How would you define feminism in a sentence or two?
Wait, stop thinking, for Reddit’s ImissAOL has already provided a wonderfully concise and accurate definition:
I see modern feminism as the equivalent to letting your kids stay up all night eating ice cream.
He adds, helpfully:
Just because they feel they are getting their way doesn’t mean it is actually benefiting them.
Gosh, that’s not patronizing at all!
Sometimes doing this blog makes me hungry.
@WaroftheNerd Controversial? Have you been living in a cave? Feminists have been talking about “how unfair the systems (we live in) are on both men and women” since forever, you plonker!
@WarOfTheNerd, Thanks for lecturing me about privilege not being binary. It’s lovely to hear things that I already know from an anonymous person on the Internetz. Particularly when I am just making snarky comments on a site dedicated to mocking misogynists (such as Dragon Slayer) and not submitting a draft article for a peer-reviewed journal.
And we’re so ungrateful, aren’t we, that Wormofthenerds has spared his precious time to come and explain how things work to us poor feeble-brained folk. *rolls eyes*
It must be noted that being from the UK, I cannot comment on the rest of the world in any credible way.
All I know is that if this country has a screwed up system, then it can’t be much different in most other first-world countries given they all operate in a similar fashion, just using different legalese that pretty much all means the same damn thing.
I forgot to add there’s also downsides in likelihood of being a victim to physical attacks of different kinds:
Young men (16 to 24) are more likely to suffer generic violent attacks like GBH/ABH/assault. “Women are more aware of crime, yet men are more than 3 times more likely to get mugged or assaulted” (Source: Crimestoppers UK)
While young women (16 to 24) are more likely to suffer sexual violence like sexual assault and/or rape. “23% of women and 3% of men experience sexual assault as an adult. 5% of women and 0.4% of men experience rape. ” (Source: rapecrisis.org.uk)
Controversial is apparently the new word for old-school and dull. Fascinating the way language evolves over time.
I know DS is just saying stuff to be a jackass, but I always enjoy these fascinating glimpses into the MRA concept of economics, where the average man is assumed to be an impoverished coal miner, and the average woman is assumed to be Kim Kardashian.
And these two people are married to each other.
Coconut Dream… ugh.
Ben and Jerry’s has a serving size of 1 pint, right? Well, this does not translate to Coconut Dream. Five years later even the smell of coconut makes me nauseated.
Definitely go for Rice Dream.
Oh god, Wormofthenerds is a Brit. It’s so embarrassing. First Mr no-butt-pads Martin and now this. *hangs head in shame*
Joe is one of ours too, unfortunately.
So, WOTN, feminists have organized to try to address the issue of gendered violence against women. What are men doing?
(Hint: If we’re talking about MRAs, which we do a lot here, it mostly involves whining about feminists or women in general.)
@titianblue && @cloudiah:
My apologies, I always try to balance arguments with sources. Everywhere I go, I see people who claim to be MRAs call feminists [rhymes with punts] and see people claiming to be feminists acting like all MRAs are the spawn of satan.
As much as I like to mock obvious overt misogyny too, I also like to be able to balance the argument. My first thought when reading this was “Who cares about feminists on ice cream when MRAs seem to be drinking all the Red Bull?” but I wasn’t sure how that’d come across >_>
cloudiah – I read Ray Cusick’s obituary this morning. The BBC sure ripped him off.
Tom Martin even sounds like a Brit. I hate to say it, bringing shame upon our people and all, but guys who take Tom’s tone aren’t all that rare, it’s just that he takes it much farther than most.
@ cloudiah
Well, we have the incels, some of whom think that men not getting laid is gendered violence against women that should be solved via government-sponsored prostitution. Activism!
They think their not getting laid is gendered violence against men, I mean. Gendered violence against women in the form of poor women being forced into some sort of messed up government escort service is the goal.
WOTN, Want to provide some examples of MRAs who aren’t worthy of mockery?
Don’t worry about it, titianblue, there are mansplainers of every nationality, race and creed.
Also, I literally came here right after reading this article:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/02/25/male-nurses-make-more-money/
Then please don’t talk as if your perception of your country applies to the entire world.
Do you actually read MRM sites? Do you read the Spearhead or AVfM? How on earth can you compare sites that talk constantly about a war against women, about how trivial rape is (yet how devastating “false rape accusations” are for men), about how men have the right to abandon their children, how they should be able to dictate when and if women give birth, how women should be forced from the workplace and denied the vote, how we are either gold-diggers if we are stay-at-home wives or are putting men out of work if we have jobs.
Find me a feminst site that has anything equivalent to that, I dare you. And to repeat the challenge offered to all our MRM-feminists-are-mirror-images trolls, find me these ‘reasonable’ MRAs who are actually doing anything to help men, rather than sitting frothing about how they hate women and jerking off at the idea of hurting us, or whining that there shouldn’t be age of consent laws.
Hell, you don’t even have to read their sites to see that shit. It’s what Dave reports on right here. Do you even bother to read his articles and the stuff he links to? If you don’t, perhaps you should, and then you’d see why we’re here on a site dedicated to
M O C K I N G
M I S O G Y N Y.
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so typical.
Gawd, another sheltered kiddywink.
Hey Word is the Nerd, if you want to bring balance to someone saying “feminism is like letting children eat too much ice cream” you call them the fuck out.
And no, not every instance of demographic clustering or minor legal advantage adds up to something like “female privilege.” Privilege is systematic, not something that just pops into existence every time a perfect 50/50 binary gender split is breached.
@ cloudiah
An English major wrote that? Oh dear.
It’s just that I like to hear both sides before making up my mind. Like, if you say, “Women deserve equal rights” I want to hear from someone who doesn’t think women deserve equal rights. You know, for balance.
And a quick lesson in numbers for the idiot Brit:
So men are 3 times more likely to suffer generic violent attacks.
Let’s put that into some perspective though, shall we?
By your quoted statistics, women are 7 times (23% vs 3%) more likely to suffer sexual violence and 12 times more likely (5% vs 0.4%) to experience rape.