My Man Boobz staycation continues. Here as promised is an interesting video.
I’d also like to take the opportunity, while I’m off, to as you all, dear Man Boobz readers, some questions that I’m really interested in seeing your answers to.
The first one: Are MRAs right about anything?
My answer to that is “no,” but there are some issues they bring up that a real, non-misogynistic men’s movement could focus on. These are:
1) Prison rape. A troubling new survey suggests that it’s far more common than previously thought, and that the number of people raped inside prison (overwhelmingly male) is by some estimates nearly as great as the number of people raped outside of prison (overwhelmingly female). (Trying to break down the numbers to make clean comparisons between prison rape and rape outside of prison is difficult; Stephanie Zvan digs into the numbers here.) Of course, MRAs don’t seem to want to do anything about the problem except use the issue of male rape to attack feminists. And of course if they focused on prison rape they would have to acknowledge that female prisoners are also raped, and that LGBT folks are much, much more likely to be raped than straight cis men.
2) Disparities in prison sentences between men and women. Even after controlling for assorted relevant variables, men tend to get longer prison sentences than women for the same crimes. (I don’t have a citation handy, alas.) This is not driven by feminism; female judges tend to be harsher on women than male judges. And of course there are gigantic racial disparities in sentences as well. MRAs again have done nothing about this except use it as an excuse to circle-jerk about evil women getting a “pussy pass.”
3) Domestic violence against men should be taken more seriously. Needless to say, though, most of what MRAs say about this issue is repugnant nonsense, and they have done nothing to actually help men, instead trying to get resources taken away from women.
Thoughts, on these or on any other issues MRA might be kind of, sort of “right” about?
I love the discussions on this. And to come to the same conclusion as everybody else… no.
Gillian – I’ve read most of the Discworld series, apart from the ones about Tiffany Aching and Colour of Magic (couldn’t get into it at all). The ones about Vimes or Death are my favourites.
Totally yes about MRAs and self-loathing. Pity is that they haven’t the self-awareness to get help for it, but project it onto other people.
hellkell – ah, would that be about Granny’s sister, perhaps? Lilith, was that her name? Which two books have you read?
Ellex: I think the internet makes them seem bigger than they are. Look at AVfM, Paul Elam is a fart in high wind, and I suspect deep down he knows it.
Kitteh’s: that’s the one. I’ve read WA and Colour of Magic.
Kittehs, I don’t know if I’m reading you correctly, but I think Mandolin is agreeing with other people here, not trying to pick a fight. He’s from Alas, a Blog, which is awesome.
I love Pratchett. Hellkell, make sure you read Good Omens and Nation as well as the Discworld books. The end of Nation will make you sad, but it’s still such a wonderful book.
He comes back to the “dehumanization as the root of evil” concept several times, IIRC.
I own most of the Discworld books in paper form, as well as in digital form. I also have a copy of his documentary that was on BBC, “Choosing to Die”. He’s going to be such a loss to the world of literature – and to the world in general. It’s so nice when the people you admire for some wonderful talent turn out to also be actually wonderful people (I’m looking at you, Orson Scott Card and Adam Baldwin *glares*).
Gillian – It seems to me that free condoms, and free any kind of contraception would be good health policy, no? The overall health expenditure is much smaller for condoms than STIs/unwanted pregnancies. I’m glad they were free for me (not everywhere, but widely available for free), followed by my tax-covered IUD. Good thing I was born north of the 49th parallel…
Why do you find covered/free condoms problematic? (or maybe I misunderstood you)
I would have sympathy for a humane father’s rights movement, because it would of necessity be fighting against the oppressive gender roles that say only women can be good caregivers especially of small children and that all men are incompetent parents. However, I’ve yet to see an MRA actually advocate for any of that.
@Gillian – you know why everyone is more familiar with the symptoms of a heart attack in men?
Nudity.
Seriously: most of us learned the symptoms of heart attacks from movies and tv. In order to show a person being treated for a heart problem on tv, you have to show them with their shirt off. You can’t show a woman naked on tv, at least in the US, so all the heart attack patients are always male.
ellex24: I hope that myself, only I worry (especially lately) that all of this swill sloshing around splashes up into the world and distorts the thinking of otherwise reasonable people. Case in point, I had a dinner date that started well until suddenly we were talking about circumcision (I have no idea, really, I still can’t quite figure out how it came up) and how “feminists are so quick to judge when it’s girls being circumcised, but when it comes to the mutilation of men…”
I sat there for a couple of minutes just blinking at him and then excused myself, picked up my coat and left.
And is it just me, or is the world at large especially rapey lately? The week is two days old and I’ve seen or heard three completely gratuitous references to rape so far (and not to rape itself but to rape as hi-larous metaphor for government or taxation or whatever…).
Bee – thanks, I was wondering what the point of Mandolin’s comment was. It read like a lead-in to all the “what about teh menz” derails whenever FGM is mentioned on any feminist site.
Self-loathing and loathing of the women that might be willing to settle for them. A corollary of serial monogamy (above) is that the only woman who is willing to settle for him will be depreciated in value compared to what he might have obtained otherwise, and compared to what the ‘alphas’ got. Hence the rants about ‘sluts’ looking for a beta to mooch off once they get older (read: less valuable). MRAs have a sense that they are exchanging their money and resources for her reproductive value, and they are angry that a woman may have spent value on pleasing herself, value that they consider rightfully theirs.
