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.
#2 gets a bit trickier than that – in the vaccination case specifically, in the USA, not going to public schools might be an idea, but there are other countries where it’s not school-based and probably other examples of that sort of religious exemption variety that aren’t either.
#3 wasn’t specifically about conscientious objection, which I do agree should be a no-questions-asked thing – that was just the first example that came to mind.
RE: pig in vaccinations
Pretty sure that’s not a thing. Some Muslim groups, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia, have stopped vaccinating and started getting polio, but the rationale behind that was the idea that Zionists or Westerners might be tampering with the vaccines, nothing to do with pig. The idea still stands, obviously.
The kirpan thing is probably a #2, actually, as are all sorts of not-really-followed Jewish doctrines. Again, sincere religious rules-lawyering seems to be the neatest option.
Aren’t the Amish normally cool with the English doing things however they like, and don’t many of the communities argue for limited amounts of modern technology that doesn’t interfere with a simple life anyway?
lowquacks: 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.
Speaking as one who has been an attender at several meeetings, and who has been involved with more than one Quaker, over the course of more than 20 years, you seem to have confused cause and effect.
They are members of an organisation dedicated to peace because of their metaphysical beliefs. They’ve been conscientious objectors since George Fox codified the basic system of belief, at times being martyred for it.
Sikhs in the Army have one problem the Army will accomodate (in Basic training one is not allowed to have any “weapon” the Army doesn’t issue; so there is a ritual kirban they can have, which has the form, but no function, of knife), and one they won’t (hair, in particular beards; because of how protective masks against chem/bioweapons work).
Ooh, I don’t think you want to take that tack. I know you’re talking about weapons specifically, but the “it’s not discrimination because nobody is allowed to do it” argument ends in really bad places.
And the kirpan is a basic tenet of Sikhism; it’s not optional. So devout Sikhs might feel like they had to choose between violating their religion and going to court, which could create a barrier to them doing things like seeking divorce.
(For the record, I’m not a supporter of weapons in family court or anything, it’s just a thorny problem.)
Yeah, it’s just an example. I’m sure there are better ones (ie, I’m sure there is some case where something is much more practical generally but violates a group’s beliefs).
@pecunium
That’s irrelevant. Quakers get easy access to conscientious objection because they belong to an organisation that is very anti-war, which is good proof that they are themselves anti-war. Generally, conscientious objectors who have been heavily involved in secular anti-war stuff can also prove themselves “legitimate” conscientious objectors in the same way, so it’s obvious that the religiosity of the Quakers is not the problem here.
I don’t know why every single soldier and ex-soldier on the internet seems to need to be reminded of this, but there’s more than one army. Some have very large amounts of (bearded) Sikhs.
Yeah I know it’s thorny. No dreads, period = almost certainly racism, maybe not if it truly makes sense, eg what pecunium said about gas masks. It’d have to be very context dependant, that is, no weapons in court is a standard, but do they really ban, idk, the pointy file on nail clippers? Probably not, so a ritual dagger that’s no more likely to cause harm? Ban both or neither?
And no, dietary bans/enforcements are bullshit. The number of times my options where PB&J, nothing, or meat…hell, it’s part of why I eat chicken and turkey these days, it wasn’t worth the fight. But it’s bullshit if it’s PB&J, violate your religion, or nothing. I cannot fathom a case where dietary exceptions cannot be made.
I guess my point here is that it probably isn’t discrimination if it effects everyone and isn’t written to affect any specific religious/racial/other-minority-group — whether straight up “group x does y and we dislike/hate group x so y is banned” or the accidentally “y is bad, but whoops, group x is way more likely to do y and not doing y would have badness of some sort”.
My issue here is the argument that circumcision is vital to Judiasm and banning it flat out is discriminating against Jews as they’re far more likely to practice it and it’s Very Important (the variety that’s made news over spreading herpes is another matter probably best left out of this can of worms)
And yes, I realize I’m playing with fire here, I’m mostly thinking aloud though, so go easy on me with your retorts?
Yeah, but that cuts both ways, because if you ban circumcision on the grounds that it’s harmful and a parent doesn’t have the right to do something harmful to a child, then it becomes fair game to ban anything that one can convince people is harmful. And conservatives can convince their base that anything is harmful.
(For instance, we could move from physical damage to psychological damage and say that it’s not okay to brainwash or traumatize a child religious reasons, say, in a cult. Which it shouldn’t be. But then it would be terribly easy to say that, say, being raised by gay parents is traumatizing to a child, or whatever.)
