Another day, another apologia for male violence from the Men’s Rights crowd. This time the apologist is W. F. Price at The Spearhead, who uses several recent news stories involving violent men as an excuse to attack feminism.
Repeated provocations against men, systematic discrimination against men, and state-sanctioned debt slavery are starting to have the inevitable effect. In a triumph for the feminist movement, men are lashing out violently against women, fulfilling the feminist fantasy of a gender war.
In the old days, everything was (presumably) peachy keen between the sexes. Then along came the feminists, and all hell broke loose. Those “take back the night” marches feminists love so much? They’re just red flags to the bulls – that is, our society’s ample stock of “mentally unstable and out-of-luck men.” You don’t want to make these guys mad!
[W]omen were encouraged to be militant against all males, which can only have unfortunate results, given the hands-down male superiority in combat. …
In other words, the fact that there are violent men out there is why women shouldn’t complain about violent men. Presumably the only marches women should be organizing would be “No, Go Ahead, You Keep the Night” marches. Don’t want to offend those rapists –that’ll just make them even rapier than usual!
According to Price, though, feminists actually like violence against women — because it keeps them in business.
For feminism to exist as a valid movement, there must be violent conflict, so many of the efforts of feminists have sought to provoke just that. … You see, for a feminist to justify her job there must be some degree of brutality against women. … So, if you are a feminist, the hapless women murdered or assaulted by the damaged men feminists have created are necessary sacrifices for advancing the feminist agenda.
So not only do the feminists provoke these “damaged men” – they created them in the first place, by being so feministy.
Wouldn’t this whole provoke-the-men strategy make life more dangerous for feminist women as well? No, because feminists are all rich ladies, and everyone knows that rich ladies are never beaten or raped or murdered:
[W]e all know that feminism has never been about the typical woman who lives a humble life, but rather the ambitious elite who want to have access to the big boys and big money on Capitol Hill and Wall Street. … Disadvantaged women are truly the cannon fodder of feminists.
So what “proof” does Price offer for his claim that men are “lashing out” at women because of feminism? He cites three news stories: one dealing with a woman-hating trucker who’s accused of killing several prostitutes; another involving a man who went on a shooting rampage at a church, killing his wife and wounding two others; and finally, the case of James Ray Palmer, the Arkansas man who shot up the offices of the judge who’d handled his divorce and custody case more than a decade earlier. (I wrote about his case here.)
How do these cases relate to feminism? You’ll have to ask Price, because none of the news stories suggest any connection, and Price doesn’t explain why he thinks there is one. True, the trucker is said to be a misogynist, but misogyny is far more ancient than feminism. Meanwhile, we have no evidence that the church shooter was angry at any women other than his wife.
In the case of Palmer, there may be an indirect connection, if it turns out that he was influenced by the angry, violent rhetoric of the Men’s Rights movement. As I pointed out in my post on Palmer, many in the MRM have made a martyr out of Thomas Ball, who committed suicide on the steps of a courthouse, leaving behind an manifesto that urged men to literally burn down police stations — and courthouses. It is certainly conceivable that Palmer’s courthouse rampage was inspired by this sort of rhetoric.
But to blame feminism for any of this is ass-backwards. Feminism is a response to misogyny, not its cause. To blame feminism for violence against women is a bit like blaming Jews for provoking the Holocaust. (Forgive me, Godwin; it was the clearest analogy.)
Price ends his piece by urging women to, in effect, shut up and fix him a sandwich:
Women’s best bet for security is not in denouncing and fighting men, as feminists would have it, but in cooperating with them and taking on their proper role.
Then he ends with a weird coda suggesting that feminists should be locked up for having the temerity to speak up in the first place:
The United States will once again be a righteous society only when feminists are jailed for interfering with families, and their academic apologists are removed by security from their jobs in taxpayer-funded educational institutions. This would be the most humane course of action to take. Far more humane, in fact, than provoking men and women to physically attack one another, as feminists would have it today so that they can unleash state agents on confused and demoralized families.
I didn’t have the stomach to read all of the comments responding to Price’s argument, such as it is. But here are some highlights – lowlights, really – of the highly upvoted comments I did read.
