Over on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, cheester warns all of us dudes about an especially insidious form of anti-male oppression: the racks of women’s magazines that lurk near the checkout counters of grocery stores everywhere!
can I get some feedback on womens magazines at the grocery checkout? Every issue states “new tricks he doesn’t know in bed” and shite like that. It’s obvious porn for the gals but why is it so accepted by everyone that it has carte blanche to be within a two foot reach as I pay for my food? If a magazine for men had on the cover: “20 Ways To Make Her Squirm Like A Fish”….there would be a national outrage.
Yeah, it’s not like Men’s magazines ever run anything like that.
Church groups and womens rights would say it demoralizes women and have the publication banned or put behind censored racks in seedy smoke shops.
Yeah. It’s not like this ever happens to women’s magazines.
But the womens mags are right there as a last shop item in the flourescent lit, sterilized, family atmosphere where every mother parades her toddlers and kids right past the 3 letter word in big black block letters;SEX on the cover of every flashy colored womens mag that comes out each month.
Not only is this oppression of men, it’s oppression of all toddlers who can read and know what the word “sex” means.
Also, feminists have never criticized women’s magazines in any way. “Ten Ways to Make Him Squirm” articles are the distilled essence of feminism! And most of them are written by the ghost of Andrea Dworkin.
NOTE: Does this even need a “sarcasm” tag?
Huh, I didn’t know about herbivore men before now. This has been educational.
But what I just learned is that the main traits of herbivore men are:
1. Not interested in sex
2. Interested in friendship with women
3. Not interested in traditional masculinity
4. Interested in simple, unambitious living
This isn’t just “not MRA.” This is more like “polar opposite of MRA.”
Sorry to double post, but I forgot to add that comparing dv to consensual BDSM is comparing apples to zebras, DKM. They are nothing alike. If an abuser is controlling hir partner with violence, that is not “a good fight before a good night”. It is assault, and comparing it to sexual roleplaying minimizes the experience of DV victims.
Now I’m confused. Feminism is running the world and has changed everything… and feminism hasn’t accomplished anything since the 70s and has changed nothing?
I need one lie, peoples.
How reliable is the Duluth wheel? Is it a feminist concoction, or is it equally applicable to male DV victims, gays and lesbian couples, etc? Maybe it is something that could be helpful with certain couples, maybe not.
I don’t know if it is entirely feminist, and if so, would the MRAs be correct in their criticism, or are they altogether mistaken, and it could even be used to help men?
A question that deserves to be asked, if not answered!
Yah, Meller, we’ll be sure to take suggestions on how to improve relationships from someone who is so terrified of modern humans that he thinks his doll collection is the only reasonable alternative.
Look at me — I’m a Mellerphobe!!!!
I’m actually really psyched about this. Off to make a T-shirt, peoples.
Please go home to your empty sad life and your doll collection. We’ll manage just fine without you and your “help.”
Okay, that’s nice, any thoughts on Long’s libertarian family law model?
http://praxeology.net/libertariannation/a/f43l2.html
P.S. Holly’s why did she stay post is certainly not the same old thing, and is exemplary in it’s refusal to be gendered. It is NOT something you could have gotten in 1975, it is the work of an experienced and compassionate emergency room worker, and as a survivor, I think it’s one of the best “layman” pieces out there.
“This isn’t just “not MRA.” This is more like “polar opposite of MRA.”
Yup, that’s why it’s so hilarious that heroicman is trying to claim them for the cause. They’re a bunch of sweet, gentle guys who love cats and cake and hanging out with female friends, and they have no interest at all in being the head of a household. In a lot of ways it is a reaction against ideas about masculinity, but it’s about as different a take on “the conventional model of how to be a man sucks, I want something different” as you could possibly come up with.
Meller – I’ve followed this whole thread. What you’ve just said is “People still commit acts of domestic violence, so you should stop trying to help the victims and instead just join me in blaming them“.
I mean sweet unicycling baby jesus, what is wrong with you? (Don’t answer, I’m well aware) – so refuges, helplines, legal support, financial support, the creation of a society where people know the police will be on their side, education and awareness-raising, none of that means shit or has done anything to help victims of IPV in any way because it hasn’t stopped everyone from abusing their intimate partners. Which is OBVIOUSLY the fault of feminism, right*?
Someone said earlier that there is only so much that society can do, and at the end of the day what will fix things is people not abusing their partners. I echo that times a million. It doesn’t mean that feminism has failed, or that society has failed (if it does all it can do), it means that the person who is abusing their partner is an abusive arsehole and the one that has to change.
*SARCASM klaxon
Oh! I get it now! The first time a woman is assaulted, it’s her fault because she wasn’t submissive enough. After that point, his man-abuser switch will be set to “on,” therefore he will be an abuser forevermore and when she is assaulted again, it’s her fault for staying with him! You’re right, Meller, your theories are internally consistent.
