We have moderators! To better protect this blog from terrible comments by terrible people, I’ve invited several longtime Mammotheers to be mods, and they have graciously accepted. You may know them as Kittehserf and emilygoddess, but from now on they will be known as, well, the same names but with “MOD” at the end, and they will help to enforce the comment policy and keep discussions running smoothly.
Those of you who aren’t mods, feel free to contact me or any of the other mods when you see a troubling comment or a commenter who deserves the boot. You can email whichever of us is on duty at [email protected] or you can put a request for a ban (or moderation, or for an over-the-line comment to be deleted) in the comments themselves.
To make it easier for all of us mods to find these requests in the comments, please accompany your request with the words “MOD REQUEST” in all caps. Put that in the subject line of any emails you send as well.
Hopefully with more mods on board and a tougher stance on trolls we’ll be able to keep the comments a safer place for everyone. (Except asshole trolls, but they don’t count.)
I’m also bringing back Troll Challenges for some annoying commenters who might not deserve a full ban, just to see if they’re willing to follow some basic rules. Feel free to suggest Troll Challenges to me and the other mods.
EDIT: Added the new mod email address.
I’m like a mutant or something, because I love brussel sprouts. Not many people do, though.
The smell of broccoli doesn’t bother me at all for some reason, and cauliflower I only dislike because it’s bland. It’s just the sprouts that smell awful to me.
However! Despite my normally finding it boring, cauliflower is the best when it comes to pakora.
Random but vaguely related to misogyny given that it’s a Murdock paper, this quote plus the accompanying comment made me laugh loud enough to annoy the cat.
(From Hadley Freeman for The Guardian, a much better paper.)
The Mirror really doesn’t get as much mockery as it deserves overseas, so I thought I’d point people in that direction. It’s almost as silly as the Daily Mail.
Yes, cauliflower pakoras are very nice. Carrot pakoras are my second favourite, but sometimes the batter doesn’t stick properly.
Broccoli and blue cheese (can substitute tasty if you don’t like blue) is a very nice soup.
Brussels sprouts! Hah! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again.
Is it called The Mirror because it reflects a narrow range of pre-selected reality and gets it backwards?
Try chopping brocolli into small florets and dry-frying them until they’re slightly burnt. If, like me, you’re a sucker for anything that tastes smoky, you’ll probably love it.
cassandra, LOL! You’d think it’d be easy enough to write “he was depressed from childhood” or “had suffered depression since his childhood” without stuffing it up.
Brussels sprouts should be halved, tossed with a splash of oil, and oven-roasted until tender.
Hello there all, a good friend of mine has been asking me for help because his housemate appears to be heading down a proto-MRA root and has been spending too long in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
He even apparently showed him this ancient and thoroughly debunked post as “evidence”: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/uwekw/facts_and_statistics_detailing_male_oppression/
Does anyone have any good resources that debunk the “evidence” in that post? I know that at least 50% of the “stats” are wrong but it’ll take me forever to gather up all the different stats to refute it. Has anyone done a point by point debunk of that post anywhere?
Congrats to all the mods!
I just wanted to let you all know that our cover has been partially blown. Someone, somewhere, told the whole cats-in-a-David-suit thing. They don’t seem to know about the ferrets in the cat suits thing though.
http://elitedaily.com/envision/portraits-of-cats-dressed-as-their-owners-are-a-little-creepy-and-a-lot-funny-photos/657293/
@historophilia
I’m not sure what exact resources could be used to debunk that post, but aside from the fact that most of the statistics are wrong/misleading, there is the fact that all of the evidence is decontextualized. That is, there is no explanation of how all of these forms of discrimination fit within a system of domination. Nor is there any explanation of how factors other than gender could be present. Those observations could constitute a helpful starting point for gathering resources, hopefully.
@Ally, that is true, also the simple observation that the vast majority of violence against men is committed by men.
