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.
Anyone who just copy/pastes shit from a propoganda site without reading through his quotes is a sad example of academia, I’ll tell you that.
(And this, by the way, is why my MSTs are generally unabridged. Nobody can claim I’m making Cockrub Warriors of Mars any sillier than it already is!)
Yes! The totes true scientificus of evolutionary psychology proves that men are supposed to be enslaved bodyguards to women, therefore evoution is misandry, and it’s irrational to oppose it, because what’s natural is what’s good.
(And we know that what’s natural is what’s good because the totes true scientificus of evolutionary psychology proves that women should stay home and do all the babby-related stuff, and never ever do boythings)
Now that is misandry! We have evidence that boys are capable of singing with candles on their heads!
See?!
do…. do these guys seriously think most feminists want any man accused or suspected of rape to automatically be severely punished? Because… hey, we can clear this up right now! No: Most feminists, while critical of many of the ways rape is trested, DON’T want to replace the current legal system with a combination of Wild West viligante mob justice and vicious, Orwellian state control! If you think they do, then you’re probably overgeneralizing from specific encounters and quotes from extremist or angry outliers (and you probably misinterpreted those people, too)! Also, there is nothing contradictory about being a feminist and disagreeing with things other feminists have said!
Problem, uh, solved?
Athywren – Mind = Blown.
mindjustblown.jpeg
Hey David this post has got me thinking… could you do a post about the hate mail and threats you’ve received over the years? Screencaps of e-mails, and such? I’m sure you must have received plenty.
“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?”
Huh? He makes no sense here. Is he confusing the word “violence” with “abuse,” because those are two different things? I suppose it would make a little more sense if we were talking about “abuse” but not violence. Yeah, I’m pretty sure no one in their right mind, including feminists, considers refusing to hire women in well paid jobs, paying them less, or treating them disrespectfully as VIOLENCE.
@HeatherN
Wow, I assumed the original article was by a college student or someone who majored in one of the haloed fields STEM. I guess he doesn’t spend a lot of time teaching students how to correctly site sources.
In the original post he made this rather broad, unsubstantiated claim.
It bears mention that I went to Amazon and searched the word “misandry” and the first three books that come up are Legalizing Misandry, Spreading Misandry and Sanctifying Misandry, all of which were written by Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, a professor and a researcher from McGill University and McGill-Queen’s University Press. The three books are about 1400 pages combined and the forth book, Transcending Misandry: From Feminist Ideology to Intersexual Dialogue, is even out yet.
I don’t know if this qualifies as a “substantial stand”, but it beats collecting 40 random quotes (some copied and pasted), labeling them misandry because they are in some way critical of men and calling it a day. That’s what Taylor did and I see no reason to take his “warehouse” of quotes seriously.
This is from his response:
I doubt doing research is his “job” since he’s not very good at it. Since Mr Taylor seems to read the comments, I like to point him to a short study sheet called “The Historical Approach to Research”.
http://tinyurl.com/og7we6y
According to them, the mere existence of this garment means that all men are assumed rapists, which is misandry.
And at the same time, locally in my town a woman was sexually assaulted by a man she’d been socializing with at a bar. He got her alone just outside and assaulted her. The comment thread on the article is filled with victim-blaming — “What did she expect, hanging out with someone she barely knew?”
Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. If we assume someone might be a rapist, we are psychotic man-hating bitches. If we let our guard down around the wrong person and get raped, we are stupid bitches who were asking for it. Funny how no matter what the scenario, it’s always the woman who is wrong to these assholes.
Transcending Misandry: From Feminist Ideology to Intersexual Dialogue
ErLACH. Now I remember why I don’t miss school at all. It feels like my brain is getting bludgeoned with a dictionary.
Chie – Links? I might add on to my blog post about the anti-rape undies.
And not just any dictionary.
Well that just logically follows, since the existance of locks makes the assumption that all people are thiefs – wait…
Eh, this one is acting like a troll in full-on NO U flameout during a comment war, so I’m going to treat him like he deserves and mostly ignore him. If all you have is one flawed but important-to-your-sense-of-self hammer to cling to, then everything becomes a misandry nail.
I will note that rape-prevention underwear can’t send anyone to jail and could in theory be used to defend against a rape charge (hey, they’ve used regular old jeans to argue that rape was impossible in Italy), so campaigning against its existence is…interesting. If MRAs are right and rape almost never happens then it’s just a useless purchase, and they won’t be the ones paying for it, so why should they care?
@Ashley
He’s actually quoting from a particular feminist article:
I don’t see any mention of emotional violence in the article, though that could be because so far I’ve only done a quick word-finding search rather than reading through it. It’s entirely possible he’s just extrapolating from certain mentioned of psychological violence.
I’m not sure about the value of the term “economic violence” but it’s use is explained to a certain degree on page 24 of the linked article:
So it’s not something he just made up out of whole cloth. It is unskeptical and dishonest garbage to assert that it is entrenched in feminist ideology, and it’s also a pathetic attempt to distract from his earlier lack of intellectual rigor in posting the original quotemine, but it’s not a complete invention on his part.
Physical violence is included in a list of things that are now considered physical violence. Whatever job in academia this guy used to hold, I can see why he doesn’t have it any more.
With the explanation that the list tagged “not just, but also” too. Poor thing, he’s not too bright.
Ugh, the stupid is rubbing off on me. Check out that sentence structure.
If I start to write like an MRA I’m blaming this blog.
Sounds like it’s our turn to cite ideology: Feminism is the problem. Feminism is always the problem. Even considering that it might be traditionalism, and that feminists might actually be possible allies in this fight is MISANDRY!!!
You’d think they’d be pleased about it, because if it worked, then they could say any woman not wearing the things was asking for sex.
@Alice, someone at Pharyngula indicated that these comments were at the original Slate article, but I see now that many are deleted. Slate article is here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/04/ar_wear_these_anti_rape_shorts_update_the_chastity_belt_for_the_rape_culture.html
(My previous post referred to the anti-rape pants.)
As a rape survivor, I am shocked, SHOCKED that MRAs are inconsistent in how they believe rape should be dealt with. Truly I am.
(And see, this is EXACTLY why I want nothing to do with them. I share a traumatic experience with female rape survivors; with the average MRA, all I share is a piffling identity label.)
It would even make sense (though I would disagree) for them to argue that the anti-rape underwear is tinfoil hat stuff, and view it as a bit out there. Where things get weird and interesting is them viewing the act of someone wearing special underwear as an attack on men as a group. Call it silly or pointless and I’ll think you’re being a bit insensitive, but call it misandry and I’m going…guys, it’s underwear. You won’t even know if someone is wearing it if you see them walking down the street or sit next to them on the bus. If you’re not in a intimate relationship with the person wearing it then it has exactly zero impact on you.
But Cassandra, wearing it means she doesn’t trust men! It means she’s saying all men are rapists! You know how sensitive dudes are, the very idea that some woman somewhere might think that about ME, ME, INNOCENT DUDE ME is wounding and insulting and just too much misandry for a guy to deal with!
That’s apart from those evil scary strangers that say hello to women or have a drink in a bar or whatever, because a woman should totally know what to expect if she talks to strangers, amirite?