What can you do when you realize that you’re losing the war of ideas? You can rethink some or all of your ideas, seriously considering the unnerving possibility that you might be, well, wrong. You can reconsider how you present your ideas.
Or you can give up on ideas entirely, and attempt to pressure or harass or even terrorize others into some form of surrender. That’s what the the uber-radical Weathermen did in the 1960s and 70s, turning first to violent direct action in the aptly named “days of rage” and then to bombs when the revolution that many in the New Left had been prophesying failed to materialize. That’s what the anti-abortion movement has been doing for decades now, with some in the movement harassing women trying to get abortions while more radical antis bomb clinics and kill doctors. .
And now we’re seeing rhetoric from Men’s Rights Activists that suggests some in that movement may also be giving up on talk. Consider A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam, who declared in a fundraising letter a couple of months back that:
Progress for men will not be gained by debate, reason or typical channels of grievance available to segments of the population that the world actually gives a damn about. The progress we need will only be realized by inflicting enough pain on the agents of hate, in public view, that it literally shocks society out of its current coma.
Elam is – presumably deliberately — vague about what exactly he means when he talks about “inflicting … pain,” and as far as I know he has never explicitly endorsed violence. But he has spoken openly about “stalking” individual feminists and otherwise “fucking their shit up” by, among other things, posting personal information about them on the AVfM-sponsored site Register-Her.com for all would be vigilantes to see. And in the “activism” section of his website he has reprinted a manifesto explicitly calling for the firebombing of courthouses and police stations.
Elam isn’t the only MRA who has officially given up on “debate and reason” in favor of “inflicting … pain” on feminists. The “counter-feminist” wannabe philosopher who calls himself Fidelbogen makes a similar argument in a recent post on his blog:
Feminism is your enemy, and the obligation to treat feminists as fellow human beings is officially waived. They are not fellow human beings, they are ALIENS.
Dehumanizing the enemy always a good start.
[L]et’s not hear any crap about so-called “hate speech”. You see, there is simply no way that you can resist evil, denounce tyranny, or call pernicious things by their right names, without crossing a fine line into “hate speech” or something very like it. Extremism against a bully is no vice, and since bullies have their own moral economy, you are entitled to pay them in their own coin.
It’s not hate speech if you really do hate them?
The important thing to understand about the feminists is, that they will not change their outward behavior unless social heat and pressure are inflicted upon them.
Fidelbogen, a sometime contributor to A Voice for Men, is also vague about what exactly he means by this “social heat and pressure.” He continues:
What, do you think they will stop what they are doing just because somebody intellectually convinces them they are mistaken? They will do no such thing, because they are people with an agenda who know they are “right”, and they lack the gift to see themselves as the rest of the world sees them.
IRONY ALERT. IRONY ALERT.
Over on Reddit, meanwhile, the charming JeremiahMRA – who used to post comments here as Things Are Bad – thinks the “inflict pain” policy should be extended to all women, any time they engage in “bad behavior.” Responding to a poster asking how to handle a disagreement with his mother, he explained his theory in (sometimes redundant) detail, receiving several dozen net upvotes for his post:
The ONLY way you change women’s bad behavior is by punishing them if they won’t start acting like adults. …
The only way you change a woman’s bad behavior is by making sure they know it hurts them. …
Reasoning with her will not work. The only answer is to use the power he has as her SON to threaten to hurt her emotionally. Women are emotional creatures. Nothing else will work. This is what it means to be a man: you do what you have to do so that things will be better in the end, even if you don’t like it. …
It isn’t about convincing her what’s right, it’s about showing her she will suffer if she doesn’t do what’s right. That is the only thing that will work.
The Men’s Rights Movement likes to pretend that is it a civil rights movement. But threats, harassment, hate speech, and emotional blackmail aren’t the tactics of a legitimate civil rights movement. These are the tactics of angry narcissists clinging to retrograde prejudices, who have given up on the war of ideas because on some level they know that history is against them, and that they will never win.
I don’t know about y’all, but if I needed a lawyer, there’s one here I’d steer clear of.
NMMNG: People like Limbaugh here? Are you fucking kidding me?
Yeah, saying that tacitly suggesting most asexuals are schizoid isn’t cool is exactly like saying a mental illness is a joke.
Grow up.
“Well, it’s good to know you wont call the police the next time your partner asks you to sleep with them. Though plenty of feminists would. ” This statement is baffling. I am a feminist, my partner is a feminist, everyone that lives in my building is a feminist (admittedly there are only four units, so that is not saying too much), in fact all of my close friends are feminists and I have never heard of the police being called over asking to have sex. In fact none of my friends, neighbors, or me or my partner have called the police on any others of my friends, neighbors, or me or my partner for any reason. This is about 40-50 people (depending on how close you consider a “close friend” to be) all of them feminists.) When you claim plenty of feminists would call the police if their partners ask these feminists to sleep with them, what kind of percent are you assigning to the amount plenty?
@Fatman
Not just for asking for sex, but asking for sex in ways that feminists deem unacceptable. For instance, asking a second time after your partner says “no.”
This is rape under the feminist definition.
Cite your shit or shut up.
Not hard.
@Roberta: I second and third and fourth the others saying CITATION NEEDED.
I have been a feminist since 1982, and nowhere have I see that as the feminist definition of rape.
Lawyers are used to citing their sources, right? So cite, or remain in trollhood.
