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.)
Isn’t “female cow” a little redundant? Cow always refers to a female of a species (bovines, elephants, crocodiles…) Male cow on the other hand, is an oxymoron. Male cattle are bulls.
Or was that part of the joke?
(I seriously see this often enough not to be able to tell when it’s intentional :’D )
///d’oh!
It was not part of the joke, I just suck on terminology. Like I said, I did zero research XD
True, I’ll keep that in mind the next time a feminist argue that white men can’t be oppressed because feminism 101.
Anyway, I haven’t read the thread, I honestly don’t give a fuck, you’re a lost cause, I’m a lost cause, that’s alright. You’re all Calvinist puritan fucks who always try to convince the rest of the world that you’re anything else than Calvinist puritan fucks and the more you try, the more Calvinist puritan fucking nonsense you produce. It would have been OK if you didn’t try to export your Calvinist puritan bullshit. We really should have killed this Calvinist puritan bullshit before some lunatics decided to make it flourish on the other shore of the Atlantic ocean. But you’ve created blues, let it be the only American contribution to history, the country which had created blues, because the rest is complete bullshit, you’re ideas are complete puerile bullshit, you’re model of society is total bullshit, all of what you’ve created is complete bullshit except blues. The rest of the world can forgive you all for all that crap if you would produce more blues and less pseudo-communist but really Calvinist crap. Thank you.
Arg, brz is still going on the same shtick.
no one says white men can’t be oppressed. We just say they can’t be oppressed ON THE BASIS THAT THEY”RE WHITE OR THAT THEY”RE MEN
i did not understand the big long paragraph, though
Arglebargle rage, I forgot to be French again, also rage, and did I mention the same points I’ve said eleventy billion times before? Rage!
Thank you.
Brz and Joe are so fucking annoying that I almost wish Tom Dane was back.
I can’t remember Tom Dane.
Should I count myself lucky?
Calvinist Puritan bullshit = 2
Calvinist Puritan fucks = 3
Calvinist crap = 1
Other uses of bullshit = 4
And one each “pseudo-communist” & “lunatic”
Goodnight guys (except Brz, he can join Joe in the land of “fuck off”)
night argenti
This is why I keep going here : it’s the only place where I can hide my feelings while expressing them bluntly.
“Calvinist puritan fucks”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
That’s not the side I take in the Wars of Religion, or the English Civil Wars for that matter. Calvin-as-he-was would be right up there with Knox and Luther for having cacti shoved down their drawers as far as I’m concerned.
Pretty sure that the only word in that phrase that he understands is “fuck”.
I just read the article that joe posted. So far in my observations it’s men doing the mocking of other men.
“Pretty sure that the only word in that phrase that he understands is “fuck”.”
Fersure. I’ve spent the better part of thirty years reading about those three arseholes and how their sects tore up chunks of Europe and the idea of anyone here, or feminism in general, being linked with them is perversely amusing. Somehow the Whining Mosquito doesn’t come across as having a French perspective in dragging up Creepy Calvin’s name.
I would appreciate if Kittehserf could explain to us why hating on Calvinists doesn’t come across as a “French perspective”, I’m sure it would be fun.
Talking as if current feminists and the original Calvinists or Puritans were the same is fucking stupid, that’s why. There’s no common ground.
@Catfish:
I largely agree with everything you wrote, but I take a bit of issue with this last piece. I was fairly recently in a Facebook discussion about this very issue – whether it’s justified to say you hate men because as a woman you’re oppressed by the patriarchy, and… I’m just against it. Yeah, people who talk like this usually MEANS “hating the patriarchal society” rather than “hating actual individual men just because they happened to be born of a certain gender”. But then DON’T SAY YOU HATE MEN. Because WORDS MEAN THINGS. If you wanna express your hatred for the patriarchy, fucking say you hate the patriarchy, not that you hate men.
Also; saying it’s okay for members of group X to hate group Y because group Y opresses group X so easily veers into an uncomfortable “pat the poor little X:ers on the head”-territory. Like, X are weak and oppressed and not dangerous or anything, and therefore it’s okay for them to hate people. I think there were a lot of this going on in male reviewers giving favourable reviews to the theatre monologue of the SCUM manifest that was played on a Swedish theatre a little while ago (can’t say anything about the actual play since I haven’t seen it, but lots of male favourable reviewers rubbed me the wrong way for this very reason).
