Apparently, all that time I spent studying history in college and grad school was a complete waste of time. Because once people die, nothing about their lives or the events that happened during their lives matters. At least according to merlin34 in Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, who recently set forth this cogent argument as to “Why feminists should SHUT THE $^%# UP about women’s suffrage in US/UK.”
The 19th Amendment of the US Constitution was ratified in 1920, before that year’s election. At the time, the voting age was 21. Any woman who was denied the right to vote would have had to have been born before Election Day of 1898. Today, she would be 113+ years old. That means dead.
In the UK, it was in 1928 that women were granted equal voting rights to men, again at the age of 21 (although women over 30 were given the vote 10 years earlier). Any woman denied the right to vote based on sex in the UK would be over 105 years old now. There’s still probably some around, but not a lot, and not for much longer, and they weren’t denied the right to vote for long.
What does this have to do with anything? It means that feminists using the “women weren’t allowed to vote, wah” or “black men got the vote before women of any color” canards should SHUT UP, because the list of those actually denied the right to vote based on sex is rapidly diminishing. In another ten years, none will remain.
Naturally, the comments are also a delight. OThompson says:
You can also tell them that Suffragettes were often domestic terrorists.
AntiFeministMedia adds:
It isnt just feminists though is it, its any woman you get into an argument with.
If its not ‘women wernt allowed to vote’, its ‘rapists get off scott-free’. They ignore the context. When did universal sufferage for men go ahead in the UK? 1918?
Most women are ignorant of most of these issues, but they are happy to just parrot all this stuff because that makes them victims, and so they get privileges they arent really entitled to.
They dont care wether what they are saying is out of date, or that most men didnt recieve the vote untill very recently either, they only care that the female gravy train of victimhood keeps rolling on.
Is the Female Gravy Train of Victimhood anything like Soul Train? Because that would be awesome.
Mammoths, startledoctopus. Not mastodons. They’re two entirely different species of prehistoric proboscids. Only manginas hunted mastodons. GAWD.
/paleopendant>
Thanks, I was wondering why I couldn’t find the t-shirt…wrong proboscid!
Yeah, I expected as much. It’s the “show me an attractive feminist” thing all over again. You don’t have an answer, so you talk around the issue and make excuses. No wonder feminists always have to resort to historic examples. I’m serious, show me how you’re being oppressed or discriminated against, as a woman, in today’s society. After all, since we live under the evil thumb of the oppressive patriarchy, it shouldn’t be hard to come up with something, should it? But as you said, I won’t be holding my breath.
Women were never opressed? Eh…what about in the middle east?
I think it is b/c ppl don’t know what you consider oppression or marginalization so they don’t think telling you will have you actually acknowledge nething xD
But if you tell us it could help :] Like… what things would have to happen for you to see it as oppression or marginalization? What groups in our society do you believe are oppressed or marginalized? :3 etc etc
At my previous place of business there were two final applicants for my boss’s job, one was male and didn’t have as many qualifications and didn’t have glowing references, one was female and her references couldn’t say enough wonderful things about her, she also had all the professional qualifications we needed and then some.
They hired the man because they thought that, as she was two years married, she’d want to start having kids soon. Of course you can’t ask about that in interviews without breaking the law, so they just guessed and hired the less qualified man for the position.
He turned out to be an extravagant liar (think of “Topper” of the old Dilbert strips and you’ll get a good idea of him). The let him go at the end of his probationary period with six months of doing nothing at all and the rest of us picking up the slack.
The woman landed an even better position and is still child-free (and as she’s 38, I’m guessing it’s intentional) two years later.
So there’s one anecdote of a company choosing the less qualified male over the more qualified female because there was an off chance that she’d take maternity leave at some point. And yes, I’m sure that’s the reason because I talked with the person in charge of the decision and he came right out with it (I was pretty appalled and that’s one reason I ended up changing companies).
Ion, you’re a moron. You MRAs waste so much time talking about “alphas” but you don’t even understand that you’re talking about the exact same social system that feminists talk about. In a patriarchy, it isn’t ALL men who hold authority, it’s only a select few. And those select few men have authority over everyone under them, which includes women, children, and so-called beta males.
