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.
Bagelsan: I was unaware there was a Big Feminist Handbook. However, I was aware that people often gravitate to ideologies that support their existing views, and that ideologies often prompt people with more violent tendencies to act on the bigotries espoused by said ideologies.
Rutee Katreya: I am no more slandering feminism by acknowledging that it has hateful views about males that may prompt feminists to abuse boys anymore than I would be slandering Christianity by saying that its hateful views on homosexuality may prompt people to abuse gay people. I understand that it is difficult to accept that something you value harms others, but that does not make the harm any less true. And I find it rather ironic that after chastising me for “[slandering] an entire movement” you promptly slandered the entire men’s movement.
Bostonian: That kind of abject animosity is precisely Snarkozy asked his question, and curious thing is that several other feminists think exactly as you do.
Pecunium: The reason false accusations of rape merit special attention is because of the social impact a rape accusation carries. Conviction rates vary per crime, and the difference likely lies in the potential evidence supporting the crimes. Many rape cases have little or no evidence beyond the accuser’s testimony. After last week’s execution of Troy David, think the flaw in convicting solely on eye-witness testimony should be obvious. As for the numbers you came up with, are you factoring in the cases that end in plea agreements?
There is a difference between a coincidental relationship and a causal one. Sorry to Godwin, but Hitler was a vegetarian. That does not mean the vegetarianism promotes people becoming like Hitler. The relationship of the traits was largely coincidental, it is not a causal relationship. This is distinct from an actual causal issue. Let us use for an example, veganism and vitamin B12 deficiency. Unless one eats supplements for vitamins (or food that contains such supplements), a vegan will get a vitamin B12 deficiency after a while. So, arguing that promoting veganism risks increasing cases of vitamin B12 deficiency has some traction.
That’s the difference, toysoldier. The fact that one abuser is feminist does not prove that feminism leads to abuse anymore than one vegetarian Hitlen proves vegetarianism causes holocausts. If you want to try and claim a wider causal relationship, you are going to have to demonstrate it.
If we judged movements by actions committed by just one person professing to be a member, oh shit are the MRAs in trouble.
(To be fair, so are groups like: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans, Australians, um I’m not sure if any atrocities have been committed in Antarctica but you get my point…)
I am curious, however, as to why you would think I would care whether feminists believe me given their general denial sexual violence against males.
Because that supposed general denial is a bad thing, right? A thing you would like to change if you were in control of such matters?
So why should denial of sexual violence against females be held to a different standard?
While the issue of what the courts should do is complex (although I sure as fuck know that “ignore more rape reports” is not it), in my mind what individuals should do is not–err on the side of believing everyone and just take that risk of being wrong.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to break that standard down by gender.
I am an atheist gay woman and this made me facepalm. You have a surface depth understanding of Christianity, at best, if you think you can sum it up that way. Now if you’d said catholicicsm, then you’d have a point. But you didn’t; so yeah, you’re right, it isn’t more slandering, it’s equally inaccurate. Nice job, idiot, you annoyed me enough with a stupid comparison that I’m not going to treat you any differently from the other MR Idiots we get. Well, maybe a little nicer, since I’m giving you tips for the future.
Excuse me while I throw my head back and laugh. You idiots are trying to hurt men, PoC, the gay, trans, and now you want to throw this at me?
What you said is factually inaccurate; you can not put this on feminism in a serious sense.. I had my painful moments, when I realized gradually that a lot of atheists don’t give a shit about women, when I realized a lot of feminists don’t give a shit about the gay or trans, etc. This isn’t it; this is one idiot flailing away with a stupid assertion.
Now, what you could have done is say that she is spouting rhetoric like feminists. This is the *exact claim* we made about Breivik and MRAs. And you would be correct, just as we were about Breivik. You couldn’t say that either Breivik or your Aunt were supported by their respectively similar movements based just on that though. For that you would need to find feminists on board with your aunt, and actually saying that what she did was understandable or okay. We have that for Breivik and the MR Idiots. Good luck with that.
