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The Feminist Hegemony will destroy your hard drive, and other things I learned from Erin Pizzey’s return visit to Reddit

Be vewy quiet! Most men wive wives of quiet desperwation.
Be vewy quiet! Most men wive wives of quiet desperwation.

Two weeks ago, you may recall, antifeminist crusader and recent A Voice for Men recruit Erin Pizzey made an “Ask Me Anything” appearance on Reddit which was a rousing success, at least by the standards of Reddit and the Men’s Rights movement. (By the standards of logic and ordinary human decency, not so much.) This Saturday, she gave a sort of encore.

Here are some of the interesting things I learned from her latest three-hour appearance. (I haven’t read all thousand-plus comments in the thread; this is based solely on what she herself said. Click on the headlines to see her original comments in their entirety, in context.) Her comments are, as always, models of good sense and lucidity.

Feminism should be banned as a hate movement because … some feminists allegedly think criticism of feminism should be banned?

Ban feminists from government perhaps! Personally, I think, I would describe feminism, and I have fought for 40 years to publicize the damage that they were doing to family life and men and boys. To me, to condemn men as sole perpetrators of all or almost all atrocities in this world, feminists are a hate movement. I say this because just recently Sweden, Norway, and I think Finland are trying to bring in a law in those countries that will make any criticism of feminism a punishable offense. That is not the action of a movement dedicated to equality and freedom of speech for all, it is totalitarianism.

If Erin Pizzey ever offers to split a piece of  cake with you, and is about to cut it in half, make sure you get to choose which half you get:

As far as I’m concerned, a sufficient amount of women have reached boardrooms and many of them publicly have said that they prefer a quality of life which includes family time, which for women in many ways is more important because we, in the long term, through our children and grandchildren. Men, as they climb up the steps to fame and fortune define themselves by how well they can take care of their wives and children. Different lifestyles, different goals, very few women want to spend the time and the total energy in making that high-achieving career lifestyle.

According to the most recent Catalyst survey, only 16.6% of Fortune 500 board members are women, and an even smaller percentage (14.3%) are CEOs. That’s a very strange notion of equality you have there, Ms. Pizzey.

Though she claims to work on behalf of men, she doesn’t seem to think that highly of many of them. Oh, and she seems a little delusional about what feminism is, but I guess we already knew that.

So many men are lickspittles. Often in my travels when I’m speaking, I have asked men, informally, why they would never stand up to women who were devoted to the idea of a world without men. The honest answer was they were too dependent on having relationships with women to stand up for what they believed. …

I think most men live lives of quiet desperation–that’s a quote, I can’t remember who said it but it’s true.

I believe that was Elmer Fudd.

Wait, no, he said something about hunting wabbits. No idea, then. Who could have Thoreau-n such an idea around? Walden you like to know?

Men Going Their Own Way have some darn sensible ideas about the world, and women need to watch out because men have given themselves the Right to Date:

I’m not surprised that men are going their own way. Why would any sane man want to risk losing his property, his relationship with his wife, his financial stability, the children that he will be deprived of… at the moment, men don’t have any rights in this area. In England, Harriet Harman and her very powerful harpies are trying to bring in a law that will mean a woman has only got to live with a man for a very short period of time before she’s entitled to exactly the same amount of money and power that is given to married women. That’s already happened in Australia and Canada too!

I am constantly in the company of women in their late 30s and 40s who after choosing a career have decided they want children and marriage. I have to regretfully inform them that the present climate against men, they are very unlikely to have a relationship with a man and will probably never have children.

It’s true. Nowhere is the problem more noticeable than Los Angeles, by the way, where men give themselves the right to date (meaning, they can have sex with as many women as they want at the same time)… very sad situation, but, why would they do anything else? The legal system can destroy them if they commit to a relationship.

The Feminist Hegemony will fuck up your hard drive:

I did manage to get exactly one paper published, decades after the fact, on the surveys I did of the first 100 women in my Refuge. Just one, in a tiny journal. … But the feminist hegemony has worked hard to keep work like this out of the public eye.