The ironically named Anti Idiocy seconds Price’s basic argument:
Anger against feminism has been building for years. As the men’s rights movement has gained momentum, feminists and their lackeys have doubled down and become more virulent in their anti-male hatred and propaganda. Women today are becoming more and more nasty on an interpersonal basis, and they are doing so more frequently. A breakpoint will come. It will probably take a catalyst; another severe economic downturn might do it. But it will come. Feminists and their pet femboys will push things until it does.
Wait. If the Men’s Rights movement is, in effect, provoking feminists to get more feministy, then wouldn’t (by Price’s logic) the allegedly increased violence be the fault of the MRAs?
Rod worries that in the case of a real gender war, men might actually lose – all because of those darned “white knights” and their reluctance to beat up the ladies:
I’m afraid that if it ever came down to a real physical war between the sexes, men would unfortunately lose. There are too many men who can’t stand the sight of men harming women, and would immediately step in to save them. Perhaps nature instilled in us a visceral reaction to women’s suffering, making us want to step in and help, and at one time in the history of our species, that reaction was no doubt a salutary thing. Now it just works against us.
Antiphon, meanwhile, blames it all on the Jews. Or, more specifically, the Jewesses, who apparently control the feminist movement in the same way that their husbands control the banks.
Needless to say, this being The Spearhead, Antiphon’s comment has three times as many upvotes as downvotes. Apparently, the only thing worse than a feminist is a Jewish feminist.
I guess my Nazi analogy earlier in this post wasn’t so out of place after all.
To blame feminism for violence against women is a bit like blaming Jews for provoking the Holocaust.
Not even. It’s like blaming the Anti-Defamation League for provoking the Holocaust.
It’s historically as well as logically backward.
As for “gender war,” the whole idea is hilarious, and the fact that MRAs bring it up proves what unserious, goofy kids playing “Political Activist Superhero” in cardboard forts they are.
Think about a real war. Who do people most worry about protecting in a war? Who do refugees escape with, who do civilians shelter, who do soldiers fight for? Their families.
There’s quite a few men in my family. And somehow I don’t think my father, my uncles, my sister’s adoptive father, my cousins, my boyfriend, and, fuck, even my roommate are going to suddenly take up arms against me because MRAs repeated “VAWA TITLE IX FALSE ACCUSATIONS” enough times.
If there’s one thing history has shown, it’s that even in the most desperate of times, families stay together. And most families have more than one gender in them.
I have the feeling that a great many female fighters in the SCA would disagree. I also have the feeling that a great many female fighters could kick this guy’s ass all over the field, assuming he’d lower himself to fight against mere women.
Women’s suffrage movement starts in London in the 1870s. Jack the Ripper arrives in the 1880s. Good God he’s right, how could we have missed it?
@Holly: There are other reasons for war besides protecting your family.
Brandon – Sure, but most people, in a war, are going to want to protect their families.
“Kill the bad people from the bad place” is a hell of an easier sell than “kill your great-aunt Susie who kissed your boo-boos when you were a kid.”
@Holly: Using the word “war” here as an actual war (i.e using the military) is overly literal. We have lots of “wars” in the US that have very little violence. War on Poverty, War on Homelessness, etc…
War in the abstract sense is taking or regaining control of something. The so called “gender war” is men and women subtly fighting each other to maintain the upper hand.
ah, brandon, always an ignorant fool. Well, at least he’s consistent.
In more complicated refutation, that means “Brandon, war as a metaphor is a foolish and absurd argument in the context of actual violence, what the post is explicitly about.”
Brandon –
So yeah.
@Darksidecat: I was responding to Holly’s “Think about a real war…” comment. Not the post itself.
Brandon: In this, “gender war” you are looking at what… killing women because they were too, “something”.
That means all those men have to convince other men to go after their wives, their sisters, their girlfriends, their mothers, their daughters.
Or just sit there and let the “soldiers” of the Men’s Rights Army come and do it.
So, are you going to step aside and them them take Ashley, in the name of gender equality?
Brandon, that’s the most pathetic “I meant to do that” I ever saw.
Freakin’ admit that you goofed or just let it go.
Yeah, same old abuser’s logic: if we didn’t make them so angry, they wouldn’t have to hit us. It’s so hard on them, being angered all the time. So very hard and unfair. A tear.
And another boilerplate rant about “systematic discrimination against men,” which as far as I can tell comes down to some combination of “nobody thinks date rape is cute anymore” and “if you get divorced, primary custody of the kids will probably go to whoever’s been raising them.” These guys are getting boring.
