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.)
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.
No. We are fans of consent. That this interferes with your ability to get away with rape is a feature, not a bug.
That you think we are followers of a long dead frenchman, well that’s you being ignorant. This is no surprise.
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.
Well… you had the chance, but you let him go to Geneva. Not our fault.
But (as per norm) when you are upset you revert to your native level of English. For verismilitude you might want to work on that; it’s blowing the illusion.
Fade: 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*….
I do. Words mean things. Men is a class. I, for example, hate cooked spinach (with the sometime exception of spanokopita). Because I hate cooked spinach I have lots of people who (despite my specifying, “cooked”) won’t include fresh spinach in my food.
How much more confusing if I said, “I hate spinach”, without qualifiers; but only when I had someone try to serve me cooked spinach?
Howard: @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.
No… it’s where Jean Calvin was FROM! Calvin was French, not Swiss. He is one of the “gifts” of France to the world (like Napoleon), which we might have been better off without.
I get “men is a class”, but I do not like the comparison of spinach to men. One of those things can’t hurt you w/ unexamined privilege; the other can.
Wait, what? We’re talking about Calvinists now? I guess it’s more original than Nazis, but what does that have to do with bloody anything?
Fade: The issue is how our use of language shapes our thoughts. Putting all of a class into one’s framing of specific aspects of portions of that class is a bad way to manage things.
Ooh, are we having a contest to find out who can name the group least germane to the topic? ‘Cause if so, Bauhaus! Dvergar! Dadaism!
Falconer: Contra-antidisestablimentarianists?
Fade: The issue is how our use of language shapes our thoughts. Putting all of a class into one’s framing of specific aspects of portions of that class is a bad way to manage things.
What if one or more aspects of that class are so overwhelmingly negative that they do, in fact, outweigh the positive aspects? And what if those aspects were nearly universal among the class? Wouldn’t it be accurate to say “I hate [class]” then? At worst it’s rounding up, slightly.
That word goes in so many circles I’m dizzy before I hit the fifth syllable.
Wouldn’t those just be disestablishmentarians? 😀
I’ve never understood why you keep accusing me of not being French : if you click on my username, you’ll find a blog written almost completely in French (apart from a quote from an Arabic poem) and owned by a guy who strangely also use “Brz” as an username, I’ve once posted here a link to a French article where there’s a comment written by a guy who also strangely happens to use “Brz” as an username and write in French things that I said here, I often quoted and translated French authors here, I wrote here a comment in French in response to another French commenter …
If you want more proof, there’s a “Brz” who once wrote a comment on a French feminist blog (and who has been banned immediately from this blog after this) and who also happens to share my opinions. There’s also another Brz who wrote a call to throw frozen dolls at feminists on another French blog where he seems to have left comments from time to time : he left for example, a call to disarm Americans completely” because American clerks can’t read a French passport, I remember having talked about my experience with CVS clerks and French passports here.
It would be pretty odd if there were so many different Brz on the Internet who happen to say the same kind of things I say here, but I’m sure that you’ll keep accusing me of not being French (which is a strange accusation: why someone would pretend to be French if he weren’t?) in order to dismiss everything I say (he lied about being French = he’s likely to lie about everything else).
Anyway, It is very telling about what are your rhetorical tools (you’re always try to find a reason to discredit people who don’t think like you rather than arguing with them, even if the pretext is puerile) as it is telling about your lack of rationality: no wonder that you’re unable to acknowledge that the big patriarchal system which is supposed to oppress women and privilege men doesn’t exist if you’re not able to acknowledge that a guy who says he’s French and provide evidences about this is, well,… French.
Although, as you say, keep fucking that particular chicken if it please you: you’ll just keep looking even more dumb than you really are.
katz: “Wait, what? We’re talking about Calvinists now? I guess it’s more original than Nazis, but what does that have to do with bloody anything?”
Because Brz the not-Frenchman thinks being against rape and for the idea that women are people has so much in common with being a radical Protestant with a fondness for the idea of predestination and, oh, civil wars, desecrating tombs, decrying fashion as sinful and so on. Extend it a little and you include that other arsehole Knox, author of The Monstrous Regiment of Women. (Yes, it was the three queens in power he was getting his drawers in a bunch about, but somehow writing a polemic like that doesn’t quite sound like something even the most proto of proto-feminists would do.)
