So the regulars in the Men’s Rights subreddit are currently discussing one of the most important — if often overlooked — issues of our time, which is: How come nobody but us sees that the ladies aren’t oppressed any more? Or, as paranoiarodeo497, looking hopefully towards the future, has chosen to put the question: “What future event/tragedy do you think will happen that will make people realize not only are women no longer deprived but in fact equal to men?”
Alas, the Men’s Rightsers aren’t hopeful that anything will wake up the snoozing sheeple. BrambleEdge, for his part, worries that men will remain oppressed forever.
![BrambleEdge 17 points 15 hours ago (18|1) Seeing as men are deprived and far from equal to women, and people don't see it now, I doubt they ever will. I sometimes fear that gynocentrism is biological and not cultural. [–]Demonspawn [-1] 1 point 52 minutes ago (1|0) gynocentrism is biological Treating women as human beings and men as human doings? Yes, it is biological. It's also why "equality" isn't, and seeking it creates a system of female supremacy.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/bramble.png?resize=573%2C230&ssl=1)
Shrekem, meanwhile, turns to the work of eminent historian GirlWritesWhat for evidence that women were never oppressed in the first place:
![Shrekem 9 points 13 hours ago (12|3) The problem is that women were never oppressed or deprived, they just had different roles. Women are certainly not "equal" to men today, they receive special treatment and are immune to many laws that would get a man locked up for life. I recommend you watch Karen Straughan's video on "When female privilege backfires". permalink source save give gold hide child comments [–]villevillakulla -4 points 11 hours ago (4|8) I guess it depends on how you define oppressed or deprived, but it kind of sounds like you're full of shit, and "different roles" can be a blanket statement to mean anything you want it to mean. permalink source save parent give gold [–]Shrekem 5 points 8 hours ago (6|1) I would define oppression as "the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner" just like everybody else. I challenge you to come up with one example of women being oppressed in western society in the past few centuries. The treatment of women is nothing compared to real oppression like that of blacks during slavery.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shrekem.png?resize=567%2C377&ssl=1)
IHaveALargePenis, in addition to being highly confident about his relative penis size, is also a bit more optimistic than his peers, suggesting that the irresponsibility of evil slutty single moms will eventually end up annoying not only single men but other women as well and thus, I guess, help to spark a new wave of antifeminism:
![IHaveALargePenis [+3] 5 points 12 hours ago (6|1) Government taxing bachelors to sponsor single moms/women in general. If shit keeps going the way it's going, everything women need will be provided by a government, while working less and claiming there's still a pay gap. It won't take a genius to put two and two together and realize that the benefits women get from the government, plus the benefits they get from working are huge compared to what men pay/get out of it. But that's not when things will change, not yet. What we're going to see is a rise of single, irresponsible moms who breed and have their lives paid for by taxpayers. And part of those taxpayers will be other women, who can't find men willing to "breed with them" or marry them, etc. These women will be working 40+ hours a week easy, will sacrifice greatly, miss their chance to have kids, and realize they're paying for all these irresponsible women to have their cake and eat it to (our society is pretty good at rewarding the irresponsible). That's when things will change.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ihavealarge.png?resize=580%2C276&ssl=1)
But Scoundrel, a more pessimistic sort, can’t imagine any scenario that would get the evil femmies to admit that men are oppressed:
Sorry, IHaveALargePenis, but you’ve been outvoted.
Meanwhile, loose-dendrite, off on a bit of a tangent, warns those who might otherwise be susceptible to feminist-think that seeing similar numbers of men and women in positions of power would not be a sign of gender equality — but rather a symptom of FEMALE TYRANNY!
Huh. I was unaware that high IQ was a prerequisite to power in our society. Did anyone tell George W. Bush?
In conclusion, MRAs have once against shown that they can use any and all evidence to “prove” what they already believe. Another flawless victory over the forces of reality.
cloudiah – Argenti and I had that idea a while back. It’d make great reality TV dumping those two together. Popcorn sales would explode.
freemage – apology accepted! 🙂
Kitteh — until they realized they had to rely on each other to survive. My father is rather physically disabled, he’d be pretty much useless for any building or trench digging or the like. Otoh, I doubt Ally’s father knows how to, for example, dress and cook game (though inb4 pecunium says he does)
RE: Ally
But he told me that because other kids are able to finish their BA/BS in less than 2 years, I should do everything as fast as possible as well.
