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Question Time: Backlash, Frontlash, The End of Men?

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It’s Question Time again. I’ve been reading through Susan Faludi’s Backlash and her more recent book on men, Stiffed, as well as some of the discussion surrounding Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and Kay Hymowitz’ Manning Up. Faludi, writing in 1991, obviously saw the 80s as a time of antifeminist backlash.

My question is how you would characterize the years since she wrote her book. A continuation of that backlash? A time of feminist resurgence, from the Riot Grrls up to Rosin’s predicted End of Men? A mixed period of progress and regression?

I’m wondering both what your general assessment of the situation is, and also what specific evidence you have — either hard data or personal experience — that underlies your overall view. This could be anything from data on employment segregation or the prevalence of rape to your sense of how media representations of women and men have or haven’t changed, or even how people you know have changed the ways they talk about gender. What do you think are the significant data points to look at?

The question isn’t just what has changed for women but what has changed for men as well — with my underlying question being: what if anything in the real world has changed that might be making the angry men we talk about here so angry? I think we can agree that most of their own explanations are bullshit, but could there be a grain of truth to any of them? Or something that they don’t see that’s far more compelling?

In the interest of spurring discussion and providing some data to work with, here are a bunch of articles responding to (or at least vaguely related to the issues raised in) Rosin’s End of Men, including a link to her original Atlantic article.  In addition, here are some posts by sociologist Philip Cohen challenging many of Rosin’s claims, as well as more general posts of his on gender inequality. (Feel free to completely ignore any or all of these; I just found them useful resources.)

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katz
11 years ago

It’ll be amusing if we can work him around to arguing that the fact that he sounds like a French stereotype rather than an actual French person is actually proof that he is French.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Dude, we don’t care if you’re a boring French person or a boring American, the key issue is “boring”. Now get lost.

pecunium
11 years ago

Anyway, I start feeling tired by this little game, you refused to acknowledge in total bad faith that you’ve accused me wrongly of having ill-interpreted the quote of the interview, as for me

You are lying again. I did admit I was in error when I used the word elide, I should have said you misrepresented the article (which you didn’t actually try to refute: all you said (of substance) was, “he said mothers”, when the context was plainly the role of mothers, i.e. motherhood, [BTW, your affections of poor english are back… this is the sort of shit which causes people to disbelieve you. It’s not that we don’t believe a non-native speaker can be fluent, it’s that you pretend, sometimes, to a lack of fluency which other occasions betrays to be false).

It’s not that you were so sneaky, or disingenuous (per se) it’s that you are either not french, or too stupid to avoid looking not french.

My way of arguing people is to address the things they said; and how they said them. Your way seems to be making bullshit statements, and then attacking the comments people make about your method of argument; ignoring the substantive replies as if they never were.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

It’ll be amusing if we can work him around to arguing that the fact that he sounds like a French stereotype rather than an actual French person is actually proof that he is French.

Look, I found a portrait of him.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago
Reply to  Auggie

The program for this site is screwy. I’m still trying to get the hang of this WordPress thing. Also, the thing with SpukiKitty was with my alternate Outlook account but I want to use exclusively my Gmail. Perhaps I can merge the two on here. I should rename myself SpukiKitty. I’ll do that now. I’ll simply replace the name “Julie” with “SpukiKitty” in the reply form thingy, bellow.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago

Brz, I don’t care if you’re a sentient fungus from Planet Blorzok-5 you’re still a loser.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

WordPress does have a fondness for messing nyms. It does that to me and I’m using the site direct, ie. from a pc and not via mail.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

“Brz, I don’t care if you’re a sentient fungus from Planet Blorzok-5 you’re still a loser.”

Okay that made me squawk!

If only he were, we might be able to send him back.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago
Reply to  Kittehserf

And there’s a BIG BLUE BUTTON that says “REPLY”. How can I be so stupid? Oh, I’m SpukiKitty again. Now, Kittehself, how do I change the icon on my posts? I want to put my own Spuki-tastic icons up.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago
Reply to  Kittehserf

My usual catchphrase for reactionary weirdos is “Ship them to Pluto”. But since Brz is from a planet of my own conjuring, I’ll have to arrange something else.

Brz
Brz
11 years ago

ah, a new insult. I’m also, among other things, a loser now, how cute.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago
Reply to  Brz

Howdy, Space-fungus! You’re back!

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Well Brz, calling you a loser is simpler. Though you remind me of what fish shit looks like after being broken down by a biological filter — slimy, gooey, stinky, brown shit.

Alien fungus is also good.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

You’d think he could find a domme and pay her to insult him rather than begging for insults here. Cheapness impresses no one!

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Spukikitty, if you click on the avatar it’ll take you to the Gravatar site and you can make an account (it links to Google and stuff) and put your own pic in. 🙂

Also, improved pic from Fawkner this a.m. (Do actual work? Nah, it’s Friday.)

Brz
Brz
11 years ago

No, I’m not begging for it and I’ll never be until you ensure my enthusiastic consent!

Kittehserf
11 years ago

0/10 for attempted wit.

Gametime
11 years ago

Trying to mock consent politics by equating conversation with sex isn’t doing you any favours on the “creepy rape apologist” front, Brz.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Are negative points a possibility here? Because I think that someone who finds the very idea of consent laughable deserves -100/10.

And also no sex, but I get the feeling that the women around Brz are already taking care of that.

Kittehserf
11 years ago

Negative points are definitely a thing.

At first I thought you meant points in the sense of “You have a point” or “What’s the point?” and the whiny mosquito being in the negatives that way.

Both senses apply, I think.

pecunium
pecunium
11 years ago

Brz: Trying to co-opt the concepts of feminism/social justice only works if you understand it.

Since you don’t, it just makes you look ridiculous (as I said earlier, you don’t seem to be averse to ridicule). If you check the banner, it it says “Misogyny [we] mock it”.

You are a misogynist. You chose to post here. You continue to choose to post here, even when your presence has been declared unwelcome by pretty much everyone (I can’t think of anyone who has said they would be grieved by your departure, and I’d be amazed to see anyone who said they wanted you to stay. It’s sort of like the large number of people who doubt your frankish origin).

So you have consented (enthusiastically) to being mocked.

Logic fail 100/100. Understanding of the social habits of the local community fail 100/100.

Fail at subversion of the language of social justice/feminism to attack same 1,000/100.

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago
Reply to  pecunium

Indeed. The fail is so epic that it deserves it’s own Cecil B. DeMille movie!

hellkell
hellkell
11 years ago

Somehow I doubt “loser” is a new insult, Brz.

minor in French
minor in French
11 years ago

“Nobody in France knows what the American stereotypes about French people are”
Just like nobody in America knows the French stereotypes about American people, right?

“no French has ever seen an episode of the Simpsons”
That statement is *blatantly* untrue, and so much so that it’s laughable.

All signs point to the fact that many French people love Les Simpson (especially because it pokes fun at those American stereotypes, I’d say).

In fact, if you search “Les Simpson” on Facebook (not “Les Simpsons” – that’s the Quebec version), you’ll find an unofficial like page that has over 1 million likes. That’s a pretty large proportion of the French population if you take into account that it’s an unofficial like page and not everybody in France has a Facebook or advertises their TV preferences on Facebook.

“No French” my butt. T’oh!

SpukiKitty
SpukiKitty
11 years ago

*SHA-ZING*!

Pure win, minor in French!

Brz is about as French as Ghengis Khan!

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