I swear, sometimes I wonder if the entire Men’s Rights Movement is an elaborate hoax. Our old friend Fidelbogen weighs in today with a typically pompous post on the cutting-edge issue of women’s suffrage, posted with the almost-too-good-to-be-true headline: Women Couldn’t Vote.That Was “Oppression?” If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to dismiss it as half-baked satire – except that FB is serious, deadly serious. (And deadly dull, too, most of the time, but I’ll try to keep this snappy.)
Fidelbogen’s thesis:
It annoys me to hear the feminists say that women were “oppressed” because they didn’t have the voting franchise in olden days. Excuse me. . . oppressed? I would take exception to the semantics in this case, for is not a bit clear to me that what was happening ought to be called by such a heinous name.
While most people are either for or against women having the right to vote – though I’ve never met any of the latter group outside of MRA blogs – FB bravely declares himself “a third way thinker upon this subject.”
Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because Fidelbogen is going to get all philosophical on us:
I would submit that women’s historical lack of voting rights was neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Rather, it was a morally indifferent state of affairs, based on a cultural consensus that was shared by men and women alike in the past.
Hey, it was the olden days. People wore silly hats and watched silent movies and no one had iPhones.
Our ancestors lived in a very, very different world than we do, and their cultural norms were very, very different from ours, yet undoubtedly befitting to their world — a world mysterious and unknown to us nowadays. Who are we to judge?
I mean, really, how dare we offer any sort of moral judgment of anything that happened in the past. The Holocaust? Stalin’s purges? Hey, it was the mid-twentieth century – people were just into that shit back then.
Well, FB doesn’t mention either Hitler or Stalin, but he definitely considers women’s former lack of voting rights to be just one of those things that, hey, people were into back then:
[W]as it really, inherently, such a horrible thing after all, that women could not vote? … Why should it even matter? Did the average woman in those days honestly feel that voting was “all that”? Seriously. . . who are we to judge the men and women of past times for their very different way of life which we can no longer entirely fathom?
And besides, most men had been denied the vote earlier, so even if it matters and it totally doesn’t, what’s the big deal if the dudes in charge decided to deny the vote to the ladies for a while longer? As FB puts it:
[W]as it really such an unspeakable crime that the female population couldn’t always go to the polls during that comparatively trifling span of years?
Or is that entire concept nothing but feminist historiography, meant to wring pathos out of history for present-day political purposes by the device of retrojection? That would certainly conform to standard feminist tricknology, wouldn’t it?
Seriously. Those feminologicalnists are totally retrojecting the fuck out of the pastological period using their standard sneakyfulogicalnistic tricknology.
And besides, even though we’re not supposed to judge the past, and even thought that whole denying-the-ladies-the-vote thing was totally a “morally indifferent thing which ought to concern us very little,” FB thinks that maybe it was actually sort of, you know, cool.
I believe a case might be constructed that it was a positive good in the context of those times.
FB decides to leave that case unmade, and returns to the whole “who the fuck cares” argument.
Once upon a time, women didn’t have the voting franchise because societal norms found nothing amiss about such an arrangement. Then times changed, norms changed, and women were admitted to the franchise. That’s all. And women were never, at any point along that general story-line, “oppressed.”
Besides, the whole idea of “rights” is, well, just like, an opinion, man.
Furthermore, women were never at any time deprived of any rights. You see, women’s “right” to vote simply did not exist in the first place — or not during the period when the so-called deprivation occurred. I mean that “rights” are only a figment. Only a mentation. Only a notion. Only a construct. Rights do not exist in their own right. They are not some mystical pure essence which hangs in the air all by itself — they must be conjured into existence by a strictly human will-to-power, and fixed by law or custom.
And so, if the dudes of the world denied the ladies these “rights,” well, uh, it was “morally indifferent” yet also probably good for some reason.
In conclusion, shut your pie holes, ladies:
So in conclusion, I wish that second and third-wave feminists would shut the hell up with their dishonest, self-laudatory rhetoric about “the vote”. They need to quit tooting on that rusty old horn. It is getting really, really old.
Well, unless they’re this lady. She’s actually pretty good at tooting a horn.
MRAL hath spoken, the rest of us can leave and let him bask in his Perfect Maleness.