(Protip, I suggest, although it’s lighter, that you look for any of the female teachers who raped their male students, as they have at least some media coverage)
Kollegemesserschmidt already sent you some links to some of the shit you assholes are fine with. I don’t care what you think about potential ‘irony’. I’m in an actual civil rights movement; The Men’s Right’s movement is a parody of one. Stop doing a poor imitation and maybe you’ll find allies for the men’s issues that exist.
NWO, your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
People also sometimes gravitate to ideologies that they think support their views, but which actually do not, or they say they believe that ideology because it is a useful lie to try and excuse their behavior. I believe that was the case with your aunt; if she was abusing you and calling it “feminism” then either she had no concept of what feminism is, or she was flat-out lying to try and excuse her abuse.
Feminism does not at all promote hatred of men or boys, or violence towards anyone (sexual or otherwise.) A common misconception about feminism is that it hates men and boys, but I have literally never seen a feminist support that idea — what I have seen is people pretending that feminism hates men and boys either 1) to “retaliate” against feminism by hating women and girls or 2) to hurt men and boys under the cover of false feminism in the hopes that feminists will support them or anti-feminists will blame feminism for the abuser’s bad behavior. The most violent thing I have ever seen out of any non-abusive feminists is a desire to stay away from men, and while I think that is often misguided I don’t think it could be used to justify abusing men in any way.
It really sounds like your aunt either deeply misunderstood what feminism is about, or thought feminism would be an easy scapegoat for her own abusive behavior. While I absolutely believe your account of things, and believe that you were told your abuse was “feminist”, I would not believe a word out of your abuser’s mouth because she sounds like a fucked up lying asshole. Maybe she really did think she was a feminist, but her abuse had nothing healthy or feminist about it in any definition of the word.
Again, on this very blog you find many quotes MRAs celebrating, or even actively advocating, violence against women (I even provided a few links). If the action of one person is enough to condemn a whole movement, I don’t understand how you could still defend the MRM.
Quoting the harmful things that MRAs spout does not constitute slandering.
I also think it is silly to compare Christians, a historically powerful group that actually had (and in most of the western world, still has) the power to marginalize and oppress certain groups (like non-straight and non-cis people), to feminists, who don’t have any of that power.
Please provide links to the feminists who condone the rape/physical abuse of little boys, or little girls, or teen boys or teen girls, if you think Bostonian is wrong.
Actually, additionally to rape being very underreported (especially when the victims were male), rapists are convicted only about less than 60% (check the statistics here).
Men being raped is actually more likely than being falsely accused of rape.
I don’t understand. Do you want rape survivors to be believed even less?
What about the social impact a rape carries?
Holly Pervocracy: To date, how many people have men’s activists or activism hurt? Denying that a group of people can be victims is a bad thing, and when a particular group constantly does that I see no point in valuing their opinion on that matter. No said anything about the denial of sexual violence against women, so I do not see your point. As for assuming every claim is true and taking the being wrong, that thinking is precisely why the U.S. founding fathers wrote in the Fifth Amendment.
Rutee Katreya: Thanks for dropping the feigned sympathy. Most Christian denominations regard homosexuality as sinful. I never said my aunt is like a feminist; I said that she is a feminist. Her views are feminist views. The only difference between her and other feminists is what she did. And I find it ironic that after chastising me about my aunt, you would hold a handful of random comments as proof that all men’s activists are violent misogynists. As for finding allies, I find plenty, but they are rarely feminists.
Bagelsan: I am curious: if people simply gravitate towards ideologies that match their existing views, would that not mean that all the positive things a person does comes from that person, not the ideology? In other words, should we not assume that when a feminist does something good it has nothing at all to do with feminism, but just that person? Look, you cannot have it both ways. Either ideologies affect people’s behaviors or they do not. If they do, they can lead to good and bad acts. But I do get it. Rather than acknowledge feminism’s impact on my aunt, you defend feminism to the point of claiming my aunt is not a feminist. Meanwhile, feminists on this thread argue that men’s activism makes men violent.
