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.
TS, I don’t know what “circumstances” and “outcome” you’re referring to. I simply meant that since there’s a clear consensus that you said what you said, I’m no longer interested in proving it to you personally.
Child abuse because of feminism? Sure… why not… if gems like “vote does not matter for anything anyway, so what’s the fuss” flying about, this is water under the bridge.
In other words, you are defending arguing in bad faith with argumentum ad populum. I must say, I am quite impressed. It takes effort to so hate a group of people that you will thoroughly contradict and embarrass yourself rather than acknowledge the other side’s points.
I can find that researchers Roy Hazelwood and Janet Warren did a study of 41 serial rapists in 1989 in which 76 percent of the rapists revealed that they had been sexually abused as children, but I can’t find anything to confirm the “by women” portion of your claim, RevSpinnaker.
Care to back it up?
CassandraSays, I think the only solution to Rev’s problem is to reprogram all mothers. We feminists need to start a “If you have a baby, don’t kill it” campaign, much like the “If someone is passed out drunk, don’t rape them” campaign that men have been suffering under for years.
Bagelsan, I think Rev mentioned upthread that stuff like sex ed hasn’t helped anything, moms are still killing their babies. So he obviously thinks there isn’t anything wrong with the current system, and we’re all just blind to the fact that women commit violence because Matriarchy!
Toysoldier:
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Nah, TS, I just think Hershele has realized what a preciously dense and impenetrably stupid snowflake you are. If everyone else in the discussion is clear on the basic premise of the debate and yet you’re still flailing around “nuh-uh”ing wildly and contradicting yourself a million comments in, continuing to try and convince you that “words mean things”, etc, is a waste of time.
So… do we lock up all the moms? I’m not clear what solutions he’s proposing. :p
Bagelsan, a solution can only happen when we realize this is a giant feminist coverup. 😛
You have to have a point before people can acknowledge it.
argumentum ad populum
This fallacy is sometimes committed while trying to convince a person that a widely popular thought is true.
Words mean things. “Words mean what I say they do,” Humpty Dumpty declared. “No more, and no less.” You’re declaration that you can arbitrarily change what your words actually mean to slide your argument, move your goal-posts, or generally dissolve discussion into Calvan-ball doesn’t create a fallacy in us, but in your own argument.
Bagelsan: No, I think the present problem is that feminists do not want to give me a ‘win’ by acknowledging the validity of my arguments. I think the broader problem is that feminists do not like that I will not fall for their tired straw men argument, red herrings, insults, and ad hominems. And I agree that words means things. I just wish that feminists did not try to change the meanings when it suits them.
cynickal: One can have a point that people refuse to acknowledge. Argumentum ad populum is defined as, “a proposition [said] to be true because many or most people believe it; it alleges: ‘If many believe so, it is so’.” The fallacy is known as consensus fallacy. Hershele wrote, “…since there’s a clear consensus that you said what you said, I’m no longer interested in proving it to you personally.” That is a class argumentum ad populum, as it is possible (and in this case true) that feminists are wrong. I agree that words mean things, which is precisely why I find so curious how feminists got “feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape” out of “I would have much preferred my feminist aunt to jokingly fantasize about shooting me with boiled potatoes to get me to accept feminism than have her actually maliciously shove dildos and strap-ons up my ass when I was a child to teach me how evil ‘patriarchy’ is” or “feminism can cause bad behavior”. That strikes me as feminists arbitrarily changing what my words actually mean to slide with their arguments, move their goal posts, and generally dissolve the discussion into Calvinball, apparently for no other reason than to discredit my experiences. Of course, irony is that feminists claim they oppose things this.
“I agree that words mean things, which is precisely why I find so curious how feminists got ‘feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape’ out of ‘I would have much preferred my feminist aunt to jokingly fantasize about shooting me with boiled potatoes to get me to accept feminism than have her actually maliciously shove dildos and strap-ons up my ass when I was a child to teach me how evil “patriarchy” is’ or ‘feminism can cause bad behavior’.”
Toysoldier, pretend I’m stupid. No, really, cuz I’ve read you say this same thing in similar words dozens of times now, and I still don’t get it. We’ve gone over the argument as to whether feminist ideology causes people to act badly, and you keep saying you don’t blame feminist philosophy for your aunt’s actions and yet continue to beat this same drum.
I’m lost in the woods here. What kind of response could we give you that would satisfy you?
