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.
I am beginning to more and more hate this.
Regularly the world which is not USA and UK and a few more is reffered and 2nd world, 3rd worlds… which is insulting as shit. Because in US some issues are resolved fenism should stop? No fucking chance.
Because in US now women have the right to vote so that issue is resolved for everyone and feminism should stop talking about it? No fucking chance in hell.
Because in US awareness towards rape and crime does exist, somehow feminism should stop talking about it and critisising it? Are they insane? Do we stop talking about people’s rights just because some group somewhere has them? What the flying fuck?
Not to mention that somehow huge issues are ignored and turned a blind-eye to, because they don’t concern “first worlders” or don’t concern them personally, like… well the whole MRA movement we are seeing (trough the lenses of Menboobz I have to add, I am sure that are examples which are not the case as what David is criticising).
Honestly, I can see why little pricks like Owly, Brandon and the genious behind the post we are currently writing under exist in the first place.
The self-importance is overwhelming…
This is really an amazing quote from Rutee Katreya. How can a process that takes a million of years produce this end result? An organism which is indispensable for the survival of the species but behaves mostly like this specimen.
Simon, you should read “The Selfish Gene.” It’s a pretty good explanation of why altruism is actually adaptive, and why organisms that behave in a “fuck you, I got mine” way toward other members of their species are far less evolutionarily fit than organisms that are capable of cooperation.
Eneya – agreed. It reminds me of when body image/eating disorders and “date” rape are lamented as “white girl problems”. A) so “white girl” problems don’t count? cause we see people get awfully upset over “white boy” problems ALL THE FUCKING TIME! B) It’s not even true in either case and yeah thats really helpful for men and people of from other races who may have these issues. way to encourage them to go get the help they need.
but yes, agreed. just because i don’t live in a comparatively extremely oppressive country and am allowed to drive and wear what I want but that doesn’t mean i’m gonna shut my mouth when I see things that are very harmful to women everywhere i turn.
Holly, I had a similar thought myself. When I read comments (usually on MRA/PUA blogs) that are just so insistent that men and women are oh so different and equality is not possible and we should not even try to mess with “nature” and change things…..its strikes me as refusing to evolve and change with the times. If I’m not mistaken, we evolve by adapting traits to ensure the survival of our species right? trying to create a more harmonious society by implementing these crazy notions of equality seems like a good start.
Quackers, that’s not really “evolution.” It’s just social progress. I don’t expect the genome to get more feminist, whatever that would even mean.
However, the idea of not messing with “nature” is still ridiculous, because whatever humans do is human nature. We’re social and tool-using animals; humans seeking social progress is as natural as termites building mounds.
Aw I missed all the fun with NWO. You guys made him really mad lol.
@Holly: Social evolution maybe?
I don’t think that explains anything, how do you know that your brand of altruism is adaptive or that it’s adaptive that this altruism encompasses all humanity? Look at ants, they’ll will happily sacrifice themselves for their colony but fight ants of others to death.
Then it’s natural too, when social changes go in the “wrong” direction.
But that’s not a standpoint you want to adapt. You want to say “inequality is really bad” and not just “we see a trend to more equality and that’s a natural phenomenon.”.
I fail to see how this can be done if you are a materialist. Within materialism or physicalism only a purely descriptive approach is possible and the word “ought” has no basis in reality.
Quackers: Men do lobby the government for shelters, but feminists oppose and fight against those efforts. Feminists did not create shelters all on their own. They had the support of men and of the local, state, and federal governments. More so, feminists claim to support all victims, not just female victims, so makes no sense for feminists to cry “Do it yourself!” when abused men turn to them for help. I do not know if it makes you an asshole to refuse to help male victims, but it certainly makes you a hypocrite if you claim to support all victims, and in my book that is far worse. It is also pretty terrible to claim that anyone arguing for men’s shelters want to defund and close women’s shelters. That kind of zero sum scare tactic only serves to delegitimize men’s valid complaints. But since you said you would donate to organizations that help male victims, I will hold you to your word. Here are several organizations at raise awareness about or provide service to male domestic violence victims: Stop Abuse For Everyone, The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women, The Gay Men’s Domestic Violence Project, and The One in Three Campaign. And please do not just donate to the third one. A lot of heterosexual men are victims too.
