“Men’s Studies” has existed as an academic discipline for several decades now. Not surprisingly, most of those involved in it identify themselves as feminists – as people interested in studying gender tend to do. But not all of them: A couple of years back, a group of mostly anti-feminist academics and popular writers with an interest in gender decided to try to do a sort of end run around the discipline of “Men’s Studies” by conjuring up a whole new, altogether un-feminist discipline called “Male Studies.”
Recently, The University of South Australia announced that it would start offering postgraduate courses in Male Studies sometime in 2014; our old friend Eoghan/Sigil1 brought this earthshattering news to the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, where it was greeted with … suspicion and hostility.
GotMyFrogHatOn wrote:
Great, now men have the same opportunity as women to waste their time and money on a worthless degree!
Liverotto was even blunter:
YES, because the cure to bullshit is… MORE BULLSHIT! /s
That’s right: Men’s Rights Redditors hate Women’s Studies, and Gender Studies, and apparently every academic discipline with the word “Studies” in it so much that they’ve transferred this hatred to a new academic discipline that could well have been (and sort of was) designed just for them.
But don’t worry, they still hate Women’s Studies the most:
What was I saying the other day about projection?
Science also involves being honest about the limitations of your research. You don’t assume that what’s true for rats will be true for monkeys, and you don’t assume that what’s true for some straight cis women in modern Western society is true for every woman everywhere ever.
@Ruby: It’s good feminism (i.e. good critical thinking) to question everything, not automatically accept SCIENCE (especially given that there is BAD science).
There are feminists doing science, and it’s possible to talk about feminism science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Feminism_and_science
Feminism practiced by human beings will involve critique and questioning of others practicing the same thing–and sometimes, because feminists are human beings, that will devolve into personal attacks. And taking a historical-cynical view, it’s possible to say that feminists were attacking each other from the get go along all sorts of axes of identity and issues–the purge of lesbians from NOW, the sex wars, the debates over racism in feminism. If you think feminism means uncritically pressing to one’s bosom and calling her sister anyone who says “I am a feminist,” then you know jackshit about actual feminism in action. The fact that you keep claiming you are being personally attacked when, for the most part, the critiques are aimed at your ideas has been extensively documented by Pecunium, so I’m not bothering to refute that.
OTOH, you also seem unwilling to acknowledge that YOU have attacked others. Mote, beam, eye, check it out.
I do wish that you could quit reciting “wired differently” as if it fucking meant anything when it comes to human brains and our incredibly new, not very sophisticated, fumbling around in the dark when it comes to neuroscience.
And, as I said way back when, I really think it’s depressing how afraid you are of differences AMONG women (ditto among men, I guess, but then as evil feminist, I don’t care about men all that much). What a boring monotone sad little life your statements reveal.
http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/are-men-women-wired-differently
Research shows men’s brains don’t work the same way that women’s brains work. More than being a factor of cultural differences or upbringing, it’s because the sexes are simply wired differently from birth.
THE WORD “SCIENCE” IS NOT A MAGIC SPELL THAT MEANS YOU DON’T HAVE TO THINK
It used to be “science” that black men were less intelligent than white men. Do you accept that with a shrug and “well, if it’s science than it’s true, but hey, they can be equal even though they’re different!” or do you admit that science and its interpretation are done by humans and can be flawed?
So do trans people not exist?
Men and women’s brains are wired differently. Science has proven it. So why get your noses bent out of shape at the suggestion that the genders don’t have the exact same sexual responses?
And now that I think of it, how does it make any sense to say “naked men don’t look good” if your belief is that the difference lies in people’s brains? Couldn’t gay men see each other as sexy?
And how do you even define ‘men’ and ‘women’ in this context? Can queer gendered men or women sexy? What about transwomen, is the “I find you hot” factor in our DNA, in our hormones?
Do you realize you act like MRAs toward science? You only accept what you think support you point, often don’t consider the source and don’t analyze properly what you link. We didn’t ignore science, several people responded to your link. It says:
Science has proven some differences between men and women under some circumstances.
Saying that this proves men are ugly and women only get wet from fat stacks of money is just taking the science and MAKING SHIT UP.
Just because the shit you make up has a tenuous connection to science doesn’t make it science itself.
HEY RUBY HOW ARE GAY AND TRANS PEOPLE WIRED
SCIENCE ME UP SOME SHIT ABOUT THAT
REMEMBER TO CALL IT SCIENCE
SCIENCE MEANS AUTOMATIC TRUTH
“So why get your noses bent out of shape at the suggestion that the genders don’t have the exact same sexual responses?”
Do you really not understand that I can’t accept “naked men are not sexy” because I am a woman* who find a number of naked men sexy? Am I lying? Stop reapeating your mantra and answer a few questions.
*and far from being the only only one
Maybe we just need to fight fire with fire here.
Ruby, there’s some new science that shows that a lot of apparent differences between genders are actually socially constructed, and highly variable between genders.
This science was conducted by very important-looking men in white coats.
They used large words and sounded very sure of themselves.
Why are you arguing with this science?
Ruby
Did you notice the science articles, journals, etc. that said you were wrong?
Did you forget last time you were quoting “science” and claiming a few anthropologists, except you didn’t even understand their work?
Can you even accept that individuals are wired differently?
Ruby, this is my most important question to you. Do you have any clue what the word ‘generalization’ means?
Oh, fuck this. I’m going to ignore Ruby’s ignorant ass from here on out even if it means grumbling “What the FUCK?!?” at the cats.
Her and NWO should get together. They both furiously resist knowledge or anything that counters their poorly thought out, blinkered worldviews. Match made in hell, right there.
Ruby, fuck off.
