Is there something about Men’s Rights Activists that renders them utterly incapable of admitting a mistake? The other day, I performed a bit of rudimentary factchecking on a collection of allegedly “misandrist” quotes assembled by Jonathan Taylor of A Voice for Male Students.
Among other things. I pointed out that the drastically truncated version of a Marilyn French quote he posted completely misrepresented the actual meaning of what she had said, making it appear that she was charging the majority of men with killing, or beating, or raping women and/or molesting their own daughters:
“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.
In fact, she had said something rather different, as I pointed out by quoting the original passage straight from her book:
It wasn’t clear to me if Taylor had been aware that he had drastically misrepresented French, as it appeared that he had simply cut and pasted the quote from another site without actually checking French’s book to see if it was accurate. So it appeared to be sloppiness on his part rather than deliberate deception.
Taylor has now responded to my post with a long and bizarre rant titled “Futrelle & Co. all in a tizzy as AVFMS exposes misandry in academia. AVFMS dissects their “counterarguments.”
He starts off by freely admitting that he misquoted French, but claiming that it doesn’t count as misrepresentation because it didn’t really change the meaning of the quote at all.
That’s right. Instead of acknowledging the misrepresentation, he’s doubling down — even though his explanation is in direct conflict with the evidence that I posted and that he reposts on his own site. He simply redefines reality until the misrepresentation mysteriously vanishes. Here’s his, er, argument:
I copied/pasted the quote from Antimisandry, although I had to find the source page for the book independently. I’ll admit: on this one I didn’t get the full quote and simply took Antimisandry’s reproduction of it. I am happy to amend it (which I have done in the original post).
David Futrelle, editor of the blog Manboobz, thinks this is a gamechanger, that it renders the meaning “completely different.” Not so fast.
He then pastes in my screenshot of the original quote, and my comments pointing out that the longer quote has a completely different meaning than the shorter one.
Then he tries to wave away his mistake with this ingenious bit of sleight-of-hand:
Actually Futrelle, according to Feminist ideology everything Marilyn French listed was a form of violence. Need I remind you what all constitutes “violence” according to Feminist ideology nowadays?
Pay no attention to my giant mistake behind the curtain! Look at THIS instead!
“THIS” being, in this case, a random feminist paper titled Intersecting Inequalities: A Review of Feminist Theories and Debates on Violence against Women and Poverty in Latin America, which suggests at once point that “[e]conomic violence against women occurs when they are denied access to or control over resources, or the right to work and earn income.”
Now, none of this has any relevance whatsoever to the question of whether or not Taylor has misquoted French — which he has — or indeed to what French’s statement actually means. There’s no evidence that French was in any way influenced by the paper Taylor quotes — which would have been a tad difficult, given that it was published 18 years after she wrote The War Against Women.
Apparently Taylor thinks that feminism is some sort of Borglike hive-mind that transcends time and space.
And he apparently thinks that when a famous feminist says that the vast majority of men have probably at least “treat[ed] women disrespectfully” in some way it is the same as if she had accused the vast majority of men of being murderers, rapists, woman-beaters and/or child abusers.
Taylor then takes issue with her references to men “beating down” and “subjugating” women, and indignantly insists that while
I know this may sound like heresy to Feminist and pro-Feminist ears, but the vast majority of men do not abuse women, let alone to an extent that they “subjugate” them.
Taylor has completely misunderstood the basic argument of French’s passage, which is that the majority of men do not have to physically abuse women in order to gain a certain advantage from the fact that other men do. You may disagree with that, but, again, she is not saying that the vast majority of men abuse women; quite the opposite.
Taylor then asserts that the really important thing is that what she’s saying still counts as “misandry.”
So apparently if someone is an evil misandrist, in Taylor’s eyes, you can misquote them all you want, and it doesn’t really matter, because … MISANDRY
Taylor continues on with his fulminations for some time after this, focusing mainly on “rebutting” comments from Man Boobz commenters. He posts an appalling photo of a crowd of white men posing proudly in front of several black men they have lynched, with the caption: “The powerlessness of women: point a finger and kill someone.”
I honestly don’t have the energy or the patience to deal with any more of his sophistry today. I’m not even going to read the whole thing. You can have a go at it if you want, dear readers. Let me know if there’s anything else in it that I need to address.
My plan today, after the nastiness in the post yesterday, was to post a bunch of pictures of my kitties. So, dammit, that’s what I’m going to do. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll put them up in another post.
AVfM are a bottomless barrel of laughs.
Providing context for quotes is MISANDRY! *nod*
So, a company is trying to raise money to launch a line of “anti-rape” wear that basically brings back the chastity belt — it’s “knife resistant” fabric that literally locks up the genital area with a combination (because obviously PIV intercourse is all that rape’s about, there is nothing else at all to be concerned about, is there?) Feminists have been arguing that this line will not really have much of an affect on the incidence of rape, and that it continues to focus on the victim rather than focusing on the rapist.
MRAs, on the the other hand, claim this line of clothing is “misandry” and have swarmed the fundraising comment thread to say so.
And somewhere, Martin Luther King Jr. rolls in his grave, clawing at the coffin door, determined to dig himself up and return to life because our society obviously still needs him.
Out of curiosity, David, do you know if Taylor from the South? Because dude has some really fucked-up idea of what lynching was, how it was implemented, and who was responsible for it.
Aside from all the obvious, what makes this whole thing so damn depressing is that this is apparently the academic arm of AVfM. This is coming from the space for students and it’s written by someone who is apparently, “a former college instructor of composition and argumentation.”