Ami Angelwings: Feminists do actually block legislation to aid male victims, but that is all the more reason to fight to help male victims. But just so I understand, you consider yourself an ally to male victims and their advocates, yet here you are mocking them for fighting against discrimination against men. With friends like these indeed…
Amused: I cannot say what you personally do or do not support. However, I can speak to the feminist reaction to efforts to address men’s issues. For example, in 2009 a male student attending the University of Chicago created the Men In Power club to address men’s issues, which promptly received a hostile feminist backlash. As for your question, to my knowledge no one offers scholarships to men specifically for being male, and I think offering that would violate Title IX. I have not seen men’s activists advocating for the elimination of women’s shelters, and it seems odd to only support fathers in meeting a feminist standard rather than simply helping fathers who need assistance.
Hi, all. I work in the history field, elbow deep in the history for at least 40 hours a week.
[I am sorry it’s not a very dangerous job, unless a big box of history accidentally falls on someone’s head or crushes someone’s toe, or if someone accidentally loses a very important piece of paper and then has to deal with the stress of whether or not their boss thinks they are prone to errors like a regular human person or monumentally incompetent. Only normal work dangers here.]
That being said, I feel like I am well-positioned to tell you what history was like. *cracks knuckles*
History was exactly as complicated as modern life. For every issue you had people who were completely for, completely against, uniformed, informed but indifferent, and every shade in between. Just like today.
We have a tendency to want to say, “People in the past thought this way or acted that way.” When it would be more correct to say, “Some people thought this way and some people acted that way.” This tendency is exacerbated by the way secondary sources are written, one must have a topic and disregard everything that doesn’t relate directly to that topic. So a brief history of women’s campaign for the vote might include information about the Anti-Suffrage League, but would not include the many women who just didn’t give a shit or who were too busy trying to survive to be concerned with whether or not voting would make their lives better. Or women who couldn’t read a ballot, or women who were in a place with a strong political machine whose vote only meant a couple of dollars and a ride to the poll and cannot be considered a true representation of what country they wanted to take. On and on forever.
Whether women getting the vote was historically a good thing or a bad thing, the answer has to be, like everything else, it was both. There were bad things that happened which were the direct result of women’s getting the vote, most notably Prohibition, and there were good things, the needs of women being better understood and more directly represented. There were also good things that were lost with women’s suffrage, things we might not be able to draw a clear an understanding of, and bad things whose effects were ameliorated. That’s how these things work, everything decision we make on a societal level has intended and unintended consequences, we just have to do the best we can and be willing to change course when it is required.
If you need me, I’ll be over here scanning photographs from 1944.
Re: toysoldiers.
do you have any evidence of men lobbying for shelters and feminist blocking this? I see your link below and I’m not invalidating it, but how about anything in the US just cause I’m more familiar with our system? The link posted below just seems like a parliament discussion to me. Feminists really don’t have that much political power (yeah yeah go ahead and argue that if you want, that’s how i see it. there is no “feminist party” or anything though so i find it weird when feminists get accused of these things.). Seriously though if you’ve ever spent ANY time around feminists they’re the ones that get upset over men being abused and non-feminists are the ones making jokes. I know this has all been said on here before it’s just mind-boggling how you guys make feminists the enemy. “with friends like these who needs enemies?” yuck yuck except feminists get upset over MRA stuff because they actively bash feminism sooo much and that is much different than bashing patriarchy because patriarchy isn’t something men thought about and fought for
feminists only assist fathers in “meeting a feminist standard”…what does that mean exactly?
