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.)
Oh Brz, we can still scroll up.
“I often quoted and translated French authors here”
Forget it, dude. After cheese and surrendering, it’s been a lost cause.
@cloudiah
“if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That’s clear to anyone.”
Translation: rape was okay because it made the men feel better.
Yuck.
(Sheesh, I keep using the wrong login info on accident)
Oh, sorry cloudiah – I hope it’s obvious that I’m quoting that rape apologist asshole, not trying to make you look like a rape apologist. XD
No worries, Aaliyah, it was clear.
Brz: 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”.
You gave an interpretation of what the articles said.
Or, as you admitted, <i“I often quoted and translated French authors here”
We read them, when you linked. Your translation/interpretation was… interesting.
Aaliyah: It’s even worse, he’s advocating something similar for the areas near the US bases in Japan…”to prevent rape”.
As for the Calvinism discussion, I didn’t say in my comment that feminism = calvinism, I’ve said that you (being drunk at the time I wrote this comment, this “you” was addressed to a Cambridge liberal straw-man) are fake, that you always pretend to be progressive, to be open, to be not conservative when in fact you’re as obsessed with purity and eradicating sins from the society as were you’re ancestors who crossed the Atlantic ocean to build the sinless Kingdom of God, to create the perfect society with massive use of “public shaming” and eradication of the bad seeds.
These who call themselves feminists and “public shame” “creepy men” use the same logic than those who used to make adulterous women stand in front of the village wearing the scarlet letter : they both have the idea that the sin can be personified by someone and that we can purify society by shaming these persons collectively, the only difference is that they have a different understanding of what a sin is. They have the same defiance against sexual ambiguity, advocating for “enthusiastic consent” (and in fact, fight to eradicate everything that can looks like ambiguous consent) is just another way to deny the existence of sexual ambiguity, just another way to pretend that human relations can be completely “pure”, that the society can be completely “pure” if we work on eradicating the non-pure. They have the same way to “neutralize”, to create “public safe places” where human have to be completely neutral, where every sexual innuendo must be banned, where every violent feeling must be banned. They have the same way to think that “bad seeds” exists, that humanity is divided between the good ones and the bad ones and that the way to make society completely pure is to keep watch, ostracize and confine those “bad seeds” : your ancestors used to think that human beings aren’t equals in the possibility to receive God’s Grace, that some are the chosen ones and others are irremediably condemned, now, you just think that the oppressed groups are the innocent, the pure, when the oppressors groups are the “bad seeds” you should control and manage in order to purify society.
They have the same voyeuristic impulse which make them putting their noises in their neighbor’s bedrooms, just in case, just to make sure that there isn’t sins which could have been committed in the dark. They’re against privacy, their ideal of society is the city of glass where everyone can watch everyone permanently to be sure that no sin is committed in the obscurity.
I truly don’t want that shit in my country, a lot of people really don’t want that shit in our country, we use to dismiss every attempt to bring that in France, especially when it concerns the removal of sexual privacy, as being just American puritan hysteria but there is people who call themselves “feminists” and those who fight against violences against women are slowly and silently changing the laws, even if the judges won’t, for now, apply them (few of them have been convinced by the utility to condemn clients of prostitutes or to condemn for harassment a guy because he made a joke which contains a sexual innuendo), things are changing slowly, there’s less nudity at the television than before, some programs suddenly decided that they have to censor slurs, it now happens that the sexual morality of public figures are “discussed”.
All this shit at the origin come from Calvinism, We should have killed these ideas before they spread.
Prove it.
You can’t because you’re full of shit on this : the translation of the passages of the interview was correct.
Shut up, Brz. Your notFrench is showing.
Running out of straw? Jesus fuck you’re stupid.
Is Japan really that backwards? That’s something that I’d be shocked to even hear in the USA.
Sorry I really don’t know much about politics in Japan, but that’s really really fucked up.
Japan has had some really ugly far-right parties for years: nationalist, racist, sexist. What’s scary is that they have enough support that this douche was elected Mayor of Osaka.
I’ve heard of some of the racism there, but not really blatant kind like we’d expect. Just the gawking at black people on subways (I’m talking today, not WW2).
How much opposition do those awful parties have? Do the Japanese realize how awful that is? Or are they just mildly disgusted.
Brz: Prove it? Again? Go back and re read the thread.
As to the “I meant this” nonsense… you aren’t saying anything new, and you are, patently, wrong. You sure as hell can’t say this is a place where “all trace of innuendo” is prohibited. We engage in it all the time.
