Our old nemesis Fidelbogen — the Would-Be Counter-Feminist Philosopher King — has taken on a dire, if altogether hypothetical, threat to the men’s rights movement as we know it today: the danger that actual activism that benefits men in the real world will get in the way of the feminist bashing that he thinks is job #1 for all good MRAs.
As he argues in a recent post:
Doing good things for men – opening DV shelters, men’s centers, passing male-friendly laws, and so on – is all very excellent and fine, but it does not attack the root of the problem.
This is kind of a remarkable statement for him to make, given that the Men’s Rights movement that Fidelbogen has attached himself to — or at least its very vocal online contingent — has so far succeeded in opening precisely zero DV shelters and/or men’s centers and has successfully lobbied for zero “male-friendly” laws.
Indeed, it’s only in recent months that any MRAs active online have managed to raise even a miniscule percentage of the money it will take to open much less operate a single shelter for men.
But apparently Fidey is worried that even these paltry efforts from MRAs will get in the way of the noble task of yelling about feminists. As he puts it, in LARGE BOLD TYPE so you know he’s extra serious:
Fidey, I don’t think you need to worry for a minute that MRAs are going to actually accomplish anything in the real world. And you can quote me on that,
Speaking of the Cat and Mouse Act, it’s not long past the centenary of the death of Emily Davison, the suffragette killed at Ascot when she was kicked by the King’s horse. Some years earlier, she’d been imprisoned and force-fed. She barricaded her cell door, and the prison authorities had a hose pipe put through the door window and blasted her with cold water before breaking the door down.
markb – I’ve not read Dworkin but I’m not seeing how what you’re quoting there suggests her views are degrading to women. As I read it, the whole patriarchal structure and the physical act of PiV are so bound up in each other in people’s thinking, that not reading PiV (consciously or unconsciously) as a demonstration/reinforcment of male dominance would be pretty well impossible, at least as society was then. It’s been the way it’s been read for so long, it’s very hard not to read it that way, to shake the assumptions of centuries.
For those who don’t know: Dworkin died in 2005.
Really hope this isn’t seen as trolling, just a genuine idle thought: what about when something is bitchin’, meaning that it’s totally rad, awesome and badass?
The idea behind reclaiming a word is to use it as a positive, preferably by the people it is applied to as a slur. That being said, I have a tendency to minimize my use of slurs in general just because they are sort of like double-heavy words.
“Bitchin'” isn’t a word I hear often; I’ve no idea whether teens here use it (heard a boy call his mates “bro” yesterday and CRINGED). I don’t use bitch in any of its senses, and “bitchin'” sounds very USian to me, which is another reason I wouldn’t use it anyway.
“Bitchin’ ” as an adjective for something extreme awesome you can at least make an argument for. “Bitching” as a type of whiny complaining? Nope. Total gendered slur.
I only advocate using “bitchin'” when you are trying to sound like an 80’s guy. As in
Bro is something stoner frat boy types say. See the infamous line “Don’t taze me, bro.”
I’m feeling cranky so I vote for banning anyone who refuses to use their return key, especially if they’re going to bang on about Dworkin and radfems without appearing to have much understanding of either.
Since I must admit I use the word frequently: can’t it be argued that it’s been so heavily used for so long that it’s no longer gendered? I don’t consider “hysterical” to be gendered, and that has multiple definitions as well. I might describe either a man or a woman in the throes of severe distress “hysterical,” and I wouldn’t consider it insulting. I agree calling someone a “little bitch” is similar to mangina or pussy. OTOH, I’ve called both men and women dicks, including myself on occasion.
YoullNeverGuess: Nope, I’m afraid both “bitch” and “hysterical” are still gendered. Yes, they can be applied to men, but they are still vastly more often applied to women, based on cultural ideas about women and their unreasonable behavior, and used rather directly to shut women up by portraying their desires and opinions as worthless.
I’m not seeing how “well I use this word a lot” translates to “therefore it’s not gendered or offensive or a problem in any way”.
To clarify – my issue with that argument is that it’s a cop-out. I’m not interested in policing other people’s use of language in a general sense – if people want to use those words then they can, they just shouldn’t do it in a space where they’ve been asked not to – but I think people need to own the fact that the words they use have potentially unpleasant implications.
