Over on Reddit, DoktorTeufel has a problem: he likes the ladies, but he doesn’t like the feminists. Unfortunately, some ladies are also feminists! And therein lies the danger. Naturally, he turns to the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit for help.
I’m just going to come out and say it: I will never knowingly enter into a romantic relationship with a feminist. I do have some female relatives and acquaintances who are feminists … and it’s not like they all wear signs that proclaim I’M A FEMINIST. (Some do.)
Aside from obvious telltales (feminist bumper stickers, etc.) or outright asking them “Are you a feminist?”, what are some discreet ways to ferret out a woman’s views on gender activism without creating an awkward situation? Feminism is a minefield topic, and I certainly wouldn’t broach the subject directly with a woman I’ve just started dating.
Naturally, this being the Men’s Rights subreddit, he received much helpful advice. Celda broke it down for him:
You don’t really care whether she identifies as a feminist or not – you care what her views are.
For instance, does she feel women have the right to force men into parental obligations against their will?
Does she feel women are oppressed in Western society?
Does she think that women make less money than men for the same work?
If yes to these questions or similar, then you probably want to avoid her.
Exactly. Always avoid those with a basic grasp on reality. They’re the worst!
Naive1000 suggested looking for more subtle clues.
Ask their thoughts on “benevolent sexism” if they know what your talking about you likely have a feminist. Just to make sure go into male privilege, it’s the feminists’ most popular talking point. Let her talk about it then you can see what she’s really like. But, there are some women who call themselves feminists, but are really egalitarian: they just don’t know the term.
Memymineown also suggests a subtle approach, and holds out hope that some of the younger feminist girls can be won back to the path of righteousness:
Bring Men’s Rights issues into the conversation subtly. I was talking with my family about Justin Beiber and brought up the paternity charge and no rape charges filed against the woman.
That led into a discussion about how women aren’t punished for rape.
Just do things like that.
But you shouldn’t exclude all feminists. I would say that the vast majority are just girls(I do use that word on purpose) who have been lied to. Once you show them the real facts they will probably come around.
ThePigman, by contrast, urges DoktorTeufel to go for the jugular:
Why do you need to be discrete about it? Just ask her. If she is a member of the cult she will start screaming about the patriarchy, then her head will explode.
It’s true. Pretty much every conversation involving feminists quickly devolves into screaming about patriarchy. Heck, a feminist friend and I once screamed about patriarchy for five hours straight. We probably could have gone longer, but the manager at Applebee’s, evidently not a feminist, threw us out. Sometimes I start screaming about patriarchy when no one else is around, just to keep in practice.
Conversations with feminists pretty much all go like the conversation in the video below, only instead of a cat you need to picture a feminist, and instead of the word “no,” the word “patriarchy.” You can see how annoying that might get, and not just to Hitler.
@Holly Pervocracy
50 million seems reasonable? For what? Hiring the three nannies while she pranced about playing the spoiled little socialite?
Yea I’m sure she was scubbing toilets and raising “his” children. Funny how that’s the only time men get credit as fathers! Any onther time it’s “her” children.
Yeah Lauralot : It IS.
I’ve been reading up on the Vancouver Rape Relief vs Kimberly Nixon case (which Nixon won but then was reversed on appeal) and it’s kinda disturbing because the judge’s reasons open up a whole can of worms.
NWO would like his judgement though :3 For example, he refers to VRR as a “club like sisterhood” and therefore it’s okay to exclude Nixon b/c VRR isn’t big enough to really hurt the trans community neways…
Also that a reasonable trans person would know to not apply to VRR so she shouldn’t have expected to not be discriminated against in the first place.
I think NWO would agree with both those statement.
And this is the COURT, so so much for the feminist-trans conspiracy running the world huh NWO? xD
Oh wait you can’t read this xD
Now the question is… if my workplace gets involved in doing a trans education workshop with the shelter… would NWO be for or against it? xD Who does he hate more, women’s shelters or trans ppl? xD
Okay, NWO, now this argument is getting somewhat sidetracked by the part where you hate women and don’t believe any woman ever does any work.
Hard to debate details when you get into that.
(Also, I’m just going to throw this out there: no one who has $200 million deserves it. Not in the sense of having worked proportionally a thousand times harder than someone who has $200K. So–personal bias–I don’t really give a shit what happens to $199.8 million or so of their money.)
“onther”
Dude, are you even trying?
NWO, Mel Gibson’s (a personal hero of yours, I’m sure) ex-wife got 450 million. That’s a lot more than 50 or 60 million.
@Amused
“There are no awards so large in a divorce that the man is left unable to pay for his own basic necessities.”
Then why are there fathers in prison for being unable to afford child support payments? Didn’t we do away with debtors prison ages ago?
There was this one time I was so close to getting laid, and I wanted to go to a hotel. I offered to pay my half. Unfortunately the dating/relationship/whatever it was fizzled out and it never ended up happening. Anyway, I always go dutch on dates, unless the guy absolutely insists on paying and even then I still feel guilty. Know what instilled that sense of fairness in me? Feminism!
and no, helping white men is not racist, that’s not what I said.
nwoslave | January 5, 2012 at 7:20 pm
@Holly Pervocracy
50 million seems reasonable? For what? Hiring the three nannies while she pranced about playing the spoiled little socialite?
