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.
As always, no one is better able to rhapsodize on the joys of childcare than a man with no children.
MRAL, why are you still here? You say you had a turn around, or something, and you were lashing out, so now you’re supposed to stay here and lash out and be a dick and half, and we should understand, just because you said you were sad and angry? Or something?
Fuck you, dipshit. Everybody here gave you way more fucking sympathy, understanding, and kindness than you EVER did anything to deserve, and here you go stamping your feet at how unfair it all is and how they just can’t see your point of view and how you suffer too and all of this is bullshit and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
YOU. ARE. A. BROWN. STAIN. ON. HUMANITY’S. SHORTS.
MRAL: Do explain just how these studies are incomplete and back you up?
MRAL: All we have is anecdotes. The studies are incomplete and frankly, if you want to get right down to it, they side with me, not you guys. Controlling for variables, wage is similar across genders.
Really… did you read the GAO report I was talking about above? I used blockquotes and everything to make it easier.
Huh. I didn’t know community colleges were awarding medical degrees. Learn something new every day.
In fact, if you do your pre-med gen eds at CC, it’s gonna be a big, uphill battle to get into medical school.
Doctors have an age-old saying: “At graduation, what do we call the man who’s graduated last in his class?”
The answer is: “Doctor.”
Physician pay is determined more by the specialty than anything else – prestige of your med school is pretty irrelevant, as doctors are in short supply, and some hospitals have a bias AGAINST hiring from the Ivies, citing their grads as “arrogant” and “not well-rounded.” The Ivies aren’t always the best at producing top-tier doctors, anyway, depending on the specialty. My cousin is a pediatric surgeon. Despite being 20 years younger, she out-earns my dad (university research physician and med school professor) and my mom (nursing home GP, focus on geriatrics) quite handily. My mother works more hours than my dad – way more – but is not compensated accordingly, because geriatrics is more or less just a sub-specialty of general practice, and is not valued.
Medical schools artificially limit the supply of future doctors with ultra-strict applications – hence, the doctor shortage. And since American medicine is, like most other professions, a delightful marriage of crony government and crony capitalism, general practice physicians, despite being in woefully short supply, don’t get compensated all that much. Most people these days – male and female – are going into high-paying specialties, because they’re rational actors following the money, plain and simple. Today’s residency is a cakewalk compared to the residencies my parents endured in the late 70s, but you’re still looking at 80 hours a week on average, with very little sleep between shifts. Most people don’t put in all that work only to be compensated just around the 100K mark.
What does this have to do with feminism or women in the workplace? Nothing and everything. The wage gap in medicine is nearly gone, and women make up around half of medical school graduating classes. When you leave out the doctors who work part-time, the payscales are pretty even.
My field, tech, does NOT have this wage parity. But there’s a reason for that: http://www.stanford.edu/group/gender/cgi-bin/wordpressblog/2011/06/researcher-reveals-how-computer-geeks-replaced-computer-girls/.
Serious advice, MRAL: If you want to put your trolling days behind you, find a different community.
A community that doesn’t know your history (hard for us to put the times you’ve personally insulted each of us, even if it was “just trolling,” behind us) and that doesn’t debate frequently about heated emotional subjects.
This is a place for people who are actively anti-misogynist, not for people who are sorta kinda trying not to be misogynist all the time. This is not a good space for socialization if you are not actively anti-misogynist.
If you want to be a member of an online community, go join a swimmer’s board, a Boston board, a math student (if that’s your major? you get the idea) board, anything. Don’t try to make us into your buddies because it’s too late for that.
You need a CHANGE. OF VENUE. Seriously.
I love you, zhinxy. You light up my life, and are the wind beneath my wings.
MRAL, read that again and again until it sinks in.
Basically MRAL seems to believe that the terrible tragedy of his being a 19 year old male virgin who works shitty jobs like most other 19 year olds justifies any and all lashing out at women that he feels compelled to do. We should all understand how hard he has it, much harder than any woman, and thus allow him his tantrums.
MRAL: And before you get pissed at zhinxy and anyone else who has lost patience with you, please actually try to empathize. I’m asking you seriously — please really try. Remember that we are all real people here — how would you feel, having extending sympathy and trust in someone to make the effort to change, only to have them so obviously not be trying at all? And then to see them demand your sympathy anyway? It fucking sucks. It is understandable that many people have lost faith/trust/sympathy for you.
MRAL, we’re having a discussion about the complexities of variables that lead to a wage gap between men and women, and all you are doing is saying that you’re life is so hard and you have to work at Starbucks as if anything we were saying had anything to do with you at all.
It didn’t.
If anyone is playing the victim here it is you and none of us want to hear it. I’m a student working a shit job too; you’re not a super special snowflake when it comes to working hard for low pay and going to school, okay? Screaming about women have EVERYTHING and just want MORE is tanking your credibility (what little you have earned, and you’re already working at a deficit) and making you look like a tool.
Stop it. Just stop.
The way he automatically rules out *asking,* it’s so precious and MRA.
She might be a hidden feminist, but we speak the same language, how could I possibly find out?