They actually destroyed the hard disk of Professor Viano from Washington University when he tried to publish some of this work.

[citation needed]

For what it’s worth, there doesn’t seem to be anyone named Viano associated with Washington University in St. Louis (aside from a physics professor who got her PhD there), nor, for that matter, with George Washington University in Washington DC.

There is an actual Professor Emilio Viano who teaches at American University’s School of Public Affairs and is an adjunct professor of law at the Washington College of Law, and he’s written about violence and victimology so perhaps he is the man Pizzey is referring to. There is, however,  no evidence I can find online that anyone, much less the “feminist hegemony,” has ever destroyed his hard drive, and he seems to have published extensively and had what looks like a pretty successful academic career without any obvious hindrance from the evil femlords.

I did find a news article in which Viano is quoted about a case in which the FBI secretly got its hands on the hard drive of one of its agents suspected of selling secrets to the Russians, but 1) that wasn’t Viano’s hard drive and 2) I’m pretty sure the Feminist Hegemony had nothing to do with that, as it was never discussed at any of our meetings that I can recall, though admittedly I spent most of our meetings eating the complementary bon-bons and playing with the cats.

I eagerly await Ms. Pizzey’s clarification of her assertions about the mysterious “Professor Viano from Washington University” and his “hard disk.”

The last little lesson I learned from Pizzey’s appearance:

An appropriate and hilarious response to the trolly question “what type of breading and/or egg wash do you use for battered women?” is:

Fried food gives me indigestion.

This from a woman who claims to care about victims of domestic violence, and whose biggest claim to fame is that she was the founder of one of the first DV shelters for women. Evidently when you spend a lot of time in the company of Men’s Rights Activists, jokes about “battered women” are just part of the landscape.

Ms. Pizzey, might I suggest that if you indeed suffer from any sort of digestive problem it might just be because you are full of shit?

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Kittehserf
11 years ago

“And we have ear, nose, and throat specialists because ears, noses, and throats are all the same thing.”

When I’ve got a cold I feel like mine are. 😛

pecunium
11 years ago

“(And while we are at it, Alan Turing is also the reason most of us don’t speak German right now, since he was the guy that cracked the Enigma codes that the Nazis used during WWII)”

Speaking as a student of history, in particular military history; with a moderate attention to that war.

No.

The war was easier, because of Turing, but even without the Bletchley Park computers (which were people, later replaced with machines; that transition [in two separate areas of that war; Oak Ridge Tenn., during The Manhattan Project being the other, but I digress] Germany couldn’t invade England, and the US wasn’t going to let the U-boats starve her.

The Rueben James was sunk in October 1941. Had more US ships been sunk that would have pulled us into the European War.

But absent a fleet of surface ships, to cover the landing craft (Hitler planned to have barges hauled across the Channel) there was no way to invade.

So long as England was able to hold out (and Churchill wasn’t going to negotiate a cessation of hostilities) there was going to be war. The only way Hitler could have managed to outlast England was to be willing to forgo the invasion of Russia; and manage to blockade England without pissing off the US.

Once that happens, Germany will lose the war. Even if she hasn’t invaded Russia she will lose. She might lose more decisvely (Stalin isn’t likely to refrain from trying to pick up Eastern Europe/the remnant of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was planning to violate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; he also figured Hitler might, he just failed to realise how mendacious Hitler was. He figured there would be some time to spare while Hitler consolidated Western Europe, and the “annexations” of Romania/Greece/Yugoslavia.

So, from here, I can say Hitler had no chance (from there it was touch and go until July 1944).

Aaliyah
11 years ago

@Marie

I’m sorry you had to go through all the trouble of writing that. But thanks. =] I’ll keep that stuff in mind as it’s definitely applicable to my brother.

lensman (@l3nsman)
11 years ago

@Aaliyah

I thank you, and I am sincerely sorry for what I wrote. Now that I read what I just wrote more carefully, I see that my tone is also a bit too patronizing. So I apologize for that as well.

Seriously, though, you are a gifted writer and a wonderful person.

