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.
Thanks, VoiP. That was a tangled thread of reasoning to follow.
Well, I hope I’m correct. The problem is that most of it seems to be bound up in assumptions which go largely unstated and which may contradict one another.
Which is common when you’re arguing with MRAs or fundies. A lot of times, when you try to tease out those assumptions, if they are things which the mass of humanity will regard as abhorrent, the MRA in question will start dodging and backtracking whether or not s/he actually believes them. It’s tough to find out what they actually do believe, what they don’t believe, and what they believe but just aren’t willing to admit to.
Kollege Kat: I meant no offense. Your icon is a cat, you’re comments are worth responding to and Kat is quicker to key in than Messerschmitt.
The “alleged doctrine” you refer to actually evolved around the same time as Andrea Dworkin coined the “all men are potential rapists” line. I believe the statement was first made by Susan Brownmiller and repeated profusely on any show (usually daytime) dealing with sexual abuse. Though when I think about it it may have been in Katherine Brady’s “Father’s Day: A True Story of Incest.”
The potential rapist thing has stuck. But child sexual abuse as the ultimate oppression of women was debunked after so many boys came forward and so many women were found to be involved with child sexual abuse. Feminists used to say the same thing about child pornography until a “Frontline Investigation” busted the biggest child porn broker in Europe.
An undercover camera caught her bragging that she bought her mink jacket from “kiddie porn.”
Nope, feminists didn’t say much about child porn after that either. Especially since many (not all) of the children were exploited by their opportunist malnurturing mothers.
Read about Gregg Milligan’s mom at Oprah.com. Women sell boys into prostitution too.
Rev., we REALLY DO KNOW that women are capable of child abuse. I gave you a link to examples where people who regularly comment on this forum and you were like, “Lack of knowledge hurts Holly too!” We told you that we know about this shit already and you say we don’t know?
“An undercover camera caught her bragging that she bought her mink jacket from ‘kiddie porn.’”
Who’s “her”? Andrea Dworkin? Susan Brownmiller? Katherine Brady?
Again, Rev., you’re talking about stuff that happened at least a decade ago. Discussion of prostitution, child porn, abuse, and sex has changed a lot since then, but you don’t seem to be aware or care that this is so.
The “biggest CP broker in Europe,” who was a woman, therefore matriarchal oppression is real.
@toysoldier
Let’s set aside for a moment that women’s crimes in certain areas often are factually distinquishable in many ways that explain most of all of the difference in sentencing (type of victims, level of torture of victims, past criminal history etc.). Let me ask you then, is this true of black women and white men? Black women face criminal convictions and harsh criminal penalties at high rates, much, much higher than white men in comparision to amounts of crime actually committed. You seem to be arguing that all women as a class have an advantage here over men as a class, in the face of your earlier claims that there is no such thing as class based advantage/class based privilege.
Toysoldier, when you describe your abuse none of us are in a position to disagree with you, and indeed I haven’t seen anyone claiming that you weren’t abused or that your abuse wasn’t bad.
When you say what feminism is like, however, you’re addressing an audience of (largely) feminists and allies, who know what feminism is like and will say you’re wrong if you appear to be wrong (which you do). That has nothing to do with your status as an abuse survivor.
VoiP, I dunno what’s wrong with me! I read the word “broker” and thought “male”, which is why I got confused. I thought we lived in a matriarchy where everyone who did anything noteworthy was female!
It does, however, provide a convenient red herring to your apparent belief that motherhood as such is a system of oppression.
To reiterate what DSC said: On average, women do get lighter sentences than men who’ve committed the same crimes. Part of this is because, on average, these men have longer criminal histories than the women in the same circumstances. But some of that does indeed seem to be the result of sexism — generally, of old-fashioned male paternalism. (Women judges don’t tend to give women lighter sentences.)
But white people get a similar “sentencing discount” when compared to non-whites.
I have never, ever seem MRAs mention this; I doubt most of them are aware of it, in part because they’ve never actually looked at any of the research on this subject, but instead are simply parroting the MR line on this issue.
Here’s another awesome quote:
I guess the reason poor, uneducated, young women are the vanguard of the Matriarchy is that since their support system sucks and they have few resources, there’s nothing out there to counteract their influence (which, because it’s matriarchal, must be bad.)
Also, “abandonist malnurturing mentality” sounds science-y!
What’s your solution, male-run creches or something?
But remember, it’s bad when (unnamed, unreferenced) feminists say child abuse is the ultimate form of oppression of women.
VoiP:
I didn’t even consider this as a reason, to be honest. Do the MRAs who post here usually assume everyone is a girl?
Moewicus:
It’s actually a pokemon, Mewtwo, wearing a top hat and a monocle. I totally forgot that not everyone is familiar with pokemon, errrgh, And it seems you are right!
Rev:
No offense taken (:
I was just really confused because I couldn’t figure out how you got from Messerschmitt to Kat, and didn’t take the icon into consideration.
As Molly pointed out, those are not exactly recent events, and feminism moved on. Feminism back then often also wasn’t too good with class, race and trans* issues (not really different from the mainstream, though), but it has improved and became a lot more inclusive.
