Here’s the entirety of a recent post by an MRA who calls himself Snark:
Uh, dude, I think you’ve confused “feminists” with “Daleks.”
Our new friend Fidelbogen thought this was such a brilliant idea he devoted a post to it himself, declaring:
Such economy, such concision. …
Really now, we wouldn’t go far wrong to make our rhetoric revolve around this above all, and very little more. The saying is deceptively simple, for it goes deep and reaches into many corners.
It puts them on the spot, and nails them there.
I knew Fidelbogen was a bit of a pompous doofus, but this is a whole new level of stupidity for him. I don’t even know what to say about something this idiotic.
Also, check out the comments to Snark’s piece. There’s something about potatoes you kind of have to see to believe.
@toysoldier, to return to my vegetarin example
You can’t just make baldfaced assertions of a causal link. Your opponents are not and will not accept that. You have to prove it.
You are misunderstanding Pecunium’s arguments as well:
Pecunium never argued that feminists can’t commit child abuse, Pecunium argued that child abuse is not a feminist act. This is like arguing that no vegetarian could commit violence vs. that violence is not a vegetarian act, to refer to the earlier analogy.
@Pecunium, the notion that queerness is inferior is hateful. The notion that queerness is a sin which harms the community or is an evil act (built into the notion of sin) is also hateful.
@revspinaker, citations needed. Also, please be sure to distinguish sexual and physical abuse for neglect abuse when finding those cites.
toysoldier: The imputation that I said your aunt wasn’t a feminist is a lie, because I have consistently said she was.
I have never said no feminist abuses. What I will say is that he being abusive isn’t a result of feminism, no matter what she might have told you, because there is no doctrinal theory of feminism, apart from men and women deserve to be treated as equals.
The same cannot be said of the MRM.
The MRM can claim Breivik doesn’t share their views; they are wrong. He quotes them, at length, with approval. They may not like the association, but it’s a lie to say he doesn’t share their views. It may be a stretch to say they share most of his, but he most decidedly shares their, and when we look at the response to things like Palmer, and Ball; and the writings of other MRAs who are out there looking forward to the gender war they see as inevitable, and the cricket chirps of dissent… the evidence argues there is more accord there than not.
Was your aunt a feminist? If she said so. Are there feminists who don’t self-ID as such? Yes, and the MRM is all too fond of saying anyone who disagrees with them is a feminist, by virtue of such disagreement. I, at least, am pointing at Breivik’s agreement when I say he is on the MRA side of the aisle.
And feminism doesn’t argue for, nor; as a movement, condone the abuse of children, be they boys or girls.
Bostonian: If feminists had respect for male survivors they would have welcomed us into the healing process 30 years ago. Instead they deliberately denied boys as victims and women as perpetrators. They then proceeded to castigate, humiliate and annihilate men & boys simply for being male. So let’s talk Matriarchal Oppression. Here’s something we all know; boys who are abused as children have no social resourses to heal and often grow up to lead toubled lives. That can literally mean trouble with the law. The majority of crimes committed by men are against themselves or other men. Sometimes those crimes are committed against “women & girls.” And that would be bad! So if feminists really want to stop violence against women, they need to start by ratifying Barbara Boxer’s Violence Against Children Act. That would show some respect for male survivors. And children.
P.S. Zombie: WordPress sounds pretty cool. I might get a blog to post Rep. Boxer’s Act.
Actual links to feminists doing that would be needed for me to believe that, RevSpinnaker.
I have heard male survivor stories, on feminist websites. No one casigated the male survivors. Ratifying Barbara Boxers Violence Against Children Act would also take the action of the Senate, not exclusively feminists.
We could, but you sound like you want to talk ab out something that exists. There is no matriarchy. Women do not possess sufficient power for this. What you’re talking about is the flip side to the narratives that make rape by men so easy to forgive, both socially and legally. As it happens, those narratives do also hurt the men they don’t apply to. I’m sorry for that. But they don’t mean that women control society in even the most broad strokes, to the detriment of men. It means Patriarchy hurts some men too.
‘campaigning for’, because I am a pedant, but yes, this sounds just peachy keen to me. Need to look into this at the local level for local democrat chapters. It’ll be as much a waste of my time as everything else has, what with being in Texas, but hey.
Yes, and technically Glenn Beck only asks questions. Come off it, nobody is this naive.
See, when we say MRA views may lead to violence, we can link to actual motherfucking violence that occured. You have “Someone who if she’d had serious power might have actually enacted misandry”. Color me fucking unimpressed, especially since feminism has done a lot more in general.
Yeah, if someone actually followed Daly’s worst shit, there’d be problems. It doesn’t happen, and won’t happen for a number of reasons that basically come down to “They’re about equal in popularity to actually punishing white people for the setting up of racist structures in the past and their maintenance of them today” and Daly’s fantasies of a misandrist world, while skipped over, are also not really endorsed.
I do. You assholes keep showing up even if I’m just trying to relax.