Yea I’m sure she was scubbing toilets and raising “his” children. Funny how that’s the only time men get credit as fathers! Any onther time it’s “her” children.
o_O
Only b/c you keep referring to them as her children o_O
The rest of us don’t think that way.
NWO, you seem to be by far the most misandrist person on this site. Really, you hate men almost as much as you hate women.
Women are lazy princesses, Holly. xD
Like you!
@Holly Pervocracy
“Okay, NWO, now this argument is getting somewhat sidetracked by the part where you hate women and don’t believe any woman ever does any work.”
Don’t give me that crap, Holly. No one gets anything for work done at home. I’m not paid to cook or clean or repair. Wether it’s just myself two people or ten. And nobody deserves to be paid for doing work in or on their homes.
I, however, got another job today. So… I guess that proves NWO right. I AM a man!
Because I work!
xD
Don’t give me that crap, Holly. No one gets anything for work done at home. I’m not paid to cook or clean or repair. Wether it’s just myself two people or ten. And nobody deserves to be paid for doing work in or on their homes.
But you believe in getting full retail value back when you resell your Star Wars books.
You actually believe you’re owed quite a LOT in your life NWO. o_O
It’s weird you believe nobody else is.
Maids? Housekeepers? Nannies?
So do live-in housekeepers deserve to be paid? I mean, they live there. It’s their home too. They even get fed (Actually, a lot of families employing housekeepers seem to have trouble with this concept… but that’s their problem.)
What is the difference between a wife and a live-in housekeeper?
I bet NWO thinks women shouldn’t get paid whether it’s in the home or not. He’s that kinda dude.
One controls sex and the other doesn’t.
“@Ami: Don’t you have to paint the xD on your door with the blood of a castrated male? ”
No, you don’t have to. As the ward and sigil of a Powerful Chinese Woman, Ami’s symbol is already charged with the blood of so many castrated boys that there’s no particular need for overkill…
Overkill for GIGGLES, on the other hand, can never hurt.
Another thing NWO doesn’t seem to understand: Providing services for yourself is not the same as having those services provided for you by someone else. The latter is what’s being discussed here.
The best part of NWO’s transphobia plus his misogyny is that all of his laws and rules and stuff he wants to put on women don’t apply to me, the one he REALLY wants to get at xD
Debtors prison, yeah. But we still send people to prison for fraud.
Dracula | January 5, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Another thing NWO doesn’t seem to understand: Providing services for yourself is not the same as having those services provided for you by someone else. The latter is what’s being discussed here.
Sure it is. And NWO doesn’t pay himself.
That’s why he didn’t eat for 200 days… he made money at work, but damned if he’s gonna pay himself that money for mopping his floor!
@NWO:
First off, for Anti-Moron’s-Rights, we don’t live in a capitalist country. We live in a socialist/communist country.
No, we live in a country that practices crony socialism and crony capitalism. Your federal taxes aren’t subsidizing the poor, by and large. They’re subsidizing the corporations and military-industrial complex, and the ever-growing, malignant federal government that will fuck you when you get into the workforce.
How is wanting to end all social welfare programs and returning the wealth to the general population licking the boot that kicks me in the face? I worked a lot of hours this year and paid around 10K in federal taxes which pay for all those social programs.
Would everyone here like an extra 10K? If everyone in around the 40-60K earning area had an extra 10K to spend, that would translate into jobs. For every 4 people that would equal another 40K a year job. Everyone who was willing to work would have a job. The math is simple.
Yes, you paid taxes on material goods, roadways, postage, and a wealth of other products and services. But if you’re making $8/hr, even full-time, you’re not paying 10K in federal taxes on all of your wages. You’re only paying 10 percent (not the same as 10K) on earnings above 8.5K. People who make 50K often don’t even pay 10K in federal taxes – the years when I earned 50K, I paid slightly less. Furthermore, at your income level, if you take time to learn even the basics of the tax code, you should be able to get the rest of your federal taxes back in a refund, using education credits. My partner has been in the same situation as you – an adult student, returning to college. (If that is indeed what you are. I can’t tell if you’re 19, or 32, or 55, or what, and it’s actually irrelevant to discussions of tax code.) His federal tax rate per year was far, far less than 10K, and that was while earning $11/hr at a student job.
One more thing you should know: People earning 40K-50K aren’t job creators, unless they’re self-employed. I have been self-employed, and the most I made at that was 40K in profits. At that rate, I could only afford to hire one guy, at $15/hr, for 10 hrs/week, (under the table, incidentally, as I didn’t feel it was fair to make him pay taxes) to work with me. The people earning millions or billions are generally the job creators. Their financial situation has never been better, but they’re crying poor and refusing to hire because a Democrat is in the While House, and they don’t like it. (Neither do I – but I would loathe a Republican only slightly more because of the Religious Right.)
It doesn’t matter either way, though. You’re not interested in reading what I have to say – just cherry picking trivial bits of my writing to twist around and misrepresent – and I doubt you really care how the tax code works, or how you can use it to your advantage. You’re interested in presenting emotional, circular logic based on how unfair you feel the world is to you.