I know you weren’t defending this terminology, just describing it and what it means, but I still felt like I needed to give my two cents on the matter.
Ally Fogg? Ally fucking Fogg?
Mmmmnah.
He just started writing for Freethoughtblogs. I read some of his stuff. Can I just say I am giving him a massive side-eye right now, and wondering what the hell he’s doing writing for that blog network, and what the hell they were thinking taking him on?
Conciliatory?
Pro-feminist?
No. Nope.
Thanks for playing, Joe. But, really, is this what you’ve got?
Catfish: No. Just no. Individual women can’t be misandric. It’s not a thing.
They can dislike or even actively try to hurt men.
But that’s not misandry.
Ugh.
@Brz: Dumbass. Calvinism? In France? Like, where John Calvin did missionary work? Fucking wiki this stuff, you are sounding less and less and less French by the second.
@ Dvärghundspossen
I agree, nobody should ever say that if they don’t mean it. I’m also very glad that you pointed out the problems with this when I failed to do so myself.
In fact, I think it’s a pretty horrible idea to phrase your words in a way that is extremely easy to turn into or mistaken for hate speech. (And not just in the “out of context” way).
I was living under the impression that misandry can also mean simply man-hatred – which certainly is a thing, albeit I don’t think it’s common at all. I could be wrong. I keep hearing that misandry-not-a-thing explanation a lot, but always sort of thought it only applied to systematic hatred/oppression.
Of course the balance of power makes it really hard for a “misandrist” to act upon it in any meaningful way, so.. yeah.
I think I just got it ? xD
The problem is similar to the one of using ‘racism’ just to mean any dislike of somebody of a paticular skin color. A black person hating a white person has no societal consequences, no ability to oppress. Conflating the two meanings allows the kind of ‘waah, reverse racism’ whining that Rush Limbaugh loves to indulge in to creep in, and treats it as if it were just as valid a usage.
So, no. We reject it out of hand, because, dammit, it’s not equivalent, it’s not even close.
Yes, you did. 😛
@Dvärghundspossen
I dont know (re: hating men). I mean, I don’t say it, but one of my friends does, normally when she’s po’d at men acting entitled, which while is a side effect of the patriarchy, feels more personal than normal patriarchy stuff. So I don’t really begrudge her it? *shrugs*….
@Fade: I actually do think she should say that she hates “SUCH men” or something like that, rather than plain “men”. Although I don’t call out my friends all the time, it’s impractical and would be exhausting to keep policing what they say if you understand what they mean anyway. I do think it’s more important to be careful with how one expresses oneself on the internet though, where loads of people can read it.
Regarding whether racism against white people exist or misandry exist and so on – some people use these words to only mean hatred which is backed up by a larger system, others to mean any hatred individuals have towards people belonging to a certain group. I actually don’t care how people use words as long as we agree that
1. Women can hate men as a group, blacks can hate whites as a group etc.
2. The above has a completely different dynamic than men hating women, whites hating blacks etc. When the oppressors hate the oppressed it’s to justify their oppression, when the oppressed hate the oppressing group it comes from an attempt to defend your sense of self-worth (although I still don’t think it’s RIGHT to hate people merely because they belong to a certain group, as pointed out above).
3. It’s whites and men who are in power, not blacks and women. (and so on for other groups.)
As long as everyone agrees on 1-3 I really don’t care much exactly how people use their words. Perhaps people who use words like “misandry” or talk about rasism against white people in 99 % of the cases are douchebags who don’t get points 1-3, but in that case, it’s these points that need to be stressed, rather than policing their choice of words.
I just feel that focusing on the words they use misses the point, and might confuse some readers (if we’re talking internet discussions) who might be like “but certainly there exist people who hate men?” in response to someone who goes “there’s no such thing as misandry, only misogyny!”.
Fade: males are gelded, and then the steers are killed for meat. Some are kept as bulls, and some are kept as, “teasers”.
They are mutilated, so they can’t actually have sex. They are not gelded. The purpose is to make the cows more aroused, so they will be more receptive to the bull.
Amusingly, a lot of them figure out how to have sex (despite the mutilation), and so they “cuckold” the rancher.
(and the one’s kept as bulls and teasers aren’t gelded. I phrased it poorly).