I wish you the best of success with everything you do…

…and good luck with your brother and the rest of your family.

And thanks for inspiring me to start reading manga again.

@pecunium

You are absolutely right and thanks for setting the (war) record straight.

Still, Alan Turing’s work saved plenty of lives and he should be appreciated and honored for it.

@Katz

OK, the metaphor you used can seriously backfire.

See, the reason Ear-Nose-Throat specialists exist instead of let just say Ear-Specialists or Nose-Specialists is because those three are intrinsically interconnected and what happens in one region can seriously affect the other. A nostril blocked by mucus during a cold for instance can cause severe ear-ache for instance.

So, I imagine that while Gay, Lesbian and Trans are fundamentally different and might even not get along with each other, there is a commonality in their experience as far as discrimination goes which allows them to unite somewhat.

Which brings me to another point…

@Argenti

I wasn’t aware of this as I only had a few gay friends and only took part in a couple of LGBT gatherings during my University days. I always wondered why gay men tended to stay away from the lesbians and vice versa when they were supposed to be in this together. Though I imagined that things wouldn’t always be harmonious in the LGBT community, I didn’t really expect things to be like this.

Thank you for educating me…

…and, yes, Cathy Brennan IS a real piece of work.

@CassandraSays

“I think you’re full of shit”

I could produce an audio/video clip with my spouse yelling at me and calling my daughter a dog, and you would still claim that I copied it from some TV show and say the same thing…

…So, how about this…

There is something fundamentally wrong with societies, traditionalist or not, that produce men like me who are completely devoid of self-worth and self-appreciation, who can’t properly evaluate relationship situations, who are deathly afraid of what the other sex can do to them, and are subsequently asked to “man-up” by a system that effectively emasculates them.

It was my frustration and my desperation at the current situation that made me susceptible to the message of AVfM and if this isn’t addressed somehow by the feminist movement, even if you somehow put people like Paul Elam and JtO out of the picture, the “Men’s Movement” will still persist.

Go to a PUA meeting, observe the men there, and tell me that what I am saying is wrong.

@hellkell

I agree with feminism in everything but two things:

The one is the notion that “gender is a social construct”. I am sorry, but I know that men and women have some fundamental differences in the way they develop speech, intelligence, muscle mass etc in the course of their lives. I understand that things are different in cases where homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism is involved, but “nurture not nature” upbringing experiments are a recipe for disaster. If you have any doubt, just google “David Reimer” (trigger warning: his story is very depressing). I can accept that gender roles are a social construct, I can not accept that gender itself is as well.

And then there’s the notion of “Patriarchy”…

Ouch! Don’t throw stones at me! Allow me to clarify!

I am not a “Patriarchy Denier”. I know that there were plenty of societies like Ancient Athens were patriarchical in the feminist sense -a “systemic bias against women”- but I also know that there were also plenty of societies, like the ancient Minoan civilisation of Knossos, that were not. And that’s not even taking into account societies like the Egyptians and the Persians. I don’t think it’s fair to label the entire ancient world as Patriarchical and/or Misogynistic when there was such a variety of cultures and societal structures in it.

Currently I live in Greece. I grew up in a Greek village, I went and got my degree in the UK (where I got my first taste of feminism -and I liked it) but I returned to my village and I currently work there doing what I studied. Others who went abroad were not so lucky: a friend of mine got a liberal arts degree, couldn’t get a job anywhere and is currently operating a Kebab Shop where he wraps pitas using photocopies of his diploma. Seriously. So, I understand how, in many very real ways, I am privileged.

Greek Society is the very definition of a traditional Patriarchy. The father is supposed to be the head of the household and the rest of the family is supposed to follow foot. The father is supposed to be the main breadwinner, and the mother is expected to work a part-time job at best and stay at home and raise the kids. The decisions that the father takes are absolute and the children are bidden to obey them.

Patriarchy in Greece takes many forms. A father may not always pressure his kids to get married, but he may pressure them to take a job they don’t want or study something they are not suited for. Someone I knew nearly disowned his daughter for actually deciding to marry and quit her job as a doctor (“I didn’t sweat blood and tears so that you’d become some man’s chattel”).