I don’t know what you mean by saying you would like violence to be allowed. I have no problem with violence, per se. But it, like sex, needs to have rules. I’ve been violent. I may be violent again. But gratuitous violence? Violence as a tool of social control (as opposed to a defensive tool)? Nope, not on. When someone says, “I’ll rape you,”. or, “you deserve to be beaten or, (warning Vox Day in one of is rhetorical excesses about beating women) Has Phony ever hit a woman? Has he ever seen a woman’s head snap back, seen her knees buckle, and stood over her as she lays crumpled on the floor? Has he ever bloodied a woman’s nose or blackened a woman’s eyes? Has he ever toyed with a woman desperately trying to lay a hand on him before stepping forward and flattening her with a single jab?
I have. It wasn’t even amusing because it was so easy.
That shit, that’s beyond the pale.
But you, you seem to think that believing that to be unacceptable, makes me a bluestocking.
Imagine how pained I am at that? Imagine how other people with morals beyond that of a schoolyard bully (i.e. not yourself) think of such things.
Imagine, just for a moment that giving a damn about anything but your present gratification, was worth doing.
Yeah, I know that’s hard; but you know what, it’s what grown ups do.
Auggie, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Japanese politics/culture. But my understanding is that there is a virulent strain of Japanese racism that is directed at Koreans in particular, who made up a sizable chunk of these “comfort women” during WW2.
katz – gakk. Thanks for that info, though. I should stress that “not having heard” meant me not reading about them, not the implication that there wasn’t anything to hear. I was also thinking of not knowing what their theology’s like these days – do they still push the predestination bollocks that Calvin and Knox were so keen on?
There’s a huge Royal Commission into child sexual abuse happening here at the moment, which will likely run for years. I’m quite sure the various Calvinist offshoots will come out just as badly as the Catholic church is. The Salvation Fucking Army’s got extremely dirty hands, for starters.
Oh, and Brzgobshite, not everyone here is USian, unlike yourself. You can put your pretend outrage about Puritanism and Calvinism back up your arse, though it’s doubtful they’ll fit alongside your head. It’s not relevant in any sense. All you’re doing is demonstrating your ignorance, not that that’s anything new.
I’m not an expert on Japanese culture and politics, and the attitude expressed by that quote is disgusting and indefensible, but it’s worth remembering that rape as a tool of war is something the U.S. has used for decades, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. This isn’t unique to Japan.
Feminists don’t want to “eradicate… ambiguous consent,” you blithering toad. Feminists want to end the idea that consent is the sort of thing you should feel comfortable assuming on a guess. The difference is that your phrasing makes it sound like feminists are upset at people who don’t clearly articulate their desires, which is false; feminists are angry with people who use the alleged “ambiguity” of consent to ignore rejection or assume acceptance.
Also, for all sad sacks like you whine about feminist shaming of “creepy men,” I have literally never seen the subject raised on a feminist site. I’m sure it happens, but waaaaay less than you think – probably because feminists are less likely to use words like “creepy” and more likely to use “harassers” or “abusers” or “assholes,” which is nice both for specificity and because it allows assholes like you less leeway to hide behind the idea that “creepiness” is in the eye of the beholder.
Simplified Brz – it’s so terrible when people talk like sex should be something that everyone involved enjoys. That’s just way too restrictive for those of us who don’t care if the people we’re fucking are happy about it or not. Society would be so much less rich and interesting if we eradicated rape!
When people talk about racism in Japan that’s not what they’re talking about. Not that it’s not a thing – you can still see blackface on TV in Japan sometimes, and it’s fucked up – but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Most of the really nasty racism is directed at Korean and Chinese people. And then there’s the way the Burakumin are treated – they may or may not be ethnically Japanese, academics are still arguing about that, but the fact that they’re subject to widespread discrimination isn’t in doubt.
I’m not even reading that article about the mayor of Osaka since I’d rather not walk around for the rest of the day wanting to punch someone in the face.
Brz, the blithering toad.
Let’s do it.
You said :
But you didn’t explain why the elision “completely changes the meaning”, like you didn’t explain how I gave an “interpretation of what the articles said” in the comments I linked to in this thread : you could not have done it because only one of my comments could be seen as an “interpretation of what the article said”, while another one was a respond to another commenter and the last two comments weren’t “interpretations of what the article said” at all.
Are you able to explain why you thought that my translation was disingenuous or you can’t because you’re just pretending to understand French?
My translation :
The original text with the elision :
http://www.bafweb.com/Lib19790410.html
The translation is clearly not perfect but I didn’t change the meaning. Explain us why the elision changes the meaning for you, if you’re able to do it of course.
Dude, if you insist on being boring can’t you at least be succinct?
Aw, the toad is kind of cute. It looks so grumpy, like it’s just not having any of his nonsense.