So apparently I’m way off base with this “misogyny” thing. For example, I have been under the impression that I have been finding misogynistic stuff in the Men’s Rights subreddit, like, all the time. With upvotes, and everything. But evidently I’m wrong.
Because now ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit mods, has done a very scientific study that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that, well, whatever misogyny is there is officially not a big damn deal.
Ig explains his protocol:
I did a quick scan of the first 400 comments on the list (100/page, 4 pages in). I scanned for words like “cunt” and “whore”, and read the context of these. I looked for the words “woman” and “women”, and read the context of these. I looked for “suffrage” and “vote” also.
I found two comments that used the word “cunt”, one of them was used to describe men, the other to describe a specific woman. The only instances of “whore” were “attention whore”.
There were two comments involving the word “woman” that generalized women with negative stereotypes.
“Suffrage” and “vote” instances did not involve any context that suggested that women did not deserve the right to vote.
How a person defines “hatred of women”, either loosely (suggestive from context, rather than explicit) or strictly (explicit statements), it is pretty clear that out of 400 comments, very few are misogynistic.
Does misogyny exist? Yes. But it does not seem to be a significant contribution to r/MensRights. At best, people are seeing a few comments and focusing on their existence while ignoring the rest.
It’s a lot like that time Michael Richards did that standup routine, and everyone focused on that one word he said, totally ignoring all the other words he used that were totally not racist slurs. I mean, yeah, he said that word a bunch of times, but it still made up a very small percentage of all the words he used that evening.
So that’s that, then. Misogyny, officially not a problem!
Or that would have been that, had Ig not actually posted about his experiment to the subreddit he had just proved was, like, totally non-misogynistic:
Because it turned out that a couple of the fellas had an issue with Ig’s methodology. In particular, that stuff about female suffrage. Because, apparently, you can totally be against women having the right to vote and still not be a misogynist. As zyk0s put it (garnering upvotes in the process):
[T]here’s the matter of female suffrage. I really don’t see how suggesting women should not have been granted the right to vote is misogyny. It might be motivated by it, but not necessarily so, and treating it as such is akin to criminalizing holocaust denial: it’s censorship, pure and simple, and if [1] /r/MR wants to keep calling itself an open space where ideas are not silenced, that attitude has to change.
Our friend Demonspawn went even further(and got a few upvotes himself):
Suggesting that the government works better without the women’s vote is not misogyny. It’s an analysis of the facts and the consequences of allowing women’s suffrage.
Suggesting that women retain the right to vote without the corresponding responsibilities that men face is misandry.
So there you have it. The Men’s Rights subreddit doesn’t have a misogyny problem; if anything, it’s a hotbed of misandry.
Fascinating tom, trying the I am a loser but not really tactics now? I guess thats better than your hate crush tactic on sharculese though.
Hank,
Top MRAs (like proper feminists) are interested in gender-developmental progress, and know that misogyny is more frequently expressed by people who hold on to traditional gender role ideas.
There are Marxist MRAs who think men as a category are oppressed by women as a category, but that is usually just a phase they go through before acknowledging that sexism is a two way street.
Top feminist spokespeople though, are still in the Marxist one way street frame.
Considering dominant feminist discourse has been around so much longer than men’s issues discourse, it really is a stunted state of affairs for an allegedly feminist debate on a good news channel to perpetuate the segregation as usual.
This is the point in the debate though, where v-fems reach their limit.
All they can do is change the subject or make personal attacks, rather than change their affinity by dropping the sexist form of feminism and instead incorporating men’s issues discourse compassionately.
@Tom, you may want to rewrite for clarity.
Tom – must be tired – have read your response and can’t see your answer to my question – but thanks anyway.
Most MRAs are anti-chimp. They’re stuck in the Marxist one way street frame where they only see the oppression of humans. Why won’t you incorporate chimp rights into the MRM?!
What the fuck is gender-developmental progress? Goddamn, Tom Martin, stop trying to ape academic jargon. The way jargon is supposed to work is to be specific, so people know what the hell you are talking about. That doesn’t work when you make shit up and pretend it means something deep.
Tom, in case you didn’t get the point of my attempted derail with the Violent Femmes song, I have no idea what a v-fem is, and most likely, other people here don’t either. If your argument involves a large group of people and you’re not defining who the hell they are, your writing is unclear, just like Sharculese said. You can’t win a debate if no one understands you.
(You also don’t win a debate if no one else wants to debate you, but that’s a whole different thing.)
I thought v-fem was suppose to mean vagina feminist but that makes no sense.
