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.
<blockquote. It is a thing of beauty and joy forever. It’s glorious, the delicate heft, the idiosyncratic voices of the writers (not yet slaves to a stylebook), the sense of depth and completeness to it.
The splendid errors, mixed in with the true facts. The sense of time and place it has.
I read through that whole thing and all I could think was old book smell.
Sigh. That and an original three-foot-long set of Harvard Classics on beautiful cherry-wood shelves. Someday!
ok Toysoldier, why don’t men lobby the government for shelters? this is what I do not understand. Feminists did the work for it, yet MRAs just want to defund those shelters…WTF?? Asking you to do the leg work is perfectly reasonable, because that’s exactly what feminists and women have been doing. Oh but I guess I’m sexist because of that right? Am I an asshole too if I choose to donate to one particular charity over the other too? would I be evil if I donated to a charity for research on one particular disease over another one? Are YOU doing anything done to get a shelter built? I really hope so.
and no, that is a very legitamate reason. If I was being beaten to death by a male partner, I would choose a shelter that did not house men, one that he could easily try to get into. Sorry but when you fear for your life, the only thing that matter is being kept safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if battered men chose a shelter that housed men only either.
I don’t oppose shelters being created for men, hell I’d donate even. What I do oppose is so called MRAs calling for the de-funding and shutting down of women’s shelters, and basically trying to take away money that they really need. Whitewashing the issue of battered women is pretty fucked up too. Shelters don’t get a lot of money as it is, and they often have to turn women away. This happened to one of my friends too. So no, as a feminist, I don’t oppose advocacy for male victims of DV, I oppose douchebag MRAs telling feminists to stop caring about battered women and demanding all the money go to battered men instead. It was feminists who brought DV to light in the first place, where were the MRAs then?
Pecunium, nice. I have a reprint of that edition, which I got for free while I was working there. Not quite the same, but I like it.
So by extension, after the Civil War, when a bunch of states and cities passed laws that made it so black people were effectively unable to vote, that was also totally cool and for the best, and not at all oppression.
I love the endless layers of irony in NWOslave claiming we’re trying to one up him and engage in “victimology,” literally right after saying a) anything women get, men get worse and b) men oppress women and by the way my name is NWOslave and my avatar is a picture of hands in shackles. Are we entirely sure NWOslave isn’t a performance artist?
Honestly, either the guy is a performance artist OR he wouldn’t recognize intellectual consistency if Aristotle rose from the grave and bashed his brains in with the entire corpus of philosophical thought.
I’m going to go ahead and venture a guess that the answers to Toysoldier’s “how many feminists would NOT” questions are all about 99%.
It is rather fascinating to compare the basic viewpoints on which feminism and the MRM are based. Feminism saw a world in which men and women did not have equal rights – men had more. Feminism’s solution was to fight for more rights for women. The MRM sees a world which it thinks is unequal, in which women have more rights than men. It’s solution is to fight for women to have less rights.
Constructive versus destructive. It’s a pretty simple difference in fundamental approach, but a very important one.
“I love the endless layers of irony in NWOslave claiming we’re trying to one up him and engage in “victimology,” literally right after saying a) anything women get, men get worse and b) men oppress women and by the way my name is NWOslave and my avatar is a picture of hands in shackles. Are we entirely sure NWOslave isn’t a performance artist?
Honestly, either the guy is a performance artist OR he wouldn’t recognize intellectual consistency if Aristotle rose from the grave and bashed his brains in with the entire corpus of philosophical thought.”
HAHAHAHAHA!
“I’m going to go ahead and venture a guess that the answers to Toysoldier’s “how many feminists would NOT” questions are all about 99%.”
Yep. Same song and dance.
I predict +400 comments, many from Toysoldier’s bullshit. If it gets to less than that, I’ll give myself a purple nurple.
In terms of the shelter movement, and the fact that many shelters don’t accept men, a more accurate criticism than the one TS is leveling would be that the underlying assumptions are very heteronormative. One possible counterargument would be that the majority of the population is straight, so there are numerically far more women in need of shelter from abusive male partners than shelter from abusive female partners. (This argument has some problems, by the way – there’s some truth to it, but it’s still too limiting.) The MRM, otoh, doesn’t care about the heteronormativity, or about men who’re abused by male partners.
Man this is fun. It’s like that episode of star trek where data had a conversation with the one-upmanship guy.