LyssatakeaBow: Here are two examples from the States. The is a press release, and the second is a comment by attorney Marc E. Angelucci. I have spent a good deal of time around feminists, and very few of them mention male victims, let alone make helping male victims a priority.
Quackers: Did you read Woods’ account of what happened to him? Coincidentally, California courts agreed with Angelucci and Woods that the shelter discriminated against Woods because he was male, and ruled in their favor. Could you provide an example of a men’s rights group pushing to eliminate women’s shelters? If you care about male victims, why does it matter what some other group thinks? Why would your support for male victims hinge on whether another group shares your political views?
blitzgal: I did not lie. If you read the link, the feminists who participated in the discussion refused to support the proposal, i.e. they blocked its passage, unless it included a caveat stating that men are rarely victims of domestic violence. They discredited the statistics the proposal supporters presented, yet ironically quoted statistics about female victimization from the same study. The proposal passed despite those feminists opposing providing services for male victims.
thebionicmommy: If I understand you correctly, it is fine for feminists to focus on female victims, but it is wrong for men’s activists to focus on male victims? Yes, Sacks urged Family Place supporters not to donate to an organization that ignores male victims and paints domestic violence as something only men do. I understand that feminists do not take issue with the “Men only abuse; they are never victims” view, but a lot of people genuinely concerned with helping all victims find that view appalling. According to The Family Place site, they generally service male batterers, not male domestic violence victims.
Another contra-reality idiot who can almost put on a reasonable face to trick morons like you? God, what is it with you MRAs? The real threat is the same as it always was: Our misogynistic society. Stop patting yourselves on the back.
Ah the misogynist’s use of ‘females’ as a diminutive. Never gets old. It couldn’t possibly be that it’s because equality is a laudable goal, and that someone would want it enacted, oh no.
Oh, additional irony…
I don’t think you committed one, because you only insulted me… but that’s all we do too. So this is just delicious.
“We should give a shit about what’s natural!” was the implication that we opposed, so… no, that’d be the naturalistic fallacy.
No, not generally. But if you don’t put any values on human rights *at all*, why are you even talking about them?
It’s true. Rapists also get a lot of media sympathy. See: NYT coverage of the Cleveland gang rape, the Roman Polanski petition, any number of athletes, professional (Ben Roethlisberger, Kobe Bryant) or not (the Glen Ridge case) …
Toysoldier: I admit I didn’t read it word for word, but skimming through that I see that perhaps there is discrimination, I am certainly failing to see where the discriminators are FEMINISTS though. It’s government discrimination, you may think the government is run predominantly by feminists but I assure you it is not. And no one said it wasn’t okay for MRA’s to focus on male victims but it’s not okay for them to minimize female victims in the process.
the 2nd link maybe theres some evidence but I don’t quite see it? also it’s just a link to a comment thread on an article, with other links, thats not really a great source but okay giving you the benefit of the doubt. It’s still definitely not a predominant view of most feminists that abused men should not have treatment centers and safehavens though.
Toysoldier said
No you did not understand me correctly. I think it’s fine for MRA’s to focus on male victims of domestic violence. I think that’s a worthy cause. I do not, however, think it is right for them to deny that women can also be victims of domestic violence or for them to blame battered women for their abuse, like saying that women bring it on themselves by nagging, withholding sex, or not being submissive. Could you please answer this question: Do the MRA’s care about female victims of domestic violence?
I know there are many worthy causes out there. Helping all victims of domestic violence escape abusive relationships is a good cause. However, I as an individual, have a limited amount of time and money I can give to causes. I think helping battered husbands sounds like a noble plan, and if that is what you want to do, I wish you well. I personally am the most concerned with helping tornado survivors in Joplin right now, because I am one of them and I feel what they’re going through. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about anyone else.
Toysoldier, it is horrible that there’s ongoing discrimination, but who are the “feminist groups”? NOW? NARAL? Ms. Magazine? None are named, just that they’re the ones protesting.
I’m not saying that those people don’t identify themselves as feminists, but it’s… I don’t know, unfair, I guess, to categorize the feminist movement as a whole based on them. You are still an MRA despite their extreme hatred and violent imagery, right? The thing is, it’s impossible to completely overcome enculturation. The best any of us can do is keep an eye out for our biases and be graceful when someone else points them out. There are plenty of people, including women, who claim to be feminists, but still are largely stuck in the sexist, patriarchal mindset.