And while I totally agree with you, TheNatFantastic, I’d point out that as someone who’s interested in restorative justice and transformative justice, I actually am really concerned with dismantling and examining the cycles of violence that include perpetrators as well as their victims.
HOWEVER, that is a separate conversation from the conversation about how to care for victims and keep them safe and give them the support and knowledge they need while keeping perpetrators from harming them or others. I think that feminism and the DV movement has been better at this than the former, but the transformative justice movement is still pretty young, and hasn’t been well-integrated into other justice movements yet. I think it’s something that can be focused on for the future.
There could be some improvements to the Duluth wheel. It would be better with gender neutral pronouns like zie and hir to better represent male victims and LGBT victims. Just because there is room for improvement, though, does not mean it isn’t useful at all. It is very helpful for victims to read about the common aspects of abusive relationships so they can recognize the warning signs in their own relationships.
I also think feminism deserves the credit for bringing awareness to the issue of DV. There are a lot of myths in society about DV, and feminists have been the main advocates to educate the public on the realities of DV and provide outreach services for victims.
well, dkm, if you keep screaming ‘bias!’ about research whose contents youre completely unaware of, what conclusion are we supposed to come to except that youre making excuses for not reading it because you think the details will make you uncomfortable.
accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being part of a feminist conspiracy isnt going to change the fact that you seem awfully resistant to educating yourself on an issue you proclaim you care a great deal about.
Bee – Hey, I know what you mean – you’re talking to someone who’s studied the matters at length. I was just trying to point out to the troll that feminism hasn’t ‘achieved nothing’ when it comes to helping victims of IPV, and his solution wasn’t more TJ, it was ‘fewer womens’ rights’ – like all his other solutions seem to be :/
How reliable is the Duluth wheel? Is it a feminist concoction, or is it equally applicable to male DV victims, gays and lesbian couples, etc? Maybe it is something that could be helpful with certain couples, maybe not.
I don’t know if it is entirely feminist, and if so, would the MRAs be correct in their criticism, or are they altogether mistaken, and it could even be used to help men?
see this is the thing. if you were actually interested in knowing the answers to these questions, youd go out and read the literature on the subject and form a conclusion based on that. but you dont seem to want to do that so much as you want to go on about how ‘we cant ever know whether facts are real, therefore my random conjectures are as relevant as anything else’. its not the mark of someone whos taking things seriously.
Pfft. Maybe it’s because I live in a college town, but around here the grocery stores put Maxim in the checkout lines along with the women’s mags. I swear, you could do a regendering on Cosmo and Maxim and come up with interchangeable headlines.
Do me a favor. The next time I am daggone CRAZY enough to babble about equal access to education, or even schooling, for women, at least above the third or fourth grade level, somebody serve me some manboobz.com posts–along with some others from e.g.feministe.com, feministing.com, or Pam’shouseblend.com–and then shoot me!
If I ever believe in this feminuttery, then I am too demented to live. Shoot me!
so now that youve discovered that nobody here is going to accept your wild, fact-free conjectures about dv as useful or informative, youre just going to go back to your usual ‘blame feminisms for everything’ pity party? got it.
I think, from DKM’s perspective, he really went out on a limb for us. Saying “DV is bad” was him humbling himself, extending the olive branch, really going halfway for us.
The fact that we took issue with the part where he was still victim-blaming and anti-feminist really shows our inability to compromise. And I think he’s feeling quite burned by that.
“so now that youve discovered that nobody here is going to accept your wild, fact-free conjectures about dv as useful or informative, youre just going to go back to your usual ‘blame feminisms for everything’ pity party? got it.”
He never fails, doesn’t he? His constant, bland rythum of bitter rants and chest-thumping…if it were an album, it would probably be one by Paris Hilton, or something.
Is this like one of those secret messages? If we sang it in a round, would we hear Meller’s sad cry for help?
I am babbling, I am demented, etc.
Hey now. Paris is annoying, but she doesn’t appear to be homicidal.
Zhinxy, are suggesting that abusers don’t, on the first date, smack their date across the face in the middle of the coffeeshop, announce to all the bystanders that he plans on making this a pattern in the future, and then turns back to ask his lady to move in with him which she gleefully does?
‘Cause I had totally thought that’s how it went. :p
I actually had a guy hit me on a second date once. It wasn’t exactly a fury-hit, it was more of a “I’m hitting you as a joke because it’s funny because I would never really hit a woman” hit–but it was hard enough to hurt.
There was not a second date.
(NOTE FOR THE BENEFIT OF DKM AND OTHER NOT-SO-BRIGHT READERS: This is not a typical experience. Most abusers can hold together the “charming and harmless” act a whole lot longer than that. They probably don’t even know it’s an act themselves–they probably think of themselves as harmless, but every guy has his limit, right?)