Frankly, I can see how that system ultimately hurts not only women but men too. A lot of married men I know view their marriage as a depressing life-sentence, where their role is defined by their ability to earn money and command authority. No wonder so many of us commit suicide as of late: with the entire social structure coming tumbling down and the ability to earn money compromised, a man’s identity is severely damaged and he has literally nothing more that he considers worthy to live for.

So, yeah, I can see patriarchy in the traditional sense and I accept that it’s a big problem.

My objection rises when I am trying to see it from the feminist sense of “a political and economical system biased against women”.

Frankly, when I try to see it this way, I just can’t. I see plenty of women administrators, doctors and lawyers, plenty of whom were encouraged (dare I say “pressured”?) to become this way by their fathers. When I went to complete my compulsory military training I served at the unit which had the first woman General, and I was personally witness to the first Medal ever to be awarded to a woman for outstanding valor and bravery -she literally dragged three wounded soldiers under enemy fire at the borders.

So, if Greece is a Patriarchy that is designed and deny women opportunity and recognition, how come I witness so much female achievement around me? How come the top students in every class are almost always women? And how come women who are raised in such an oppressive environment can go abroad and literally dominate in their respective fields of interest?

I can see Patriarchy in the traditional sense, but not in the feminist sense, is all I am saying.

Please enlighten me and feel free to set me straight.

Briznecko
Briznecko
11 years ago

This isn’t the space to have your hand held through feminism. But! Google is your friend! Feminism 101 will be more than happy to enlighten you.

We mock misogynists here, not raise toddler feminists. Happy googeling!

hellkell
hellkell
11 years ago

No, dude, I am not here to educate you. You’re gonna have to find enlightenment on your own.

It was my frustration and my desperation at the current situation that made me susceptible to the message of AVfM and if this isn’t addressed somehow by the feminist movement, even if you somehow put people like Paul Elam and JtO out of the picture, the “Men’s Movement” will still persist.

Oh, fuck you. You want the feminists to do your heavy lifting, you types ALWAYS want women to do your emotional labor. I can’t say “fuck you” enough. Shitweasel.

Briznecko
Briznecko
11 years ago

Wow, I missed that lovely nuget of assholery. I hereby retract my friendly response.

gametime218
gametime218
11 years ago

The one is the notion that “gender is a social construct”. I am sorry, but I know that men and women have some fundamental differences in the way they develop speech, intelligence, muscle mass etc in the course of their lives.

First, I’ve encountered very few modern gender theorists who believe that gender is entirely a matter of social construction and zero who have argued that the way people develop muscle mass is a social construct, so you might want to do some more reading on the subject before you begin arguing against things feminists don’t say.

Second, the idea that speech and intelligence development has nothing to do with socialization is pretty comprehensibly wrong. (This, incidentally, is part of why your earlier comment about “male and female brains” was wrong as well as offensive – the biology of a person’s brain in part reflects the upbringing and experience they’ve had, so saying “men and women have different brains” doesn’t prove anything about biological essentialism in a society where men and women are socialized differently.)

Aaliyah
11 years ago

I am not a “Patriarchy Denier”. I know that there were plenty of societies like Ancient Athens were patriarchical in the feminist sense -a “systemic bias against women”- but I also know that there were also plenty of societies, like the ancient Minoan civilisation of Knossos, that were not. And that’s not even taking into account societies like the Egyptians and the Persians. I don’t think it’s fair to label the entire ancient world as Patriarchical and/or Misogynistic when there was such a variety of cultures and societal structures in it.

The only societies that weren’t patriarchal were some hunter-gatherer societies. Every other society we know of is patriarchal (except for perhaps the Iroquois), although I suppose it’s fair to say that some were worse than others. I mean, obviously Mesopotamia and modern-day North America are vastly different in terms of the prominence of patriarchal norms, but they are both patriarchal and they both have problems because of the patriarchy.