They MIGHT be right about hunting mammoths- however nothing in the article specifies which gender was doing the hunting.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/animal_forecast/2013/02/pleistocene_extinction_did_climate_change_or_humans_doom_mammoths_sabercats.single.html
My favourite Pratchett is Small Gods. Highly recommend 🙂
@Ghost Betty
So you think women should be forced to stay pregnant against their will and give birth against their will because in your mind, consenting to sex is exactly the same as consenting to pregnancy, and being forced to bear a child against your will is EXACTLY like having to make payments?
Lovely.
What about women – not your anecdotal examples but actual people – who were using birth control and had a failure? What about men who refuse to wear condoms? Have you ever even heard of the phrase “reproductive coercion”? I’m guessing not.
Paying child support is not being a parent. It’s providing financial support. It’s a complex issue and I’m open to suggestions for fixing it from people who aren’t MRAs, but the reality also is that only about 60% of chid support owed actually gets paid.
Any man who is that horrified at the mere idea of paying money to care for a child should either always use condoms, be celibate or sterilized. And frankly I’d prefer those men choose option B.
Maude: Oops, sorry! Must be the bourbon talking…
If it were up to me, it would all be free, but what I was referring to was a meme going around at the same time that contraception coverage was the Obamacare outrage of the dayTM that, since all the Slutty McSluttersons want their birth control pills covered by insurance, why shouldn’t condoms be covered as well? As if that were the appropriate comparison, you know (especially since most of the health care plans in question covered medications like Cialis or Viagra)? Somehow the fact that you can walk into any drugstore or supermarket and buy as many condoms as you can carry, but that you need a prescription for hormonal birth control wasn’t making it through the ideological filter…
drst – I’ve heard of that. Men on tv and in film have heart attacks so they can have their shirts ripped off, given fake chest compressions, and heart monitor leads attached to their (fortunately hairless) chests.
Women get drowned so that men can give them mouth to mouth and they can seem naked while being fully clothed.
What always burns me is when some woman is drowned or suffocated, some man revives her, and it’s all *fade to black as they passionately kiss and are presumably about to have sex*.
And I want to yell at the tv, “Dude! She wasn’t breathing! She’s seriously not gonna be up for pretty much anything but sitting around feeling like crap!”
Then again, I often want to yell at the tv. Why do we never see a man giving another man mouth to mouth resuscitation? Occasionally – very occasionally – we might see two women, but never two men.
Kittehs’ – I kind of side-eyed Mandolin’s comment re: circumcision as well. It was a bit lacking in context.
I like the Gaiman/Pratchett collaboration “Good Omens”.
Also, if I may comment on the reincarnation topic that was on yesterdays thread- check out Christopher Moore’s book “A Dirty Job”. It is fiction and humorous but it also has an interesting take on reincarnation – a person is not necessarily born with a soul, but may collect it sometime during their lifetime so that the soul can pick up where it last left off and not have to start all over.
I have a sudden image of MRAs staying soulless because all the souls not yet housed are saying “I’m not going there! I won’t, you can’t make me!”
My favourite Pratchett book? Any that includes Death of Rats… I love that little guy! (SQUEAK) Although considering I have two adorable pet ratties of my own, I hope I don’t get to meet him anytime soon.
As for MRAs, I think it’s a real shame that the few genuine points they might make – difficulties with custody arrangements, prison populations and rape, for instance – are overshadowed by the d*uchebaggery they carry on with the rest of the time.
@ kittehs’ Lol.
a kitten for you:
http://media-cache-ec5.pinterest.com/550x/b5/62/13/b56213e2292feb73078a9280b0b4ee15.jpg
“A Dirty Job” is one of my favorite books.
@hellkell I also really like “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal”
@drst I could be wrong (as Toby once said, “I’m pretty drunk”) but I don’t think that’s what Ghost Betty was saying at all. At least that’s not how I read it.
The completely crap version of the scenario that we’re all familiar with (to our eternal nausea) is the one from Knocked Up, where all the guy needed was to get someone pregnant so that he could get his act together and be a man, etc. Or something. I shut it off pretty quickly because it was so cringe and vomit inducing.
But I do wonder about the messy gray situation where both parties entered into casual sex with the understanding that it was going to be casual and temporary, and oops something seems to have gone wrong. And I’m completely pro-choice, in that I think that having an abortion is a right that firmly and fundamentally belongs to every woman. But she could choose to have the baby too, and then what does the guy do? Just as I think there is no way that she should be coerced to have a baby if she doesn’t want to, she ought not to be coerced to have an abortion if she doesn’t want to. Choice is just that; you find yourself in a place and you ought to have the freedom to make the decision that works for you.
I want to believe that it is wrong for a woman to be forced to have a baby she does not want, but I feel that to fight for that position, I also have to support the opposite.
I could not agree more that fatherhood is more than providing cash (and one of the successes of feminism has to be that more women are pursuing careers when they want to and more men are taking care of kids when they want to as well) but if women can’t be forced to be mothers, can men be forced to be fathers?
Granted, it’s historically been easier for them to walk away anyhow, but, well, this one gets messy for me…
I’m not sure that we do have to argue for the opposite to maintain the first position. The way I see it, a fetus has little moral value compared to the woman who bears it, therefore her rights trump what little rights it might possess. In contrast, a child has huge moral value, and it has a right to be cared for, or conversely its biological parents (and all of us) have a duty to its well-being. Therefore the biological parents can and should be compelled to provide that care.