@ Toysoldier:
if I say you win will you quit beating this poor dead horse?Your quote of your words:
I would have much preferred my feminist aunt to jokingly fantasize about shooting me with boiled potatoes to get me to accept feminism than have her actually maliciously shove dildos and strap-ons up my ass when I was a child to teach me how evil ‘patriarchy’ is” or “feminism can cause bad behavior”.
My explanation of how many (including me) though I didn’t talk to you before, because, work, got “feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape” from what you said WITHOUT changing the meanings of words.
1. Just about every self identified feminist I saw on this blog said they believed you were raped as a child by your aunt. I am a feminist. I believe you were raped.
2. The context as I recall was a discussion of an MRA supporter talking about shooting a woman (a feminist?) with boiled potatoes to teach her something. If I’ve forgotten the context, sorry, but it’s late, I’m still at work, and just on a short break, not wanting to wade through hundreds of post comments)
So the context was one of a supporter of a theory (ideology) called MRA fantasizing shooting women to convince them of something (presumably the ideology).
3. You said that you would rather your FEMINIST aunt jokingly fantasized about shooting boiled potatoes to get you to accept feminism (her ideology, identified by you in the phrase ‘feminist aunt”) than what she actually did to (presumably, get you to accept feminism): i.e. raped you when you were a child (which I don’t believe any of us said we did not believe).
You put “patriarchy” and “feminism can cause bad behavior” in quotes (although the more I look at it, the more I cannot figure out your syntax: i.e. your aunt was shoving “dildos and strap-ons up [your] ass when [you were] a child to teach [you] how evil ‘patriarchy’ is or “feminism can cause bad behavior.” The syntax problem comes from the fact that your clause structure parallels two UNparallel items. They are neither grammatically parallel, nor do they make sense as “what your aunt was trying to teach you”:
HOW EVIL PATRIARCHY IS
FEMINISM CAN CAUSE BAD BEHAVIOR (NOTE: “can” is a modal operator–in linguistic terms, it modifies “cause”. Saying FEMINISM CAN CAUSE X is not the same as FEMINISM CAUSES X which argues a direct cause/effect relationship. “Can” is not the same as “must”).
But these are the two things that you state she was trying to teach you by raping you: by you putting them into quotes, I would assume (standard English convention) as I think others did that these were your aunt’s words — why are they in quotes otherwise? So we thought that she said that, because of what YOU wrote.
You (and many other MRAs) believe that feminism’s core belief is that patriarchy (AKA ALL MEN) is evil (that’s not accurate, but let that go for now).
So that first one could make a terrible sense (i.e. it’s abusive and horrific, but if you accept the premise that MEN ARE EVIL, it can justify abusing a male child–in the same way the Inquisition justified murdering witches, mostly but not all women). But why would a FEMINIST aunt be raping her nephew to teach him “feminism can cause bad behavior”? That statement seems to be what YOU have been trying to convince us all along (that feminism as an ideology can cause bad behavior), right?
Again: I believe you were raped. But like many others, especially after you claim that your aunt never said X or Y, I don’t believe that your aunt’s actions prove anything about FEMINISM as an ideology (they prove plenty about her as a human being, capable of immense harm to a child, but that’s totally different).
I have been reading feminist works and interacting with feminists since the early 1980s. Feminism theories (British, French, Marxist, Anglo-American, Womanist, etc. etc.) do NOT condone the rape of children. THey do not argue for it. They do not support it. There is NO feminist theory I’ve read or any feminst work that says “let’s abuse male children to win our cause.” (Now novels by feminist writers might show a number of horrible, abusive, treatments of women, and of boys and girls–but usually in the context of trying to convince readers that the abuse is a bad thing.)
But I don’t think it’s a gross misreading of what you originally wrote for readers to take away the sense that your words as organized in the clauses you wrote could be paraphrased as “feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape.”
Paraphrases are never exact, but as an English professorial type, with a lot of training in parsing badly written text (did I mention I was grading Annotated Bibliographies all day today), I can see where certain stylistic choices you made, especially the use of quotes, contributed to what you see as a gross misunderstanding of your words.
So, there you go.
NOt gonna argue with you–just giving you an outside expert opinion on how i think the misreading occurred. And as I tell my students in peer workshop situations, if a number of readers “misread” what you wrote the same way, you haven’t done YOUR work, so REVISE.
Damn, BAD strikethrough.
I only meant to strike through the FIRST sentence.
*slaps html around violently*
test
so does this work…
Hi David: Sorry for the mess–maybe you could delete the HTML fail. I’ll repost a clean text, run through edits in word program.