Kollege Messerschmitt: Stating that an ideology that expresses bigotry towards males prompted a person to behave violently does not constitute slander. According to the Stern Review, “It is clear to us that the figure of convictions for people of all ages charged with rape is 58 per cent, as the term is normally used in relation to crime.” My emphasis. My concern for victims does not trump my desire to make sure no innocent person loses his freedom. One is not more important than the other. Unfortunately feminists do not share that view.
Toysoldier: So you, with your sophistry that you aunt represents feminism because she also happens to be a feminist, you accept that Breivik therefore represents the Men’s Rights Movement, in the same way.
It’s more than any of us did.
Care to explain how a movement that expresses bigotry and violence toward women being called on it isn’t misrepresenting it, in the same way you say you aren’t slandering feminism?
Rutee. Now if you’d said catholicicsm, then you’d have a point.
No.
If you said some catholics, yes, but the Church position is, IMO, confused, but it not hateful, per se. The official position of the CHurch is that God has seen fit, in His infinite wisdom, to burden some of His Creation with the difficulty attendant to needed to refrain from any physical expression of their love.
I think this daft, and the social stigma that go with it is a real problem, but the actual practice of homosexuality isn’t, doctrinally, worse than heterosexual fornication; it’s just that there can never be any Church sanction of a homosexual relationship.
There is parallel in the way the church handles civil divorce. Someone who has been married in the church, and gets a civil divorce is living in as much sin, should they enter into any other physical relationship, as any homosexual.
MRAs lobby for abusers and rapists in the courts. They harass rape victims. They attack funding for safe houses for victims of domestic abuse.
They write apologia for pedophilia on a regular basis and pretend it is something else. They regularly deny that rape and abuse happen at all to women.
You cannot post a link that refutes me, I have links to back up all those statements. MRAs are a farce and a force for evil as they are right now.
No one has posted any link to any MRA site that lobbies for anything that is constructive.
I know that is because that link does not exist.
I think that some actions are independent of ideology, and some are not. This should be obvious: people who share an ideology can still behave in very different ways from each other, and even often behave differently in relation to that shared ideology.
Personal views can inform one’s ideology, and vice versa. For me, I’ve always believed on a gut level that men and women should be treated equally — that’s why I started calling myself a feminist. (Personal views –> ideology.) But after starting to identify as a feminist, and reading more about it, several of my personal views have changed and matured in response to feminism, particularly as it relates to other social justice movements that I hadn’t known about before and thus hadn’t formed an opinion on. (Ideology –> personal views.)
Sometimes I do good things regardless of my feminism: for example I gave my little sister some cash today to buy coffee, which isn’t really a “feminist” or “anti-feminist” action. And sometimes I do good things because of my feminism: for example I’ve stopped making rape jokes, even though I think they can be funny, because I’ve learned to view those jokes as anti-feminist.
But while personal views and ideology can often complement each other, they can also sometimes be totally at odds with each other — which is the case with your aunt. There are lots of controversial and gray-area bits of feminism (should women reclaim the word bitch? how should sex work be handled?) but rape and child abuse are not among them. Feminism is absolutely about treating people of all sexes and genders with respect, bodily autonomy and humanity — if you do not believe in these very core criteria then you are not a feminist, any more than someone who completely absorbs high-frequency visible light can claim they look purple. Words mean things, and when an abuser tries to twist those words around (a notorious tactic of abuse) that still doesn’t chance the meaning of those words, it just means that person is lying.
If I claimed to be anti-racist, and then ran around screaming racial slurs and attacking black people, everyone would be totally right to say “that is bullshit; you aren’t anti-racist” no matter what I claimed to be, because my behavior would be completely antithetical to the very meaning of anti-racism. So it is with your aunt; if she claimed that sexually abusing a child was feminist she was just flat-out wrong no matter how much she tried to claim otherwise. Maybe she did other feminist things — for all I know she donated half her income to Planned Parenthood or whatever — but child abuse and abuse of boys is still 100% anti-feminist.
If your aunt had blamed her abusive behavior on the fact that she drove a Ford or had brown hair or was allergic to pollen or anything else like that her excuses would be equally bullshit. Her abuse was no more caused by feminism than any other random thing she could have chosen to blame. And her abuse was no more representative of feminism than it would be of Ford-driving brown-haired allergic people.
