So I’ve been skimming through the mass of comments that the Daily Beast piece on the Men’s Rightsers now has trailing in its wake. So far I think this is my favorite exchange.
Yep, that’s DriverSuz — aka Suzanne McCarley, “Senior Editor” of A Voice for Men.
And yep, that’s Angry Harry, the fellow that many MRAs call “the father of the men’s rights movement.”
Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
Lol. Fine. There is one exception, and you have found it. Although I’m almost certain that toilet training devices are only toys in the way that *dictionaries are books (ie papery things with words in).
*Disclaimer…I collect Oxford dictionaries
@Kitteh, love your coat – did you knit it yourself?
Auggz — sim tower? Cuz I have what should be a working copy.
Puzzles and Lincoln Logs and dinosaurs, with a side dish of pretend shopping, for me (I think that last one was because relatives I didn’t see much enjoyed it and I was quite particular about my creations whereas that wasn’t artsy like building stuff)
Shaun — point noted, but I had to 🙂
Argenti, trust me, I would have had to as well. I completely understand, and applaud you.
“Talking about ignoring “male protection” and other benefits (and “benefits”) that all women owe their lives for, what about the fact that a lot of the reasons humanity got where it is in the first place is because of unpaid labor and inventions made by women? Even today majority of the hard work is done by women and children. Generally as slave labor and/or or just for the sake of survival.” –
You mean the unpaid labour sitting at home popping out children? And inventions such as the plane, the computer, the development of Lapalce’s transforms, general relativity, cars, Hindu-Arabic numeral system? Oh yes, I forgot the invention of the chocolate chip cookie; I think I can live without them. Even today, the vast majority of hard work is done by men – from fighting the wars, to garbage cleaners, coal miners, fishermen, to construction. You don’t need to look to the 3rd world, just look at the west!
LilFuggit: (I can’t get ginned over the word cunt– aside from it being my favorite unintentional typo, up until extremely recently it was always a completely neutral slang word for, you know, cunt. The modern use of it is just so modern I don’t even care about it. I like to use it, in the neutral sense. It’s right up there with cock.)
If by modern you mean Chaucer, sure. And it’s not been “neutral” in more than my lifetime (as I’ve seen it used a slur against men being to, “girly” in works from the 1940s.
So keep on telling yourself that’s it’s not important, because it’s, “modern, and was neutral until even more recently”
wordspinner: To all the MRAs who think that women would be out in the cold without men: historically, men would have been out in the cold without women, since women have generally (at least in Europe) had responsibility for making clothing–particularly spinning and sewing, and basically all the work that was done in the home (men did things for pay, like knitting, and IIRC some weaving, but if it was home production it was generally women’s work).
Some expansion: Spinning was women’s work, but weaving was men’s (and some aspects of spinning, e.g. woolcombing for the making of top, were the property of men’s guilds).
So what you had was a division of labor, the women made the yarns (some of which, like worsted weft, required an intermediary man) and men made the fabric. (I did a post which covered some of this, but I ended up doing a lot more reading than I linked to, this was one of them, Weaving in Yorkshire. Of course the industrial revolution moved a lot of that “male” work to women, because they could be paid less.
A lot more women were working in the trade (because all the daughters would be spinning, but the sons would be apprenticed out), and there is no way men have clothing without the work of women (from scouring, to darning).
Dvärg: And seems like it’s so much worse than when in the late seventies/early eighties when I was a little kid… at least that’s the impression I get from friends with children, that things have been moving backwards on that point.
They havve. I am about to send out a skein of yarn to a friend (who was delivered of a baby girl last week; their first, and they didn’t know the apparent gender until she was born).
The mother chose the colorway because it was neutral. I’ve been hearing about how hard it is to find non-“sexed” clothes from several friends for years now. I know that when I was au-pairing, 20+ years ago, it wasn’t that hard to find greens and yellows and purples (red was harder), as well as rainbowing things.
Now, pink and blue are dominant colors. Also… people get pissed if you have a child in, “the wrong” color. The want to be able to assign a sex to the child so they can properly interact.
