I know a lot of Man Boobz regulars have been dealing with a lot of rough stuff lately, so I’m opening this thread up to provide a (relatively) safe space to discuss them. No trolls allowed; any trolls who post here will be put on moderation and possibly banned. (Please notify me by email (my last name at well dot com) if there are inaproppriate comments; I get behind in reading comments here.)
I’m assuming that this is the open thread right? If so, I feel like doing something on behalf of Manboobz by debunking the Warren Farrell lecture held at University of Toronto on November 16th because it’s honestly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
Here’s the video by the way, for reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6w1S8yrFz4 (LOL it’s like 2.5 hours long)
I will present to you a list of his arguments that I can think of, and my response to each of them:
1) There are environmental pollutants in the water that mimic estrogen
My response: This is not a men’s right issue at all, and I think it’s funny that he singles out estrogen and say that it’s “the main toxin” while ignoring plenty of other things like mercury, lead, PCB, arsenic, etc. And estrogen does not just negatively affect men – they affect women as well.
2) Father’s rights blah blah blah (took up a good 45 minutes of the talk with this pointless garbage)
My response: Feminists are fighting for father’s rights. Next…
3) One thing I have found is that the main reason why African American children are so oppressed is because they lack a father.
My response: As opposed to systemic racism, poverty, and a whole host of other issues? Sounds like this guy needs a lesson on racism.
4) Sons from single mothers has been found to do girly things like playing with dolls and wearing lipstick.
My response: Really? Where’s the proof? And while we’re at it, how is this a problem?
5) Male disposability theory: imagine you’re a sports star, who suffered from multiple injuries, and a cheerleader says to you “Go go you can do it”
My response: This is a very weird example of the theory. It’s like he’s trying his best to fit in the “women are causing men to be disposable” idea by illustrating a cheerleader (who is not necessarily a female) and a sports star (who is not necessarily a male)
6) Boys are suffering from porn addiction nowadays, and I have found that men tends to be very cheap and women charge more for sex.
My response: No, porn addiction occurs because of male social circles. I couldn’t remember exactly what Farrell said, but it seemed like as if he wants cheaper prostitutes to be the solution. Ugh.
And the last one takes the cake:
7) Mothers are much more easy going than fathers, and this leads to the ADHD crisis nowadays, where boys from single mothers are more likely to suffer from ADHD due to the fact that mothers don’t discipline their children well.
My response: Where to begin? First, this is not only offensive to women, but also to men, and to patients who are experiencing ADHD. Second, where is he getting his study from? Third, ADHD is mostly a genetic disease, with multiple environmental factors that we still do not know yet. Farrell seems to twist these facts around and say that all the problems in this society are due to women.
Good breakdown. I’m amazed he had anything (that 20% you mentioned) that wasn’t stupid, among that lot. He really is disgusting.
Was the 20% that wasn’t absurd “good evening, Toronto!” and an observation about the weather?
@breadmold..
wow, this Farrel guy really make us women out to be so very very powerful, that we are almost god-like in the way we affect EVERYTHING.
Right now I’m paying more attention to the 3 women that were freed from some guy’s basement. I’m thinking those 3 guys who kept these women prisoner for over a decade were possibly MRAs, or something along the lines. The story’s still unfolding, so we shall see.
Those 20% were just the typical MRA stuff like “women can abuse men as well”, basically stuff which I don’t disagree with, but if the MRA’s are saying it, then they must mean it differently.
And Warren Farrell is a date rape apologist. I’m sorry but he is.
It really takes some balls to have the nerves to be a blatant misogynist and say that women who speak with non-verbal “yes’s” is committing date fraud.
My overall view is this: If you are worried that you might be accused of rape after having sex with a drunk stranger, DON’T ask for sex. End of story. Whether or not a few people “enjoy” screwing while being drunk doesn’t change the fact that date rape is still a very common and frequent occurrence.
Farrell seems to imagine women as being a cross between Catwoman and the Patrician from the Pratchett books.
He also never focuses at all on male related issues that truly deserve mentioning. Paternity testing, for instance – not discussed AT ALL in his lecture. Neither is vasectomy.
I have to ask how vasectomy is an issue. It’s something men elect to have performed and, to my knowledge, love the results of. Those who want to make babies or don’t but are so insecure they think shooting blanks makes them less of a man don’t have it. Sounds like everybody wins.
The problem is that it’s so hard to get one, and even if you do, most would tell you that you’re just too young.