Well actually, he most likely would abandon Ashley to their tender mercies. Brandon is mostly all about himself, after all. I’m not sure he could be arsed to care about his mom if someone were holding her hostage.
Brandon: Holly was applying a reality filter to the OP, who is talking about a real war.
A civil war, a la Viet-Nam, before US intervention, or the Communists vs. the Koumintang.
That’s what they pretend to believe is inevitable. Some, like Meller, look forward to the “gendercide” with glee, others pretend to be, “more in sorrow than in anger”, as if it were slavery they were fighting, and women were the Southern Slaveholders.
So, are you going to step aside and them them take Ashley, in the name of gender equality?
Well, yeah. Brandon doesn’t let himself get tied down by people and their needs. He’s like the wind, baby. He’ll tell Ashley the MRA Army is at the door, and she’ll giggle and ask if she’s been a bad girl. Then, spankings for all!
Thus will end the Great Gender War.
@Pecunium: The notion of having a war (an actual war) that specifically attacks women is far fetched to say the least. However, I do see less and less men “playing the hero” and risking themselves to save “random woman XYZ” from harm.
What does attacking or killing my mother, aunts, sister or girlfriend have to do with gender equality?
Because the idiots in the original post think that ordinary men are going to be cool with attacking the women in their families.
Holly pointed out that the ridiculousness of that notion. You defended the idea that ordinary men with no axe to grind and families which include women, would turn on women immediately.
The notion of having a war (an actual war) that specifically attacks women is far fetched to say the least. However, I do see less and less men “playing the hero” and risking themselves to save “random woman XYZ” from harm.
The action-movie version of that scenario–the woman’s in a burning building or whatever–is extremely rare and has little to do with gender. (Also, there are female firefighters, police officers, and EMTs.)
And the mundane version of that scenario–the woman is broke, unhealthy, unloved, and in the slow sick kind of danger instead of the exciting dramatic kind–is one that chivalrous types have never deigned to swoop in on.
What does attacking or killing my mother, aunts, sister or girlfriend have to do with gender equality?
An excellent question. I don’t know the answer either. But W.F. Price and his buddies seem to think it’s related. We’re making fun of them for how ridiculous and horrible that is.
Brandon: The notion of having a war (an actual war) that specifically attacks women is far fetched to say the least…. What does attacking or killing my mother, aunts, sister or girlfriend have to do with gender equality?
You may think it’s farfetched; they don’t.
They make a regular ppint of saying that, when the men rise up, to redress the manifest inequalities which feminism has brought into being and, by the use of, “state sanctioned violence” continues to force on men.
This will, inevitably (if women don’t come to their senses and stop provoking backlash) lead to a mass pogrom, and the return of the world to it’s natural order.
@Shaenon – The particular argument that men are angry because feminism is among the most easily disproved. To whit:
“What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, an natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors!… And the tears of a woman are a deception, for they may spring from true grief, or they may be a snare. When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.”
The above quote may sound, at first, as if it comes from a feminism-damaged man in todays pussy-power dominated culture. Actually, though, it is rather a bit older than all of that. It’s from the Malleus Maleficarum (the “Hammer Against WItches”) and was written in the late fifteenth century.
It might still have been feminists who drove this writer to hate men, but they would have to be time-traveling feminists.
@Bostonian: Ya, I will just hand over my mother to people that will hurt her. Are you ok? Seriously, that has to be the dumbest thing to assume of someone. Oh, look! Someone I don’t agree with…I bet he would put his mother in harms way. Talk about a stretch.
I would do what I can to protect my family. Mother, father, sister, uncles, aunts, etc…
As long as Ashley and I are together, I will look out for her.
You are consistently selfish in your positions. I did not say you would put her in harms way. I said you would not be arsed to protect her. Mainly because you sound lazy and indifferent to relationships.
I would do what I can to protect my family. Mother, father, sister, uncles, aunts, etc…
Sounds like you should be pretty angry (or at least highly amused) at these MRAs proposing a literal gender war and excusing violence against women like your mother/sister/aunts, then.
@Holly: I wasn’t really talking about police officers, firefighters, etc… I was talking about men as a whole putting themselves in harms way to protect a woman they don’t know. Such as a security guard not intervening as a woman is getting mugged…but they call the cops instead and keep their distance.
Or the stereotypical, “men jumping in front of a bullet for a woman”