The MRAs have a new list! A list of evil, man-hating quotations, that is. This list, put together by A Voice for Male Students, has a rather pretentious title: “The language of misandry in academia: a collection of quotes by faculty members, students, and administrators.”
And it comes with a rather high-minded introduction by list-collator Jonathan Taylor, declaring that
misandry in academia is not merely a collection of infrequent and disassociated anomalies arising from individuals uninfluenced by supportive or acquiescent peer groups. On the contrary, it is culturally pervasive in academia in a way that cannot be reasonably characterized as incidental or coincidental.
Indeed, Taylor hopes that his list will be
a useful resource for those new to men’s issues in academia. It should also be useful to advocates as a “go-to” resource for identifying and referring others the kind of hostile learning environment that has become pervasive in certain academic circles.
Given all this, you might expect his list of quotes to be a little more carefully vetted than the typical cut-and-pasted lists of Terrible Feminist Quotes that are passed around on the internet by antifeminists. You may recall that when I and a few others fact-checked one of these lists a while back we discovered that many of the quotes were either taken out of context in a misleading way, or made up, or taken from fictional works. Or were from people no one had ever heard of an who might not have been feminists at all.
Even a quick glance at Taylor’s list reveals that it has a lot in common with these lists: alongside a number of quotations from well-known radical feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Mary Daly, he includes quotes from little-known academics and an assortment of random student activists, one of them identified only as “Ginny.” How typical are any of these views in academia? Taylor makes no attempt to find out.
The list doesn’t confine itself to feminists, quoting from one “traditionalist women’s college group” and even from Margaret Thatcher.
And many of the quotes are scanty — simple one liners — which leads me to wonder if there is anything in the context that makes these sometimes shocking quotations a bit less shocking.
Still others aren’t actually “misandrist” at all.
I don’t have the time or the energy to fact-check all of these quotes — nor do I have access to the academic journals many of them came from.
But several of them grabbed my attention, and I was able to track down the original quotes in context — only to discover that Taylor’s abridged quotes completely distort their original meanings.
Let’s start with this truncated quote from Marilyn French:
“As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love; he can rape women…he can sexually molest his daughters… THE VAST MAJORITY OF MEN IN THE WORLD DO ONE OR MORE OF THE ABOVE.”
– Dr. Marilyn French, The War Against Women, p. 182, her emphasis.
This seems shocking: Is French really suggesting that the vast majority of men either beat, rape, or kill women and/or molest their own daughters?
Actually, no. Those little ellipses in the quote are a clue that there’s more to the story here. When you look at what French actually wrote, you can see that her claims are not actually shocking at all. Here’s the original quote, which you can find for yourself by looking up the book on Amazon and going to page 182 of the preview available on the site.
As you can see, French’s argument is completely different from what the truncated quote would suggest. But quoting a feminist suggesting that the majority of men might “treat women disrespectfully” isn’t very exciting, is it? Let’s pretend she said something hair-raising instead!
It’s clear that Taylor didn’t get the quote from French’s book directly; when I searched for the quote online, I found the exact same truncated version, with the same ellipses and the same CAPITAL LETTERS on an assortment of right-wing and antifeminist sites, in one case attributed to the wrong book by French. Clearly he got the quote from one of these sites — Conservapedia, perhaps? — and didn’t bother to spend five minutes trying to fact-check it as I did. It’s also pretty clear that whoever edited the original quote down did so in a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what French said.
The next bit of fact-checking was a bit more straightforward, because this time Taylor provided a clickable link to the source on Google Books. Here’s the quote:
“Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated.”
– Dr. Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified, p. 82.
Curious about the context, I clicked on the link and saw that she was defining rape in this way as a sort of thought experiment rather than as a legal category:
While this is not quite as dramatic a misrepresentation as the chopped-up French quote, the context here changes the meaning of the quote quite dramatically.
One more quote in the list caught my eye:
Consent as ideology cannot be distinguished from habitual acquiescence, assent, silent dissent, submission, or even enforced submission. Unless refusal or consent or withdrawal of consent are real possibilities, we can no longer speak of ‘consent’ in any genuine sense.
– Dr. Carol Pateman, “Women and Consent,” Political Theory, vol. 8, p. 149.
I’m not going to bother to fact-check this one, because, well, this argument is completely reasonable: if a person cannot say “no,” or cannot withdraw consent, then we really aren’t talking about genuine consent at all, are we?
Taylor claims to be fighting “misandry” in the academy. It looks to me — in these examples, at least — like he’s fighting against straw feminists and a meaningful notion of consent.
I think that’s because anti-gay bigotry has been influenced by both the patriarchy and ultraconservative religious opposition to homosexuality. The former is largely still in place in many ways, whereas the latter has been declining rapidly due to more non-religious folks, among other groups. That’s probably why you still see rigid ideas about masculinity despite the fact that homosexuality is gaining acceptance at a fast rate.