When I was in college, one of my guy friends was raped. And no one called it rape, which I am really ashamed of today. We all knew it was a fucked up situation, but he’s a really tall Aikido black belt, and the woman is, like, half his height. That’s not the patriarchal view of rape – women are not capable of harming men, particularly when there is a size disparity and, dude, again, black belt. I’ve considered myself a feminist since I was in middle school, so you could claim that “men can’t be raped” is a feminist belief; it was true of one feminist at one time (although I wouldn’t have said that, ever, clearly my actions contradicted my beliefs). Now, thanks to more reading into feminism, I know that was rape. While I still struggle with the beliefs about men and women that I grew up with, at least now I recognize that, if a situation is rape when it’s a dude doing it to a woman, it’s equally rape when it’s a woman doing it to a man. That is very much a feminist belief, that men and women should be treated equally. What I thought back in college was fucked up, and it was feminism that fixed that.
Okay, that was a really long-winded way of saying that overcoming biases is hard. The idea that women cannot hurt men is not feminist, it’s a relic of the patriarchy, and we need to continue to educate people, not scrap the whole movement. Feminists have always made mistakes and often enforced, rather than dismantled, the kyriarchy. But that’s because we’re human, not because we’re part of a hate movement.
Ah Woods. Yes let’s talk about Woods. The court noted, of course, that most publicly funded DV shelters in California were already gender neutral, so the ruling should change little. While Woods v. Shewry isn’t an example of a MR group pushing to eliminate women’s shelters, it is a good example of the MRM (again) pushing to coopt feminist work. As Alas, a Blog said,
“Many or most DV services were initially created by feminist work and activism; MRAs have done none of the hard work involved in creating this network. Nor is the MRA movement fundraising to enable DV programs affected by this ruling to add services for men without reducing services for women, or lobbying to increase funding for DV shelters.”
It’s nice that a few more male victims and their families will be helped under this ruling. But the MRM still fucking sucks.
@random6x7: Just sending applause your way for a fantastic, awesome comment that discusses how long and hard the process of working out of kyriarchal mindsets can be — it’s making the process part of one’s life that i define as important, not implying that somehow feminists or any other activist have “perfected” it all. I’ve struggled long and hard with biasses that I grew up with–as well as those i acquired in the early 80s from some second wave feminist writings.
I admit I haven’t been here long, but in the comment threads I’ve taken part of, I’ve noticed a pattern. DKM and/or NWOSlave appear, try to spout their MRA talking points, are countered by a tidal wave of reasoned debate, intelligent discussion, and insults which are all more than they could actually manage. After struggling for a while against this, they slink away, no longer able to actually meaningfully counter what’s arrayed against them.
So why do they keep doing it? Do they think that maybe the next time someone will have slipped us bimbo pills or something? Because those are… not actually real. Then again, neither is most of the other stuff they believe, so I wouldn’t put it past them.
Okay, catching up, so I will try to make a whole bunch of points at once
1. Why is shelter access gendered? Or, more specifically, why was it gendered initially? The answer to this is not what you might think. The shelter movement grew out of the prohibition movement, actually. The notion was that alchohol, which men consumed at far higher rates than women (this gap has narrowed greatly in the ensuing time period) caused abuse. So, some programs that offered rehab services for male alchoholics (often excluding female alchoholics) offered temporary shelter for the abused spouse and children while the man was undergoing the process meant to rehabilitate him. So, while male victims were excluded from help, so were female alchoholics, and these services were linked. Delinking abuse shelters from alchoholism programs is a more recent development.
2. Often, MRAs have no clue about the actual laws and procedures to which they are objecting. For example, VAWA funding is gender nondiscriminatory towards programs that apply for grants (some states actually give priority to male victims services grants as “underserved population” grants). Also, the have a tendancy to advocate very, very harmful policies that are not the best way, or even a good way, to “solve” the target issues. For example, those who complain about a men only draft but support a men only combat rule. Since the draft is intended to gather combat soldiers, there is no point wasting resources registering those who cannot be combat soldiers (this is discussed extensively in draft cases). These people often destroy their own arguments. This is because most of them do not actually want to end sexist oppression of women or gender segregation, but rather they want to maintain or expand male privilege but have a wider range of allowable masculinities for men.