Toydolsider, I agree that all victims should be helped and supportd despite gender.
also, i do care very much about all abused people. I do however also gravitate more toward helping women because I think I’ll be more effective helping abused women than I would be helping men because I understand what it is like to be a woman in this world more than I do to be a man. does that mean i hate men and don’t care if they’re abused to you? because i focus more on what i understand better? I do however support all safety for the abused. There’s a center near me that specifically helps transgendered people that have suffered sexual abuse and i think that is an absolutely fantastic thing to have but I wouldn’t be too great helping out there cause I have no idea what it might be like for them. I guess you can accuse feminist of blocking things that help abused men (some evidence of this would sure be nice though) but i know for sure that I personally haven’t done that and many consider me a feminist and I can say the same for every other person who may be considered a feminist that I’ve ever met.
Toysoilder,
Except they do try to defund women’s shelters. National Coalition of Men has sued women’s shelters over supposed discrimination, even when the guy in question suing was offered referrals http://www.feminist.com/news/vaw1.html
And I did a search for this on NCOFM website and I found articles stating that they sue shelters and DV related laws. That really sounds like they care about men. That really sounds like “reaching out” it sounds like revenge, that’s what it sounds like. That sounds like “well if I don’t get service, no one does!”
And yes, I’ve heard calls to defund women’s shelters from MRAs before. So no. I don’t believe MRAs care about establishing “connections” with shelter workers. They simply want to harm services that battered women really need. That’s why I, and I assume other feminists say “do it yourself” not because they don’t care, but because MRAs have made it clear that THEY dont care about female victims.
Feminists did the legwork, feminists did the petitioning, and only after that did men support them. I find it very offensive that MRAs think they can hitch a free ride because of it, all while simultaneously insulting feminism. If it weren’t for feminists, DV would probably be unheard of! I find it especially disgusting that MRAs expect feminists to bend over backwards for them while they insult and belittle feminists and a lot of the time women too. Forgive me for being a bit put off by it. I take offense by angry rants that tell me I’m a slut and a greedy gold digger for being a western woman, and a man hater just because I care about women’s rights. I find it sick and disturbing when I read MRA comments and articles excusing men who kill women in custody battles. I find it offensive and a plain out denial of history and facts when they claim women were never oppressed or had any issues at all.
Do MRAs care about the message behind slut walk? nope. They just laugh at the movement and call the protesters attention whores. And I’m suddenly supposed to care so much about they claim?
I hope my message is clear, but in case it isn’t I’ll lay it out for you. I as a feminist, am not opposed to advocating for male DV victims. I have no reason to try to stop lobbying for male shelters. But when the source of some of the DV studies are from an angry, misogynist website, it makes me very critical of the information and the studies. Especially when there is also counter evidence to those studies. You know what I find really funny? MRAs have no idea how similar their behavior is to the radical feminists they constantly rant about. The generalizing, the smearing of the opposite sex, the alienating angry tone. Like radical feminists, they touch on some important issues, but to get to them you have to wade through a fuck ton of misogyny and zero sum bullshit. MRAs are alienating. They are just as as guilty as radical feminists when they decide to paint an entire gender as bad, and the entire feminist movement as some kind of evil matriarchal agenda. They’re even more off-putting when feminists with an open mind do want to listen to what they say, but are sick of being painted as man hating bitches and all the other shit they say we are as evidenced by this blog.
So once again, I support male DV shelters, and government funding for them. But the moment I hear that MRAs try to sue/defund women’s shelters or simply try to take all that funding to further their own agenda, that I do not condone. Also please keep in mind that even though some studies claim 50/50 DV, women are still more likely to be killed by an intimate partner and more likely to be injured. This is not to discredit male victims, or to claim that men dont need shelters, but it is an important fact to consider. I will check out those links too.
Eneya: The point (I think) Rutee was making is that democracy, eveni in a limited franchise, isn’t “relatively recent”, as was argued. Since it isn’t, and the franchise hasn’t excluded women; always and everywhere, the argument has a flaw.