Greek Society is the very definition of a traditional Patriarchy. The father is supposed to be the head of the household and the rest of the family is supposed to follow foot. The father is supposed to be the main breadwinner, and the mother is expected to work a part-time job at best and stay at home and raise the kids. The decisions that the father takes are absolute and the children are bidden to obey them.

Patriarchy in Greece takes many forms. A father may not always pressure his kids to get married, but he may pressure them to take a job they don’t want or study something they are not suited for. Someone I knew nearly disowned his daughter for actually deciding to marry and quit her job as a doctor (“I didn’t sweat blood and tears so that you’d become some man’s chattel”).

My objection rises when I am trying to see it from the feminist sense of “a political and economical system biased against women”.

Frankly, when I try to see it this way, I just can’t. I see plenty of women administrators, doctors and lawyers, plenty of whom were encouraged (dare I say “pressured”?) to become this way by their fathers

My father wants all of my sisters to be educated and get full-time jobs, just like me (because I’m still perceived as male) and my brother. If we looked at the patriarchy that way, we could call my father as an ardent feminist.

But that would require us to ignore the fact that he occasionally calls some women “bitches”, laments about why all women are like this or that, told my older sister and her friend not to go on a road trip to our place because he was worried about her and her friend being raped (or something similar), constantly tells my older sister to wear loose “modest” clothes whenever she’s here for a visit, thinks that women who get abortions are evil, and gaslighted my mother and my step-mother when confronted about his abusive behavior.

There is more to the patriarchy than what you have pointed out. Misogyny exists in many forms. Just because you know women who are being pressured by their fathers to do those things doesn’t mean that we don’t live in a patriarchal society. Clearly things are changing for the better, and what you point out is a sign of progress. But it’s not proof that the patriarchy as feminists conceive it doesn’t exist.

When I went to complete my compulsory military training I served at the unit which had the first woman General, and I was personally witness to the first Medal ever to be awarded to a woman for outstanding valor and bravery -she literally dragged three wounded soldiers under enemy fire at the borders.

“first Medal ever” – your words. What does that say about the social opportunities of women in this day and age? To me it says that women are gaining a more equal status, but have not reached it.

So, if Greece is a Patriarchy that is designed and deny women opportunity and recognition, how come I witness so much female achievement around me? How come the top students in every class are almost always women? And how come women who are raised in such an oppressive environment can go abroad and literally dominate in their respective fields of interest?

I live in California, and I notice successful women all the time. That doesn’t mean, however, that women in general don’t face heaps of misogyny and denial of opportunities. Especially if you look at women who aren’t white, middle class, straight, etc. Benevolent and hostile sexist attitudes still marginalize and oppress women, even though things have changed for the better. Although there are many examples of patriarchal systems, one only needs to remember that women are still disproportionately affected by intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. And then we have an entire culture that trivializes sexual aggression and shifts the burden of avoiding aggression on the victims, most of whom are women.

I could go on and on and even cite some sources if you like, but really, pretty much all reliable sociological evidence supports the feminist conception of patriarchy.

Fibinachi
11 years ago

It was my frustration and my desperation at the current situation that made me susceptible to the message of AVfM and if this isn’t addressed somehow by the feminist movement, even if you somehow put people like Paul Elam and JtO out of the picture, the “Men’s Movement” will still persist.

Go to a PUA meeting, observe the men there, and tell me that what I am saying is wrong.

I actually can’t say I disagree.
The meetings I witnessed were certainly…
interesting is a good word. And people will probably keep believing those things, if nothing else change except the spearhead figures.

But, @lensman,

I don’t think this is the right space to ask those questions. This is not an attempt at shutting down debate or coyly skipping the issue, it’s just that there’s a trolls who tend to drop by, and no one here really… the patience? To explain basic issues again and again. That sounds so glib and dismissive, but I hope you get the meaning behind it as I cannot think of another way to phrase it.

Still though:

Gender is a social construct, and this is one of the pecularities of language, but as a thing, gender is and sex isn’t. I could be wrong there, but that’s the way it’s been explained to me and the way it seems to make sense.

Denying that people are biologically different is sort… strange, if you know any people.