Ullere, no, the State cannot force private companies to do anything, but the “private company” that isn’t a smaller family and/or personal business, is largely a creature of PR. A large corporation typically receives so much federal funding, corporate welfare, even eminent domain deals, that it’s really hard to say that they’re private by any definition that doesn’t cover the Post Office too. Actually, probably less private than the post office – Do you know they’re not tax-funded? Also, the Post Office is not legally a person.
If they’re going to largely be a wing of the government, providing us the all important jobs, then yeah, they’d better give them out equally, even by lot, since we’re being driven out of the “create our own business” alternative pretty damn fast, and we do need to eat.
Why AM I STILL TALKING TO YOU HOLY SHIT ABORT ABORT YOU ARE A MORON AND YOU ARE NOT ENGAGING IN GOOD FAITH THIS IS A ZHINXY TRAP CHEW OFF YOUR OWN FOOT ZHINXY ESCAPE ESCAPE
But shaenon, cleaning the poop on a toddler is so rewarding! And so is running after a kid to stop him to injure himself, or to destroy everything they can. And if there is more than one at a time, it’s just magical!
Don’t get me wrong, NWO, I love children, even though I still haven’t deciding whether or not I want to raise some myself. But I also spend my Christmas evening running after kids. One in particular spent his evening launching marbles everywhere, walking (on purpose and repeatedly) fruits on the ground and destroying decorations. The rest of the time I mostly tried to stop them from destroying each others’ construction, making the place to messy, hurting themselves or others (some times on purpose, some times not) and keeping them busy, which is not easy because some of them had the attention spawn of a fly, others couldn’t speak two words without yelling and some were too young to understand the rules of the games.
And you know what? That was a good evening! Because I do like children and because putting a lot of energy on it is way easier when you only have to do it from time to time.
When I was in college, I worked retail and made $5 an hour, which, I assure you, didn’t go very far. Everyone goes through this stage. It’s called “being in your late teens and early 20s.” Youth passes quickly. Stupid is forever.
Whoops, my privilege is showing. Not everyone goes through this stage. Some people cannot go to college, either because they don’t have the aptitude, or – more commonly these days – they can’t afford it. Many people stay around the minimum wage mark for years, with no hope of being lifted out by higher education. Education is a privilege.
That comment about young men paying for most things was especially telling, by the way, MRAL. The only reason someone would believe that to be true is if they only think of women in relation to dating. Men do often pay for dates, particularly in the sort of feminist-unfriendly circles that you seem to run in, so if you don’t quite grasp the concept that women still exist and have lives when they’re not interacting with men in a sexual or romantic way, your comment would almost make sense. But if you actually do grasp the fact that women are people with lives of their own, it’s completely ridiculous.
AMR:
For those who don’t speak French:
“Time changes nothing,
When you’re stupid, you are stupid
Whether you’re 20 or a grand father
When you’re stupid, you are stupid!”
The thing about MRAL’s comments that shows me he isn’t paying attention is that 1: He is complaining that there is no wage gap.
Fine. At his level of work this is probably true enough (since Starbucks, like most retail businesses, is hiring primarily part time, and has a fairly enlightened policy on benefits).
But his real complaint is that “there is no wage gap,so people who say there is are doing it…” because of something he can’t articulate.
Those who argue there is a wage gap are demanding things which can only help all workers; the most simple being not keeping wages secret. The second being that people doing the same work, get the same pay. Unless he thinks this is a demand to decrease mens’ salaries, to match the depressed salaries of women (which would be admitting a wage gap), there is no harm in it.
Other than the inability of workers to get the wages paid by employers into the public sphere.
Maybe I should find another community. It’s just that I’ve invested so much time in this one, it seems difficult to just give it up. And yet despite the huge amount of time I’ve spent here, everyone is perpetually hostile.
“That comment about young men paying for most things was especially telling, by the way, MRAL. The only reason someone would believe that to be true is if they only think of women in relation to dating.”
Oh right, that’s what he meant? I skipped this one because I didn’t understand what he meant.
The solution? Date feminists!
An awesome 4 minute privelege acknowledment from Anti-Moron’s Rights. Yet some people, yea, possibly many people reading here, crazy as that sounds, would rather die than do it over a period of hours, days, months, years. It’s so easy and fun and it’s not making anybody win points on you!
Well, you have to subtract the amount of time you spent calling us ALPHA FUCK BITCHES and talking about violently assaulting women and such.
And then you’ve actually spent negative time here and would be much better starting at zero.
“everyone is perpetually hostile.”
Gosh dangit, I just can’t think why!
As I said, that was trolling.
Maybe I should find another community. It’s just that I’ve invested so much time in this one, it seems difficult to just give it up. And yet despite the huge amount of time I’ve spent here, everyone is perpetually hostile.”
You just had to throw that last bit in, didn’t you.
Ah jee. People who have listened to you, and given you advice, and maintained you were young and worth saving, in the face of truly vile, petty shit, are still “perpetually hostile” to you, even when you’ve CHANGED, just because you lash out like a bitter, nasty angry little viper, BUT YOU ADMIT YOU’RE ANGRY! YOU HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS!
You SAW THE LIGHT, you just you know, have these dark spells occasionally, WHY IS EVERYBODY HOSTILE TO YOU just because you’re BEING A COMPLETE ASS!
Fuck you. Seriously.