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?
Trusting == gullible. You weren’t the only one giving lensman the benefit of the doubt, Aaliyah, don’t knock yourself.
Aaliyah, trusting isn’t bad, and you can treat him however. I could do without lectures on sincerity, however.
@hellkell
I apologize.
Apology accepted.
Aaliyah, be nice to him if you want to be nice to him! If other people don’t want to that doesn’t mean you can’t. (Just so long as you’re not telling other people they have to be nice to him, which you aren’t.)
I agree completely. But I’m sick of having so little trust in some of the people in my life. I wish I could completely trust my dad and believe he’s a truly good person when he does nice things for me, but because I can’t help but remember how abusive he is, I never trust him entirely. And even though my brother is one of the most supportive people I know, I still have trust issues with him because he often trivializes my concerns by rushing to give me condescending advice instead of just being there and listening to me.
So sometimes my mind drifts towards trusting people I don’t know well merely because I see them do nice things and haven’t seen them do anything cruel.
It’s weird. I’m inconsistent when it comes to trust. I hope you understand where I’m coming from.
Aaliyah: I understand the desire to take people at face value. I try to do that. That said, Lensman sent up flags from the get go; and the, “yes, thank you; you are right but see how I wasn’t wrong” makes me less than sanguine (and because of work, and prepping for a party I have seen him naught but here).
Anytimes someone is engaging in “soft” gaslighting, I give them some serious side-eye.
If he’s being a douchecanoe elsewhere, then he’s getting less than he deserves here.
In that case, I don’t trust his being nice at all (esp. because I’ve not actually seen nice, but rather passive agrressive explantions as to why he’s not really to be faulted for being wrong).
Aaliyah: I totally understand where you are coming from. I hope I didn’t come across as if I thought you were wrong, or naive, or gullible. I don’t think so at all. I think you are being decent.
If Aaliyah wants to trust him (or anyone else) then that’s fine. Telling hellkell that she’s being insensitive by not doing so, though? That’s not cool.
I have reservations about believing most claims from someone who says he’s an MRA or obviously aligns himself with a pack of misogynist liars. We’ve seen too many fantasy tales of Menz Oppression *cough* being spat on in the street *cough* here not to apply a whole damn shaker full of salt.
I just said that I wasn’t comfortable with hir doubting his claims of being abused because at the time I had no idea lensman has shown himself to be shady and trollish elsewhere on Manboobz. But in any case I take back what I said as it was definitely rude.
Where did I doubt his claims of abuse?
Perhaps I read way too much into what you said. At the time, when you said “I bet he went to bitchesain’tshit.com. No wonder he’s unhappy” I construed that as saying that he’s not actually feeling unhappy because of the abuse, but rather because of what you mentioned.
In that case, I apologize for that as well.
“Insensitive” was a direct quote. I’m not cool with arguments that people aren’t being sensitive enough towards potential trolls, not in this space.
If you want to give any particular new commenter who’s sending up red flags for many others the benefit of the doubt yourself then that’s fine, but policing the way in which other commenters interact with them? Not OK.
I’m aware it was a direct quote, Cassandra. I just paraphrased what I said in the comment in question (I hope it didn’t look like I was trying to twist my own words or anything). I certainly didn’t intend to engage in any policing, but my intent is irrelevant because my words were still problematic – and so I apologize.
By “policing”, I’m specifically referring to telling people what to do for no good reason. Just clarifying as my above comment might have mad that unclear.
Lol, please disregard the comment directly above. I was being anxious so I ended up stating something obvious.
@ Fade re the jerk she quoted
“A western woman is a woman who is difficult and stressful. She also hates how Asian women are often happy being subservient to me”
…wow. All the ick. It’s totally not nice how he decided to add a bucket of,racism to his sexism.
@ viscaria
“I would really love to learn a bit about Renaissance art! I’ll just google “why was Raphael such a poopy head?””
::died laughing:: XD
( also, auto correct tried to change you name 🙁 )
@hellkell
“That’s nice, Aaliyah. Have you read his stuff in other threads? The one where’s he’s writing odes to his right to be an asshole?”
Luckily misses that bit. I can’t do,as much manboobZ w/o computer.