And since the quote doesn’t seem to be referenced on the internet anyway, I don’t think it very influential anymore, if it ever was influential in the first place.
I still don’t understand where you got the notion that we don’t believe women can be abusive?
I’d also ask you again to provide sources (disclaimer: Glenn Beck is not a reliable source) and links for your other statements, so we are able to verify your claims.
It’s nothing personal, but I would just like to read those things firsthand so I can do more research and educate myself on the issue before I reply, because I don’t want to get anything wrong, and I also think it is interesting to learn about new things!
Kollege–I’m familiar with pokemon, but I only saw it as Mewtwo when you pointed it out. Had I looked closer, I might have noticed the “tail” going straight into the head…
Again you fail to show why feminists need to have this vague reaction you expect–saying something? Saying what?–in order to be consistent/whatever vague thing it is you think it damaged by lack of this vaguely defined expected reaction.
Not that I expect much better from someone defining motherhood as Matriarchy.
Heh, one of ’em thought that I’m a girl, which was pretty strange.
If you disagree with them; after all, why else wouldn’t you realize that their beliefs were self-evident?. Although, I think Toysoldier used to think I was a dude, back in that one thread where Pecunium and I schooled him in logic over and over.
What’s the difference between “opportunist malnurturing mothers” and an “abandonist malnurturing mentality”? Is that like how there’re Personality Alphas and Facial Alphas for MRAL?
@KMesserschmitt:As Molly pointed out, those are not exactly recent events, and feminism moved on. Feminism back then often also wasn’t too good with class, race and trans* issues
Did they really move on? One of the worst transphobic haters in history, Mary Daly (you know what she said about trans people, I’m not going to repeat it) is still constantly praised by contemporary feminists. How can such a person be honored?
Yeah, we fucking love Mary Daly. She’s our second favorite person ever after Valerie Solanas. But my personal hero is Andrea Dworkin.
Flib: I am using privilege in a sociological sense. I just do not conform to the feminist or progressive liberal explanation of the sociological impact of privilege. Disagreeing with a theory does not mean I am engaging in intellectual dishonesty.
Hengist: That is a red herring and false dilemma. Feminists can disagree with my aunt’s behavior AND feminism could cause people to become violent towards males. If feminists condoned my aunt’s behavior, that would not make my aunt representative of all feminists. As I noted before, my aunt believes that men oppress women, benefit at women’s expense, and present a potential threat to women via “patriarchy”, i.e. the general feminist doctrine. Your confusion may lie in feminists claiming I argued positions I did not.
Rutee Katreya: I understand that you are upset that your retort failed. Next time read the abstract before you link to it. Your counter evidence claim makes no logical sense. If black women were privileged over black men and white women in general, then the feminist privilege doctrine would declare black women a privileged class. Curiously, in many instances, from education to support services to imprisonment, black women fair much better than black men, which runs contrary to the feminist claim that all things beings equal men have it better than women. The problem with a generalized theory is that someone will eventually apply it to their individual experience. If it does not apply in one case, there is no problem. If it does not apply to many individuals, the theory is flawed.
Kollege Messerschmitt: You did not clarify what you referred to, although the context implied it referred to me talking about my experience. This perfectly illustrates the problem with insulting people to ‘win’ an argument. It may make you feel empowered, but it does not make you the better person. Putting ‘abuse’ in brackets does not mean I stated that feminism condones, endorses, or supports abuse. At worst, some men’s right activists expresses their frustration using violent imagery. That is not the same as endorsing, supporting, or being violent,nor does it mean the whole movement is pro-violence. Rev never said anything about Oprah being a feminist, only that she denied knowing the prevalence of sexual violence against boys. Stop using red herrings. You are not good at it.
darksidecat: In most cases women’s violent crimes are not distinguishable between men’s violent crimes, but they are regarded as less harmful. White men face harsher sentences than black women.
Hershele Ostropoler: If I said a cop assaulted me due to bigotry in the police department, would your contrary experiences prove I lied about my experience or I misunderstood what occurred? No. Just because you have a different experience with feminism does not mean I lied about my experience or understanding of feminism.
David Futrelle: Feckless writes about sentencing disparities. I believe Glenn Sacks mentioned it several times on his old radio show. Even Spearhead covered it (it took 0.24 seconds to find that). Before you claim men’s activists do not do something, check their popular blogs.
Are there seriously living feminists who praise Mary Daly without reservation?
Can you cite an instance in which contemporary feminists praise Daly for her comment about trans* people? Because if not, I think it’s possible that you’re shitting us.
That is what Rutee was talking about with intersectionality. That is exactly what she was talking about. For fuck’s sake. You’re just…not super-great at absorbing information through the medium of words, are you?
Of course not.
“Are there seriously living feminists who praise Mary Daly without reservation?”
AS A MATTER OF FACT, YES THERE ARE!
Here, a small quote from this one lady that I don’t know…I didn’t really care to read the link either, and I don’t know if the link even works, but I have a feeling that IT PUTS FEMINISTS ON THE SPOT: http://allmensuck.org
Am I doing it rite?