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.
To clarify, since the report mentions proceeding beyond the police stage, I mean proceeded to court with clear stats on guilty vs. not guilty, sentencing/appeal and the CPS throwing the case out.
WaroftheNerd:
“I look at both sides and wonder why decent feminists…”
*looks around* Okay, check, we got those.
“… and decent MRAs –”
WAIT WAIT WAIT stop. I see your problem right here.
I dunno, for someone well-read, you’re awfully naive. “Both sides are equally right and they should just work together” is a very primitive position; it’s rare that two sides of anything are actually equally right (and particularly rare that two sides are equally victimized, and treating them as such is unfair to the people who are actually being hurt.
If you like reading a lot and are impartial on the topic, how about reading this? The whole thing, but especially this. And also probably this, this, this, this, and this. That should answer your questions, or at least get you started.
Dammit, thrown in moderation for a billion links. Here’s the important one. If you’re a voracious reader, you should devour this.
@katz: most important one read and devoured. Will refrain from making awful instinctive assumptions that when male privilege is mentioned as an absolute that mentioner is automatically denying existance of some society-created female privileges (I’m guessing you interpreted that post as a variant on PHMT, hence being the important one). It will take me a bit of time to go through the entirety of finallyfeminism101, but before making any new comments, I shall have a good read of everything (I’ll start with the links you’ve recommended, though).
@hellkell: Which is why I try to focus more on studies, try to find sources of reasonable provenance which are already academically cited (if possible) and then look at the opinions of both sides. That way anything I state can be peer-reviewed and the original source can be looked at. Obviously, unlike in academic study, anacdotal evidence does play a big part too; I’d never ever tell someone who has had personal experiences that their experiences are any less valid just because of a bunch of numbers in a table. No matter how well any research team has dedicated themselves to the scientific method, nothing replaces genuine personal experiences (regardless of personal interpretation of experiences).
@heidihi: Don’t forget MRAs can be Feminists (or Feminist allies) too. Perhaps I asked the wrong question early on: Have misogynists claiming to be MRAs scared off Feminists and Feminist allies from potentially accepting the label? (I hope not…)
Thanks for looking at those!
@WaroftheNerd, people in this thread have already asked (and you’ve been unable to provide examples of) a single MRA who isn’t completely in-decent. (And yes, I’ve been here long enough to have seen the hateful shit show that is GirlWritesWhat.) I have never in my life seen or met an MRA who is a Feminist or an Ally, and you are not really providing any examples. So, I don’t have to forget what i never learned. MRAs have not been shown to be Feminists or Feminist Allies.
On the other hand, many many Feminists and Allies in this space alone have made me more aware of issues affecting men. I feel that Feminists are great allies to men and care about actual men’s rights. Whereas MRAs just care about hating people (including some men).
WOTN, Yeah, I’m afraid the overwhelming asshattery of the people calling themselves MRAs has kind of ruined that term for people who just want to, say, deal with the male suicide rate or whatever. If you’re not a misogynist, you’ll have to come up with something else or else start to consistently outnumber (and drown out) the misogynist MRAs.
Being charitable for a moment and assuming that you’re not being disingenuous, here’s the thing – there’s no way for anyone here to know anything about the people you know offline. You say you know MRAs who aren’t misogynists. Great! If that’s the case you might want to get them to start blogs, given that you yourself can’t find any current MRA blogs that aren’t cesspits of misogyny.
Bottom line is, if you don’t like the way the MRM is perceived, it’s your job to fix it. Your current approach is not going to accomplish that goal.
Seconding what heidihi said.
WOTN – a man who isn’t misogynist doesn’t identify as an MRA, or gets the hell away from them the minute he realises what their “movement” of keyboard warriors is really about.
You know something? There are people of all genders on this site who used to identify as MRAs, whether they thought it was a genuine movement for men’s issues or because they thought feminism had gone “too far” or whatever. And they’ve all ended up realising it’s nothing but misogyny. There are women on this site who found for themselves just how much the MRM hates us; even when they wrote in support on sites like AVfM, they were hated and threatened just for being women.
You want some concern for men’s problems? Recognition that they exist? Try feminism. Oh, but don’t do a “what about teh menz,” because men are not its default, its primary, concern, even though that’s what society tells us should be the case in every conversation.
Yeah, I’m not picking up what Nerdboy is putting down. It’s the same old song, it still has a shitty beat I can’t dance to.
Let’s also not forget the blog started by a former Manboobz commenter that was entirely about men’s issues.
Zie had to end that blog because too many guys were being aggressive assholes about it. And that’s on a site called “The Good Men Project.”
@WaroftheNerd
Let’s round to 54 because it makes the math super easy. Using that (inflated) number, only 1/4 of false allegations were made against specific people. Meaning someone was accused of rape rather than just a woman claiming a rape occurred when it hadn’t. The odds of being falsely accused of rape by a female “victim” is ridiculously small.
That is what the MRM is massively concerned about. That they will be one of those ≈54 men. They can’t be worried about being accused by strangers because a) that isn’t what they talk about and b) it makes no sense to worry about rape allegations, but not false allegations of any crime.
Nerd: far more male brick layers
Which is a skilled profession. One can’t just pick up a hod of mortar and start slapping up a wall. It takes training. Women are often excluded from such jobs, on specious grounds.
Not really privilege.