Were you born this stupid? It wasn’t ‘feigned’, although I am not the first person anyone outside a very small group of people should go to for comfort. Your idiocy is so transparent, your accusations so slapdash that *I* actually became offended on behalf of Christians as well. And I’m just not going to treat you differently from the rest of your idiotic movement anymore. I have no reason to; you’re only tiny bit less stupid in that you actually are a victim.
Yup, but it’s still too diverse, and disagreement so varied (Even within denominations) that making a blanket statement for that for all Christianity is just not doable. It’s not helped in matters any by the about 400 different ways people choose to read the damn book, so the same line can be seen in entirely opposite ways.
And I didn’t disagree with you. What I said was that feminists, and feminism, do not support what she did.
Not the ones that said raping a child is fine! That’s not actually okay according to feminism. Declaring it so because a feminist said isn’t really a meaningful way to discuss the beliefs of any group, because I am *positive* that if you look hard enough that means literally every single group would then have utterly self-conflicting views.
Ah, that is not actually what I said. So not only are you stupid, but you are illiterate. What I said is that the men’s rights movement is perfectly okay with supporting violence, and does not mind it. Although I’m sure there is at least one MRA who strictly opposes violence for the sake of ‘men’s liberation’, the fact of the matter is that at this point finding such a person isn’t worth my time. The movement as a whole, at best, turns a blind eye to that violent outcry. Quite frankly, I think it more accurate to state that a strong plurality outright support violence, but lack the stomach to do so themselves (All the better, such violence would only end in tears if attempted). Look at the popularity of the Beating Women subreddit with the r/MR, for instance, and r/MR’s approval of someone who outright states he wants people who stand in the way killed (the new r/MR mod). Your movement’s foot-shuffling to condemn violent murderers is also astounding; I don’t merely mean that you say those murderers don’t represent you. That’s totally fair. I mean that when those murders happen, ther esponse is “Violence is bad BUT ITS UNDERSTANDABLE AND IF YOU STAND IN THE WAY MORE WILL HAPPEN SO REALLY ITS YOUR FAULT” That’s not really a condemnation of the violence, just an unwillingness to do it yourself.
Pull the other one.
Actually, AFAIK feminists don’t really have a unified view of what should happen to rapists in an ideal world. For instance, I don’t really want prison, at least not in its current incarnation. It’s clearly not a working system, and something a lot closer to a medical model would be better (Not exactly t here, but something much closer to it). I’d need to examine more prison systems, more models, but hte most successful ones seem to be the ones that remove only some freedoms, and notably keep the inmate integrated into society. Which, to be sure, is still worse than not losing it, but it also seems a less harsh system in general, which strongly benefits the falsely accused.
But you know, on-point, what you said is idiotic in the extreme for another reason; you’re not really trying to help all that many people. Your rhetoric works if you take a general stance on the corrections system, but if you’re really just worried about false accusations of rape, then you’re not really living up to this fancy rhetoric of wanting things to be good for the falsely accused in general. That is a much broader category, and while The Innocence Project needs more help, it doesn’t need help from assholes like you who are just trying to bludgeon women with it.
“It’s wrong to be this, and immoral, and you shouldn’t exist but we won’t legislate you out of existence” is still hateful. It’s just not as hateful as “Die, monster, you don’t belong in this world.”
Now, to be completely fair, I really should have said evangelicals *anyway*. Catholics just aren’t anywhere near that bad in comparison, outside of some Americans (In the proper sense, not USians). The Catholic Church compared to most Protestants, has been positively decent. But it is still an anti-gay organization that leverages a non-zero amount of influence against the gays. It just doesn’t try to destroy them, and compared to evangelicals, who actually want to legislate the execution of gays, it’s really not as big a deal.
Rutee: The Church (as opposed to many of it members) doesn’t say homosexuals shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t say they can’t be priests; so on that aspect they are more enlightened then they are about women).
What they say is you can’t get married, in the church, and that, as for everyone else, sex without being married in the church is a sin.