And it’s seriously rich hearing you folks talk about the culture of victimhood when wailing about how YOU are victimized by women is all. you. do.
“It’s the “show me an attractive feminist” thing all over again.”
OK sweetheart, you show me a picture of your beautiful face + a copy of today’s newspaper and I’ll show you mine 🙂
As that is never going to happen, I’ll just point out that we’re onto your stupid game. I could show you Carmen Electra’s identical feminist twin and you’d say she was ugly. You think the worst thing to say to a woman is that she is ugly, and you’d love to find some way to get under our skin. So why don’t you put yourself forward, as we’re not the ones making ridiculous statments about ‘ALL MRAS ARE UGLY’? Otherwise noooo dice.
” What groups in our society do you believe are oppressed or marginalized? :3 etc etc”
Men, of course. ONLY MEN!!!
The fact that overt, blatant discrimination against women is increasingly rare (though by no means non-existent) may be attributed to…wait for it…feminism!
My last comment should be amended to include the qualifier “in Western, industrialized nations.”
Ion, to add to captainbathrobe’s excellent comment, what you want is for commenters to present their personal experiences to you, and you will then make a determination as to whether or not what they describe constitutes oppression. First of all — what makes you the arbiter of whether or not someone is oppressed? And second — is there ANY chance that you will look at someone’s personal experience and determine that yes, it is oppression? Or are you going to accuse the commenters of whining in every single case, despite the fact that you invited them to share? After all, if people hell-bent on historical revisionism dismiss industrialized genocide as mere inadvertence and bad luck, what is to be said of employment discrimination? So the people here are being very reasonable in asking you to define your terms first. I find that to be a very useful tool in any debate, on any topic — cutting through all that semantic noise with the fundamental question, “What evidence will it take to prove your beliefs wrong?”. If the answer is that no amount of evidence will suffice (which is usually the case), than we can spare ourselves the rhetorical nonsense and the humiliation of submitting our lives to the judgment of someone who is hostile to us. If you are willing to discuss the characteristics of oppression first, then maybe we can talk.
@Darksidecat
“Poor women have traditionally always worked…nwo does not live in reality, where poor people, black people, etc. include large numbers of women.”
Well guess what, so have white men. So if poor white men have also had to traditionally work they were equally oppressed, therefore no one oppressed.
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@Kate
“So there’s one anecdote of a company choosing the less qualified male over the more qualified female because there was an off chance that she’d take maternity leave at some point. And yes, I’m sure that’s the reason because I talked with the person in charge of the decision and he came right out with it”
And I’ve already told you how when applying for a position I was told flat out that I was perfect for the position but I wasn’t a woman which they needed to fill a quota. So women not having the right to vote 100 years ago was law, which women called oppression, which men as a whole did not actively lobby to enact. Yet today, women as a whole have lobbied to enact laws which discriminate against men while benefiting women in all realms of society. Women stand in complete solidarity with the State against men. You tell me, who are the real oppressors?
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@Nobinayamu
“I have no idea. But there are, apparently, a bunch of spiritual and material benefits to be gained by playing the victim.”
See above paragraph for an explaination.
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@Andrea Vaughn
“And it’s seriously rich hearing you folks talk about the culture of victimhood when wailing about how YOU are victimized by women is all. you. do.”
When men “wail about victimhood” the State, UN, charities, MSM all call it misogyny, when women wail about victimhood everyone of those organisations mobilize to remedy the problem. Men on the other hand are individuals on their own. Not only that, but any attempt to even support something like DV shelters for men with what scant resources men as individuals can afford, all those same organisations will shame men as misogynists and actively hinder efforts to help men. No doubt all those fine organisations will quiver in fear as I bring my full political and economic might to bear.
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@Joanna
“Women were never opressed? Eh…what about in the middle east?”
First off YOU don’t live in the middle east, western women are the most pampered and privileged creatures to ever walk the planet. Secondly, when you hear about women being punished, it’s the other women who are demanding punishment. Also, the women over there consider western women to be filthy slut-walkers. Finally, as modern wars seem to be all about freeing women from some percieved oppression by western women. How many men from the middle east should men from the west kill, and how many men from the west need to die? Do tell us oh cheerleaders of death. Would 500 million dead men be an equitable amount so a million middle eastern women could obtain a degree in womens studies? I guess once a man is dead he’s no longer oppressed. Lucky him!
