Among those MRAs who are actually willing to acknowledge that women actually suffered oppression in the past, you sometimes find this argument: “Sure, things were bad for women back then – in the 1950s, or 1890, or whenever — but these days women don’t suffer from sexism. It’s men who are the real victims.”
This argument not only flies in the face of, you know, reality; it also reflects a naïve and simplistic understanding of how prejudice works, and why it persists. Misogyny, like other prejudices, is deeply rooted; it’s been around for literally thousands of years, and permeates culture and cultural/social/political institutions. The idea that a couple of decades of feminism have been enough to eradicate centuries-old attitudes and beliefs is, if you know anything at all about history or sociology or psychology, simply absurd.
How persistent is prejudice? A recent article in Slate looks at a historical study of anti-Semitism in Germany. As Ray Fisman notes in the Slate article, the study found that:
Communities that murdered their Jewish populations during the 14th-century Black Death pogroms were more likely to demonstrate a violent hatred of Jews nearly 600 years later. A culture of intolerance can be very persistent indeed.
Let’s just let that sink in for a second: Six. Hundred. Years. The noxious ideas of anti-Semites in the 14th century deeply affected what their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren believed (and did) when the Nazis rolled into town six centuries later. (I’m assuming an average 4 generations per century here; if that’s an incorrect assumption you may need to add or subtract a handful of “greats.”)
Here are more details, from the study’s abstract:
This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.
As Fisman notes,
Changing any aspect of culture—the norms, attitudes, and “unwritten rules” of a group—isn’t easy. Beliefs are passed down from parent to child—positions on everything from childbearing to religious beliefs to risk-taking are transmitted across generations.
You can read more about the details of the study on Slate; the actual study is available here.
EDITED TO ADD: And, on a lighter note, here’s what happens when a “white-men-are-the-real-victims” dude (who clearly has been reading about pick-up artistry) goes a-courtin’ on OkCupid.
EDITED AGAIN: Added more details from the study’s abstract.
DKM, that is what happens when the shit hits the fan. When you oppress people and deny them opportunities and a sense of investment in society then when they finally do have some decision-making power they will do things you don’t agree with and don’t understand and they will not care that you don’t “get” it. If women and minorities had been treated as human beings historically we all could have communicated with each other more effectively. The people who *don’t* tell you there’s something wrong are the ones you should be worried about. But, no, you’d rather blame feminism et al for the state of society. Believe me, things were wrong a long time before women and others started protesting. As for the harmony of the sexes…yeah, people who talk about women’s “special genius” say the same thing. Funny how women’s “special genius” isn’t as useful or as valuable as men’s though, and, despite its special specialness, still requires men to be the head of the relationship, huh? If that’s your idea of harmony, I’ll take feminism. Thx.
@Meller, in what parallel universe have feminists been universally getting their way for a century? A century ago, women could not vote in the US. Forty years ago, marital rape was nearly universally legal in the US. Not to mention things like the wage gap. (A similar principle applies to people of color-who faced ad lidem discrimination as well as de facto continuously, shit, Jim Crow wasn’t even officially ended fifty years ago). It is also worth noting that high levels of equality of women is strongly correlated with other measures of social well being, including lower violent crime rates (including lower rape rates) as well as better health outcomes and lower infant mortality. Take a look at the UN’s gender inequality index reports http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2010_EN_Table4_reprint.pdf and notice that countries which do well in health care and have low rates of violence in general score far better than their more misogynistic counterparts. Workweeks are actually shorter in western Europe, where gender equality tends to be the highest. Plain statistics suggest a correlation that is the exact opposite of your claims, Meller, because, in fact, the higher the gender equality, the better a country tends to be doing in all of the things you listed (with the exception of marriage rates, perhaps).
Also worth noting, birth control and social safety nets are not modern inventions. While it is true that birth control technologies have in some cases improved, there is literally thousands of years of documentation of birth control technologies. Roman women even drove an entire genus of plants extinct by overusing them for their effective birth controlling properties. The sheep skin condom has been around for at least two millenia. People discussed abortion in Ancient Greece (Hypocrites may have taken a different side of that than I, but people were talking about it). Often, our Eurocentric view of history projects Victorian morals (and other post Renaissance Western European Christian models) onto every other culture-when these things were not in fact the case at all historically. Imperialist spreading of these ideas, along with the other brutalities of imperialism, also did massive damage to women and sexual minorities within victimized societies. But, blame the troubles in the Islamic Empires on those ladies being too slutty, rather than the massive fucking invasion and centuries of brutal attack by Europeans, because that view of history makes tons of sense.
O Lord, we thank thee for this bounty of trollishness of which we are about to partake. Amen.
My gut feeling tells me there is something way off about this study. The fact that both authors are working in economic departments at their universities is also not strengthening my trust in their research.
I mean, we are talking here about the deepest Middle Ages vs. the Modern. Now the study tells me that in 600 years of incredible scientific, economic, philosophic, psychological revolutions prejudices were able to maintain in a very small local area. People were able to accept that the sun is the center of our universe and time is relative, that light is a wave but also a particle, that humans descend from apes, that humans have an unconscious mind etc. etc. But they were not able to give up their hatred against Jews because people, living in the same small area, 600 years ago hated Jews. I’m sorry, but I can’t believe this. How is it possible to overcome so many false beliefs, but to hold on to another very specific false belief?
There is something wrong with the methodology of the study.
Almost every article–and post–on the Spearhead gives clear, thoughtful and reasonable arguments how feminism–and feminist–injure society, damage the family, and corrode love and harmony between the sexes!
No, they really don’t. I’ve started reading some of the Spearhead since I was made aware of it, and the misogyny is fairly rampant – you won’t see any of the commenters or bloggers on Pandagon, Feministe or Feministing trashing men with the same vitriol that is shown towards women on the Spearhead. Not to mention, many posts on the Spearhead are factually incorrect and logically unsound. When I think ‘love and harmony,’ I certainly never think of The Spearhead.