You can hang out with NWO (he’d like what you’re saying), and DKM (he’d probably not like it as much)!
http://radtransfem.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/under-duress-agency-power-and-consent-part-two-yes/
Here’s one
@Roberta:
Any particular portion you’d like to point out? I’m personally reading the whole thing because of curiosity, but just posting a link isn’t gonna do you much good.
Who said this?
Who said this?
NMMG, you come in here all the time with your internet diagnoses for MRAs and PUAs and anybody else you don’t like. You make statements suggesting all people with a particular disorder are exactly the same. And then, whenever you get called on it, you hide behind your own diagnosis. It’s cowardly, and it’s bullshit, and I, for one, am really sick of it.
And as one of the asexuals you’re stereotyping, it’s getting really fucking old really fucking fast.
@Roberta: you do know that “radical feminsts” are not “all feminists,” and implying that ONE radical feminist blog presents a certain definition of rape is not the same as saying “this is how feminists define rape.” Don’t they teach lawyers not to overgeneralize from one example?
And I am a little dubious when the only “feminist” sites or cited anybody critiquing feminism can give are blogs–because, well, you know BOOKS have been written by feminists (and proto-feminists).
Starting in the 14th century…………….
Apparently law school doesn’t discuss the importance of reading comprehension…
For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-rape/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-rape/
And this book:
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100559980
Rethinking Rape
Ann J. Cahill
@Roberta:
Also, that post is freaking long and very technical. Sooo… yeah. Point to the place where the writer is claiming that saying “yes” to “please baby, we haven’t been intimate in almost 2 weeks” is necessarily rape.
I say necessarily because, of course, context matters. And a situation where that phrase generally leads to more abusive stuff could make that “yes” a “no.” As the writer of the post points out, it’s complicated and not apt to simple summary. So you’ve got to point out where you find your evidence, not just handwave at the whole thing.
Otherwise, one might get the impression that you really haven’t bothered reading it, except to note that it was written by a radical trans-feminist. 😛
Do I even need to bring up Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon? They’ve both authored several books on the subject. One in particular has argued that all PiV sex is rape under a patriarchy.
Oh, I’ve read it. Dear god, have I read it.
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/humannature01/ProposalArticles/AComparativeStudyofRape.G.html
Wow, definitions change over time! Whodathunk!
@Roberta:
Oh goody, so you should have no problem picking out where the auther makes the claim that saying “yes” to “please baby, we haven’t been intimate in almost 2 weeks” is necessarily rape.
I’m a little over a third of the way down the page so far and haven’t seen anything like that.
Roberta: Unlike you, I’ve read Dworkin and MacKinnon.
And more than one work
And I disagree with them, and I am a feminist.
So what now?
Just FYI, folks, Roberta has been pulling this exact same act on Jezebel for ages. I haven’t seen her there for a while so I guess she gave up and decided to come troll here instead.
Fair warning for anyone who might be thinking there’s some point in attempting to reason with her.
And while we wait…
That’s a good question!
And I’m no expert, but a few seconds of looking on the internet gave me http://www.ncvc.org – which has a report on spousal rape laws, and how progress has been made since the 70’s (evil feminists!) and “spousal rape” is granted to “exist”, there are still many states in which victims of spousal rape face additional hurdles non-spousal rape victims do not have (less crime, shorter reporting window, lesser charge, etc)
So there’s one example – rape should be rape in all states, even if you are married.
WACKY!
And speaking of states, my fine state of PA is the lone state which doesn’t allow for expert witnesses to speak at sexual assault trials. Its easier for rapists to get away with sexual assault where I live than anywhere else! So my second, specific suggestion is to allow expert witnesses to testify here, as they do in all other 49 states.
And while we’re “just sayin”, how about some kind of federal standard for that sort of thing? Is there any good reason to have rape defined differently in Alabama than it is in Maine?
Plus, you know, all the misogynistic types bring up Solanis first, then Dworkin, and ocasionally a very erudite one knows of Mackinnon.
But those are THREE count them THREE feminists (one of whom probably was severely mentally ill)
NOT all feminists.
Not the mainstream of feminism even back when they were publishing more regularly and working to change laws–have you heard of the Sex War of the 1980s?
Do you have any idea how blasted ridiculous it is to paint feminists as some hive mind.
You’re still not proving much other than a FEW radical feminists have a more extreme view than the rest of us.
So????????????????
Silence, ithiliana! Don’t fight the hive mind!
Didn’t say or even imply that. The only thing that comes even close to dismissing SPD is when I accidentally typed schizophrenia, which I already corrected. Typos /= dismissal.
I could if you’d like, but I have no desire to be a dick for your amusement. Let’s go over my post shall we:
That says that you are not saying that all asexuals have SPD, but that most people with SPD are asexual.
This says that I agree with DSC that people with SPD have a variety of sexualities, INCLUDING ASEXUALITY, and that I have not come across anything (as a psych student) that links asexuality with SPD. I have only completed a Bachelor’s so there’s more things under the sun of psychology that I don’t know than those that I do, so I’m skeptical of your claim, not dismissive of it. The link that you gave suggests the same thing, that some people with SPD experience sexuality in a unique manner, but not that most people with SPD are asexual.
For real, is this going to be the new thing now: Limbaughing the thread?
I repeat, I’m skeptical, not dismissive of your claims. If you have proof, cite it. If you don’t cite shit, you can’t be surprised when we don’t believe you.