Which is a big part of how an innate sense of gender difference gets started. We are planning to have neuter clothes, and they can wear their hair as they like (since both of us who are primary partners to my partner have long hair, and most of her other partners do to… I see it likely that any male children will think long hair is fine; maybe even to be preferred).
titianblue – thank you, yes, I did! Do you knit?
My adorable, tough-minded niece (now twelve) went through a pretty pink pony princess phase a few years back. My sister-in-law, who would be a great soft butch except for the heterosexuality, was nonplussed, but let her work through it at her own pace. She (my niece) is still what her mom calls a ‘girly-girl’, but has cut way back on the pink and frills. It’s been an education for me. I grew up with three sisters who, as my eldest brother puts it, would kick your ass for a quarter, so the Floradora Femmadonna shtik was new to me.
@kitteh – I’ve picked it up again, this year, after a few decades of not doing any. Just completed my first attempt at knitting with circular needles (a cowl using malabrigo rios yarn in Liquidamber). http://instagram.com/p/fx-N5AF-9d/
Not good enough yet for proper clothing 😉 but thrilled with the new yarns & patterns available now.
Awww so adorable. So young and already getting ready for the coming revolution. 😉
You have my vote for head of the People’s Tribunal. Well, as long as you kept your wrath to Pretty Princess Barbie, Bank Executive Barbie and so forth and left Glorious Proleterian Barbie alone. (It’s okay though if it was Trostky-Fascist Saboteur Barbie in disguise.)
Am I too late for the celebrity BFFs? Can I have Nathan Fillion and Kirsten Vangsness, please?
Oh, block-quote fail. It’s MY text from “My best friend and I”… onwards.
OK, I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I really do feel I have to jump in and defend the c-word and certain people who use it.
I’ve seen all the arguments on it being historically used as possibly the worst slur available against women (reducing her to her genitalia and implying she’s nothing beyond that) and that applying it to men is also using “feminisation” as an insult. And this may very well be true – *in one country*. And if that’s the case, I’m horrified as this is a disgusting way to hurl abuse at someone and I’m very glad I’ve never used the term in that way and hope I’ve never heard it used that way until recently.
There is an issue here, in that case, if the US meaning (which is vile and misogynistic) is creeping in as the ‘one true definition’ of the term. I appreciate it may be hard for the very large number of people who are familiar with this use of the term to accept that there is a completely different use with a long and proud history (the same way I find it hard to accept that it could have such an atrocious use elsewhere). But it strikes me as very unfair to say “well, people in my country have been systematically vilifying women with this term for decades so you can’t use it any more because we pissed all over it”. It’s doubly unfair to chastise people who use it for a different purpose, and even worse to then hit them with “and if you continue to claim there’s any other possible interpretation of this term than this disgusting, gender-specific, sexist one, well, you’re just being wilfully provocative and a horrible person”
So I’d just like to make a stand for the non-US usage of the c-word. As a non-genital related term of abuse that has a very well-established history as the ultimate and most serious accusation one can make against another person, and one that (perhaps interesting in its irony) is used to describe *men* far more frequently than women. Cuntish behaviour is that displayed by the very worst of people – politicians who close down a country’s manufacturing base, oil companies who destroy habitats, religious orders that cover up sexual abuse. And that git who cuts you up on the motorway and nearly causes an accident. The definition of a cunt is someone who *knowingly* and with no sense of social responsibility does harm to others. It’s a term for the most reprehensible in society but conveys the disgust, anger and challenge that just saying “you’re reprehensible” ever can. So it’s no good saying “there are other words you can use” because there aren’t. Nothing trumps the c-word when used in the non-US way. That’s what it’s evolved to be – the worst thing you can call a person.
If you take this term away, what are we left with? The c-word has a long history of making it to the top of the league table of cultural checks and balances outside of the US. Personally, I want it to stay there – it has a very good use. Yes, I want to reclaim it before it becomes swamped and pushed aside by this other genitaled version. I don’t like that version and would like to see it die.