@ Toysoldier:
if I say you win will you quit beating this poor dead horse?Your quote of your words:
I would have much preferred my feminist aunt to jokingly fantasize about shooting me with boiled potatoes to get me to accept feminism than have her actually maliciously shove dildos and strap-ons up my ass when I was a child to teach me how evil ‘patriarchy’ is” or “feminism can cause bad behavior”.
My explanation of how many (including me) though I didn’t talk to you before, because, work, got “feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape” from what you said WITHOUT changing the meanings of words.
1. Just about every self identified feminist I saw on this blog said they believed you were raped as a child by your aunt. I am a feminist. I believe you were raped.
2. The context as I recall was a discussion of an MRA supporter talking about shooting a woman (a feminist?) with boiled potatoes to teach her something. If I’ve forgotten the context, sorry, but it’s late, I’m still at work, and just on a short break, not wanting to wade through hundreds of post comments)
So the context was one of a supporter of a theory (ideology) called MRA fantasizing shooting women to convince them of something (presumably the ideology).
3. You said that you would rather your FEMINIST aunt jokingly fantasized about shooting boiled potatoes to get you to accept feminism (her ideology, identified by you in the phrase ‘feminist aunt”) than what she actually did to (presumably, get you to accept feminism): i.e. raped you when you were a child (which I don’t believe any of us said we did not believe).
You put “patriarchy” and “feminism can cause bad behavior” in quotes (although the more I look at it, the more I cannot figure out your syntax: i.e. your aunt was shoving “dildos and strap-ons up [your] ass when [you were] a child to teach [you] how evil ‘patriarchy’ is or “feminism can cause bad behavior.” The syntax problem comes from the fact that your clause structure parallels two UNparallel items. They are neither grammatically parallel, nor do they make sense as “what your aunt was trying to teach you”:
HOW EVIL PATRIARCHY IS
FEMINISM CAN CAUSE BAD BEHAVIOR (NOTE: “can” is a modal operator–in linguistic terms, it modifies “cause”. Saying FEMINISM CAN CAUSE X is not the same as FEMINISM CAUSES X which argues a direct cause/effect relationship. “Can” is not the same as “must”).
But these are the two things that you state she was trying to teach you by raping you: by you putting them into quotes, I would assume (standard English convention) as I think others did that these were your aunt’s words — why are they in quotes otherwise? So we thought that she said that, because of what YOU wrote.
You (and many other MRAs) believe that feminism’s core belief is that patriarchy (AKA ALL MEN) is evil (that’s not accurate, but let that go for now).
So that first one could make a terrible sense (i.e. it’s abusive and horrific, but if you accept the premise that MEN ARE EVIL, it can justify abusing a male child–in the same way the Inquisition justified murdering witches, mostly but not all women). But why would a FEMINIST aunt be raping her nephew to teach him “feminism can cause bad behavior”? That statement seems to be what YOU have been trying to convince us all along (that feminism as an ideology can cause bad behavior), right?
Again: I believe you were raped. But like many others, especially after you claim that your aunt never said X or Y, I don’t believe that your aunt’s actions prove anything about FEMINISM as an ideology (they prove plenty about her as a human being, capable of immense harm to a child, but that’s totally different).
I have been reading feminist works and interacting with feminists since the early 1980s. Feminism theories (British, French, Marxist, Anglo-American, Womanist, etc. etc.) do NOT condone the rape of children. THey do not argue for it. They do not support it. There is NO feminist theory I’ve read or any feminst work that says “let’s abuse male children to win our cause.” (Now novels by feminist writers might show a number of horrible, abusive, treatments of women, and of boys and girls–but usually in the context of trying to convince readers that the abuse is a bad thing.)
But I don’t think it’s a gross misreading of what you originally wrote for readers to take away the sense that your words as organized in the clauses you wrote could be paraphrased as “feminism condones, supports, and endorses child rape.”
Paraphrases are never exact, but as an English professorial type, with a lot of training in parsing badly written text (did I mention I was grading Annotated Bibliographies all day today), I can see where certain stylistic choices you made, especially the use of quotes, contributed to what you see as a gross misunderstanding of your words.
So, there you go.
NOt gonna argue with you–just giving you an outside expert opinion on how i think the misreading occurred. And as I tell my students in peer workshop situations, if a number of readers “misread” what you wrote the same way, you haven’t done YOUR work, so REVISE.
@Polliwog: Statistics vary. The citations I provided were random and intended to make the point about America’s high maternal murder rate.
“The United States ranks first in child homicide under the age of four years. Forty-five percent (45%) of all child murders occur in the first 24 hours of life, and thus can be classified as neonaticide.” Wikipedia
@Polliwog: “Children are three times more likely to be abused by their fathers than by their mothers.”