Starship Mine? xD
Also I notice that you’re avoiding Zhinxy who can kick your butt on your faux-libertarianism XD
So rly,this isn’t fun for you xD
(sorry I was out xD guess doing what NWO? 😀 You’re the expert on other women and queer ppl’s lives after all xD)
ok Toysoldier, why don’t men lobby the government for shelters? this is what I do not understand. Feminists did the work for it, yet MRAs just want to defund those shelters…WTF?? Asking you to do the leg work is perfectly reasonable, because that’s exactly what feminists and women have been doing. Oh but I guess I’m sexist because of that right? Am I an asshole too if I choose to donate to one particular charity over the other too? would I be evil if I donated to a charity for research on one particular disease over another one? Are YOU doing anything done to get a shelter built? I really hope so.
Because feminists would destroy any attempt to do so and then jail the men. Feminism will oppose any attempt to help men, and that’s why you shouldn’t try. >_>
http://ami-rants.blogspot.com/2011/07/amis-safe-space-project.html
Also this is a good time to promote my safe space project again 😀 (I need to update it a little with new submissions… )
I showed the facilitator of my YWCA trauma therapy group too and she’s going to contribute and spread it around too 😀
Oh those evil feminists! XD
“Because feminists would destroy any attempt to do so and then jail the men. Feminism will oppose any attempt to help men, and that’s why you shouldn’t try. >_>”
Huh…then why be an MRA?
“Well, uh…because FUCK YOU MANGINA, THAT’S WHY!”
I’ll be completely honest and just say that I skimmed through this thread, so apologies if I am doubling up here.
The fact that women had to wait and struggle for a *mere* (jesus!!!) 26 years to gain the most basic right to VOTE is egregious enough. And we’re still not granted a right to our own bodily autonomy!!
I’m sure that the MRM folks have a say on this, and I would just like (ahem…LOVE) to turn the tables on them.
Things would be much easier if there was only one super misogynist.
I’m going to go ahead and venture a guess that the answers to Toysoldier’s “how many feminists would NOT” questions are all about 99%.
Over 9000.
500? As if, Ami! NWO is a total caveman. Throughout history, he has hunted the mammoth for women who did not respond with the desired level of wanting to bone him in return. All of civilization’s anti-male oppression HAPPENED TO HIM!
He was there when a caveguy first decided that he wanted to woo a cavegal rather than abduct her. OPPRESSION!
He was there when a cavegirl he wanted badly insisted on taking a neanderthal as her mate instead of him. The guy was freakishly tall, had an annoying voice, smelled different, and was a total THUG too, but he figured that must be what women want. OPPRESSION!
He was there when agriculture led to the development of beer. In fact, he was the first person in history to wake up the next morning next to someone he found tremendously unappealing. OPPRESSION!
He was there when society became organized and food plentiful enough for a handful of men to seize power and authority over thousands in order to treat themselves to lives of opulence and near-constant copulation with multiple ladies meeting their society’s highest standards of beauty. And none of those powerful new kings was NWO. OPPRESSION!
He was there when Jesus said to turn the other cheek and that those who were wealthy should give to the poor. A man who has two robes should give to he who has none. Don’t worry about being wealthy and awesome, look at the flowers, they just live to the best of their abilities, and are more beautiful than any wealthy person’s designer couture. Oh, and treat women, prostitutes, foreigners, and men who prefer to hang around lots of other men with respect. NWO of course found this all nauseating, but kept his opinions to himself because there were lots of people around who would disagree with him, and he was a coward. OPPRESSION!
He was there when Siddhartha Gautama first gained enlightenment and became the Buddha, proclaiming to the world that desire is the source of all pain, and letting go of desire the cure. NWO was so shocked he fell into a wandering fugue until the Hoover administration. OPPRESSION!
NWO was there, dude. HE KNOWWWS
…just not how to find happiness..
Well, he could find happiness if only society would allow him to abduct and have sex with 14 year old girls. Alas and alack, his one chance at happiness has been denied, and it’s all feminism’s fault.
500? As if, Ami! NWO is a total caveman. Throughout history, he has hunted the mammoth for women who did not respond with the desired level of wanting to bone him in return. All of civilization’s anti-male oppression HAPPENED TO HIM!
So NWO is 5000 years old xD
That’s how he knows the theory of evolution is wrong. He was there. xD
Behold, we have found the missing link.
If only women had the entrepenurial spirit to do that on their own back in the ancient days. No one helped individual men, they did it on their own back then.
Example please? :3
So wait, NWO is Vandal Savage?
For the Big Book of Larnin’: The only kind of oppression that exists is oppression by law. Also, “If men and women each had their own crosses to carry, than no one was oppressed.”
Slavey:
You guys, he has many leather-bound books!
Cassandra:
Unless David’s sitting on stuff, his flounce was his first comment in this thread.
Toysoldier:
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