I agree with the posters who’ve said they feel it’s a ‘polluted’ term if used to describe female genitalia in erotica. I have the same issue, because I’ve always felt uncomfortable with my fun bits being associated with, well, cunts! But it’s a harsh, guttural anglo-saxon term that doesn’t do justice to such a lovely thing anyway, in my opinion. Cunt makes the perfect swear word and insult, in my opinion. I’d be very happy to see its continued use . But not as a reductive insult to women or womanliness. I’d be very pleased if that stopped completely.
Also, me and my best friend had a game we played with the My Little Ponies only, where they had gotten super powers from radioactivity, and that was simultaneously the explanation behind their weird colours. My ponies were a family where the dad could turn invisible, the mum had super strength, one of the daughters could fly and the other daughter shoot lasers from her hooves.
@Terrene: I’m not even a native English speaker, so maybe I shouldn’t enter this discussion, but… I get the feeling that you and the Americans are speaking past each other a bit here? I don’t think the Americans are claiming that everyone who use the word “cunt” as an insult in the US use it to intentionally promote misogyny, or that an American can’t use it against a man who simply did something really crappy. (I’m pretty certain that I’ve seen “cunt” used to denote “man who is just a really shitty person” in American movies, even if it may be more common in British ones…)
I think their point is that since it is a word for female genitals, there’s an inherent misogyny in using it whether it’s intentional or not, since you use a word for female genitals in order to express that something is bad/shitty/evil. And I can’t see how anything you wrote contradict that?
I’ve only been diving into the MRM crank stew for a short time and I’m already becoming somewhat inured to their in-yer-face hostility.
I read driversuz’s insane post and my first thought was she doesn’t seem to understand the integral role women play in agricultural societies. For instance, how women often are responsible the home gardens that provide key staple foods for people and livestock.
My second thought was, wait, did she just write that women could be put in animal pens with farm livestock? I’ve read plenty of anti-feminist polemics written by women but they don’t usually reach this level of hate and castigate all women everywhere to point of denying their very humanity. Yeash.
@ Titianblue
Survey says no.
Wait wait wait, back the baby bus up, pecunium! You may make little pecuniums?! I’d have an excuse to go toy shopping!
Well, guess what? The word has been weaponized beyond reclaimation now. Shit happens, find a new word.
If you find a way to divorce it from the reductive insult, and make sure it’s not used that way, I’m all ears.
@Terrene, there is no “non-US” way of using the c-word. Your description of it being “a term for the most reprehensible in society”, a word that “Nothing trumps” – that is the exactly the US-way of using the word. And it is saying that the worst thing anyone can be compared to is female genitalia.
And yes, it’s a lovely short word that forms in the mouth perfectly for spitting out in rage and contempt. But it still means female genitalia and using it as an insult is still misogynistic.
I really do appreciate what you’re trying to say Dvarghundspossen, but also feel it kinda illustrates my point. Because cunt is one term for female genitals does NOT automatically mean its a misogynistic term. Especially if its not being used *as* a misogynistic term. And certainly if the history of it as a misogynistic term is in doubt.
I don’t think the UK even has a term that describes women ‘as’ genitals. The US clearly does. Are there terms like that in other countries? There are plenty of common insults describing sexual behaviour in a derogatory way – slut, slag, dog etc. But remember that misogynistic means ‘fear of women’ and in modern parlance it’s come to mean hatred of women. The commonest UK usage of the word cunt has no elements of fear or hatred of women or their genitals. And hasn’t for a very long time.
In the same way that bastard is no longer an insult about a person’s legitimacy, the insult remains but the kind of behaviour it’s levelled against has broadened. The same goes for cunt. It shares a meaning, but has become divorced from it in some areas. So perhaps like some other people here, reclaiming the word as a non-genitaled, non-misogynistic insult is something I’m in favour of. And I’d like to give my support to the other posters on here who’ve felt they need to defend themselves against an unfair accusation,
@Terrene, I call bullshit. I’m a Brit.
Terrene, just because 4channers believe that they’ve reclaimed the word ‘fag’ doesn’t mean that it is magically no longer a slur.