Cassandra — idk on gay rights. I mean, yeah, gay marriage is becoming a thing, and maybe I was 18 and naively hopeful, but the backlash against it surprised me. (And I think you made yourself older than you are, I’m 28)
As for when it started, idk, I really only got engulfed in feminism after rapist ex #2, so 6 years ago-ish?
That could make sense. I haven’t seen any recent surveys on level of religious belief in young people, but if it’s declined then that would explain a lot, as would individual religious groups drifting away from specifically homophobic ways of interpreting their religious texts.
@ Argenti
Thing is, there have been multiple polls on this and they all show a lower level of homophobia in younger people (25 and under in some cases, teens specifically in other cases) than in older people. So even though there’s backlash I don’t think kids are where it’s coming from.
(And if we’re talking about teens it’s not like they would have been able to vote on say Proposition 8 anyway.)
CassandraSays:
I think there is also this dynamic of, “Being gay is okay, but I’m not gay, and now I have to prove it,” and the way for young men to prove their heterosexual bona fides is to be hyper-masculine (because apparently no gay men are hyper-masculine…)
If you look back, (like to the nineteenth century) it used to be more acceptable for men to be physically affectionate, and I can’t help but wonder if the increasing openness/acceptance of alternative sexualities is putting that more and more as unacceptable for straight men.
So funny story time:
My friend and I were talking to a male classmate, and he was complaining about how men couldn’t be physically affectionate with each other without being suspected of being homosexual. I was with him all the way, but then he said, “I mean, look at [female classmates A and B]. They are all over each other and nobody says anything.”
My friend then said, “Ummm… A and B are both lesbians.”
So good analysis hampered by picking the wrong example. (There were plenty of other women who were affectionate with each other who weren’t lesbians, but he just happened to pick the couple who made it official about three months later.)
@ wordspinner
That ties in with the fact that, at least ime, it’s the societies where everyone is busy pretending that nobody is gay where it’s most acceptable for men to be physically affectionate with each other. I’ve lived in both the Middle East/North Africa and Asia, and in both cases saw far more physical affection between men than would be acceptable in the US, but part of the reason for that I think is that everyone just assumes that it couldn’t possibly mean the guys are gay.
Another thing: with the rise of non-religious folks overall comes with the rise of shitty movement atheists (cases in point: Richard Dawkins and thunderf00t). Folks who have been known to oppose anti-gay bigotry in the name of rationality yet retain their love for patriarchal masculinity because science.
I don’t get the sense that a lot of prominent atheists are all that cool with homosexuality on a personal level. Could be wrong, but I don’t think the fact that there’s also a lot of misogyny is unrelated.
I’m in my late 20s and I noticed also that LGBT rights are thankfully more accepted now and people in my age group are more vocal in supporting them. But yes, it is odd that aside from that progress, everything else seems to be going backwards. How many times do I have to hear about how men have been “feminized” which I think is just code for men don’t have all the power anymore.
I do think that when women became more or less liberated, men were still stuck behind in their gender role. But this also makes sense because women’s gender roles were always more constricting in that they actually had less rights and freedoms than men- so of course they would fight for something men already had. Men’s gender roles are pretty confining still though, so I think it’s good to have a men’s movement…but the current MRM is nothing but a hateful backlash.
I just don’t know what a lot of men (at least the ones that actually discuss these issues) want anymore…I hear nothing but contradicting messages. They want to “be the man” be the strong ones, have control, but they also don’t want to pay for dinner, keep saying that women are attractive when submissive, yet they also don’t want to do the heavy lifting and jobs that come with the package of being the stronger sex. I also don’t get why more men didn’t protest wars and the military since they made up most of the deaths as soldiers. Instead war is glorified by many men still. Why is that?
I don’t know, and ultimately I think this is for men to figure out. MRAs and the manosphere overall though are more interested in bashing feminism, women, and trying to roll back the clock on women’s rights and all the progressions made on rape and DV. It’s very fucked up.
As someone who used to spend a decent amount of time in religious circles, I can safely say that this phenomenon is also present within many Islamic circles. Most mosques I’ve been to in the US have Friday sermons about the virtue of non-sexual affection between Muslim brothers. And even the more “Americanized” imams I’ve heard speak say a lot about not only the importance of such affection, but also the problems with toxic masculinity (although their analysis of toxic masculinity is anything but feminist).
@ Ally
Which makes me think that my gut instinct that it’s the assumption that nobody could be gay that makes the more demonstrative behavior OK in people’s minds might be right. Are the people you’re talking about mostly Arab? I’m wondering how much of it is just cultural and how much is something else.
@Cassandra
Most of those (non-family) Muslims I’m referring to are non-Arab, although in my experience there is a decently large number of Arab Muslims in the US with such views.
I think you’re right, but at the very least, most prominent atheists seem to be very much opposed to religious anti-gay bigotry, and that’s probably what contributes to the relative rise in acceptance of homosexuality. And they assume that since only religious people can be against homosexuality, their own views on gay folks are infallible and totally 100% progressive, rational, and scientific.