“How on earth is this meant to be evidence of the supposed terrible epidemic of maternal child abuse?”
To be honest, once I spotted the corroborating stats about neonaticide and infanticide I moved on to another reference. But thanks for bringing this to my attention. The reference given for the point in question was from Dr. Mary McKay, and regarded only situations of prior domestic violence against the mother. The stats were culled from domestic violence shelters where three times more children were more likely to be abused by fathers.
Ironically, the same study states children from single parent homes were the most likely to suffer violence. Wouldn’t that usually be the mother?
Clear ×The Link Between Child Abuse And Domestic Violence
http://www.yesican.org/articles/linkcadv.html
A quick perusal of some of Ms. McKay’s references indicate a heavily feminist prejudice. The “study” about the spike in domestic violence during the Super Bowl, and the nonexistent March of Dimes study stating domestic violence was the leading cause of birth defects were fabricated at this same time. All were part of the campaign to pass the Violence Against Women Act. Playing politics with kids, how despicable.
Clear ×Substance Abuse Treatment and Domestic Violence – Bibliography
http://www.athealth.com/practitioner/ceduc/health_abuse9.html
Appendix A — Bibliography
Adams, D.
Treatment models of men who batter: A profeminist analysis. In: Yllo, K., and Bograd, M., eds. Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Press, 1988.
“…as far as I can tell, sharing a gender [?] with a talk show host whose audience was apparently rude to you upwards of two decades ago?”
The issue with Oprah was not her audience, but the fact she never included men in her discussions about child abuse for the next 25 years and to this day denies that women are perpetrators of 30% of intrafamilial child sexual abuse. Or that her mother abandoned her.
Test… Test… My last comment wasn’t posted.
David, have I been banned or something?
Molly Ren: No, I will treat as an intelligent person. I do not believe you do not understand my position. However, I do believe you do not agree with it, and that you feign misunderstanding in order to dismiss my position. Since I honestly do not understand how feminists get “I blame feminism” out of “I think feminism can influence people negatively”, perhaps you could connect those dots.
ithiliana: The context of the discussion was a person joked that he would shoot boiled potatoes at a feminist to get her to stop being a feminist. This spawned a host of complaints about men’s activists supporting violence. In response, I stated that I would much prefer my feminist aunt to joke about harming me to teach me a lesson rather than what she actually did. I do not believe in ‘patriarchy’, so I put the term in quotes. The “feminism can cause bad behavior” is simply me quoting myself. I never stated my aunt made that comment. It is my position, and I presented that position after feminists stated that feminism does not condone, endorse, or support abuse. Feminists’ initial response implies that they interpreted me relating my experience as blaming feminism, which is a gross misreading of my comment. For the record, I have read feminist works and interacted with feminists (much to my physical and sexual detriment) since the early 1980s as well, and it is very clear in feminist writings that changing male behavior is one of the major methods that feminists believe would improve women’s lives. The difference them and my aunt is solely how she chose to change my behavior. I am sure feminists say they oppose violence against males. However, the way feminists treat male victims suggests there is a certain amount of apathy and antipathy at play. I hope you also tell your students that if a number of people who oppose your argument deliberately “misread” you, they are engaging in a logical fallacy.
“I think feminism can influence someone negatively” implies a causal relationship that is not in evidence.
cynickal:
I’m just astounded he was un-self-aware enough to say it.
Actually, it is in evidence as an ideology by definition influences people’s views. More so, feminists agree with the notion that feminism can influence someone positively. Unless you contend that that notion also implies a causal relationship that is not in evidence, you have a severe logical contradiction.
@TS: I hope you also tell your students that if a number of people who oppose your argument deliberately “misread” you, they are engaging in a logical fallacy.
Well, no, I don’t, because as far as I know (and that branch of rhetoric is not my area of specialization), there is no such logical fallacy.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Toysoldier: See, a logical or formal fallacy is something a WRITER does, not a reader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Toysoldier loves his sophistry.
Gee, I don’t know,maybe because you actually *SAY* it. Then of course, when it’s quoted and pointed out to you, you blame multiple readers who reach the same conclusion about your poorly hidden insinuations.
As Ithiliana stated clearly, You have no facts that we’re ignoring through consensus, you have an agenda that we’re objecting to and rejecting.
We reject your framing.
We reject your sohpistry.
We reject your attempts to use a single person’s actions that we’ve all denounced to smear an entire segment of the population.
We reject your sloppy logic.
We reject your weaseling.
You’re a sad, troubled person who needs counceling.