It’s not a mortal sin. Being homosexual won’t damn one to hell. So no, the Church doesn’t believe what you say it believes.
The Church (as opposed to the Fundamentalist wing of the American Catholic Church [which I am including all of both continents) is also less opposed to birth control; and to some degree, abortion, than is commonly understood (It is a mortal sin, one will end up in hell, or purgatory; for a really long time, if one fails to confess an abortion; the same is not true of birth control).
But I will grant the practice of the vocal members of the church; which includes large portions of the American Curia, is; as a practical matter, not friendly to homosexuals; and is actively working to keep them from having civic (as opposed to religious) rights.
In this regard they are being evil.
Pecunium: I never said my aunt represents feminism. I said that feminism caused her to behave the way that she did, and that her views are very much a part of feminism. The difference between my aunt and Breivik, besides the acts they committed, is that my aunt is a feminist and has been one since the late 70s, while Breivik is not part of the men’s rights movement and does not claim to be.
Bagelsan: You are not actually disagreeing with me, but you are going out of your way to claim that feminism can do no wrong. Your argument is illogical and fallacious because people engage in contradictory behavior despite their beliefs, and sometimes the ideology itself rationalizes the contradiction. Few ideologies openly endorse violence against other people, yet many present views that can easily lead to violence. That is essentially feminists’ argument against the men’s rights movement. But following your logic, since the men’s rights movement is absolutely about treating people of all sexes and genders with respect, would that not mean that anyone claiming to be a men’s rights activist who encouraged, endorsed, or committed any violence against women was not a men’s rights activist? If not, why should this not apply to feminists?
Rutee Katreya: If you want to deny available evidence, that is your business, but it only makes you look foolish. Speaking of which, I never stated anything about feminism supporting child rape. I stated that my aunt’s views and actions are informed by feminism. Those are two very different ideas. Saying that the men’s rights movement is perfectly okay with supporting violence implies that they are violent people. I am not a men’s rights activist. Feel free to insult me, but use the proper labels. Since I am concerned with anyone being falsely accused of crimes, there is no contradiction in my position. As for your anger towards me, how fortunate for you that my aunt shares your views.
And why, Pecunium, will it not marry homosexuals? You keep skating over this, and it’s growing quite irksome to see. If it actually believed something not hateful about homosexuals, it would just marry us and be done with it. There is no way to refuse to marry homosexuals and say anything but “You are, at best, lesser people, and do not deserve this rite we grant to normal people”.
It does not believe anything so virulently hateful as Protestants historically have, and the Vatican pales before the dreams of most Evangelical churches, but that does not mean that I should consider the Catholic Church not-hateful to the gay. Just less hateful than its intra-religious competitors.
Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn! It opposes birth control in a meaningful sense with demonstrated effects on large swaths of the world at large. That it does so with somewhat less vigor than is humanly possible is of little consequence to me!
1) How do you know abuse by her father did not cause her to behave the way she did, and that she also latched onto feminism as a product of that abuse? Isn’t it much more likely that she was abusive because she was abused than that a normal person discovered feminism and became sexually abusive, given everything that is now known about how abuse is perpetuated?
2) The view that young boys should be raped because patriarchy is not a feminist view.
Wait, wtf is American “in the proper sense”?
Excuse you, but if you want to talk about evidence as if you’ve provided any, you should at least have links to prominent feminists supporting child rape. Just declaring that I’m ignoring the evidence doesn’t, itself, make you correct.
You know what, you’re stupid enough that I can buy you think this is a valid rhetorical device. But no, it isn’t.
It doesn’t really produce a coherent worldview to credit every single action ever undertaken by an adherent or member of a group to the group as a whole. Nor does it make sense to impute responsibility to that group for every single individual’s actions. Again, I’m not really all that interested in Breivik just because he quacks like you MRA ducks, per se. He almost certainly has to have views that are at least roughly analagous to a group’s, and that group isn’t necessarily responsibor him (Just as it’s rather insane to blame… oh let’s take an easy one, Pacificism for all of Asoka’s killings.) What matters with Breivik (and any other extremist, especially violent ones) is how the mainstream group that’s similar to him reacts… and in this case, that is wicked glee and warnings as transparent as a mafioso’s.
