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Links: Michael Kimmel and Amanda Marcotte on masculinity, misogyny and Anders Breivik

The world doesn't need any more macho Nazis

A couple excellent pieces on Anders Breivik and misogyny.

First: The other day I posted a link to a piece by Michael Kimmel on Breivik and the sexual politics of far-right thought. It turned out that the article was a draft that got published prematurely.

Now the final version of the post is officially up at Sociological Images:  A tale of two terrorists redux. Kimmel argues that what we know about Breivik thus far

indicate[s] that … it will be impossible to fully understand this horrific act without understanding how gender operates as a rhetorical and political device for domestic terrorists.

These members of the far right consider themselves Christian Crusaders for Aryan Manhood, vowing its rescue from a feminizing welfare state. Theirs is the militarized manhood of the heroic John Rambo – a manhood that celebrates their God-sanctioned right to band together in armed militias if anyone, or any governmental agency, tries to take it away from them. If the state and capital emasculate them, and if the masculinity of the “others” is problematic, then only “real” white men can rescue the American Eden or the bucolic Norwegian countryside from a feminized, multicultural, androgynous immigrant-inspired melting pot.

Meanwhile, Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon offers some thoughts on Misogyny and Terrorism:

[T]here’s definitely a strong link between misogyny and violence that can’t be denied.  Misogynists are far likelier to be violent people than non-misogynists, which is why rape and wife-beating are such common crimes.  (Domestic violence is the number one cause of injury for women 15-44.)  All bigotry provokes violence at its ends, of course.  This isn’t the Oppression Olympics.  But misogyny and violence go hand in hand so often because misogynists really buy deeply into the idea that women are weak and men are “strong”, by which they mean aggressive.  A steady drumbeat of misogynist thought couldn’t be better designed to reach the unhinged and cause them to lash out violently, all while imagining themselves to be big, tough men who claim they were forced—with “why did you make me do this?” being the battle cry of wife beaters—into violence.

Discuss.

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PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Women are denied the right to be conscripted into wars and to die in them. Actually in the US this is something that is true-if tomorrow a global war broke out and we had to bring back the draft, women would be excluded. And NOW along with other feminist groups were opposed to that the last time it came up before the US Supreme Court. Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981) There is literally no reason, not now anyway and probably not in the 1980s for women to be excluded from serving in all roles in the military outside of possibly the roles that require sheer brute strength (Pecunium can go into that detail better than I can.)

The claim that it was women doing all the shaming when there is a war on is based on some reported instances of white feathers being handed to those who refused to serve during WWI and it was wrong then and it would be wrong now to demand someone do something that one is not willing to do themselves (even if unable to by reason of physical problems.)

Women are denied the right to work in mines and to die premature deaths on account of exposure to toxins and soul-destroying environments. Yes, they were and frequently are now. Are they barred by law? No, thankfully they are not. Are they barred by the treatment they receive? Yes. Maybe you Chuckeedee are okay with being treated like a sex object while at work but not everyone and certainly not women. And certainly not in a mine where you should be focused on the job at hand. This makes it difficult for women to get jobs that pay better then menial office work even if they are exposed to toxins.

On top of that, on several occasions women’s jobs have been directly linked to their ability to have children. This linkage was so tight that a woman had to be sterilized to work in a factory to keep her job. What man has ever had to be sterilized to keep his job?

Women were denied the right to offer up their lifeboat seats so that at least some men could survive the sinking of the Titanic.

The “women and children first” idea arose barely sixty years prior to the sinking of the Titanic. Prior to that there was little effort to ensure women and children were first. And since then, everyone is to get on the lifeboats. If you have been on a cruise you have to do your drill first before the ship even leaves port.

Women are forced to use appliances, in between watching their soaps or swanning around shopping malls, that their providers provide to them in whole-day jobs that they had to compete for against women indulging in the affirmative action gravy train.

So wait, women both have to stay at home all day long spending money and work all day long while their husbands also work? Make some attempt to have some sense dude.

Pam
Pam
13 years ago

Women are denied the right to be conscripted into wars and to die in them. Actually in the US this is something that is true-if tomorrow a global war broke out and we had to bring back the draft, women would be excluded. And NOW along with other feminist groups were opposed to that the last time it came up before the US Supreme Court. Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57 (1981)

And let’s not forget that it was staunch ANTI-feminists who fought vehemently against taking away women’s exemption from military conscription, amongst other things for which MRAs bemoan the unfairness of it all.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Chuckeedee is basically a more articulate NWOslave. What do we have to do to get some original women-hating commentators around here?

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
13 years ago

@Molly Ren:

Be careful what you wish for, the universe has a sense of humor.

vacuumslayer
13 years ago

Come on, ladies. Lets not let facts muddy up this debate.

Sharculese
Sharculese
13 years ago

oh, hey, a long winded autodidact is here to assault us with his barrage of contextless facts facts facts. somehow i remain uncharmed.