Oh my god, Brz…
I don’t care if you’re french or fake or not, that has to be the funniest thing I have ever seen. “And when I go other places, they ban me. I guess what I’m saying is you guys here have low standards. Anyway, can we talk about me some more?”
You have hideous ideas and are a misogynist. Stop hating women, stop defending people who advocate terrorism, just stop. You’re awful. (but hilarious!)
Brz: We did argue with you (in this thread, in resonse to your inane reference to Jean Calvin). You didn’t engage honestly. Right down to those of us who speak French seeing that your interpretation of French articles was, to be generous, a bit loose.
You might be french. What we are mocking you for is the slipshod way your story is written.
Why would someone claim to be something they aren’t? I don’t know. Ask SteAL, or Pell, or Catwoman/breadmold.
What I would surmise is that someone who wanted to be able to claim an outside perspective, and so imply a greater awareness (being outside the phenomenon) might choose to do it.
But such a person suffers problems if they encounter someone who knows the parent culture they are claiming. Your assertions about life in Paris, at odds with the experience of those here who have also lived there.
Your use of English… inconsistently bad. Your explanation of why/what you are doing in the states, vague; and inconsistent. Your explanation of what has happened to you (inability of clerks to recognise a french passport) out of keeping with experience.
Your affected chauvinism… out of keeping with any french person I have known in person (which numbers about 50, over the course of 30 years).
Your in-depth familiarity with the straw-feminism of the American MRM.
So, even if you are french, I don’t believe you are being honest.
And that, mon ami, is what makes us say, “he’s lying about something, which (in addition to the obvious falsity of most of your claims) impeaches everything you do.
You have an agenda; and it looks as if you are hiding large parts of it.
Well yes, that’s what the old school Calvinists were, but a) they had absolutely nothing to do with feminism (both being separated by hundreds of years and being totally ideologically unrelated) and b) Calvinists are A Thing now, so it’s patently odd to use the term decontextualized to refer to an obsolete meaning, like using “hipster” to refer to a jazz aficionado.
….for seriously?
Brz, what’s the ratio of female to male political decision makers in your home country?
@katz: so, you’re saying this is just like every other term and idea the MRM gets hold of? That they barely understand the original idea, are twisting this beyond all belief, and refuse to let go no matter how counterfactual they sound?
Because that’s just what I expect of them, of course.
“Contra-antidisestablimentarianists”
*goes digging* Anti contra proferentem — ridiculousness seen in a legal brief (opposing counsel was intentionally shoving their heads so far up their asses I’m amazed they could still walk straight)
katz, that’s what made me laugh about it. Brzzzzzzz’s pairing of Calvinist with puritan dumped it right back into the 16th and 17th century context, and he didn’t come back and say “I’m talking about Calvinists now!” because that would undermine his whole “feminists are killjoys” idiocy. (He’s evidently never heard of sex-positive feminism either.)
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of current-day Calvinists being in the news for being radically unpleasant, unless there’s any connection between them and US fundamentalists – I know nothing of their antecedents.
For folks who can read a PDF: this report by the World Economic Forum, while not perfect, does a good job of sketching out the current state of gender equality across countries.
Something you notice real fast; even in liberal, progressive places where they’ve taken active steps to try to close the gender gap, they’re not there.
I can’t imagine why any French feminists would ban Brz when he denies there’s any patriarchy in effect in France.
Kinda sorta. In this case he’s mostly just being random and grabbing something that he’s got the idea will make him sound French.
More in the WTF department: http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Japanese-mayor-Wartime-sex-slaves-were-necessary-4512784.php
You haven’t? Well, here’s a child sex abuse scandal. And there was this cultish church discipline incident. Fun fact: I attended both those churches.
Ironically, it might turn out that it’s you the one who lies: I suspect you of not really being able to understand French because none of the comments I wrote I linked to contain an “interpretation of French articles”.