No, it hasn’t. Remember how I was literally hired by NIH to review brain anatomy research?
Later, I worked with neuroscientists on an image processing workflow that performed some of the morphological operations and averaging that I was talking about upthread, to estimate overall brain anatomy.
So I’ve not only literally worked on the exact data that would be used to prove that there are gender differences in neural anatomy, but I’ve also been hired by the agency that funds biomedical neuroscience in the US to help make funding decisions on projects that would assemble the necessary data into to databases so that it could be used to find this result.
As a reviewer, if someone was going to, say, publish a paper claiming that neural anatomy fundamentally differs between biological sexes, I’d be looking for where the data came from and what analysis was done, before I’d make a recommendation to publish.
So let’s get it on the table. Where’s your data, and what’s your analysis?
Oh, wait, you don’t have one. You would get exactly nowhere in the scientific community with your claim. Once you have some data and an analysis, you would get further–you’d get to the review panel. Then your data would have to be collected with appropriate controls, and you’d have to have a coherent analysis. And if your conclusion contradicted earlier results, you’d have to cite those in a way that shows that you understand them and did a better job collecting and/or analyzing data.
If you don’t want to do all that, but still want to make your claim, you have to find someone who did all that and cite them. The problem with your current citation is that study that you cited the article about doesn’t actually make the claim you think it does.
tl;dr: science is a real thing that you have to do.
Ruby might also want to consider that the extent to which 1970s white feminists focused entirely on “all women are alike, all women suffer the same oppression, we white women will help all women” ended up in some pretty racist spaces (i.e. the focus on abortion without any concern for forced sterilization, lack of prenatal care, and lack of access to medical care which is more related to the axes of class and race than gender).
Intersetionality, let us try it!
Ruby, do you think finding one more link to a site that does not in fact say only “all women are wired exactly alike and not like those men” will convince people here given the pattern of you give us link, and people here with more training in the sciences point out the errors in the reporting, the errors in the study, or the sheer lack of claims you claim are made?
Why do you keep doing the same thing over….well, I guess I should ask why I keep doing the same thing over and over again too.
Hmmm, Ruby, do you LIKE this kind of attention?
WHY DO YOU HATE SCIENCE, PEOPLE? WHY ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE TRUTH?
CLEARLY RUBY HAS ALL THE ANSWERS AND WE SHOULD CROWN HER QUEEN.
because your sources are invariable of the lowest quality and show a fundamental lack of understanding of what science is. it’s not even the lazy generalizations that are annoying any more, it’s your pig fucking ignorance and total disrespect for scientific inquiry
ruby has Brave Truth-Teller stamped all over her. hell yes she gets off on this shit.
@Sharculese: Yep, I’m coming to think so–which means the most effective response is…………….NONE!
I will try to sit on my hands next time.
Ruby: Men and women’s brains are wired differently. Science has proven it. So why get your noses bent out of shape at the suggestion that the genders don’t have the exact same sexual responses?
1: SCIENCE has not proven it. Some scientists have argued it.
2: We are perfectly fine with the idea that men and women could be wired differently.
3: It’s quite possible women and men have different sexual responses
3a: That isn’t what you said (and you have not linked to any studies which actually show this).
4: It’s your specific claim about how women don’t like looking at naked men which is in dispute.
5: It’s not really about you. Honest. Get over yourself. It’s about how you are turning in piss-poor work that any decent high school teacher would grade with an F. Then you rail that if we just accepted how you were right we’d see this was the bestest paper ever.
Ruby: It’s bad feminism to ignore science. Or call it pseudoscience if you don’t like the results. And personally attack fellow feminists because they don’t toe your particular belief system.
QFT
“Physician, heal thyself”.
You can’t say you’ve offered, “Science” here. Moreover people have asked for science. You refuse to offer any; or when you find a study which superficially resembles what you’ve claimed “is true”, you expect us to just take your word for it and admit that you were right and we were wrong.
All the while ignoring any of the studies we provide.
That’s dishonest.
Then you call us evil and small-minded because we don’t adhere to your belief system.
NWO does all that shit too. You’re just less directly insulting about it than he is.
Seriously Ruby, start with the book I recommended. Read it before you keep doggedly repeating your evo-psych/hardwired differences talking points. The science may surprise you.
…things I’ve learned today:
@Ruby Hypatia – there are only ugly straight men and hot straight women, who are different. Science has proven it (note to self: check Judd Apatow’s scientific credentials). I look forward to related discoveries science will make such as the planets of origin of these disparate groups.
@Cliff Pervocracy – cavewomen weren’t interested in caveporn. It’s sad how our ancestors lived. It’s a shame that we have to live exactly the same way, and feel the same way about things. And why? Science.
@xavan512 (the redditor quoted in the post) – the Feminist Industrial Complex is most interested in perpetuating violence against women. Anything to keep lining the pockets of Big Feminism.
…therefore:
I’m rich and powerful, like all feminists, which will help since rent’s coming up. I’m not interested in porn… which will hurt my career significantly since I make porn. And from now on I have to pick a gender not just for myself but for my bed partners, and they can’t be the same… decisions, decisions.
I feel like it needs repeating, because I still don’t know if Ruby noticed.
The study DID not revealed women never enjoy looking at sexy naked dudes, it revealed their frigging amygdala activated less when looking at the pictures. Don’t you see the difference?
Are you also calling the women in the study liars? Were they imagining being aroused?
You need to understand that even if you – and maybe all the women you had talk about this subject before today – never got wet by looking at a naked man, that doesn’t mean you can project that onto all of us.
The fairer sex is just a cultural idea?! LOL! Sure, and the peacock being fairer than the peahen is just a cultural idea. Really you guys, what alternate reality are you living in?