But at the same time, accidentally thinking everyone is biologically different in the same way is making a massive, massive category error.

Gender is the ideas associated with “Women are this”, “Men are that” and sex is the “These bits are the bits I happen to have”. So far as my understanding goes, one is, in fact, a fairly massive social construct with the implications and feedback that brings and the other is the area of doctors, science and what you prefer. But people who are not, you know, me would probably say things differently and it’s a subject I know very, very little about.

The interesting thing about the notion of “A patriarchy” is that often ends up sounding like a history spanning mega conspiracy tought up a bunch of burly men in leather armor one night around a campfire and with that, yeah, anyone can see that it’s rather silly. You will also find multiple examples of societies and cultural unions that are not, strictly speaking, ruled by fathers – your examples are good, for instance, and there’s a few studied tribes from the Indian geographic area that had maternal lines of property holding, there’s a few societies in Papa New Guinea that arranged things on a sort of filial split rent basis, which was intricate and interesting.

However, assuming that it means “Men are always in charge” isn’t quite the case. Your story is interesting, and I wish you the very best of luck dealing with the issues and troubles that might plague you and yours. No one should have to suffer unnecessarily.

So when I write this next bit, it might seem as if what I’m doing is belittling your pain (if you have any) or saying you deserve your fate. That’s not the case, that’s an issue of language and my inability to phrase myself correctly. If your situation really is as… bloody miserable as it seems to me, reading your words, then I hope you find a way to live in a way that makes you happy. Because, I mean, dude, that does sound both glum and miserable 🙂

Still, in your examples, what strikes me is this:

Patriarchy in Greece takes many forms. A father may not always pressure his kids to get married, but he may pressure them to take a job they don’t want or study something they are not suited for. Someone I knew nearly disowned his daughter for actually deciding to marry and quit her job as a doctor (“I didn’t sweat blood and tears so that you’d become some man’s chattel”).

and this

A lot of married men I know view their marriage as a depressing life-sentence, where their role is defined by their ability to earn money and command authority. No wonder so many of us commit suicide as of late: with the entire social structure coming tumbling down and the ability to earn money compromised, a man’s identity is severely damaged and he has literally nothing more that he considers worthy to live for.

contrasted with this:

So, if Greece is a Patriarchy that is designed and deny women opportunity and recognition, how come I witness so much female achievement around me? How come the top students in every class are almost always women? And how come women who are raised in such an oppressive environment can go abroad and literally dominate in their respective fields of interest?

If you assume “Patriarchy means men always win!” then everything you write makes perfect sense, but that’s not really the case. Look at it from a slightly different angle – If a lot of men view their marriage as a depressing life sentence, why aren’t they divorcing their spouses?
If a lot of them commit suicide because they are unable to wield the authority and power they thought they were supposed to wield, how come they don’t change their expectation to match, say, sharing power or engaging in a different kind of relationship?

If someone chooses to disown their daughter for who they marry, based on the notion that that daughter should live differently and bring honor to the household, seeing as she’s just chattel otherwise, how come they don’t stop and think: Wait, what am I really saying here?

If a lot of men commit suicide because traditional social structures are crumbling and their ability to earn money compromised, compromising in turn their identity, how come they don’t change that identity? How come, in the society you describe, a slackening of traditional parameters for male achievement leads to male suicide?

I don’t really like the phrase “Patriarchy” myself, because it implies that men always come out on top. I like Kyriarchy or intersectional oppresion in related to current social structures, but both of those often get me blank stares. So, meh.

If women achieving things causes you to ask “How come they’re achieving things, being women, and not me? How come they can travel out of here and do good things, and I can’t? Is it because I’m a man?”

then, with all of that, you’re indicating a thought structure, a way of organizing society and a setting in which the notion of men doing manly things and women doing womenly things is just assumed to be true. That is, per definition, a patriarchal society. Since economics often don’t really care about societal specifis in our interconnected world, a down turn in the rent in Belgium crushes the economy of Greece, and that sucks. For every single person in Greece who are now denied service, jobs and a future. It’s literally the worst thing I can imagine. And I am sorry that this is what you’re going through.