Remember, the spellcheckers still don’t recognize misandry as a word, even though it was first used in the 15th century, and is in relatively common use today:
134,000 web pages on ‘misandry’ listed on a google search,
versus
1,094,000 web pages for ‘misogyny’.
That’s because misogyny is a real thing and “misandry” isn’t.
I thought it was victim-feminist. Also, combined with Steele’s m-feminist (that is Steele, right? Someone does that one) it makes me wonder why they’ve decided to add qualifiers to the term “feminist.”
I think v-fems is supposed to refer to ‘victim feminists’, those who use their victimhood for profit or something. I shall from now on refer to ‘v-MRAs’, which is 99 percent of them anyway.
Dammit, ninja’d. My first ninja’d!
A v-fem is a victim-feminist. I assumed manboobzers would know that already. I am crediting you with a degree of self-awareness.
Also, it bothers me that my avatar is very similar to Tom Martin’s
Victim never occurred to me. That’s helpful – at least I can Google that.
Also, what’s this misandry isn’t recognized by spellcheck bullshit? Firefox recognizes it, and so does Word 2010.
Ooh, burn.
Shaenon said:
That’s because misogyny is a real thing and “misandry” isn’t.
Anybody?
@TomTroll claims that misandry was first used in the 15th century (and spellcheckers don’t recognize it). Although, really, that shows his deep ignorance of the crappy programming behind spellcheckers–but I got interested in the 15th century claim and checked the Oxford English Dictionary (the BEST philological dictionary of English in the WORLD). (Tolkien Fun Fact: first job he got after WWI was at the OED which hired him for W words–the OED folks got together his notes and stuff (WHICH OMFG THEY STILL HAVE) and published a book, THE RING OF WORDS which, if you is a lexicography fan like moi, is TO DIE FOR)>
Ahem.
Anyway, TomTroll, I looked up MISANDRY:
Nowhere in that do I see a 15th c. quote. If you got evidence of that word appearing in PRINT in the 15c century (aka the 1400s back when they were writing with parchment and quills in the monastaries), you should hie thee hence to the editors who have somehow missed this amazing early usage.
Really, you owe it to scholarship.
Except you don’t, you’re lying through your teeth, and where in the fuck did you find this factoid (or did you just make it up)?
Suck on your socks, Tom!
Naww. You’re just crediting your ideas with way too much prominence
Ithiliana,
I was picking up every dictionary I could find, about eight years ago, to see if misandry was included, and it usually wasn’t, but I picked up a huge, old authoritative-looking etimological dictionary in a Westminster reference library and read the word misandry, where it mentioned its origins in the 1400s I seem to remember.
It surprises me every time I read that the word has a much earlier usage.
If it made any difference to me winning this debate, I’d double check – but it doesn’t.
Anyway, anybody care to police the manboobzers sticking with the ‘misandry isn’t even a real thing’ line?
What does Douchetrail say about it? Nothing?
If you’re claiming that misandry is widespread, institutional, and a real obstacle to the advancement of men in society, that would be yours to prove.
If you’re saying that there are a few feminist douchebags around here and there, yeah, there are.
Happy now?
I don’t think there’s anyone who goes by Douchetrail posting here, so I’m not surprised zie hasn’t responded.
My feelings about misandry are somewhat similar to the feelings I have when someone complains (as a former classmate of mine once did) about black-only college choirs that exclude white students. It’s not actually a result of systemic discrimination; it’s an artifact of systemic discrimination going the other way. I have yet to hear of an example of “misandry” that isn’t just the flip-side of something misogynist. Men have to register for the draft? That’s because women are assumed to be weak and in need of protection, which has historically sucked way more for women, what with the whole denial-of-autonomy thing. And so on.
So no, I don’t think “misandry” is a real social problem. I think patriarchy is a real social problem, and one that causes harm to men as well as women, and if feminists really did rule the world, all of the MRM’s valid concerns would be addressed. (The shit-stupid ones, like women being able to vote and being allowed to walk around all sexy without putting out on demand, not so much. Because those are dumb as shit, and guess what? Misogynist.)
I have yet to hear of an example of “misandry” that isn’t just the flip-side of something misogynist.
Examples of basic anti-man-ness can probably be found. The funny thing is, you’re more likely to see it coming from the MRAs themselves.
Burgundy,
You do appear to at least have some opinions on misandry.
What books have you read on misandry?
@whataboutthemoonz
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Tom Martin, so I decided to do something more productive and drew you a birthday present:
http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/w408/myoomyoo/Octopus_birthday.png