Since there have been more than a few examples of women holding power, leading “nations” (Boadicea, Elizabeth, Isabella, Some of the Emperors of Byzantium, etc.) it’s not as if people had no examples of women being competent.
Further, there are things such as the Salic Law, which excluded women in Carolingian Francia’ precisely because they hadn’t been excluded in Merovingian Francia.
Bullshit:
The “blocking” that you refer to was an amendment by a female Labour party member that indicates that the majority of domestic violence victims are female. Alex Neil’s motion was passed, and the help line for men was funded. You’re a liar.
What is it with MRA types conflating the expression of contradictory opinions with actual resistance at a legal level that would prevent the MRM from doing something, oh I don’t know, productive? Zarat used to do the same thing – post a link that was supposed to be an example of feminists opposing a men’s studies program as proof that feminism is preventing men’s studies programs. But as soon as you followed the link, it would be something like a feminist blogger mocking some spokesman’s reasons for the Men’s Studies Program.
Keep in mind, the program itself would be: 1) in existence and funded despite the feminist mockery and 2) doing just fine. If you want shelters, charities, scholarships, etc., study the existing laws to ensure you aren’t violating them and do the work to actually fund, build, create these projects! The laziness of the MRM bothers me almost as much as the misogyny. Yes, there will be people who disagree with you. Some of them may even *gasp* have the temerity to do so publically, rudely, and with a tone you don’t really care for. They may express opposition to your ideas.
So you keep at it. You want to be taken seriously as a civil rights movement; study how those who worked for and within those movements actually accomplished their goals. Stop invoking their struggles if you’re unwilling to acknowledge how much they were ridiculed, how much direct opposition they faced and how they succeeded despite these obstacles.
“We can’t create shelters because feminists mock us,” is an excuse made out of laziness. I’ve done development work for all men’s shelters. They do wonderful work. There should be more of them.
Blitzgal’s already covered your other lies, so I’m going to go back to this copyright issue.
“But just so I understand, you consider yourself an ally to male victims and their advocates, yet here you are mocking them for fighting against discrimination against men.”
We mock misogynists, not male victims of discrimination.
Quackers, I’ve known a few radical feminists in my time, and none are as hateful as MRAs. The only women I’ve known who categorically hate men do not identify as feminists. Just my own experience, FWIW.
Quackers – I am amased by your comment.
Just… awesome!
I can agree with that because there is no need to prove or cite traditional oppression to deal with oppression right now. I also reject the traditional subordination argument. This is a common manosphere argument that women were happy being in subordinate positions in society and home for thousands of years, therefor men have a rightful place of authority over women. Men had special privileges then so should still have them now and denying them this is oppression of men.
Toy Soldier, what have MRA’s ever done for female victims of domestic violence? All I’ve seen them do is deny it happens or say that female victims had it coming to them. It’s hard to take the MRM views on domestic violence too seriously when they write blog posts like “How to Slap your way to Slavery” or “Bash a Violent b**** Month”, and then commenters gleefully describe putting women in their place by beating them up. The moderator at men’s rights reddit also posts sick jokes at the beating women reddit. They don’t do much for male victims of domestic violence, but they do a lot to harm female victims.
Glenn Sacks and his supporters called contributors to The Family Place, a domestic violence shelter, to urge them to stop donating money to it. The reason is because he and the FRA’s were angry that The Family Place ran ads on buses which showed a girl as a future victim of domestic violence. I guess they consider it offensive to suggest that some men are capable of beating or killing their wives, even though it happens all too often. How does that help male victims? Their solution for helping male victims is to defund a shelter that actually provides services for all victims, including men.
Now you come here to tell us feminists aren’t doing enough about this problem when many of us help victims of domestic violence in the real world. We don’t deny men can be victims and we want male victims to receive help. We just don’t want support groups that think the best way to help male victims is by defunding services for women and children.
Not being allowed to vote is (apparently) a privilege.
Maybe it is time that society pampered men by taking away THEIR right to vote. Actually, I can see some advantages, given the number of men with wing-nuts in their skulls.