I second (third, fourth) that Ion should post what he would consider to be oppression or discrimination, and then we can say whether it has happened to us.
Okay, Ion, here’s a little oppression story:
I’m an EMT. I used to work for an ambulance company which was mostly men, but I kept up, physically and emotionally; I was strong enough to carry big patients up stairs and strong enough to tell angry drunks to sit down and shut up and let me do my job. I constantly had male coworkers offering to handle “the tough stuff” for me and I constantly had to turn them down to prove myself. (Yes, they were trying to help, but they were trying to help in a way that implied I couldn’t do my job.)
So after I’d been working there for about a year and a half and they partnered me with a new guy to train him. It was a mess; he refused to take any directions from a woman. He refused to do paperwork while the ambulance was moving (kind of a necessity when you’re supposed to be taking notes on your patient’s condition) and when I told him that wasn’t optional, he told me he didn’t like women telling him what to do. Hell, he walked backward everywhere because when I tried to show him how to pull the front of a stretcher while you walk forwards, his Manly Pride refused to let him admit that a woman had taught him something.
I went to HR and complained. (I know, the HR complaint, bane of a man’s life. But it was the only way to not be stuck with this guy for months, and I didn’t want to still be stuck when he managed to really hurt a patient.) They shrugged and reassigned him to a man.
Lou: Women were denied the vote, as an entire category, for being women.
Some men were denied the vote for not being wealthy/landowning (the US) and for not being of the correct family/landowners (England/Germany).
It didn’t matter if a woman was a Duchess, or owned all of Rhode Island, she couldn’t vote.
So saying universal suffrage was near in time for both is disingenous, at best.
And you do, “discount suckage”, when you say, “in the west womena re doing better by most [i]f not all markers of well being while men dominate those of hardship….
It’s even better that you then try to tie all that up to a non-relevant comment about the persistence of disparitive treatment with your misrepresentation of why feminists talk about suffrage.
I guess Ion prefers to be spoon-fed as well. Some of us enjoy actually reading other people’s thoughts. Rather than just chiming in with “MEGA-DITTOS!!!!”
No you’re not.
@Amused
“After all, if people hell-bent on historical revisionism dismiss industrialized genocide as mere inadvertence and bad luck, what is to be said of employment discrimination? So the people here are being very reasonable in asking you to define your terms first.”
Oh, oh, teacher of all that is progressive and equitably let me field this question!
Employment
As I said in my previous post I was denied a position of employment because I wasn’t a woman. Any quota where gender is the determining factor for employment by law is discrimination. I was discriminated against by law as are any men who face the quota system.
Education
Any quota where gender is the determining factor for education by law is discrimination. Oh we can couch the almighty Title IX in terms of equality but if a woman is given a slot in any eduactional endevour over a man because she is woman rather than merit, why thats discrimination as well.
Parenthood
One of your own gave the statistic of women getting primary custody at 83% in divorce cases to prove some point, so we’ll run with that number. The reasoning for this is being the, “primary caretaker.” How is primary caretaker established? Well, by being a woman of course. So the title primary caretaker trumps the title of father. So the right of parent is determined by gender. Thats discrimination.
Charities
There are sooooooo many women/girl only charities as to boggle the mind. Just one example would be the many organisations to advance education for girls in third world countries. A noble cause indeed, yet why only girls? Don’t boys in third world countries need education as well? Are boys disproportionally more/less educated? Does anyone care?
Death/Incarceration
Now heres an area where men excell beyond comprehension. Men die in numbers from work/war/sickness that is staggering compared to women. Yet all monies from taxes, (10 federal womens health centers/0 for men) goes to women. Everywhere you can see women only hospitals and such. For incarceration, everyone knows women recieve very little if any punishment compared to men for the same crime. Often women recieve, “help” while men recieve incarceration. My taxes hard at work. I’d say that classifies as discrimination as well.