No, making a big deal about rape, specifically, does in fact mean you are an asshole. Pecunium is correct in saying htat, of all the things you can possibly be falsely accused for, rape is amongst the best ones. About the only way for that to be worse, given how amazingly difficult it is to even get that to trial (At least, for white people, not nearly so difficult for hispanics and black men to at least get *that* far), is if you are accused of raping a child; then you can be sure that your incarceration will be even closer to a hell on earth than it already is. But considering successful prosecution is so low, the prison sentences so relatively easy to commute into actual jail, the parole relatively easy to get, etc, you are actually just perpetrating a narrative that is there to punish women for reporting about a crime that happens predominantly to them to focus on rape defendants as your special case.
If she thinks you’re stupid too, that I would actually agree with her on. Sometimes, even a shitty person can say something correct.
Now you’re just lying. No feminist has ever endorsed abuse of children.
If you can show any connection between feminism and abuse, then you need to bring it.
To say that feminism cause your aunt to engage in sexual abuse, you need to show that feminism is a necessary or sufficient cause of that abuse. Everything we know about child sexual abuse, however, shows that it has very little to do with ideology. Face it–your aunt is or was a sick, sick person, probably as a result of abuse by a family member. The fact that she abused you while spouting feminist doctrine does not connect the two: it fulfilled some twisted desire in her. You’ll probably never be able to hear the word “feminism” the same way I do, but it is important that you understand that this is about an abuser, not an ideology. You need therapy to see past this and I hate to make it so personal but it sounds like you need more therapy than whatever you have already gotten. You’re obviously quite intelligent but it is clear from the outside that you are looking at feminism through a warped lens. When you’re on the internet saying things like “how fortunate for you that my aunt [who sexually abused me] shares your views” you need to step back and take a look at things.
I knew I forgot to respond to something. A quick look at your blog doesn’t give me your preferred label. I don’t really care, because you are not, in practice, different from a men’s right’s idiot, but I will defer to the label you prefer. I’m going to insult you with it, but I will use the label you prefer if you actually tell me what it is, rather than whine that I have confused you for a Men’s Right’s Idiot despite you having pro MRI posts, repeating MRI talking points (Especially the inaccurate ones. Gender Bias in schools is for men, all else being equal, you grand idiot; try reading a sociology study some day), and generally being an MRI-flavored chew toy.
Toysoldier: So we are playing games of definition. Because your aunt is a feminist all her actions are the result of feminism, but because Breivik merely quoted the words and ideas of MRAs, but didn’t say, “I am a member of the MRM”, nothing he did is at all related.
No true scotsman indeed.
Okay, what is one feminist view that can “easily lead to violence”? Name just one.
Feminism is universally and explicitly opposed to violence against other people, based on its explicit regard for all people as valuable human beings deserving of dignity and safety, both physical and psychological (and spiritual, for the feminists who are into that.) And it’s not just an opposition to real world violence; the vast majority of feminist communities are also very strictly opposed even to violent rhetoric. So tell me, how does a view that says “men and women are equal” lead to violence? How does a view that says “there is no excuse for rape under any circumstances” lead to violence? How does a movement that says “no, don’t even say violent things about people” endorse violence, either openly or implicitly?
Yanno what, I’d actually be cool with that. If the MRM wants to disown the people who encourage, endorse and/or commit violence against women I think that would be a fantastic step in the right direction towards any hope of social or legal legitimacy. If prominent MRM boards and blogs wanted to state (and enforce) the kinds of rules that feminist blogs have — no sexist or otherwise -ist language, no jokes about killing or raping people, no calls for violence or celebrations of violence — then I promise I will stop calling the MRM a sexist and violent movement.
So you go get them to do that, and then meet me back here for cookies and champagne and endless highfives.
Toysoldier has written a blog post about this discussion; you can find it here:
http://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/can-an-ideology-teach-hate/
I think it misrepresents this discussion, not to mention feminism, but I guess you’ll probably want to see for yourself