DON’T DO IT. Seriously, don’t. I did it, and the only reason I pulled it off was constant front-swaps, a load of dissociation, and constant self-medication via starvation and overexercise. I don’t recommend it to ANYONE, and that your father even considers this applicable is horrific.
I feel perversely thankful. At least my family was easy to get away from.
RE: Argenti
LBT — you mean this one?
YES! Thank you! *posts to Tumblr*
Argenti – would they even have the knowledge for survival from scratch, let alone the physical capabilies? It’s a microcosm of how the whole Reddit Island idea would implode. Even if they had ready-made places to live, and food drops, they’d struggle, because who would there be to take out their assholishness on?
My schadenfreude is on the up today. 😉
Kitteh — probably not. I’ve looked into the actual work needed to go off grid safely and with a reasonable standard of living and yeah, you’d need food drops, or a great deal of farmable land and others to trade with, or a grocery store. Small enough population in a food rich environment could work, but gods help you if you don’t know anything about sanitation, on both the incoming and outgoing ends 🙂
LBT — I found that searching for “octopus goes nope” XD
At first I thought that Nepenthe was getting annoyed because zie didn’t understand that those of us who objected to hir comments were defending the individual (ie don’t mock commenter X because zie is a Christian/has some other belief system that seems silly to you) rather than defending the institution (the Catholic church is just awesome and has no flaws at all! said nobody here, ever). Now I’m getting the sense that zie does understand that and just wants the community in general to be more tolerant of hir wish to mock people for their spiritual beliefs, in which case, if we’re voting on whether or not that’s OK I vote “no”.
(Joins cloudiah in the NAAALT camp.)
Cassandra – seconding that. ::waves from NATALT camp (Not All Theists Are Like That)::
Hey we could totally get a little market/trading post thing going with these camps. Anyone want to barter stuff for knitting? It’s special knitting, it comes with cat fur woven in (granted, cat furs are pretty common around here, but this is knitted cat fur).
Can you knit warm socks? My feet get really cold in the winter.
Eh, if my options are theist and atheist (yes I realize those, in theory, encompass everything), I’ll be with Cassandra and Katz. Pretty sure pecunium would join you over their kitteh. And he’ll almost certainly barter yarn for your knitting, he was certainly trying to give it away to me!
“the Catholic church is just awesome and has no flaws at all! said nobody here, ever”
Indeed, including the aforementioned catholic, but I’ll let him explain his complaints if he wants to. They aren’t really relevant besides “they exist”.
Not harming anyone? Then I give zero fucks what you do, and particularly don’t give a fuck what you believe. Or, to bring this full circle to how I accidentally spawned yet another religious discussion — and ye harm none do what thou wilt. This *waves hands* aside, I still think it an excellent motto for life in general.
@LBT
I’ll do what I can to ensure that I don’t do any course overload. I know from experience in community college that that’s a horrible idea. I just wish I knew how to avoid that, given that my dad has leverage against me.
Another homeschooler here, although for the flexibility and the allowance of being weirdo hippies at home rather than the less than charming local public schools (“oh, your kid is getting beaten up every day? tell them to act less weird.”) or the private schools in the rural USian South, ie, “don’t worry your children will not be exposed to anyone of color and will be beaten if they don’t pray!” – I never bothered with the SATs or ACT or anything, and still managed to go through college and all that fun stuff. I get bristly at the “oh my, have you heard there are homeschoolers who had their education neglected?” when the educational options near us were so terrible. Strikes me as serious “but what about the middle-class children??” hand-wringing, considering the tiny number of homeschoolers vs. the amount of public school students pushed through grades until they can legally drop out.
Cassandra – I can learn! Plus furry socks would be extra warm, I hope.
Argenti – yeah, theist and atheist don’t really cover it that well, and I’d just go for theist ‘cos I’m definitely not an atheist. Deist would probably be better, at least in a very broad sense.
Cat worshipper would be the most accurate of all. (Wot’s that in Latin?)
Karalora wrote:
It’s not in Wiktionary either, but there’s ailurophilia (love of cats) and ailurophobia (fear of cats), so ailuromorphic sounds legit. Further, I’m guessing that worship of cats would be ailurolatry.
Also frequently relevant to this site: misailury is the likely term for hatred of cats (also understood as not giving them adequate respect).
(I have virtually no actual understanding of Greek)
Ailurolatry! Love it!
Heh – kitties would certainly define not giving them sufficient respect as misailury.
@tenya:
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we had to choose.
I’ve looked into the actual work needed to go off grid safely and with a reasonable standard of living and yeah, you’d need food drops, or a great deal of farmable land and others to trade with, or a grocery store. Small enough population in a food rich environment could work.