The basic problem is that there’s often no obvious, easily-defined line between sound, sensible ideas and extremely bad ideas.
I don’t know any way to think through these things except “X sounds like a good idea, except, fuck, then that would imply that Y was also okay, and that’s clearly not true…but if X isn’t allowed, then Z presumably wouldn’t be allowed either, and that isn’t fair…hmmm…”
At the end of the day, I’m tempted to throw in the towel and say “These things should be decided by reasonable people on a case-by-case basis.”
lowquacks: I don’t know why every single soldier and ex-soldier on the internet seems to need to be reminded of this, but there’s more than one army. Some have very large amounts of (bearded) Sikhs.
You’re right, I was being parochial.
I still think you are making some overly broad statements about why Quakers are (as are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists) more often granted blanket CO status (and they aren’t granted it everywhere).
And they are. A Quaker doesn’t have to show that they have personally been actively anti-war. Being a Quaker gives them a presumptive pacifism which affords them CO status; because of their metaphysical belief.
Right, but the point is that one doesn’t have to be part of a pacifist religion in order to get CO status, so it isn’t a religious exemption, it’s a philosophical one.
In totally unsurprising things: I’m a fan of using sound statistics for these “what’s harmful” questions. And yeah, those take time and require a sort of critical mass of data. The autism/vaccine study isn’t sound flat out, but say, the handful of global warming denier studies are seriously outweighed by global warming is a thing and these are details type studies. Vaccines are proven, circumcision really isn’t proven safe, but likewise I haven’t seen terribly much evidence that it’s unsafe (bodily autonomy question aside for a second). Obviously this gets fuzzier with non-medical questions, but do gay parents inherently traumatize children? Studies say no. Religion? Idk that there are really studies, but yeah, let’s get some for that question. Psych damage is measurable.
Bodily autonomy issues I’d go the other way — not “is not doing it harmful” but “is doing it safe, and well justified” — maybe you can manage a religious justification, but it’d have to be for something “safe” (nothing’s 100% safe, but some standard applied to everything, idk, no more risky than ear piercing?). I don’t want to ban non-medically necessary surgeries that are relatively safe and can be well justified, but “justified” itself gets weird — the difference between a facial deformity or webbed fingers or something and intersex “correction”. You could potentially justify all three, but maybe only the first two would opt for it as adults and you could generalize what adults who had the surgery in question say?
Sorry, I’m way down a rabbit hole here huh? Short version is harmful would have to mean medically proven to be harmful — eg refusing transfusion for your kid is definitely harmful, vaccines have been proven safe and refusing them is harmful to public health as well as your kid, circumcision hasn’t been proven safe (nor harmful afaik, but I thought studies were just generally lacking so could go either way?) etc.
Utter tangent but if you’re getting ears pierced, yours or your kid’s, do not use a piercing gun! Get it done by a proper piercer with a needle, the guns cannot be sanitized and pierce by crushing the tissue, where needles slide through it like a vaccine needle. Hurts less and is safer.
Lol, getting *anything pierced but anyone doing anything but ears with those guns should be shut the fuck down immediately, even the gun manufacturers say ears only.
/PSA
That anti-vaccination movement is hard for me to watch. Herd immunity is all that is protecting them. When I was a kid, I got both the Salk and the Sabin polio vaccines because I came in on the cusp of those, and back then you would see wheelchairs and crutches everywhere in public. Chickenpox and measles (both kinds) were normal childhood diseases. In my parents’ genertion, diptheria and whooping cough were normal diseases, and people sometimes died. Mumps made some men sterile. They even vaccinate for meningitis now. People used to die of it, frequently enough that you’d hear about it wherever you happened to live.
One thing I’ll say for the Christian college I spent my freshman year at — meningitis vaccine and TB test or you weren’t staying in the dorms (I have mixed feelings on the later as I failed it after the nurse tried twice in the same spot and the measure of failure is a red spot over a certain size and I had a tiny red bit where she fucking stabbed me twice — helps if the tester knows wtf they’re doing)
But yeah, meningitis vaccine is a thing, as are vaccines for certain strains of hepatitis (had that one too)
Need a DTP booster though. Lol, anyone know of planned parenthood does that? They’re the only ones who haven’t made me feel like my blood was being drawn by a vampire. Probably not…
But what if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
@pecunium
Katz expressed what I was trying to far more eloquently.