Maybe kind of random but I swear I read that racist groups have a history of picking up while we have a Democrat in office. I think it happened with Clinton but I would imagine it would enrage racist assholes even more to have a black man in office. I think they might feel more in control and like they are retaining power when “their guy” is in office….hopefully I am not talking straight out of my ass.
There’s also the fact that the kind of personal homophobia you see in asshole atheists (and others) may not show up as such on opinion surveys, because they’ll say that they support gay rights and gay marriage but then they really are not that comfortable with gay people, you know, actually existing.
I suspect some of that lot wouldn’t give a hoot if it wasn’t religious bigotry involved. It’d be like the “atheism is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than [insert social justice issue of choice here]”.
Exactly, kitteh. I think that their opposition to heterosexism is really just a veiled attempt to make themselves feel intellectually superior and enlightened.
Funny how the folks who come to oppose heterosexism for those silly, irrational, emotional reasons happen to be much kinder and more tolerant than their Rational Freethinking peers. It’s almost as if empathy is actually necessary for well-informed moral judgment.
I think this “article” is an asinine exercise in anti-intellectualism that have no patience for these days. News articles, TV news segments and quotes from famous women are the equivalent of academic texts, as is, somehow, the ‘Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter, 1987’. You don’t need to read, summarize, contextualize or critique a work before you condemn it as misandry, just find a juicy quote that proves it’s EVIL. (Ooga booga!)
This mishmash, catch-all list of meanie quotes
If he’s referring to academic circles found only in the feminist hellscape that exists solely within the author’s fevered imagination, then yes, it’s plenty useful.
I did think his caveat was amusing.
Who knew?
I’d give a passionate defense of intellectual pursuits and critical thinking, but it’s impossible to argue with disingenuous fear-mongers. You can actually engage with controversial books, it can be fruitful and even fun. Ezra Pound was anti-Semitic and pro-fascist; I don’t like either of those qualities, but I love his poetry.
I was in college when the “culture wars”, an ideological scuffle over the Humanities in US colleges, started in the late 1980s. The author should read Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind to see how a conservative intellectual goes about making a not rock-stupid cultural critique of liberal academia.
FYI, Andrea Dworkin is fascinating, talented, significant and infuriating. Check out the New York Magazine article “Prisoner of Sex” for a helpful overview of her colorful life.
Quoted For Truth!
… Did you see the Little Dickie Dawkins video by SomeGreyBloke, posted here yesterday? Priceless, just priceless.
This is going to sound glib, but in my little corner of the US, it seems like things really got bad after 9/11. I was sophomore in college back in 2001. I remember being called a traitor for protesting the Iraq War (2nd Iraq War? Gulf War II? Does it have an official name?). Before that, it seemed like the country was swinging more to the right, but 9/11 was like a watershed. And it seems like people got really polarized after that. And liberals, and causes associated with the left, (like feminism) got demonized.
There was a backlash going on before this. It just seems like the 9/11 attacks gave the right something to scare people with. And the reactionaries got bold. And now we have all these restrictive laws on abortion being passed and Todd Akin talking about “legitimate rape” (and Republicans backing him up) and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and all that shit.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. I don’t think it’s that simple. I think probably a multifactorial thing.
I think it’s an interesting point about people being more open to homosexuality coinciding with a decline in religiosity (is that a word?). It seems like folks most opposed to gay rights are because of (their narrow little interpretation of) religion.
I think we’ve seen a big shift here. Remember, 10 years ago, anti-sodomy laws were just coming off the books. I remember back then it was still an actual question whether homosexuality was a choice and you could hear liberals talking about how gay people just wanted to have a bunch of risky casual sex. Now all those anti-gay positions have pretty well migrated into the right, and the far right at that (not that there’s any other kind of right at the moment).
This is true, but it’s important to note that gay acceptance is growing rapidly across all age demographics, even if you account for people moving up in age brackets. For instance, here’s the Gallup numbers; notice that the 2013 acceptance among middle-aged people is higher than the 2001 acceptance among young people, and the 2013 acceptance among older people is higher than the 2001 acceptance among middle-aged people (and about the same as the 2001 acceptance among young people).
So it isn’t just a matter of young people not having the same prejudices as their parents: People of all ages are actively changing their opinions.
Obviously I’m disinclined to go for the “people are more accepting of homosexuality because they’re less religious” explanation, partly because I attend one of those churches with rainbows on our signboards, but mostly because changes in religious belief have been tiny compared to changes in acceptance of homosexuality.
Thanks for sharing that, katz.
In light of that article, perhaps the cause of homosexuality gaining acceptance at a faster rate than patriarchal masculinity is the fact that many people still do not readily see the connection between heterosexism and patriarchal norms.
katz: Idle speculation slain by facts! 🙂
This is a little tangential; but it would be neat to see if churches/mosques/synagogues/religious communities that were more accepting of homosexuality and gay rights are experiencing an increase in membership, while those that aren’t are losing people.
More idle speculation! 20 minutes of sleepy googling bad revealed nothing.
Good night, all.
Niters!