And the huge freaking leap he makes from Dr. Patemen’s “consent as ideology” quote to assuming she means that consent ONLY exists in the minds of ideologues is just…wtf?! Reading comprehension is obviously not this guy’s strong suit.
LBT,
That lynchings in the south were the fault of women is something I’ve seen several times from MRAs. They claim that the same “rape hysteria” is being used by feminists today to imprison innocent men.
But a feminist said it and, as we know, it is feminist ideology that anything a feminist says is true. Therefore it is universally accepted feminist ideology that denying a person access to or control over resources is violence. It’s irrefutable! Because.
Denying feminist time travel abilities now, are you? Psh.
You’ve gotta appreciate some of the comments, though:
That’s right! Calling people out on quotemining? Approaching claims with a skeptical attitude? Ignorant and brainwashed is what that is! True intellect and freedom of thought comes with uncritically accepting anything you’re told. Sure does!
What? Didn’t you know? Context is a word that creationists use, therefore it proves that we’re wrong!
@Heathern
“This is coming from the space for students and it’s written by someone who is apparently, “a former college instructor of composition and argumentation.””
Former! Probably means he was hired for a quarter in haste, and just as quickly dismissed.
Still, I agree it is disappointing that college students cannot do better than this.
Countdown to MRAs saying that David is talking about posts he didn’t even read…
This is absurd even by MRA standard, and that says something. I mean, I get that they think rape basically never happens, it’s all just innocent men being locked up on the whim of women, and therefore talking about rape and trying to raise awareness about rape is misandry, since it’s just gonna end in more men being locked up. But how is a chastity belt gonna send someone to jail?
Athywren – :O So does that mean evolution is misandry?
Dvärg – don’t you know? Not being able to cut open someone’s drawers in order to fuck them is MISANDRY! Women’s garments should be openable with just a slight touch, so that any man can feel her or fuck her up whenever he wants to. Otherwise, it’s MISANDRY!
Anyone who wants to know more about the real history of lynchings in the south should read Red Summer by Cameron McWhirter(?)–not 100% positive of the author’s name, but it’s easy to find.
Meanwhile, AVfMS seems to positively require Myoo’s fabulous dancing goalposts.
Note that said “instructor” and not “professor.”
p.s. You just know they’re going to say David putting up pictures of his kitties is an admission of defeat, when the reality is KITTIES ALWAYS MEAN VICTORY.
Reblogged this on Discombobulate.
It’s already pretty bad when white, mainstream feminists ignore the intersectionality of race, class, and gender, but MRA types take intersectional blindness to a whole new level. These “voices” for men just love to forget all about race and appropriate the violence visited upon black men to pretend that racial oppression proceeds along the axis of misandry, forgetting that it was white men who did the lynching and that you’d never see a white man in the days of lynching strung up for whistling or looking at a white woman. TL;DR Fuck you, AVFMS.
RE: Lea Tapp
That lynchings in the south were the fault of women is something I’ve seen several times from MRAs.
Same, and it makes me SO ANGRY. Don’t you DARE fucking grab such brutal history and claim it for your stupid pet cause, assholes. You don’t know shit. Lynching was an overwhelmingly horrible racial crime perpetuated by white people on blacks, treated as a family occasion with souvenirs. It was a RACIAL CRIME, not a gender-based one.
Let me see if I’ve got this right – most men have at least treated women disrespectfully -> disrespectful treatment is a form of violence -> most men are violent abusers -> MISANDRY! Is that the line of thought here? Because the idea of someone from a movement that is based on spreading the gospel of disrespecting women getting his gender-non-specific underwear in a wad over the suggestion that men are disrespectful…there is a certain beauty in that logic, even if it a Lovecraftian kind of beauty that will drive you mad if you stare at it too long.
So let me get this straight. MRAs hate that one person said that men are disrespectful, which is why they’re in a movement… that does nothing but be disrespectful.
The thing that really kills me about the French misquote is that there’s even ellipses to indicate that the quote was shortened, just not in the part that was removed to change the quote’s meaning. There are full sentences flat-out vaporized without note, and they just happen to be integral to the meaning of the passage? How can that be anything other than blatant intellectual dishonesty?
I mean, even from Taylor’s perspective – how can he argue that even with the full quote it’s no different in meaning when the source he got it from (“Antimisandry” lol) clearly had the intent of obfuscating its meaning?
(btw I know the answers to these questions – I just tend to get rhetorical when my flabbers are ghasted)
Oh, just got some real male discrimination from the school world up in my Swedish feminist group on Facebook… A teacher works at a school where the other teachers don’t wanna let boys apply for being “Lucia” (Swedish tradition: http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=953948 “Lucia” is the person in the middle of the pic with candles on her head), because that’s for girls only. Seriously, every year this happens at schools all over the country. GET OVER IT, SCHOOLS EVERYWHERE! Boys can sing while having candles on their head just as well as girls can!
Well, let’s be fair. What she said is that most men are at least disrespectful.
(I kinda want to clarify that farther, since it’s entirely possible that the one thing that most men have done is not disrespecting women… but is it actually possible to do the others without disrespect? Technically it says “treat women disrespectfully” which is not the same as actually respecting them… but then paying someone less for the same work, expecting them to be a servant at home, and molesting or killing someone are definitely all disrespectful treatment. Hmm.)
Hey now you folks, the MRM is nothing but respectful! Haven’t you seen the tagline for their slogan? “Fuck Their Shit Up: in a thoroughly respectful and nonviolent manner”. Or “Bash a Violent B**ch Month: using only what force is necessary to secure your personal safety”.