Sorry if I seemed snippy or harsh above, it’s just a personal pet peeve of mine when people do that. 🙂
lowquacks — I’ve used exactly that argument on transhumanist sorts who get all handwaving about how technology will solve it. There is no downside to pushing for lower emissions of green tech, fuck, I was once hoping Obama would go all New Deal with green energy — installing solar and wind tech means jobs. But oh yeah, oil lobbying…
Still, oil company subsidies and politics aside, there’s no practical downside — worst case is:
1) it isn’t happening and we change for the better for no reason, but hey, better!
2) it is, we do nothing, and we kill the planet
There’s a real hard choice!
And now I’m going to bed before I turn into scare tactics (please stop burning dinosaurs before we turn into Venus = oh you’re listening now? 🙂 )
Completely OT, but as she says, Oh my God.
lyrics translation:
Hear my stories and hear
Hear my sorrows, my sadness
Hear the story of my displacement and homelessness
We were lost, we were lost, lost around the world
War drove me out of my homeland
We were frozen, they wore us coffins
Expatriate begun, hardship begun
The stage of destitution, the stage of misfortune
Bullets showered us, our farm burnt to ground, our trees dried up
Tearful, we crossed the border
Like wingless bird, with no wings
Wings, wings, wings, wings…
We were lost, we were lost, lost around the world
In the country of strange our child was abused
Our educated ones became street workers
We ate our own body when we were starved
We drank our own tears when we were thirsty
We thought going to Europe bring us joy
We might find a living, we might end suffering
But we were stuck in the refugee camps
Where our skins were extinct
I dreamt kissing the dust of my homeland
We were kings and queens in our own land
But here, we are waiters and dish washers
”I don’t know, I don’t know, oh my god, oh my god”
We have forgotten our own tongue
We were human beings too but why abused?
We ran everywhere like worthless objects
In the country of our neighbor they called us ‘dirty Afghan’
In the line of bakery, they left us at end
What did we achieve in Iran and Pakistan?
Half became addicted, other half became terrorists
But, but we are hopeful now
United from now on
No more child abuse, woman abuse
No more going silent
We were lost, we were lost, lost all around the world
No more Europe, Iran, or Pakistan
From now on it will be Afghanistan
Funnily enough, the same sort of reasoning used in that argument could suggest that sucking up to transhumanists in case they do actually become demigods would be a very wise idea.
Goodnight!
But we’ll all become demigods and nothing could possibly go wrong and we’re just so clever than Dunning-Kruger doesn’t apply and and and!
One dude who really needs to grow the fuck up already. Totally bitter, dude just decided that I could manage to finish my degree (which means 5.5k just to get my records released, plus either returning to Pittsburgh, awesome but unaffordable, or transferring credits and loosing a bunch in the process) if I figured out a solution, because there’s always a solution.
I always want to slap the privilege it takes to honestly think that there’s always a solution. Like, the damned serenity prayer even gets that sometimes there just fucking isn’t.
But yeah, worst case is they’re right and we all become some enlighten non-human being, not so worst case. Or that they’re just right enough to put Hal in charge of the planet.
Pecunium, if you see this and it’s still remotely relevant, can you explain how “friendly” AI doesn’t mean friendly?
My brain, it is all sleeping pill fog. (My torrent, it’s nearly done and idk if I should stay up or close the laptop and DECISIONS!)
…3 min, appears I’m “staying up” w00t (Children of Earth, because my mother breezed through Torchwood)
@Argenti
IIRC from my days on the weirder sides of the internet, a “friendly” superintelligent AI is one that continues to have human values. This can lead to some interesting sorts of ideas.
I once had a religious fanatic/MRA start spouting off about Erin Pizzey, as if this was some sort of weapon that I should shrink before. He was dumbfounded to learn that I had no concern about what Erin had said or written, that it made no difference to me whatsoever. That her opinions were her opinions and that I gave them no more thought or weight than any other opinions. Likewise, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, just people with their own opinions. He also seemed to think that I had some leader he could appeal to or defeat that would cause me to surrender and fall into his camp. Like they think Feminism is some army and that all feminists take orders from some leadership hierarchy.
I mean, Germaine’s a bit of an embarrassment to my country and university a lot of the time. The MRA appeal to “but Valerie Solanas!” really does see the feminist thing in the MRA image, i.e., led by a group of opinionated weirdos rather than as a popular movement. “Academic feminism” and “the less immediately obvious parts of radical feminism” often get represented as the ideas feminists are all trying to sneak into everything ever, too.