have done hands down. Why should I even going to bother to read the rest of your criticism as it’s clearly not driven by intellectual honesty? Frankly, short of you admitting that you are heavily biased and have been from the start, I can’t see myself believing anything you write. Outright lies are one thing. But packaging them neatly into “lets try and make it look constructive” kind of criticism while keeping an “oops I didn’t see that” excuse handy just in case you’re caught, is a lot more harmful.
Time to move on.