3. Traditionally oppressed groups are more wary about privileged people only areas than the reverse, and rightly so. Traditionally privileged groups often have used these spaces to further entrench their power status and to segregate the oppressed groups out. This is why a “Men’s Power” group is not equivalent in practice to a “Women’s Power” group, or a “White Power” group to a “Black Power” group. The presumption when the group in power discusses its power is that it intends to hold onto the disproportionate amount of power/resources it has traditionally held.
4. Protectivism is not valuing a person, it is a protection racket. It is “if you do not obey restrictions X, Y, and Z, and give us A, B, and C, we will be violent towards you”. This is why there is so much pressure on female victims to be the perfect victim, for example, the intense scrutiny of the victim’s lack of virginity in many rape cases. Built into this system is the fact that those who do not knuckle under are intentionally selected for violence and thrown to the wolves when they are victims. In order to be the good victim, the perfect victim, a woman must actively work against both her own best interests and the best interests of women as a class. Sometimes, even if she does this, the fact that she got the bad result that is often blamed on the “deviant” behavior of the “bad” woman victim is taken as proof that she was a “bad” woman. This has often been true of other oppressed groups as well in certain situations (though gender oppression is one of the most, if not the most, protectivist in modern western culture). Still, you can see similar things in some ways with the poor. The “good” poor must maintain lip service to a system which oppresses them, which elevates the interests and status of the rich, which denies them pleasure in life, etc. and must sell out the “bad” poor in order to be considered worthy of praises.
@ithiliana: Thanks. It really is amazing the kind of doublethink that people can put up with, and while it’s always nice to claim it’s just the (right wing/MRAs/whoever) that experience it, the truth is, we all do. It’s not fun to realize it; Lord knows I feel sick over that situation, and some others, and it’s disheartening to think about what I’ll be cringing about in another decade. But my comfort isn’t the issue, when it comes to prejudice.
Please, I am not an MRA. Really not.
And I never said, that Pelle Billing is reasonable person, but he comes over as one.
No, that wasn’t my intention. I used the words “females” because I had in mind a comparison between human and non-human females.
But you’re right that I don’t like women, I admit that. I don’t like humans in general if that makes it better.
I don’t remember if I did that and if so it probably wasn’t sincere.
@Nezumi: So why do they keep doing it?
There are several theories about that: one, they think they won (they go crow and strut on other blogs, as well as on occasion here, about how THEY showed THOSE evil feminists and manginas).
Two, they are looking for dominant women (did you see how DKM explained how anybody here is a woman if they are a feminist or something blah blah blah) and are too cheap to pay for the services of a good dominatrix so they come here for the beatings.
Three, one or more is a trolllliln’ troll here for the lulz.
Did I miss any of the theories, fellow e.f.a.m.?
I used the words “females” because I had in mind a comparison between human and non-human females.
Oh, okay then.
Toysoldier,
It matters because before I give a group my money, I want to know that its going to benefit men, but not harm women in the process. Even Straus mentioned this in his findings. Therefore if I see anti-feminist sentiment (and not just valid criticism, but purely anti-feminist) I get suspicious. And Given the track record of every MRA website I’ve been to, they are explicitly pro-male and anti woman. They downplay women’s issues and belittle our current activism like slutwalk, while further reinforcing why it exists in the first place like telling slutwalkers they should expect to be raped by dressing the way they do. To put it bluntly, while I’m sure there are some MRAs out there actually care about men, the majority of the online MRAs are just an angry backlash movement with an agenda. I can’t give you a link because these are mainly comments from MRAs always ranting about the domestic violence “industry” and how shelters are evil without looking at the entire picture. Yes, men do need shelters, but so do women, and transfolk and gay and lesbian folk. All the while I’m wondering “so why don’t you guys get off the internet and actually DO something” the same could be said for feminist activists who are mainly activists online too. Not that online activism doesn’t help, but it doesn’t get shelters built.