@pecunium- there was a period in english law where men were liable civilly (but i dont think criminally) for the offenses of their wives. but were talking like 14th century here. way before blackstone and way before anything that would be recognizable as modern society.

Pecunium
13 years ago

Molly: I don’t know. I’m not really sure they can be, and be the sort of person attracted to coming her to prove how evilfeminism(™) is destroying the world. It does take a certain mindset, which is the sort that thinks the getting of jobs is 1: driven by quotas and 2: there are no qualified women.

Basically the Chuckeedees and NWOs, and Mellers and Nolans of the world are reactionaries. They are also often fantasists who think they will have happy lives if some bygone golden age can be regained. Never mind the things they believe about that past are pure nonsense.

Pecunium
13 years ago

chuckeedee: You have been using those past cultures you claim we can’t understand to justify things in the present, by using them to explain how the better manifestations of the different natures of men and women (which feminists don’t dispute; the problem isn’t that, but what is to be done about it. You want to put women barefoot, pregnant and housebound back to the way of the land. We don’t).

You can’t then turn around and, honestly say, we can’t then compare them to the present.

Sharculese
Sharculese
13 years ago

of course what dudes who love to bring that fact up don’t think about that is of course men had to have civil liability for the offenses of their wives because you can’t sue someone who isn’t allowed to own property. it’s an artifact of patriarchy, not evidence that men were in any way oppressed.

Pecunium
13 years ago

sharculese: But these guys aren’t talking about civil, and Blackstone does go back a pretty fair piece. As you know, one of the nice things about law is that people write it down. We can go and look at what/how things were done.

And they weren’t done like that. When someone trots that lie out to rebut widespread, longstanding restrictions on women, as if those injustices were somehow counterbalanced (with a sly implication that women could use it as leverage to get rid of husbands they were upset with… it’s sort of like the entire lunacy of the,”false-rape epidemic”) I know they aren’t really arguing from an informed position, but rather in less than good faith.

Because what they are saying, wasn’t so, and five minutes on the net would show it to them, so I know they aren’t interested in finding the facts.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Pecunium wrote, “Molly: I don’t know. I’m not really sure they can be, and be the sort of person attracted to coming her to prove how evilfeminism(™) is destroying the world. It does take a certain mindset, which is the sort that thinks the getting of jobs is 1: driven by quotas and 2: there are no qualified women.”

Aw, damn. Here I wanted a new argument to chew on. 🙁

Wait a minute… that’s what the forum’s for! *goes to hang out there*

darksidecat
darksidecat
13 years ago

Which thread was it where I went into a lengthy discourse about women and coal mining, with lots of links? I am feeling too lazy to repeat myself…

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

In short tolls, LEARN YOUR HISTORY BEFORE YOU SPEAK!

May the Troll God put an eternal curse onto you for using the word “troll” like old media.

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

1) The French Revolution did not occur because of feminism. Women participated in it and were lauded for their efforts. However as the Revolution progressed, the leaders (all male) systematically denied women any rights politically or socially. In fact women in France were much worse off under the Republic and Napoleon then they where beforehand.

True… but it occurred because of a WOMAN.

As we know from Rousseau “Then let them eat cake!” said an (sadly unnamed) princess when she learned that the peasants had no bread to eat — the final straw which caused the revolution.

Btw, inciting brutal revolutions that spill the blood of many decent men is something women are very good in.

The German Peasants’ War for example was caused by a woman, too:
During the 1524 harvest, the Countess of Lupfen (oppressed victim of sexist discrimination) ordered their (privileged male) serfs to collect snail shells she wanted to use as thread spools. This was to much for the peasants and they revolted (typically they thought their stupid harvest and “food” was more important than the hobby of the countess). Luckily, these MGTOW-peasants were later all slaughtered by White Knights.

Snowy
Snowy
13 years ago

Marc, are you seriously suggesting that the French Revolution was caused by Pandora, who is not actually an individual but a character in a greek myth? No comment.

“As we know from Rousseau “Then let them eat cake!” said an (sadly unnamed) princess when she learned that the peasants had no bread to eat — the final straw which caused the revolution.”

From wikipedia: “Rousseau does not name the “great princess” and he may have invented the anecdote, seeing as Confessions was, on the whole, a very inaccurate autobiography: “The ‘facts’ he so frankly admits often emerge, in the light of modern scholarship, to be inaccurate, distorted or non-existent”; and his work is the oldest source for the saying.”

I’m pretty sure an anecdote in a book written and published many years before the French Revolution happened can be safely assumed to not, in fact, be the final straw that caused of the French Revolution.

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

Marc, are you seriously suggesting that the French Revolution was caused by Pandora, who is not actually an individual but a character in a greek myth? No comment.

