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.
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.
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.
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?
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:
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?
Beware of PUmAs! You might wake up to this in the morning.
@Kittehserf
I could live with that, as long as it didn’t eat me. XD
I am not seeing the problem with a pet puma from my perspective, especially if it’s rolling around looking for belly rubs.
(From the puma’s perspective I can see why being someone’s pet would be less than ideal.)
My first thought with that mega kitty was that I’d be very, very wary of that “scratch mah belleh” pose. I’m kind of attached to my arms and I’d like to stay that way. 😀
lensman: So far you have made a number of declamatory statements. All of which have been wrong.
To all of which corrections you have replied with, “Yes, you are right, but…” and gone on to defend (or apologise away) the amount of foot you chose to put in your mouth.
For everyone’s sake (and esp. yours), just stop.
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,
Oh, FFS, unless that is the majority of men in your society, you can’t really fob it off on “culture”.
Go to a PUA meeting, observe the men there, and tell me that what I am saying is wrong.
Been there, done that. You are wrong.
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.
Re patriarchy:
My objection rises when I am trying to see it from the feminist sense of “a political and economical system biased against women”.
Dude… your entire example of Greece is just that. Women never get to be in charge. They are denied access to full participation, poltiical, social, and economic; and the system is built to perpetuate it.
You have solved your problem.
PS… where were you when you attended this PUA meetings?
Hey, another thing:
Your example of your feelings cannot be extrapolated unto a generation mechanism for “producing” people like you, somehow.
There is no conspiracy against self worth, no monsters out to eat self esteem. If you cannot properly evaluate relationship situations, if you cannot feel proud of yourself and feel devoid of self-worth and self-appreciation that should not, is most likely not and will not be the fault of some “Societal mechanism” at large, unless every single person suffers the same way.
Every single person, save the lucky few who don’t because of “Outlying circumstances”.
And how can the system effectively emasculate you if it also asks you to “Man up?”. If it asks you to man up, it must have an idea of what that entails and if you do those things, you would not be emasculated in the eyes of the system, since you’d be “Manning up”. If it’s asking you to “Man up” just so it can emasculate you, you’re not dealing with a societal movement or an ideology, you’re dealing with a villain and their memetic trap.
I glossed that over the first time, but in retrospect and pecuniums comment that is really, really strange. What a remarkable thing to say.
And if socialization of gender is a lie that doesn’t hold because of the example of one person given terrible treatment and botched surgeries, then how come you can be socialized to be a “Loser”, if you’ll pardon the term? If socialization doesn’t matter in the forming of your attributes since gender is essentially different, you’d be different because you’re a man – not because of some overlying philosophical standpoint the “Society” around you has taken.
If you were there to witness a woman winning a medal that would imply that every other medal was won by a man, so how come you can say that there’s something wrong with societies that produce men like you if they also produce men like the men who win medals?
Yeah, um, guess what, buddyboy: a LOT of women have horrendous self-worth too. I’m one of them.
lensman: No wonder so many of us commit suicide as of late:
Of late. But that didn’t seem to be the case before austerity. So the “depressing life sentence” doesn’t seem to have been a big deal before. Perhaps it’s more complicated than that.
Suicides in Greece, which used to have the lowest rate in Europe, are rising rapidly and coincide with crushing austerity measures that have driven 20 percent of the population into poverty.
Before the financial crisis began, Greece’s suicide rate was only 2.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat. Earlier this year the German news magazine Der Spiegel wrote that, “Most of the suicides were among members of the middle class and, in many cases, the act itself was carried out in public, almost as if it were a theatrical performance.”
Which makes me think that, in addition to a sense of desperation, there might be a bit of it which is related to the Japanese idea of Funshi (i.e. suicide as protest/rebuke)
Not caught up but a simple reply here.
“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.”
A good bit of that is hormones, which are generally the same as one’s gender, yes. But that’s the point of HRT — muscle mass and fat distribution change and become more like that of one’s gender than that of one’s previous biology, same for tone of voice (speaking mannerisms otoh are socially conditioned and need to be trained to present as one’s gender).
I use biology here, not sex, because one’s default hormones don’t always match one’s chromosomes — there are XY people with androgen insensitivity syndrome for example (genetically male, but may appear female in all aspects, because the testosterone you’d expect from XY genetics isn’t processed).
Gender/sex/biology/socialization, all add up to one complex intertwined set of assumptions.
And yes, what happened to Reimer is a tragedy.
I would like to thank everyone who tolerated me. I was looking for a discussion that would make me think and reevaluate some of my ideas and preconceptions about life and that’s certainly what I got. I especially thank Argenti, pecunium and Aaliyah, since your responses set me straight on quite a few things I got wrong.
