Longtime antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey recently did an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. Here are some highlights — by which I mean lowlights — from her answers.
Ms. Pizzey wants to ban feminism as a hate movement:
Personally, I would like to see the feminist movement described as a hate movement, so that we can then ban them from the government, from university faculties, from anywhere where they can destroy the minds of young women and men.
It’s just a teensy bit ironic, I would say, that she characterizes feminism as a hate movement at the very same time that A Voice for Men, a site she has very publicly aligned herself with, is leading a hate campaign against an individual feminist activist. (More on this to come tomorrow.) Indeed, Pizzey herself adds to the vilification of the activist here.
And speaking of A Voice for Men, she apparently agrees with AVFM’s Paul Elam that feminists are only interested in the issue of rape because they have rape fantasies and are angry that they’re not getting enough attention from men:
If you’re referring to Paul’s statement that many or most women fantasize about being taken, I’m sorry but that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean they want to be raped, but it’s a fantasy I think almost all women have. And I think he went on to say that feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were and are so obsessed with rape are really projecting their own unconscious sexual frustration because men don’t give them enough attention. Andrea was a very sad lonely woman like this–I didn’t know her but I knew of her, and I knew Susan Browmiller and you can just read her stuff to see it there.
Yeah, I’m thinking that Dworkin’s “obsession” with rape might have had less to do with her wanting “attention” from men than it did with the fact that she had been raped.
In response to a question about using Title IX to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), Pizzey argues that most women’s brains aren’t equipped to handle all that sciencey stuff, and that most women would rather be raising children:
what will happen is that a few women will come out of that world in those areas that suit men’s brains better than women’s, and do well, but most of them won’t, and they’ll just leave and go on to other professions or to have children or family. That’s what’s been happening all the time when they’ve had quotas.
But what about the men who get excluded because of that? That’s the tragedy isn’t it, and the waste of money. Harriet Harman has proposed quotas for women in parliament, quotas for women in all the high-status fields, and women have flocked in but do not want the gruelling hours that men are willing to put into their professions because most of them–MOST of them–want to be spending time with their children at home, and that God for that.
Pizzey believes that most feminists are “mental patents” who deserve only condescension:
Personally, I don’t get into arguments with mental patients, which is what most feminist women are. Look at them with pity and compassion if you can, speak the truth as you know it.
But if you want a real reaction, pat her on the head and tell her not to worry her pretty little head about it. That’s what I do! I think men have to start using their sense of humor as a weapon. You must get past any sense of anger when you do such things though!
She believes most prominent second-wave feminists were feminists mainly because they hated their dads:
One of the early mantras of the feminist movement was to make the personal political. Therefore, those women who had bitter and violent experiences of the first male their lives (e.g. their father) then branded all men as violent and dangerous. They are also what I call the walking wounded. As far as I’m concerned the prominent feminists of the day virtually all had appalling relationships with their fathers. So if feminism grew out of a justified sense of grievance, and created a platform where they did not attempt to heal their own damage, but to project onto all men… so yes it’s very cultlike that way. But it’s any cult group that works that way, they all have either a figure they adore or a hate object that keeps them together. And their hate is against men, even when they deny it.
Yes, that’s right, she says all this and somehow does not notice the hatred of women amongst the MRAs she’s aligned herself with.
While she dismisses feminists with “daddy issues” she urges those who have been abused by their parents to forget the abuse they’ve endured, forgive their abusers and “move on.”
[T]each yourself that the past is truly the past, it is done and you cannot change it, all it is is a loop in your brain that needs to be closed down so that you can move forward. Because those patterns are deep within you, it takes a lot of hard work, but in the end you FORGIVE YOURSELF and you FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS and move on.
Meanwhile, she thinks that it makes sense for men who don’t like feminism to “head for the hills” and Go Their Own Way.
It was many years ago I was talking to a very eligible bachelor, who was a lawyer, and asked him about American feminists. He laughed and he said “what they never banked on was that men would get together and take to the hills.” This is where that expression comes from. He and his male friends would get together and have a wonderful time, they did not make permanent relationships with women, because they realized they would have too much to lose: their homes, their children, and their money. I always remember this. When 40 year old feminists complain that they can’t find any men to commit themselves, why is it men’s fault? I can’t blame men who feel this way in today’s legal environment. If the so-called women’s movement, the feminists, want men, they have to care equally about men’s desires and men’s need for protection.