Go ahead and use the words if you want to, but trying to weasel out of admitting that the words are gendered so you don’t have to feel bad about using them is not the most adult or self-aware approach.
If they aren’t acceptable here, then I won’t use them. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to judge my character based on the fact that I draw the line in a different place than you, considering how much casual dialect changes from area to area. Language changes. That’s why “literally” now has two definitions, which are literally the opposite of each other. I would be very sympathetic to a boy I saw crying hysterically. Crowds can succumb to hysteria. I honestly think it’s a bit of a reach to still hear that term as gendered. But again, if that’s the overall feeling on this comment section, I’ll respect that.
To pick a more esoteric example, I believe “quaint” and “cunt” share the same root, but nobody would call quaint gendered.
Again, this comment section had its own dialect, and if I use a term people find offensive, I’d prefer they just tell me that matter of factly (which is what happened) without the accompanying assumption that I’m inferior.
Don’t think so; quaint goes back to Latin, where the other seems to derive from old German. It’s the similarity of sound in medieval pronunciation, and the variable spellings, that make them seem closer.
Also, I don’t think Cassandra’s saying or implying that you’re inferior; she made a valid point about thinking about the words one uses. I too used “hysterical” freely, mostly in saying something extremely funny was hysterical; I didn’t think of it as still gendered until AJ suggested thinking about it (and not using it here) recently. Zie’s right in both: it does still have that load, I think, and it’s another of those “if in doubt, don’t” situations. I might not think I’m adding to the problem by using it, but I’ll avoid it in case I am.
@LBT: YES a thousand times yes – I bought Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Trouble’ as I thought it would be relevant to the course I’m starting next year (which isn’t wymen’s studies btw, in case there are any MRA trolls on this thread). But I found it so impenetrable I had to stop. I just can’t seem to figure out what she’s talking about most of the time. And that habit she has of using uneccessary quotation marks around words really drives me wild (e.g. constructs, or ‘constructs’…discourse, or ‘discourse’…)
Butler belongs in the “why are you choosing to communicate in a way that makes your ideas harder to understand?” category of academic writers, along with Daly. Not that I would have agreed with the ideas anyway, but their books would be a lot more appealing if they would accept the idea that one of the main goals of writing is to communicate ideas. If most readers end up wondering WTF you’re trying to say then you’re doing something wrong.
Yeah, I used to freak out when I encountered a writer who used that obtuse, obfuscating style – like ‘oh my God, I can’t understand this really important bod’s really important works – MAYBE I’VE REACHED THE END OF MY INTELLIGENCE WAAAAH’ but now I’m further on in my academic career, less insecure, and I’ve learned to chill out a little and realise that the writer has a responsibility to meet you halfway.
Gods, yes, I hate it when writers do that, especially if it’s a book that’s not supposed to be purely academic, ie. for a particular discipline and narrow audience, whether or not it’s filled with jargon. It’s even worse than the ones that go around in circles and leave me wanting to scream WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING POINT, or the ones with the pattern of “This was so-and-so”, an example or two, then a repeat of the original assertion.
Still, at least some writers do get the idea – an historian I emailed once was amazed I’d read his first book ‘cos he said it was almost unreadable. 😀
The best professor I ever had was able to explain Foucault to me in a way that was comprehensible. Which, if any of you have read Foucault, you understand that that is a HEROIC FEAT.
Foucault! Now that is a primo educator. I’m normally quite blase about picking up a specialist book and reading as much as I can if I’ve heard the person’s ideas are worth a look.
“As much as I can” turned into a brief horrified look at a few pages and I happily abandoned the whole enterprise. Some things are worth the effort. This wasn’t.
@M Dubz: aaah Foucault, yeah I’m reading the auld bastard right now actually. (I had to come to the internet for a break). I like what he’s saying (when I know what he’s saying), but I wish he’d give some concrete examples of those sneaky Disciplines in action. I might try getting high and then re-reading his chapter on Panopticism for added insight. Please tell me – what did your Prof say, in a nutshell?
That sounds risky.
Yeeeeaaaah, I do NOT miss academia. It seemed to APPROVE of being as confusing and “what the fuck are you trying to say” as possible.
This is why everything I know about philosophy, I learned from other people and blogs. They seemed more likely to just say it in Layman.