Caveat: one has to know what the foods are. The first Europeans to land in the Pacific Northwest (a hunter-gatherer society with so much surplus they engaged in conspicuous consumption, e.g. potlatch), starved.
They didn’t know what was “food”.
RE: Ally
I’m sad to say, your father will probably always find SOME kind of leverage over you. I wish you luck.
RE: CassandraSays
Now I’m getting the sense that zie does understand that and just wants the community in general to be more tolerant of hir wish to mock people for their spiritual beliefs, in which case, if we’re voting on whether or not that’s OK I vote “no”.
Nepenthe gives me the sense that they’re an Earnest Young Atheist who has just discovered they aren’t the only one, and foolishly expect all atheists to agree with their views. They also give me quite the impression that they are an asshole, seeing as they’re totally okay with sneering at an identity that they had apparently never heard of until I freaking mentioned it, and apparently know nothing about.
But then, anyone who uses the term ‘special snowflake’ with derision pretty quickly gets put on my ‘what the hell, dude’ list. It’s like, “oh no! This person has too many weird things about them! They obviously only have these weird things because they want to be SPECIAL, which is totally unreasonable and an unforgivable sin! Quick! Mock the special out of them, so they get their ass in gear and stop being different!” I mean, jeez, are you still in high school?
As another atheist, I would like to mention that very few of us think that it is somehow wrong to have supernatural beliefs. Many people mistake the intentions of outspoken atheists who may criticize religion, and think that they are somehow impugning the moral character of all believers by attacking various religions. They are not. Atheists, as a whole, believe that the religious hold factually incorrect beliefs, and may or may not be shy about saying so. We talk about religion because we believe that issues of true and false beliefs are important, not because we want to mock or be derogatory towards religious people. Some atheists are in fact assholes and believe that they are somehow morally superior to the religious on the sheer basis of not believing in any gods. That is bullshit (The Amazing Atheist comes to mind).
But on the other side of the coin, please realize that there is a LOT of religious privilege out there. We atheists get defensive easily because many of us have spent our entire lives being told by others that we cannot truly be moral people by pious hypocrites who support the religious right. And that’s some of the nicer stuff said about us. Even liberal allies will say shitty things about atheists from time to time. Religious privilege is another axis of privilege, and the conflation of beliefs with identity, shutting down criticism of religious beliefs is part of it.
I have respect for many religious people, even if I think they are wrong about some things. That’s okay, I don’t need everyone else I know to agree with me about everything. I think religion goes wrong when power structures form around it, like someone up thread mentioned.
I don’t think there’s any harm in holding untrue supernatural beliefs if you don’t harm others with it. I put otherkin and “fictionkin” in a similar category, in the sense that they are unprovable supernatural beliefs. It’s no more or less harmful than religion itself is, which is to say, it’s only harmful if the holder of said belief does other things to make it harmful.
Most religious beliefs are unprovable, unfalsifiable, and, lets face it, may appear weird and sometimes silly to outsiders. But as long as you’re not hurting anyone, who cares? What you DO is way more important than what you believe. “Intent isn’t magic”, after all.
mnekora: Word. As a non-atheist, I like you.
As far as the term “special snowflake”, when I hear it, I think of well-off career moms who talk about nothing but how special and wonderful their kids are (usually while they are ignoring their kids while they destroy something or cause a scene).
Also the tendency of teenagers to do various things just for the sake of trying to be an iconoclast and nothing more. (I did this too!)
While I agree with all of that, the problem is that the comment posted upthread that people were complaining about was personal and rather mean-spirited, and that’s been an ongoing issue.
(To people coming in in the middle of this conversation this may not make sense, but I don’t think Nepenthe’s comment would have provoked the same kind of “bite me” responses if there wasn’t already a history there.)
Well, not the part about it being natural for all atheists to be defensive. I think that’s really dependent on people’s background, and how persecuted people feel as a result of their atheism has a lot to do with where they grew up, whether they were raised in a religious family, and so on.
Btw this whole discussion wasn’t about religion to start with. What set it off was that someone mentioned “fictionkin” (honestly, I don’t even know what that means, either than that someone SOMEHOW identifies as a fictional character/species, but that can be given so many different interpretations), and then Nepenthe wrote that this was super ridiculous and started making fun in general of people who hold “ridiculous” beliefs or identities, not necessarily religious ones.
Without the history the conversation probably wouldn’t have gone off the rails, which is why I’m saying this is probably super confusing to people just coming in now.