As for the article, the one I posted was not about Wood, but a different man named Eldon Ray Blumhorst. Not only that but he got NCOFM to sue 10 shelters. The courts sided with the shelters. Now tell me, don’t you think all that money he spent to sue could have been better used towards a men’s shelter? don’t you think it would have made more sense to go to the media and tell his story rather than try to take money away from women’s shelters that already are low on funds? a media appearance could have brought even more male victims forward. They could have gotten together and applied for a government grant (I think its a grant).
This is what everyone is frustrated about, it just looks like MRAs want to harm women and children victims. It would make more sense to network with shelters and ask them how they got started, how they got funding, etc. So when we say “do it yourself” we don’t mean don’t ever ask for help, we just mean dont expect us to drop everything to focus on your cause only. I don’t know how else to explain it. This goes for every cause really. As for the feminists and shelters out there who are going to try and stop you, if they actually do exist, screw them. Building a shelter for men is not against the law, there really isn’t anything they can do to stop you. I know there are feminists who will back you up, but if the current MRM keeps alienating and insulting ALL feminism, and pretends that battered women dont exist and it isn’t a problem, feminists are just going to shut off and not consider your POV.
Anyway I’ve said all I need to say. Darksidecat covered a lot of good stuff in his comment. I will keep supporting male victims and correcting misinformation when I can (ie that men can’t get raped or battered) I have limited funds too so I can’t donate often, not even to women’s shelters. So I’ll do what I can, but am still very critical of what comes out of the MRM.
A lot of DV talk goin on. How many women only DV shelters were started by men? How many are funded pimarily by men? Does the State fund any with our joint taxes? It seems many DV shelters were primarily started/funded by men.
The near 100% prevailing thought is, if men want DV shelters for men start and fund them ourselves. I just thought it’d be nice if women returned the favor for all men have done for them.
urg….long comment is long haha
Captain Bathrobe: I guess when I was thinking of radical feminists I was thinking of Valerie Solanas, especially since she’s the one MRAs keep ranting about. Mainly I was comparing the abrasive language and the hostility in the writing. But it doesn’t surprise me that you say know non-feminist women who hate men. I read a study that showed traditional, non-feminist women are actually more sexist towards men and expect them to “be a man” and pay for everything etc.
Eneya: thank you!! 😀
Yea right NWO…women did and still do absolutely nothing to fund shelters, nor do they work at shelters. Its all men. *eyeroll* Did you even read the comments? no one is opposed to helping men by donating, networking, and exchanging information. It just gets annoying when they expect us to drop everything for them and when they whitewash the issue of male on female violence.
Do you donate to women’s shelters? do you care about women victims?
actually when I say men, I should really say MRAs
NWO doesn’t read. That would be too much to expect.
“David is a mangina.”
Every time you use the word “mangina”, god kills a puppy.
Does the State fund any with our joint taxes?…
The near 100% prevailing thought is, if men want DV shelters for men start and fund them ourselves. I just thought it’d be nice if women returned the favor for all men have done for them.
I know Ami’s out there on the ground working for men. I know others out there.
Quick question, NWO, which I’m sure you’ll duck like everything else I say to you. Should the State be funding men’s shelters with “our joint taxes” or not? (I know Ami’s out there on the ground working for men. I know others out there.) As a libertarian, I don’t really seek or recommend state funding for any project, of course,(Though, again, it bothers me far less than military/police spending or sweetheart deals for Wal Mart, but I digress) but you seem unclear as to whether or not State funding of shelters is appropriate, or no. Is this a case of women voting and taking our precious tax money and bankrupting the state you… Support? Don’t support? Is it bad that the state does anything to support women’s shelters because the State is bad, or because it doesn’t do so for men? Help me out here, freedom loving individualist? Throw me a bone?
NWOslave | October 19, 2011 at 7:22 pm
A lot of DV talk goin on. How many women only DV shelters were started by men? How many are funded pimarily by men? Does the State fund any with our joint taxes? It seems many DV shelters were primarily started/funded by men.
You seem to know all the answers to this. You tell us? :3
After all, your opinions aren’t conclusions that you’re assuming are true right? They were constructed FROM facts you found? So show us those facts that convinced you to your position that DV shelters were all created and funded by men :3