Compared to what young women are put through in order to get tubal ligations or hysterectomies, it’s nothing.
It is nothing, but the problem is that it’s so hard to get vasectomies in this society. Here in Toronto, there’s only THREE clinics that perform vasectomies, and before you can get one they have to make sure that you’re over the age of 30, and that you must have at least one child. Fucked up I’d say.
A large part of every Toronto urologist’s practice is performing vasectomies (and they’re not the only practicing physicians performing them.) The guidelines vasectomy clinics adhere to don’t apply to anyone but those clinics.
The reluctance of health care practitioners to provide young people with few or no children with sterilisation procedures is not a men’s issue. It’s a people’s issue and it affects women disproportionately.
“Imagine if someone sends a foreign child into your house and extorts you into caring for that child for 18+ years against your will.”
Irrelevant. That means the person knows from the outset and has no wish to raise the child. You’re comparing that with a situation in which the person has no knowledge that the child isn’t theirs – how else could it be “fraud”? It’d be coercion, a different matter altogether. Are you saying the person loses all the love they had (I hope) for that child when they learn they’re not related?
And the suggestion that it could in any way compare with a terrifying and potentially fatal assault is just mind-boggling.
“Farrell seems to imagine women as being a cross between Catwoman and the Patrician from the Pratchett books.”
If only we were. I’d love to do a Patrician on that lot.
(PS apologies about the paternity fraud comment: wrong thread!)
So the same man who claims to be a champion of the rights and respect of men and boys is arguing that boys shouldn’t be doing “girly things.”
Ok.
And to think that people wonder why I say that most MRAs don’t actually help men and boys in any way, shape, or form.
That’s why as a male I’m offended by these statements that this guy is making.
Well, dolls kind of creep me out, but I like men who play with makeup!
On behalf of emo kids, goths, glam-rock dudes, and theater nerds everywhere I sneer in his general direction.
WeeBoy, congrats on the new gig!
Am worried that I might survive a suicide attempt with diminished faculties. God that scares me so much. Last year a friend whose brother is a retired GP gave me a set of pills that would work for someone my size, but stupidly I let my ex-girlfriend and best friend convince me to try therapy, but she abandoned me halfway through and I got worse again and now I am down to more hands-on means, like short drop hanging, with the attendant worries.
Thanks for going through that video, breadmold.
At least three of his talking-points are all based around the same fallacy–it’s one that is also often used in the SSM debate:
Step 1: Take studies of single parents vs. two-parent homes. These invariably (and, quite logically) note that, once you take income into account, single-parent homes produce a greater degree of troubled children.
Step 2: Take advantage of the fact that most single-parent homes in the U.S. are headed by the mother.
Step 3: Declare that all the problems found in the homes from Step 1 are derived from the lack of a father (rather than the lack of a second parent who can step in when the first is occupied with other crucial tasks, such as paying for rent).
Of course, he also fails to recognize that the disproportionate number of single-parent homes in the African-American community is a ~result~ of endemic racism, rather than a cause. You can’t remove 25% of the men from a community (that’s the odds of an urban African-American going to jail, most likely for a non-violent drug crime that doesn’t get prosecuted when the suspect has less melanin) and expect things to just roll along hunky-dory.
It’s one of the few places where the ‘economic theory’ approach to evaluating these things actually makes sense (because yes, most people do seek out romantic affiliations, and systemic racism in law enforcement has produced an environment where the remaining men have a greater ability to assume that they can walk away and find someone else; women in these decimated communities, on the other hand, rarely have the ability to make that assumption, so are less likely to exercise their ability to walk away). But the MRAs never actually do that, here, because hey, that might mean that the problem was racism, not ‘misandry’, and they can’t acknowledge that, ever.
@freemage, I know. We do have Skepchick and FTB, but any intersectionality in movement atheism gets such an incredible volume of flack (for NO! REASON!) that it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed and outnumbered. It’s really discouraging.
inurashii: Patheos’s Atheism community may not be as active or as accurate in intersectionality issues, but they are still on the side of diversity. Also, with one major exception, all of the atheist/skeptic cons were pretty quick to adopt sexual harassment guidelines once the issues with the current unofficial system were made public.
That exception, of course was The Amazing Machine, which seems determined to rename itself “The Asshole Magnet”.
Given that this is breadmold, I assume the 20% is probably Farrell saying that paternity fraud is worse than rape.