Yes, this is certainly true, but we can put forth at least some political capital towards it. It’s not actually an unfair demand.
Annihilate? Hyperbole much?
Or is this like that AHMO thing–annihilate, humiliate, mutilate, destroy–that football fans paint on their chests sometimes?
Toysoldier:
I would appreciate it if you would stop arguing against those straw feminists and their beliefs, and start addressing what the flesh-and-blood feminists on this very site are telling you instead.
Feminists see women as socially inferior, and that’s why they are fighting for equality?
What? Women being seen as socially inferior is the exact thing feminism is AGAINST! Do you even think about what you write?
It’s like if Anti-racists would say that black people are socially inferior.
This would also completely contradict any claims you made about what constitutes feminism. How can feminism be anti-male (according to you) if it views women as inferior (according to you)?
[Citation needed]
Seriously, where did anyone here say that feminists don’t commit child abuse?
It was said that feminism doesn’t SUPPORT or CONDONE child abuse in any way or form. Please stop misrepresenting and start addressing the things that were actually said.
People have commented on this already, but it’s just to beautiful not to quote again..
It’s not that I don’t respect male survivors. It’s that I don’t respect idiots who spew lies and misinformation.
I believe that what you told us happened to you, and I have much respect for the fact that you talked about it on an open space like this.
But I still think you are full of shit.
boys who are abused as children have no social resourses to heal
Not quite.
So if feminists really want to stop violence against women, they need to start by ratifying Barbara Boxer’s Violence Against Children Act. That would show some respect for male survivors. And children.
Agreed. But as Bostonian points out, there also needs to be action by, you know, men; many of which are decidedly anti-feminist. If you really want to help Baxer’s initiative, you might want to work on convincing them also.
Bostonian: I can’t provide links for personal experiences from 30 years ago but when I started speaking about child sexual abuse to women’s groups I was literally told I deserved it. Feminism has changed it’s tone since then, not from empathy and understanding of men, but for the fact the next generation of women were so turned off by the vitriolic angst driven animosity for men, they completely disassociated with “FEMINISM.”
darksidecat: I prefer citations to semantics. Consider this, according to the Center for Disease Control, American women kill more of their own children than any other mothers in the industrialized world. That represents a 25% increase since 1985. Yet not a blip on the domestic violence front.
That last should have been obliterate rather than destroy, my mistake. It is an awkward set of words and I filled in a better one.
But annihilate? Somebody gonna tell me when feminists started using White Phosphorous weapons?
Citing something actually requires citing it, not just stating information. As in, a link, or the title and journal information of a study.
And does anyone think that the US is the most feminist influenced country in the industrialized world? I don’t. I doubt anybody does. So you’re gonna have to connect the dots if you’re talking about the relationship between feminism and child abuse, rev.
So, RevSpinnaker, you spoke to women’s groups. Which ones?
I first encountered victim advocacy among feminist groups. All of them included male survivors and denounced female abusers.
Your spin on why feminists include male victims is not borne out in my experience at all.
darksidecat: I think some (not all) of the problems with trying to explicate RC doctrine has to do with inside vs. outside understandings.
Queerness isn’t inferior. I don’t go so far as some (whom I think are being evil; and completely distorting things), who say that homosexuals are especially beloved of God, because he gave them this extra burden to bear (and the doctrinal,and dogmatic errors in that are so many as to be several doctoral dissertations). Hell, as a personal theology (and there are a number of reasons I am a lapsed/fallen away member of the Church, but that’s a whole different subject, and not relevant to this one), I don’t see that the issue ought to exist.
But sin, in the RC doctrine is not an issue of evil. It’s an issue of not being completely obedient to God. One who sleeps in on a Day of Obligation, or eat’s “meat” on a fast day is as sinful as one who fornicates.
The larger culture in the US is much more informed by the protestant ideas of sin as “wilful deviations from God’s Laws and Commands”. Because protestant doctrine is one of personal acceptance/subjegation to God, to violate one of His commands is a much more damning (theologically) issue. Add the much greater emphasis on the Devil, and the idea that one who disobeys God is actively working against him (which so many of the more vocal Right Wing Religious espouse) and the background against which all homosexual condemnations exist is more than problematic.
Do I disagree with the Church on this? Yes. I think Peter’s vision on the rooftop was metaphoric, and said that “all which God has made is Good”. It wasn’t about all food being kosher but that no person is treyf/. I think the RC is getting there, not as quickly as I would like, but I also don’t think it’s correct to say they hate homosexuals.
I really think that, were the US not so religiously narrow as it is, and so culturally imperialistic as it is, the issue would be very different; because the Religious Right would not have so infected the American Catholics, and the sway they have in the politics of the Curia (which doesn’t want to alienate so visible a part of the Church) and so the US pathologies on homosexuality would be less affecting of the Church as a whole.
And I understand why you disagree, but felt the need to explain myself/how I see the Church.