There is no realm of modern society where men aren’t actively discriminated against. Now who was it that lobbied for an enacted all these laws? Funny how when men held the power of State they ensured women and children came before themselves and were cared for. Now that women hold the reins of power they’ve codified in law that women come first, second and third. And men must pay to be discriminated against in all realms of society or go to jail.
G.I. Piggy: That would be the institutional bias. Why are women not in thorassic surgery?
That categoric dichotomy is part of the problem. Take a look at teaching. Women make up the bulk of the teachers, but they are a minority in administrative positions (at all educational levels). Administrators get more money.
That’s a gap. It’s even discussed in the CONSAD report being dissected here so recently.
One of the interesting things is that when women enter a profession the wages start to drop, and then men leave the profession, and it becomes “women’s work” and people say that it’s less demanding, and so needs less money.
Speaking of this, wasn’t there a post on this blog a few weeks ago where all of you were tittering and snickering over an MRA who posted a picture of himself and his girlfriend, the both of them fairly normal and good-looking I might add? I said ‘show me an attractive feminist’ then, and basically got the same thing. You don’t have an answer, all you have are bullshit excuses and long-winded arguments.
Same for the oppression thing. So far the only one who gave an example was Kate, and even that was apparently more about self-preservation than sexism. They thought a female employee of a certain age would get pregnant and go on maternity leave soon. They didn’t think she wouldn’t be as smart or as capable as a man, simply that she was a higher risk to the company.
As for the rest of you, more excuses and arguments and blah blah. Why are you so convinced that I wouldn’t consider the examples you give as oppression, anyway? Maybe because you’re not totally convinced yourselves? A clear-cut case of oppression or discrimination should be self-evident, so maybe most of them aren’t as easy or clear-cut as you’d like them to be? Whatever, you certainly don’t owe me anything and I actually got my answer so it’s all good.
And by the way Dave, I must protest this blantant discrimination of being the “moderated man.” It hardly seems equitable that my comments come a day late and a dollar short.
I guess thats the price I must pay for being the bad man. I do so beg forgiveness from the pillars of society that the manboobz gang represents.
I gave an example, Ion. Scroll up.
Yes, but that’s only oppression in your lady-brains.
Ion will mansplain how it’s not really oppression, or bias, or anything to worry your little lady-brain over.
There, I was a good mangina, do I get a sam’ich?
@Ion:
“As for the rest of you, more excuses and arguments and blah blah. Why are you so convinced that I wouldn’t consider the examples you give as oppression, anyway?”
1) You have repeatedly shown yourself to be dishonest in your conversation.
2) Your first bit was trying to get us to prove that feminists are attractive, which has no point besides simultaneously saying that only attractive people have a point to make and sexualizing people who’s entire purpose is to not be sexualized.
3) Nobody needs to convince you of anything. You are unimportant and irrelevant. The fact that people continue to converse with you is incredible.
4) You’ve already shown that you dismiss events that we (and reasonable people) consider opression. Instead of people offering experiences only for you to deny them, why don’t you define your terms first?
I guess Ion prefers to be spoon-fed as well. Some of us enjoy actually reading other people’s thoughts. Rather than just chiming in with “MEGA-DITTOS!!!!”
You don’t seem to be one those, though, because “MEGA-DITTOS” are basically all you contribute. And what the hell does ‘being spoon-fed’ have to do with a blogger being lazy and resorting to copy-pasting articles and going “hey, this is pretty stupid, amirite?” I mean it’s pretty impressive that you managed to spin this into a positive thing, but by that logic newspapers shouldn’t print articles anymore, they should just write headlines and leave pages blank so people can discuss and express their thoughts…
I second (third, fourth) that Ion should post what he would consider to be oppression or discrimination, and then we can say whether it has happened to us.
I guess Katz prefers to be spoon-fed! Ahem… sure, post any instance where you felt you were at a disadvantage by sole virtue of your gender. Easy, right?
Holly: Wow, did that guy come from Iran or something? Still, you say he was reassigned when you complained. That’s just an example of one man with a sexist attitude, though, and your subordinate/trainee at that.