This sort of makes sense, given that Pizzey seems to live in an imaginary world in which women, not men, are the truly privileged.
The actual irony of this situation is there is nothing more privileged than white middle class women, who are most of feminists. Very very privileged, because they know when they are born that either the state or a man will take care of them if they do not choose their own career. Men on the other hand are born underprivileged, particularly now, even as small boys they are demonized and discriminated against. …
I cannot see how sane sensible educated intelligent woman can consider that men are privileged. It has always been rich and middle class women who have been protected, and they are the truly privileged.
Indeed, she’s managed to convince herself that “never in the history of the world have men been so unprivileged, if you think about it.”
Naturally, all of her comments were happily upvoted by the Reddit masses, and her “Ask Me Anything” post itself got more than 1200 upvotes. Evidently pandering to Reddit’s collective fantasies about the oppression of men pays off big in the upvote department.
How compulsory is vaccination in the US?
And my parents are normally really cool, but bought into some of the hysteria with the HPV vaccine a few years ago when my sister did and encouraged her not to have it. Mild brush with homeopathy for Mum, too, and her and Dad have stuck up for workfare schemes. But otherwise pretty cool.
I know only one anti-vaxxer. He has full custody of his son and refuses to get him vaccinated. Something about how vaccines can cause horrible chronic conditions (not autism, but other stuff) and he won’t knowingly give his son something that could cause him serious harm. I don’t know why he picked vaccines and not, say, paracetamol, but there you go. He’s a hippy too…
Haha, my parents did that to us! This was a few years before the chicken pox vaccine. Made me pretty miserable (my sister got a mild case, I got a fucking terrible case) but, as mentioned by others, was a matter of getting it out of the way immediately or risking a much more severe case later. I wonder if they would still have done it if they’d known that we could get properly vaccinated later.
Assuming these women aren’t going into STEM just to evilly deny men their rightful place, they do like the fields. How anyone could interpret the more-likely-to-leave-to-have-children-or-family thing as indicative of lack of STEM talent among women instead of the effect of gender norms with a dash of the sexism in the STEM fields? You’d have to start from an idea that women don’t know themselves as well as men do.
Most elementary schools require vaccination as far as I know but all allow people to receive an exemption due to “religious belief.”
I also just read that there is a big measles outbreak in Pakistan because parents are choosing not to vaccinate over fears that “Westerners” are using the vaccinations to secretly sterilize Muslims.
Again, MILLIONS dead per year worldwide before the vaccination became widespread. Within my lifetime. How can people not get this??
@Fade: Yeah, the ableism also irked me extra much in all that horribleness. I’m a feminist AND a mental patient. And you know what; people get into arguments with me all the time. Actually, you could say arguing is my job, since I’m a philosopher. Somehow my colleagues, even the many of them who know full well that I’m a mental patient, do actual arguing rather than just patting me on the head.
“It’s just a teensy bit ironic, I would say, that she characterizes feminism as a hate movement at the very same time that A Voice for Men, a site she has very publicly aligned herself with, is leading a hate campaign against an individual feminist activist. (More on this to come tomorrow.) Indeed, Pizzey herself adds to the vilification of the activist here.”
I don’t see any sort of campaign against that woman. Dan Perrins wrote *an* opinion piece on her. I certainly don’t see how one piece makes a campaign. She did cheer when the fire alarm got pulled at the talk see about :30-:40 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_X4DkwA_Q. She did scream in people’s faces and she did call them names such as “fuckface”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxY-5ISEHPg Pointing those things out isn’t vilification of someone who has acted innocently.
Also, Paul Elam has made it very clear that he does NOT want anyone to reveal her personal details and said ” the only thing we know for sure is that she was exercising freedom of expression. We encourage that, even from the likes of this woman.” http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/a-request-of-readers/ (which implies that she’s NOT going up on register-her.com unless she breaks the law).
“Naturally, all of her comments were happily upvoted by the Reddit masses, and her “Ask Me Anything” post itself got more than 1200 upvotes. Evidently pandering to Reddit’s collective fantasies about the oppression of men pays off big in the upvote department.”
That comes as fairly misleading. Right now that reddit has over 1200 “points”. As I write, it has 3912 upvotes and 2659 downvotes. So, such “pandering” as described in the original post ALSO pays off in the downvote department.