I think that the story of Pandora just exemplifies the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. It’s always the same: A beautiful and (seemingly) pure woman comes along and shortly after all hell breaks loose. Pandora is a very good symbol for women and femininity in general, to remember you of that, I put this link in my post.

I’m pretty sure an anecdote in a book written and published many years before the French Revolution happened can be safely assumed to not, in fact, be the final straw that caused of the French Revolution.

Yes, but though it might not be not true it is very well invented!

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Snowy
“Marc, are you seriously suggesting that the French Revolution was caused by Pandora, who is not actually an individual but a character in a greek myth? No comment.”

For years in womens studies college courses the, “rule of thumb” for beating a woman myth was said to stem from Romulus and Remus in ancient Rome. There was much gnashing of teeth at having been called out on their blantant lies. How they were loathe to remove that little gem from the feminist handbook. Luckily feminists continue in their never ending quest to rewrite all history as womens oppression.

Toysoldier
13 years ago

@Sharculese: All of the posts focus primarily on Breivik’s comments about feminism, comments that literally make up 1.5% of his 1500-page manifesto, and treat that portion as just as important, if not more important, than the other 1477 pages of Breivik’s rant. I cannot make feminists care about mass murder more than their ideology, but I can certainly call feminists out for hijacking it in order to make it all about them.

@kirbywarp: No, you cannot downplay 76 murders and hijack the attack to make it all about how Breivik criticized feminism. Killing dozens of people because their political party supports immigration is pretty bad by itself. It does not get any worse because Breivik said feminism is poopy.

@Futrelle: The only people claiming they are intertwined are feminists, and they are not exactly objective. Writing one post is highlighting. Ten posts with little to no mention of Breivik’s actual motivation is something else. It is pretty easy to find random people from any movement agreeing hateful nonsense (I find plenty examples in the femosphere), so no, it does not give me pause. What would give me pause is if anyone acted on it or told others to act on it, and that has not happened.

@Ami: The links do not disprove my point that feminists ignore the rape of boys. Of course some feminists write posts about the topic, but that does not mean feminists do not focus more on the Vatican’s policies against women than the rape of boys.

shaenon
13 years ago

Oh, good, another sexist dude who makes vague references to the natural innate differences between men and women but dances cutely around what he thinks those differences actually are. I’ve come to prefer the assholes like NWO who at least cowboy up and say what they think. (SPOILERS: The differences are that women suck at everything, and men don’t.)

I also give NWO points for the honey badger. Because honey badger don’t give a shit.

shaenon
13 years ago

The story of Frankenstein is very well invented! Therefore, all men dream of reviving stitched-together corpses and sending them to murder friends and loved ones. Damn those men!

redlocker
13 years ago

The story of Adam & Eve is very well invented! Therefore, all woman dream of tricking men into eating strange fruit and making an asshole god punish all of humanity for it!

Yeah, this should be a meme.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

The story of Paul Bunyan is very well invented! Therefore, all men dream of being lumberjacks with giant blue oxen.

Snowy
Snowy
13 years ago

20 Leagues Under the Sea is also very well invented! You can’t deny that all men mostly spend their time fighting giant squids underwater in a submarine they built themselves, can you? Well, when they’re not busy reviving stitched-together corpses.

VoiP
VoiP
13 years ago

As we know from Rousseau “Then let them eat cake!” said an (sadly unnamed) princess when she learned that the peasants had no bread to eat — the final straw which caused the revolution. Btw, inciting brutal revolutions that spill the blood of many decent men is something women are very good in.

Um…no.

The causes of the Revolution are still debated, but we do know some things about it:

* The French government was going bankrupt before the Revolution (military expenditures for the Seven Years’ War–which just about destroyed France–were still working their way through the system, and added to that the french had just gotten involved in wars in the New World)

*Taxation was heavy and its burden was felt unequally (for a description of what this can do to people, please see “Peasants into Frenchmen”)

*The 1780s saw a series of crop failures as well which were nobody’s fault. (The last time Europe saw a string of crop failures like that was just before the Thirty Years’ War. The next big harvest crisis would be in 1847, right before the ’48 revolutions. INTERESTING.)

*The intellectual motor of the revolution at this time was bourgeois/lower nobility rather than peasant.

Marie Antoinette may have been a symbol of the French government’s fiscal failures, but she didn’t cause them. No one person could have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_French_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Furet#French_Revolution

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@Toysoldier

It is akin to how feminists ignore the rape of boys that occurs in the Catholic Church in favor of complaining about how women cannot be priests or Popes.

The links do not disprove my point that feminists ignore the rape of boys. Of course some feminists write posts about the topic, but that does not mean feminists do not focus more on the Vatican’s policies against women than the rape of boys.

You said that they “ignore” the rape of boys… I was just showing you they didn’t :] If your argument is that they care MORE about one than the other, you need to show that (and which feminists? all feminists? some feminists? me? o_O )

We’re kinda back to Holly’s “prove you don’t hate elephants” thing xD

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