However, none of that really means that women are somehow better off, or that the notion of rule by the fathers is denied, wrong

So long as a man’s primary identity is defined by his ability to earn and achieve, and the power he might wield in a family unit, you’re dealing with a few of the ground pillars in traditional patriarchy thinking. In societies where there’s a boom going on, that’s often unremarkable and just assumed to be the case (Everything is going so well, of course families are happy and men are opening businesses!). In societies where the economy is crumbling, you start getting the interesting picture.

So let me finish by repeating a question:

If Greece, as a society, is not a patriarchy and there is not a specific, set out, and defined role for men, how come, when their ability to wield authority, their income potential and their identity as given by society starts crumbling, do people commit suicide?

🙂

Aaliyah
11 years ago

Also, lensman, the most salient evidence of the existence of patriarchy is that femininity and femaleness are still coded as inferior to masculinity and maleness. Benevolent attitudes towards women exist, of course, but that’s just benevolent sexism. See the research done by Glick and Fiske for a more detailed discussion of ambivalent sexism, which includes benevolent sexism.

I should also note that, throughout the ages, a woman’s strong masculine performance has been seen by society as an attempt to gain status or snatch power away from men, whereas a man’s strong feminine performance has been seen as something so inconceivable that it could only be a result of a lack of self-respect (because who in the world would ever want to be feminine and/or female)?

If it weren’t for the extreme aversion to men perceived as feminine, I wouldn’t be so afraid as a trans* woman to dress up and put on a wig. But only the most hardcore traditionalists who have strong religious values denigrate women who have a masculine gender performance. My sister is tomboyish but I don’t know anyone who thinks less of her because of that.

Just some things for you to consider.

Fibinachi
11 years ago

Oh hey, Aaliyah, want me to chuck a free recording program and that book at your g-mail?

Aaliyah
11 years ago

Please do! ^_^ My email address can be found through my Dreamwidth profile if you don’t know it.

Aaliyah
11 years ago

Gender is the ideas associated with “Women are this”, “Men are that” and sex is the “These bits are the bits I happen to have”. So far as my understanding goes, one is, in fact, a fairly massive social construct with the implications and feedback that brings and the other is the area of doctors, science and what you prefer. But people who are not, you know, me would probably say things differently and it’s a subject I know very, very little about.

As a trans* woman, I strongly disagree with your definition of gender. Gender, as I understand it, is split up into basically three parts: identity, expression, and roles/expectations.

Gender identity is how I know I’m female. It’s simply an understanding of my inherent femaleness. In other words, gender identity is the essential understanding of one being a man, a woman, a genderqueer person, etc.

Gender expression is an aspect of personality that is defined by masculinity, femininity, and so on. But it’s almost entirely about how one presents oneself, not how one tends to behave. For instance, my gender expression is what is best described as “femme-tomboy,” but my personality is entirely disconnected from my gender expression.

Gender roles/expectations are what you are erroneously defining gender itself as.

I believe that gender identity is fixed and arises from various bio-psycho-social factors, although the fact that the perception of gender identity is partially influenced by sociocultural norms doesn’t change the fact that it’s fundamentally unchangeable at the end of the day. Gender expression varies from culture to culture, and especially gender roles and expectations. Roles, expectations, and expression are what are socially constructed, not gender identity.

Fade
11 years ago

The one is the notion that “gender is a social construct”. I am sorry, but I know that men and women have some fundamental differences in the way they develop speech, intelligence, muscle mass etc in the course of their lives.

Okay, like everything there except muscle mass is influenced by socialization…

So, if Greece is a Patriarchy that is designed and deny women opportunity and recognition, how come I witness so much female achievement around me

Because people will work really hard to acheive shit, even if everyone else in the world wants them to fail. Saying “how come you all say it’s hard to climb mount everest if this one guy could climb it” is not… logic, and neither is this.

Look, I feel like you have good intentions, but you need to read up on some 101 stuff if you’re gonna claim that speech and intelligence (omfg what does that even mean) are biologically predestined or w/e.