@Blitzgal: Seems to me that lots of anti-vax people believe that the measles only BECAME occasionally deadly AFTER people started vaccinated against them, because vaccination has “weakened” us.
Not quite all, but yeah, most. Have a list — http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/schoolsurv/schImmRqmtReport.asp?s=Religious,%20grantee&d=10&w=%20%20%20%20&t=2
Harder to follow, but here’re the disease requirements — http://www.immunize.org/laws/
The thing is, you don’t (at least here) have to prove anything to get the religious exemption, it’s just a matter of signing a form. So you can be part of a religious group that has no position on vaccines, or an atheist, and still claim the religious exemption.
Cassandra, as far as I can tell, that’s an inherent vice of religious exemptions; making people prove their religious affiliations is never going to end well. Which immediately calls into question religious exemptions for vaccines, which in turn immediately calls into question all religious exemptions.
Yeah, I don’t have any solution as to how to get around that, other than just not allowing religious exemptions for vaccines at all.
(Which is in fact the solution I would vote for, if they ever put it on the ballot.)
Ugh, I hate anti-vax people for all the reasons outlined above, plus one. My little sister is autistic and has PTSD triggered by the medical environment, due to her almost dying (Stevens–Johnson syndrome) as a young child. Recently my mother had to decide if she wanted to subject my sister to the sheer trauma of going to the doctor and getting a vaccine the school wanted all the students to have, or not doing it. After like a week of debate between her and my dad and my sister herself, she decided to go to the school and request that my sister be exempt from this. Even after explaining why, the first woman she talked to more-or-less called her an awful parent and made my mother feel like dirt. If anti-vax people weren’t so prevalent and dangerous, my mother would have had much less of a hassle avoiding triggering my little sister. :/
As would I. The tricky thing is that it’s hard to think of a justification that couldn’t be applied (reasonably or unreasonably) to most other religious exemptions. I suppose the key one is the danger to others.
What katz said = QFT – quoting, because it’s right there 🙂
I’m fine with adults making decisions for themselves based on their religious beliefs, and/or what they claim their beliefs to be. Because see, you don’t want a blood transfusion, okay, you’re competent to make medical decisions? Then it doesn’t matter why you don’t want it, whether it be religion, or you just find blood squicky (yes that’s supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum)
Not fine with adults making medical decisions for children/other dependants that go against commonly accepted “best practice” medically. I give zero fucks if your religion says your child’s broken arm will knit back together if you pray, that thing needs to be properly set. Likewise, vaccines are proven — an argument could be made that HPV needs more time, but counter that, that age group could argue they’re competent to decide for themselves.
In short, I don’t think religion, or other views, should have more than minor bearing on how children are treated medically. You want to schedule the vaccine for after your vacation or something, yeah whatever. Fuck, I’m just fine with the “we’re worried about autism” crowd to wait until the kid is 3~4 and would’ve already been diagnosed. But sending the kid to school unvaccinated? Yeah, you can home school if your religion forbids vaccines. Sure state education is a right in the US, but isn’t “a safe education” part of that? (And um, it damned well seems to be with the post-Newtown gun control fight)
With some issues I’d be worried that it would lead the parents to home-school as a wide to side-step the school’s policies, but with the crunchy parents or the ones who’ve just bought into the autism hysteria I don’t think that’s so much a problem. And honestly, why should kids be allowed to expose their fellow students to potential harm because of religion? If someone said that their religion required them to take a loaded gun with them to school they’d be told that was too bad. Part of the reason the anti-vax thing has gotten so out of hand is that both school boards and pediatricians caved too easily, imo.
Cassandra — my thinking is that the parents who honestly won’t vaccinate because of religion are going to disagree with curriculum on so many other points that it’s better for everyone if they home school. Granted it sucks that the kid won’t learn, say, evolution, or sex ed. But at least here we’re dumbing down everyone’s education to suit them.
And maybe being forced to home school would make them reconsider if it was really worth the effort. That’s probably biased against religions though huh? But do non-fundies really go anti-vax?
Guess it’s the difference between saying “[thing] is required, no exceptions” and “your child cannot go to public school if you’re [religion]”…though in effect they may mean the same thing?
Religious exemptions in general strike me as bullshit. Most can fit into one of three categories:
1. The Tacit Admission that the Requirement is Bullshit
“We don’t normally let people wear long-hair-and-beards/head-coverings but it’s cool because you’re a Sikh/Muslim” and “You’re not allowed to have peyote unless it’s a part of your religion” strike me as being quiet admissions that the sky wouldn’t actually fall in if people were to start wearing the hair and beards long/heads covered in those jobs, or taking peyote.