Hey David Frutell I would love for u to help me out with a blog. its something along the lines of There are women who actually believe women get not male attention.
sorry if i spelled ur name wrong
Bumping an awfully old conversation, but I just came across this. Something I’m curious about is Erin’s claims of feminist abuse; obviously the hard-disk one is likely nonsense, but what about those apparent bomb threats, dog murder and stalking harassment? I’ve done a bit of research….and I cannot find any sources that attest these happened – only Pizzey’s own commentaries. I’m not saying feminists can’t do bad things, that wold be nonsensical, but surely events this severe there’d be some kind of a record?
I’ve been looking more into Erin Pizzey and some of her history is…disturbing, to say the least. It’s clear from her letter to the Daily Mail that she judges feminism through a biased lens, and likely projects her issues with her mother onto other women – she was barely secretive about that! She’s taking credit for setting up the first shelter, only it seemed to be about her as much as “helping” anyone. She said she did it because she was feeling “lonely”. Erm…
Another thing is she continuously presents a narrative of feminists high jacking “her” movement and using it to hurt the victims and propel their hurtful agenda. Yet, from other sources I’ve checked out, it seems she was involved in the societies for a time; certainly, she was around for the formation of a federation – which she then took umbrage over not being made a leader of, seemingly. Even weirder is that it seems she threw a tantrum during one meeting where most of the women wanted to discuss DV as a “gendered crime” and focus on how societal views may affect women to be greater victims as they had an inferior status at the time. Afterwards, it seems, she began a smear campaign where she accused them of being lesbians and communists who wanted to ruin traditional values, trying to encourage authorizes to not fund the shelters and instead focus on hers….erm.
But yeah, no evidence on those alleged bomb threats or vicious letters. I did read that she apparently manipulated her findings to present a claim that men and women were equally violent – by considering self-harm and attempted suicides as “domestically violent” acts. Violence is violence, according to Pizzey. She seems to have used a very flawed methodology of research, CTS.
Yeah, weird woman.
On the dog thing, in one of her Reddit AMAs she admitted that she had no proof it was feminists, and also that the dog didn’t die.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cbrbs/hi_im_erin_pizzey_ask_me_anything/c9f25vy
But the way she’s written about it it’s easy to see why people have gotten the impression that “feminists killed her dog.” Here’s the relevant quote from a piece of hers that led Fox news and Wikipedia to conclude erroneously that the dog was killed:
http://www.fathersforlife.org/pizzey/failfamt.htm
It’s certainly possible she got threats, but, yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s no proof of any of this outside of her own writings, and I don’t think she’s got a lot of credibility on any topic.
I can’t remember the person’s nym, but we have/had a commenter who’s worked with Pizzey and found her very…erm. I knew some women of her generation in London who’d tried to work with her too, and “toxic drama llama who will make you want to tear your own hair out in frustration, avoid” pretty much sums up their descriptions of her. I met multiple people who knew her, but never met anyone who liked her, which is…yeah, erm. I’m waiting for the inevitable drama-fuelled meltdown when she finally clashes with her current MRA buddies with a bucket of popcorn and some Junior Mints, tbh.
Like all other FeMRAs, Pizzey gives me all the bad vibes.
@cassandra, I was involved with Bristol Women’s Aid and Women’s Aid Federation England. I didn’t know her but knew people who did and some of the politics. She wasn’t well regarded and seen as very self-serving, to say the least
Ah, thanks David!
Yeah, I’ve found nothing to confirm these “terror attakcs” on her. Not a news report, a police record, not even a non-Pizzey observation on it. And it sounds like the kind of thing that would make some headlines. I did read some of her texts though, and Pizzey really liked the idea of trying to get the women and their abusers to “work on it together” – to the point where she’d try to get them to return home or fight to allow the men in question into the shelter. Erk, it’s no wonder she fell out with the other women.
@CassandraKitty & BigMomma: Some of the information I got was from a woman who had friends who worked with Pizzey. But yeah, she sounds to have been consistently tempestous and difficult to work with. I skimmed through one of her books and she does seem to really antagonize the women a lot; often she writes about how the woman had been manipulating this poor guy (who battered her and raped her, you know?) and that’s likely why he hits her. I think there’s more gory injury detail in these accounts than there is psychology. Hmm. The idea of her throwing a huff when she didn’t get her way is quite common. I can see why people who disagree with her.
Someone talks about her here: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a1446622-Erin-Pizzeys-work-with-Refuges
Rather than being “forced out” by those hairy commie lesbians, she seems to have stormed off on her own accord.
This is a bit weird: http://briandeer.com/social/erin-pizzey.htm
Seems Pizzey’s dogs are “shot” a lot.