IF feminists were correct in their assumptions of gender equality, everyone–both men and women, and especially the up-and-coming generation, would be strikingly better off! Divorce would be fewer, families would be stronger, drunkenness, drug abuse, urban crime and crime–especially among young people, would be a rarity, and perhaps even unknown in many communities, the workweek would be shorter (especially given the immense technological advances of the past 50-75 years), rape and sexual pathology would be almost unheard of, and equality could and would have fulfilled its promises made so noisily in the ’60s and early ’70s!
As to that – most marriages in which one or both partners identify as feminists are more sexually satisfying (http://www.livescience.com/1964-feminists-fun.html), from which we can assume that they are at least marginally less likely to divorce (I tried googling it, but all I came up with were posts blaming feminists for divorce without any supporting evidence). Since feminist men respect women as people, they are certainly far less likely to rape than a man who sees women as objects to be controlled.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘sexual pathology’, nor am I clear on precisely the mechanic by which you think feminism ought to reduce alcoholism, drug abuse and crime (that being said, there’s a chapter in Freakonomics that argues Roe v Wade in the 70s was responsible for a permanent drop in crime in the 90s). Besides, there was certainly crime, rape, sexual pathology, drug abuse and alcoholism way before even the first wave of feminism – so from whence came those impulses, if not from the evil feminists?
“Almost every article–and post–on the Spearhead gives clear, thoughtful and reasonable arguments”
God, I’ve heard this so many times from MRAs here. And I read the Spearhead quite a bit, and I’ve never, even once, read a blog post there that wasn’t patently ridiculous, wrongheaded, mean, unsupported by any credible evidence, and totally predictable and thus dull as hell. Could you, perhaps, link to something on the Spearhead that you think gives even one clear, thoughtful, or reasonable argument?
Another question no Spearheader can answer: Why do you insist on calling their blog posts “articles”? Trying to add credence where none is warranted, is my best guess.
oh shit, you mean there was a deadline for creating feminist utopia? You mean we only had 40 years? I must have missed that memo.
I mean, I’m trying hard to remember which 60’s 70’s feminist “noisily promised” that everything would be hunky dory in the year 2011, and nothing’s springing to mind.
Bee, I’ll have you know that every post on my blog is actually an article, especially the brief, nonsensical prophecies.
Johnny Pez, my response to you is in the form of a Big Fancy Treatise:
Well, poop!
And then I went and found out that the VAWA does in fact, help men. Ooops!
Oh and Thomas-people have followed some Jew from the Middle East with no hard evidence he even existed for thousands of years…so it it really THAT odd to think something like that could persist equally long?
What I would be interested in knowing is why some villages had many pogroms and some did not. I mean, it had to start somewhere, right?
Feminists (and nonwhite racial egalitarians) have had everything their own way for the better part of a century
We have? Really? You mean they passed the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion is totally unrestricted in every state, Planned Parenthood has been fully funded & contraception is free for everyone, public schools are fully funded & sex education includes full information about contraception and there are no “abstinence only” programs anymore, maternity leave and paternity leave are guaranteed and fully paid… all if this has been going on for decades and NO ONE TOLD ME???
@Plymouth We would have done all that and more if feminism was run by men… it’s about time we put a real man in charge and get some results! >_>;;
xD
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘sexual pathology’
He means teh ghey.
Bee, I’ll have you know that every post on my blog is actually an article, especially the brief, nonsensical prophecies.
Did you guys all read my article about my kitty?
The crime rate and the divorce rate are falling.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8485132.stm
The divorce rate in the UK, for example, is lower than it was in 1980 when women were not allowed to get mortgages without a male guarantor, and lower than it was in 1990 when rape within marriage was not legally a crime.
Katz, that article was incredible! Stimulating and well thought-out!
Kitteh. =3
@Katz AWWWWWWW <3 She is adorable! 😀 So cute! :3
This is an article about my cat and how she has a unique way of trying to catch her tail xD
Ami: That is some hard-hitting investigative journalism right there. Cat that thinks it’s a dog! Also, cute.
It’s a serious, thoughtful catblogging post that has never been made in such detail or with such care.
Are MRA’s ever concerned with quality of marriage more than quantity?
Katz, she is a splendid kitty!
The bit I don’t understand is that, having decided to live in a fantasy world of their own devising, MRAs choose such a nasty one: a crime-ridden battlefield where nobody ever finds actual, freely-chosen and equal love or happiness – even the alphas, who just get the comparative pleasure of being the spitter rather than the spittoon. If I was going to make shit up, it’d be happy shit, like that chocolate prevents cancer or there are a family of pandas in my garden.
What I like best is being told that women/feminists/whatever have been RULING THE WORLD!!!1!!!!11!!!
Women have only had the right to VOTE for 91 years. Not even a century yet. But somehow we’re controlling the world? The ERA was never passed and my right to bodily autonomy is being debated by old white dudes on pretty much a daily basis, it’s only 900-something bills in every single state (those bills are spread across all 50) because I’m sitting here trying to tell men….anything about their healthcare.
Shit, I was away for a couple days helping my boyfriend move (yes, a woman doing physical labor for a man without remuneration, and only in this space does that seem weird) and now we have all these new characters!
Anyway, one thing I need to point out to David K. Meller – “Goyim” means “nations,” not “cattle!” It’s not an offensive term.
Also, a general comment: MRAs always seem to think that feminism is about women dominating men, so MRA should be about men dominating women–a straight up boys vs. girls game. The concept that they’re trying to dominate people who would (99% of us, at least) be very happy to merely share power never seems to really sink in.