Moewicus: Glad you brought up football. We could discuss the dominance of women in the teachers unions and question the underlying sexism of sports programs in public schools. Independant studies in Scotland and Japan both conclude women are more sexually drawn to pictures of men with more masculine even scarred faces when mensturating. Hmmm… The only place I was ever taught a “sport” whereby as a direct result of my behavior someone else may end up with broken bones, concussions, paralysis even death was in public school.
And the cheerleaders provided pagentized rectal display for the biggest males with the greatest potential for violence. Kind of like Mountain Goats and Lowland Gorillas. What was the question again? Where’s the violence come from? Think if we had cheerleaders for math and science. Cheerleaders to stop global warming…
Wait, so now you’re trying to say that women teachers make young boys play dangerous sports because scars are sexy?
Dude.
You might want to look at the gender makeup of who’s *setting* the curriculum and who decides what sports are ‘boys’ vs what are ‘girls’ ones – rather than, you know, the ones who just *implement* it.
Signed ~ someone who wasn’t allowed to play rugby at school cos she had a vagina.
As always, citations needed.
Um, where exactly did you go to school?
RevSpinnaker:
A quick search on Shakesville alone have me several article about harassment and abuse of boys, or how the media deal with (and often minimize) them.
• about sexual harassment at work
• sexual abuse of boy scouts
• about the problems of sexual predator registeries
• about clergy abuse
• about the problematic coverage of Tyler Perry’s sexual abuse by CNN (how his abuse by a man was called “molestation”, while the abuse by a women was called “seduction”)rep
• about the offensive and homophobic way a professional advice columnist replied to a male survivor of sexual abuse
I remember that there were several more articvles about sexual abuse of men and boys, like about how a talk show host called a 13 year old boy who was sexually abused by an older women “lucky”, or something along the lines, and who laughed even though the boy looked really uncomfortable and triggered, if I remember correctly. I think the boy was a musician?
I also think there was an article about female and male sexual abuse in the army. Feel free to browse the Today In Rape Culture tag, in case my examples aren’t enough.
@revspinaker, I do so hate to repeat myself:
.
@Pecunium
Disobedience to god is seen as bad/evil. What god dislikes are bad things, presumably, if one is presupposing a benevolent deity. Saying “we don’t hate you, god does”, just deflects responsibility for hate, it is still hate. And thinking that queerness is bad, unnatural, and/or worse than hetero models of sexuality is thinking we are inferior, and it is hateful. Saying that the only good sex is a certain narrow sampling of hetero sex is saying that those people and their sexualities are superior to everyone else, who has bad sex. Saying that it isn’t the worst of sins may be less hateful than saying it is, but it is still hateful. And don’t give me this ignoring history and blaming modern protestantism (which isn’t better itself still) for this, this is a longstanding issue that was around before the protestant reformation even occurred. They burned and drowned queer people before there ever was a protestant church, don’t give me this bullshit. Modern US “pathologies” on queerness are a direct descendent of historic Church rhetoric. The very first codified bans on queer sex in law in the western world were put on the books on the grounds of Christianity. Shit, the very term “sodomy” is derived from Catholic rhetoric. So don’t, as my mother would say, “piss down my neck and tell me it’s raining”.
blockquote fail, but it should still be clear enough
Zombie and Bostonian: You’re both right. Men do have to take the initiative about maternal child abuse. But I find women in general, not just feminists, are particularly adverse to entertain the discussion. Bostonian, 25 years ago I worked with some of the first men in the Chicago area to advocate for awareness of child sexual abuse of boys. We organized the first therapy groups for men at the Ravenswood Hospital, we did speaking engagements and panel discussions including a national DCFS Conference, the national Phyliss Levy Radio Show at WLS and a couple large conventions for survivors. We were the only men. We phone blitzed the Oprah Show to do a show for male survivors and she reluctantly did. I spoke briefly from the audience. She never seriously dealt with the subject again until last year’s “200 Man Show.” I also wrote articles for the Sun-Times, including one with Jeffrey Zaslow.
Moewicus: I did cite a source, go to the Center for Disease Control web-site, or the American Psychiatric Foundation among others… the stats vary slightly but they all say the same thing.
*gave me several article about harassment and abuse of boys *and men
*articles
Ugh, sorry tor all the typos.
It seems like my comment is on moderation because of all the links anyway, though.
Displaying one’s rectum sounds more like something someone would do for scientific reasons rather than sports… Maybe they WERE science cheerleaders after all.
*for
Please provide actual citations (with links), RevSpinnaker.
I would also like to remind you that “data” is not the plural of “anecdote”.
darksidecat: Within the family, sexual abuse represents between 13% and 20% of the total of all child abuse. Of that 30% is perpetrated by females, relatives, trusted friends, babysitters etc. A large portion of child abuse is considered neglect, which is vague. Felony neglect sounds more like an oxymoron than a sentencing guideline. Casey Anthony was guilty of neglect. Look what happened, or actually, didn’t happen to her.