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A Voice for Male Students: Misquotation, Schmishquotation!

Is THIS your quotation from Marilyn French? No? Um ...
Is THIS your quotation from Marilyn French? No? Um …

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:

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. Beyond that, it is not necessary to beat up a woman to beat her down. A man can simply refuse to hire women in well-paid jobs, extract as much or more work from women than men but pay them less, or treat women disrespectfully at work or at home. He can fail to support a child he has engendered, demand the woman he lives with wait on him like a servant. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love, he can rape women, whether mate, acquaintance, or stranger; he can rape or sexually molest his daughters, nieces, stepchildren, or the children of a woman he claims to love. The vast majority of men in the world do one or more of the above

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.

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Alice Sanguinaria
11 years ago

LBT – I’m now seeing plaid skirts and leather jackets. NICE.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

Well, I’m a guy and not into skirts. I guess I’ll have to join pecunium in the kilt brigade…

Alice Sanguinaria
11 years ago

LBT – Oh yeah, oops.

Do they make plaid pants? Or maybe you’d be wearing all leather, but with plaid trimmings and a plaid shirt?

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

Ew, plaid pants.

My general classic is: blue jeans, plaid shirt, and leather jacket. I have this FABULOUS black leather jacket with a ludicrous amount of trim and red leather roses embossed on the back. It has the magical ability that no matter WHAT your gender, that jacket will make you look gay.

sparky
sparky
11 years ago

LBT: Nothing wrong with learning from comic books. I learned that zombies are awesome from reading reprints of Tales from the Crypt. But then, I mostly read trash when I was a young’un :).

As far as the uniforms go, whatever is decided, can have thigh-high boots?

I’ve always wanted a pair of thigh-high boots.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

I’ve always wanted a pair of thigh-high boots.

I currently have 3 pairs, so if you’re a size 7.5-8 US you can borrow one.

Unimaginative
Unimaginative
11 years ago

Thigh-high boots are Teh Awesome. I mostly can’t even wear knee-high boots, because my calves are humongous, relative to my feet, apparently. Oh well, they’d probably just make me look shorter anyway.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

My uniform? My knee high boots with the grommets up the front and nice chunky heel (w00t for goth boots making me less short!), black, black, more black, and a tie (also black, if my shirt is white, or red if black)

Or boots, brown pants and tie, green shirt. I picked up a pair of strangely safari like outfits, oh well, I guess some color won’t kill me!

Unimaginative
Unimaginative
11 years ago

Argenti, my eyes crossed and I somehow read that you wear bright green bow-ties. My cerebellum fused, and I had to reboot. I should probably go to bed now.

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

Not that I’m encouraging rampant commercialism and having giant shoe collections or anything, but when I was in Thailand I discovered that it was possible to have thigh-high boots handmade, and they took measurement about every half inch all the way up my legs so they would fit perfectly.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

I just clicked over to the rant the OP is about and didn’t really read it but I skimmed the comments and I saw Dean Esmay call David Futrelle “the Michael Savage of feminism.”

Time for me to shut down the Internet for the night.

sparky
sparky
11 years ago

CassandraSays: That is very generous of you; however I have big feet (I wear a size 9-9.5) 🙂

Maybe some sort of badge would be better, considering everyone has a different style?

WeeBoy
WeeBoy
11 years ago

Kinda OT, but my friend had a massive feminism gestalt moment yesterday. At the moment there’s this massive awful scandal involving guys getting underage girls drunk, raping them, and boasting about it on Facebook. It’s horrendous.

Anyway, my friend is a genuinely good guy, has always treated his girlfriends well and helped out girls being creeped on at parties

He told me he was feeling really uncomfortable with the way some of the media coverage of this scandal. “I felt like people were judging me for being a man, I felt blamed. Then I thought ‘holy shit this is how some people are treated all the time! ‘”

He’s promised to stop telling rape jokes after I explained that the rapists thought he was on their side, and he’s volunteering at the local women’s refuge as a handyman because he’s good with tools and every hour he puts in is an hour a cash strapped organization doesn’t have to pay for.

I’m proud of him for taking his anger and being positive with it, rather than violent, or making his discomfort someone else’s problem.

kittehserf
11 years ago

Yay for your friend, WeeBoy! That’s really good to hear, and encouraging.

Misandrist uniforms … well, mine’ll have to involve knitwear. Because knitwear.

neuroticbeagle
11 years ago

Misandrist uniforms … well, mine’ll have to involve knitwear. Because knitwear.

And fur from your furrinati owners of course.

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/07/10/dc/0710dc670f03849c4c17792b5127e994.jpg

kittehserf
11 years ago

It goes without saying! The fur’s built in, they see to that.

neuroticbeagle
11 years ago

That’s right! They “help” knit. I forgot. My furrinati owner prefers to help clean the dishes.

kittehserf
11 years ago

So do our lot over the other side! Louis had the bright idea of having breakfast in front of the fire last night – it was a real autumn storm outside. Well, great idea, except as he said later, he hadn’t intended it to be breakfast for twenty.

neuroticbeagle
11 years ago

What kind of dogs do you have on the other side? (I know the kitties were helping as well, but I’ve seen more pictures of them).

kittehserf
11 years ago

Mostly hounds and poodles who’ve hung out with Louis since his earthly days, plus Juliet, who turned up in the eighteenth century, iirc, and has now decided I belong to her; and Quadrille, who arrived sometime in the 1970s, I think. He’s the family clown, that one, the cause of the Great Skating Disaster last year.

Those aren’t actual photos of them, of course, but they’re quite similar.

Dvärghundspossen
Dvärghundspossen
11 years ago

@Athywren:

Now that is misandry! We have evidence that boys are capable of singing with candles on their heads!

*lol*

Brodt
Brodt
11 years ago

@kittehserf
I saw your welcome package, thanks! I liked it, but am still confused about the female whore penguins….because, awesome though they are, why?

Also, please allow me to summarize the entirety of Taylor’s arguments:
“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I’M CLAPPING!!!!”

There’s nothing else to say about his drivel.

But if we want to get into how rough male students have it (I am one by the way. A student who owns a penis that is, not an MRA), I should point out a major privilege those of us with a Y chromosome enjoy:

When we do well in a class, it’s assumed to be because we’re smart and worked hard. When a woman does well in a class (especially if it’s compsci or math or any science field), it’s because she’s sleeping with the professor. Because apparently women aren’t smart, can’t do math, and are only good at cooking, producing babies, and pleasing their man. Unless she isn’t hot, because then she “wouldn’t be worth raping”, and assumptions are made that she must have a dick (because transphobia is still seen as ok for some reason?)

Yeah, obviously it’s the male students who have it bad here….

daintydougal
daintydougal
11 years ago

Where to begin on those absolute bleeping bleepheads using lynching to score points against women. The fury and despair is quite painful.

And comparing Fininachi to an anti-Semite for questioning their (admittedly!) incorrect data.

Nearly beer o’clock.

Falconer
11 years ago

I saw your welcome package, thanks! I liked it, but am still confused about the female whore penguins….because, awesome though they are, why?

Oh man, where to begin.

The short version is, we had a troll last summer who claimed that almost all women (the percentage varied from 95% to 99%, I think) were … ladies of negotiable affection, and yes, this included penguins.

The welcome package has links to the origins of all of the in-jokes, but for a shortcut, here’s the all penguins are bad comment.

Yoyo
Yoyo
11 years ago

Back on fashion for a moment, (sorry sorry) . How about any f..king thing we want, maybe with a kitteh motif because we don’t give a screaming shit what the morons think! Ps mine will still involve boots