The solution here is to get rid of the stupid rule, not chip away at it with religious exemptions.
2. The Backing Down on a Sensible Requirement
The vaccination thing is an example of this.
The solution is probably to not allow exemptions, but it’s a little trickier.
3. The Not Actually Religiously-based
Quakers have an easy time getting conscientious objector status in quite a few places, but that’s probably got more to do with the fact that they’re members of an organisation dedicated to peace than with any metaphysical beliefs of that organisation.
There’s not really a problem with these.
This isn’t denouncing religious sensitivity: setting things up so as not to unfairly affect Muslims over Ramadan is still a good thing to do, and it’s important to keep in mind various cultural practices and to accept input and criticisms from people who might be disadvantaged by current setups or rules.
It’s just saying that religious exemptions are generally horrendous ways of doing this and say odd things about which religious ideas are worthy of being recognised (one-person religions are probably far less likely to get them), and suffer from the problems CassandraSays mentioned above about the problems of trying to prove religious affiliation, particularly with non-official organisations (Catholics can prove it easily enough, for example, but other religious affiliations might be harder to show).
I might want to approach it differently if I thought that most anti-vax parents were doing it for religious reasons, but they’re not. That’s just a convenient loophole that they’re exploiting so they can “protect” their kids and rely on everyone else’s presumed herd immunity.
This. Note that most established religions have long traditions of lawyer-y classes who specifically update or interpret the religion to maintain the spirit of the thing but fit in with current social mores. The tiny blunt daggers worn by many Sikhs to cover the requirement to carry a sword with them at all times are a great example!
I don’t think how one could do this with legitimately religious antivax paranoia, but then again I’m not a theologian/rabbi/whatever.
I hang out online with some good peeps from Pharyngula, and they recently had an… issue… with someone they encountered on an Autism-related page Facebook.
The woman had an autistic kid. She’ anti-vax, pro-Wakefield, disparaging anyone that didn’t have kids because they couldn’t possibly understand, dismissed and blocked most of the self-identified autistic people in the thread because they were obviously unempathetic and incapable of understanding her emotional response, and clumsily tried to pat one on the head to get her on her side (that… did not work).
She expressed that she would rather her son have had a vaccine-preventable disease and DIED than have autism, because she would be able to comfort herself by knowing that she’d nursed him as best she could.
The conversation became rather profanity-filled at that point, with very good reason.
The kicker is? She also works part-time at a school that focuses on the non-neurotypical. >_<
Lowquacks, well summarized.
Of course there are still cases of Sikhs getting in trouble for carrying kirbans :/
lowquacks is right about #1, and doing away with all of those would also kill some of the “dreads are unacceptable/not professional” sort of racism. As for #3 yeah I just don’t care any, religious or not your belief applies to you and you have that right (fuck, if we started another draft I’d try CO and I’m not getting any religious exceptions).
It’s where #2 and actual religious sensitivity cross. Like, idk if any vaccines are pig derived or anything like that, but they wouldn’t be kosher if they were. It’d be a legit religious issue, but asking someone to prove they keep kosher to that degree would be unethical (and probably impossible and cue “that’s how it started with Hitler”, and rightly so) — but if you’re so religious that a few pig cells to potentionally save lives really bothers you, you’re going to have issues with everything else about public school and maybe home schooling is a good idea in general?
(Note, there probably aren’t pig derived vaccines and afaik kosher can be broken to save a life, but pecunium would be a better source in that)
katz — yeah but if it’s an absolute weapon free zone where a similar thing on anyone else would be banned…it isn’t really discrimination. I mean, if the rule is based on banning Sikhs from carrying kirbans, than yeah, racist. But courthouses and the like where anything like a weapon is banned? Family court in particular is No Fucking Weapons for what are probably obvious reasons.
Another one of those points where idk whether “is it seriously worth not just playing along?” Is discrimination versus this rule is sensible and we’re not bending.
Vaccines are egg-derived, though, so I’d imagine that, say, a Jainist might have a problem with them.
There’s also the case of things that are standardized one way because they’re vastly cheaper/simpler/more efficient/more effective that way, but that go against someone’s beliefs. Hand-counted ballots for the Amish, for instance.