And re: gendered differences in people’s brains — even if scientists can prove that there are some differences in the way people’s brains work based on gender, I don’t think anyone’s articulated these gendered differences into ways that work in the real world, rather than “slightly different areas of the brain light up when men and women do the same task”

Fibinachi
11 years ago

Ah, see:

Gender identity is how I know I’m female. It’s simply an understanding of my inherent femaleness. In other words, gender identity is the essential understanding of one being a man, a woman, a genderqueer person, etc.

What was I was lumping under “sex” – the various bio-psycho-social, “This is what I know I am” while gender was the… soft?… this is what I present like, tied up with the ideas of how people normally present like as one thing or another.

Well, thank you for the correction. Much obliged, I’ll keep it in mind 🙂

Aaliyah
11 years ago

“slightly different areas of the brain light up when men and women do the same task”

Which is probably one of the worst ways to find sex differences. fMRI scans are being abused.

katz
11 years ago

Okay, like everything there except muscle mass is influenced by socialization…

Hell, even muscle mass can be. When dudes hit the gym, they don’t get accused of doing it just to pick up a boyfriend.

Fade
11 years ago

Good point, katz. Not to mention women are encouraged to get in shape by dieting, and men are encouraged to get in shape by exercising.

Fibinachi
11 years ago

Which is just sort of funny, since neither really works without the other.

Sub optimal role assignment! The joys of binary gender.

Marie
Marie
11 years ago

“Epically simple version? Being Cathy Brennan is incompatible with not being a TERF (she flips out that cis is an insult, seriously, just google her, ALL THE WARNINGS though)”

TERF? Also, kind curious but also so don’t want to know what ‘logic’ she used to think cis is an insult. It’s just a describer thingie.

@Aaliyah

“I’m sorry you had to go through all the trouble of writing that. But thanks. =] I’ll keep that stuff in mind as it’s definitely applicable to my brother.”

No problem 🙂 hopefully some of it comes in handy…

@lensman

“There is something fundamentally wrong with societies, traditionalist or not, that produce men like me who are completely devoid of self-worth and self-appreciation, who can’t properly evaluate relationship situations, who are deathly afraid of what the other sex can do to them, and are subsequently asked to “man-up” by a system that effectively emasculates them.”

Cry me a fucking river. Being emasculated is not some horrible fate, and men aren’t the ones who are told their only worth is if they are found attractive. Patriarchy is hard on men sometimes, but not in the way you’re spinning it.

“Go to a PUA meeting, observe the men there, and tell me that what I am saying is wrong.”

Pumas think women aren’t people, just points to be won in their sick game. They encourage pushing yourself on women who say no, repeat that no is just playing hard to get, and sometimes even encourage abusive tactics to convince their partners to stay. The promote rape culture, and if you think they have a point I encourage you to take a long hard look at your life and your views on women.

“The one is the notion that “gender is a social construct”. I am sorry, but I know that men and women have some fundamental differences in the way they develop speech, intelligence, muscle mass etc in the course of their lives. I understand that things are different in cases where homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism is involved, but “nurture not nature” upbringing experiments are a recipe for disaster. If you have any doubt, just google “David Reimer” (trigger warning: his story is very depressing). I can accept that gender roles are a social construct, I can not accept that gender itself is as well.”

You’re going to need a huge ass citation. Also, I’ve been straight when I was younger, and went from that to bi to lesbian, and had the same brain with me the whole time. Imagine that.

Fade
11 years ago

Pumas think women aren’t people,

Hilarious typo?

Look at their cold, judging eyes

Fibinachi
11 years ago

Pumas think women aren’t people, just points to be won in their sick game.

Greatest.

Typo.

Ever.

Marie
Marie
11 years ago

;)everyone’s mocking my typo…not my fault, autocorrect ‘fixed’ it before I could notice.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

TL;DR, lensy. Also, no, feminism as a movement is not required to send you a personalized welcome brochure explaining what it’s going to do for you, specifically, because you’re just that important. It doesn’t do this for women either.

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