It must be noted that being from the UK, I cannot comment on the rest of the world in any credible way.
Since you admit to talking out yer arse, why should we pay you any mind?
Look at your, “sourcing”: you infer that the rest of the world must work like the UK. Guess what, in the US they aren’t required to give paid maternity leave to anyone.
There is this thing of which you might have heard, the Internet? It has resources like Google, and Bing, and Wikipedia. You could actually get some facts to go with your arguments.
What outrages the MRM is that women have the right to say No at all, and that the law – in some countries, and in theory if less so in practice – actually recognises it. They don’t want women having the right to refuse a man, or to choose one, for that matter. Their loathing of us having control over our lives goes much further than that, of course, but I think that’s the absolute base level of it.
Nerd: But I do happen to know men offline that consider themselves to be MRAs (who also consider themselves to be feminist allies), so there are reasonable MRAs. So I know it’s possible for MRAs to exist that don’t act inherently misogynistic.
And they support you in e-mail.
If they are invisible to The Movement, they don’t count. Why? Because they are not standing up to to be counted.
As to your, “reasonable mra”
She says feminism is hate.
But that would be because, “owning your shit” is a blog by Girl Writes What, with whom we are well acquainted.
You think her reasonable? Ok…. That’s telling. She’s toxic.
The UK Home Office sampled cases in 2005 and based on their raw data of recorded rape accusations, 8% of accusations were considered to be false allegations (with a estimated maximum of 9% and minimum of 3%). That’s a scary percentage but it is blown out of proportion by most MRAs. [Even the most pessimistic exaggerator would not likely go as far as to say potentially 1 in 10 accusations are false.]
False? Really? The Home Office said 8 percent of rape complaints were known fabrications? Source please.
Also, how in the name of fuck do you get off saying that rape isn’t a violent crime?
Oh, and now you backpedal: Well, the report doesn’t seem to separate false allegations which proceeded from those that didn’t, so it’s possible that out of the 8% of classified false allegations, some of them may not have been false, the police may have just assumed them to be false. Bad policing can work both ways. It may look cynical but under different counting rules (looking at admitted false allegations) the result is 3%.
I don’t suppose you have the Home Office stats for robbery, or burglary, or theft, handy, to show how much more prevalent this rash of false-rape allegation is?
@heidihi: Don’t forget MRAs can be Feminists (or Feminist allies) too.
Fuck. There is a second tag, at the very end of that post. Dave, could you go and close the first one?
One priceless quote from the oh-so-reasonable GWW’s page:
That’s it. She says feminism is an oppressive and discriminatory attitude or belief.
Please don’t trot out any more claims of her being reasonable. She isn’t.
PS. loved the bit where she’s going on about Danielle Paradis being part of a group that tore down posters to stop another group making its ideas known – this couldn’t be the famous incident where JohntheOtter
was set on by a mob wielding boxcuttersargued with a couple of people taking his posters down, could it?>>>@heidihi: Don’t forget MRAs can be Feminists (or Feminist allies) too.
Also, pigs can fly.
@WarOfTheNerd “I look at both sides and wonder why decent feminists and decent MRAs don’t collaborate to catalyse the process of working towards true equality.”
ARE YOU SERIOUS? The answer staring you right in the face is because the MRM don’t want to work toward true equality. That’s not what they’re about!
The MRM is not a genuine human rights movement. It seems that you don’t understand this, which tells me you have not engaged with it at all. It is a reactionary hate movement, a backlash against feminism, that is what defines it. All MRAs want to do is quash feminism, not make progress toward equality. This is made VERY VERY clear in every one of their “writings” I have ever read, and I have read A LOT.
Do you also suggest ethnic minority advocates should sit at a round table with the KKK sometime?
*sigh* I miss ice cream.
Though I will say the coconut milk stuff is as close to eating actual ice cream as you can get without the pesky dairy.
So, eroticism is hate? Also humanitarianism? Cubism? Impressionism? Existentialism? Pointillism? Surrealism? Activism? Syllogism? Individualism? Intellectualism? Pragmatism? Symbolism? Realism??
It’s heartening that GWW is only what, in her twenties, and she’s already reading dictionaries, people. That’s some mean achievement right there. Still, I think she should read harder.
Wow…fucking seriously?
“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.”
No, if your point is that I don’t deserve rights because I wasn’t born male, you’re a sexist asshole. There’s actually not two sides to every debate…you’re indulging in false equivalency. Here’s an example fale equivalency arguing, just so you know what I’m talking about:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/22/326556/classic-false-equivalence-on-political-abuse-of-science/?mobile=nc
Your insensitivity is appalling, by the way, young or not.
It’s also just frustrating because it shows an intense bias (not to mention ignorance), all while pretending to be objective and unbiased. Which makes it even HARDER for people to go, “No, seriously dude, you have a MASSIVE bias here.”
I’ve had arguments along these lines with my father before. “Of course I know you aren’t possessed, but can’t you see it from the point of view and compromise with the people who think that way?” It’s like, uh, no. I’m not going to compromise with people who think I’m a DEMONIC FUCKING ENTITY.
Regarding non-dairy frozen yums — edy’s and dreyer’s both make amazing fruit pops. The dreyer’s coconut in particular are to die for. Afaik none of them contain dairy (or much more than fruit really)
Dadaism, totally a hate movement…that statement is nearly meta
*rides off on a walrus* (funny story behind that one)