I am terribly sorry if I sounded too patronising, ignorant etc.
And to whoever said here that I should go somewhere else and educate myself: I did try to do so and I wound up following the MRM.
I come out of here thinking that maybe, just maybe, I was terribly wrong in doing so, but it took the efforts of people like Aaliyah, Argenti and pecunium who took time off their lives and very real problems that they are facing there in order to write all those brilliant things they have written and correct me.
Self-study is not a very good idea when your personal feelings, biases and frustrations can get in the way.
@lensman
I’m glad to hear that you’ve had a good experience here! But I must admit that, even as someone who responded to your comments in a calm manner, I understand and sympathize with the abrasive reactions from some of the people here (and make no mistake – I can be abrasive, too). Far too often do terrible misogynists visit this space and and communities like Manboobz in purely bad faith.
When we see people come here and show that they have views that even seem anti-feminist on the surface, we tend to be right about who they are. For instance, just recently an MRA commentator commented on the latest article, bringing up a typical MRA talking point, and then when he got angry he just started calling male feminists “manginas” and “c*nts” and saying that all women are irrational and overly emotional. Bottom line: if you don’t seem very pro-feminist at a glance, chances are you’ll receive some (entirely understandable) negative reactions from feminists in spaces like this. Even I will react like that sometimes, especially when it’s obviously a misogynistic asshole.
As for your concerns about your behavior, you don’t need to be so hard on yourself. You already apologized, and it’s quite clear that you’re willing to listen to and understand what we have to say.
Speaking of being hard on yourself, I also have a very low sense of self-worth. I constantly denigrate myself – I often feel unlovable, unworthy, and burdensome to everyone. And so I understand how awful it can be. So if you would like any advice on trying to feel better when your self-loathing is at its worst, please let me know. You and I have different circumstances in life, so I may not be of any help, but I might know a thing or two to help make things a bit easier.
I wish the best for you, lensman, and I hope one day you get out of that abusive situation somehow. I’m sorry for not commenting on it earlier.
P.S. One very good resource for feminism 101 is Shakesville. They have a bunch of feminism 101 articles (which can be found immediately) that have really helped me understand feminist ideas much better. Perhaps you will find them helpful as well.
Briznecko posted a link to feminism 101 at the very bottom of the previous page, you might want to poke around over there too.
And as a well meant warning, Shakesville has such good 101 resources because they Will Not tolerate 101 level errors, stick to reading.
Glad I could help clarify things for you, and really, I am game for answering polite 101 level questions (I’ve been working on getting my semi-conservative mother to realize she’s more feminist than she’d claim, honest ignorance is so much easier to deal with)
Speaking of her, her ire at the FDA approving e morning after pill for those 15 and up lasted about 5 min. She’s anti-abortion, but just needed a lesson in medicine and “you’d prefer someone supposedly too irresponsible to have sex at all become a mother?”
Argenti used logic!
It worked!
(Argenti also got non-acetone nail polish remover on zir iPad, and can safely say that the screen is liquid proof, at least if you’re quick about it)
Lensman tried Cower!
It didn’t work!
Argenti threw Charm ball!
Lensman captured!
Just don’t forget to poke some holes so that I can breathe please… I mean just look at what happened to those guys:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=1
Were your search terms “women suck?”
Poor baby just fell into the MRM. The disingenuousness is barfworthy.
@Hellkell
In case you are curious* googling women suck leads you to something called the-niceguy,, and a top ten reasons why american women suck by whatmenthinkofwomen. Is that second one an MRA site?
*well, I was. XD
I’m pretty sure it is, Fade.
And hit #1 for “why can’t I get laid?” Roosh
Googling bombing is in order?
*was also curious*
The second result for american women is boycottamericanwomen.blogspot.com
what are we supposed to be googling for, Argenti Aertheri?
Also, I just want to leave this piece of disgustingness here (urban dictionary definition for western women)
Fade — idk, hence my attempt at a relatively innocuous, and probably common, question.
@Argenti
Ah. I was just wondering if this was going to turn into some google game that would wind up giving me a bunch o weird ads. XD
Ads are personalized slightly b ased on what you search, right? Idk, I’m computer ignorant
Lol, probably, but mine think I need a wedding dress, so I’ll take sexy things over that.
@hellkell
It’s actually really funny, you are half right.
The Google was “Marriage Sucks”.
Mine are advertising for college student aide applications, because my career explorations teacher just had us all look up a bunch of college info.
lenstroll: no, it’s not particularly funny. However, it does show what simpleminded sad sack you are.