Also the fact that “The vast majority of prisoners are men.” is erasing the fact that it is not “men” but Men of Colour, especially Black men who make up most of the prison population. And therefore the reason behind this is racism and not “misandry” (that and the fact that men simply commit more and more violent crime).
Congratulations and all-hail to the mighty mods.
Definitely good idea for troll challenges, but perhaps on a troll-by-troll basis for the repeat offenders. So for JudgySlur, post a comment which conforms to standard PR professional norms, with no excuses like “the new PR” or “satire”.
For a generic troll, name a renowned STEM person who is a) a woman and b) still alive. Or quote both accurately and relevantly from a renowned woman philosopher.
@ cassandrakitty – the Sunday Mirror isn’t a Murdoch paper, though it is a trashy one.
On misogyny, it was called the Mirror (or rather its sister paper, the Daily Mirror was) because it was aimed at women, and y’know, female vanity and all that.
It was supposed to be staffed and edited by women, too, but a year in (1904) they were all sacked.
@historophilia, I think you’re not in the U.S. so this might not help, but The New Jim Crow has a lot of good stats proving that it’s men of color who are being imprisoned, while white men get diversion or else not even arrested for the same (drug) crimes even though they engage in the same (drug-related) activities as men of color, even at slightly higher rates. (Which makes sense, intuitively: men of color already know the cops are after them, and are much more cautious, whereas suburban white boys know they can deal without much danger of being arrested.)
Also, I know you know this, but the so-called parity in domestic violence only applies if you treat all kinds of abuse (emotional, psychological, all forms of physical (a slap, a close-fisted punch) as equivalent, which reasonable people agree they are not. Women are overwhelmingly the victims of the most severe, life-threatening forms of IPV; the remaining victims are almost entirely men battered by their same sex partners. Yes, trolls, all forms are wrong, but they’re not equivalent. Women accused of IPV are actually slightly more likely to be arrested than men accused of IPV.
Workplace deaths are mostly male, but they’re also going down dramatically in the US–which seems to give the lie to the idea that people view men as disposable. The fact that people see this as a big problem and are working on making it better clearly demonstrates that people care about men. Where the problem is most intractable is actually among undocumented immigrants, at least in the US — they are vulnerable because of their status and their race.
Suicide is a huge problem for both genders. I think we all agree that there should be more mental health resources aimed at men, but it really bothers me that MRAs downplay the problem for women. Women attempt suicide more often than men do, and they belittle this by claiming they don’t really mean it, or (even worse) that women are just too incompetent to do a good job of it. Fuckers.
Men still have more options of finding decent paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. While I think we should look into the gap in college attendance, it doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem — though it might. I have to admit I am amused that they claim the wage gap is down to women’s choices, and therefore it can be ignored, but the college gap (which is down to men’s choices) is a super serious problem and must be fixed immediately. Misters, you’ve got to pick one. Which is it?
When people are accused of crimes, it is public in the US. (Some countries do it differently.) This is due to an aversion to Star Chamber-like secrecy. If we change that, we should do it for all crimes. The reason false rape accusations don’t always result in harsh punishments is that (a) most of them aren’t provably false, (b) of the rest, many involve people with mental illness who aren’t legally responsible, juveniles who aren’t legally responsible, or good faith misidentification of the guilty parties. The UK in particular is quite aggressive at going after false rape accusers, and both there and in the US the threat of prosecution is often used to deter women who’ve actually been raped from pursuing charges.
Men with uteruses have exactly the same reproductive rights as women with uteruses. Feminists aren’t the ones blocking other reproductive options for men. Feminists don’t oppose making vasectomies free. The fact that women have been more successful at organizing for women’s health does NOT mean that men are discriminated against. Get out there, misters, and organize to get that done!
A big chunk of the homelessness problem in the US is connected to (a) the mental health issue, (b) the need for better support systems for veterans, and (c) the prison issue. One youthful drug-related results in a felony conviction that will follow a young man his whole life, making him ineligible for subsidized housing and other financial support, making it harder to find a job, penalizing his relatives if they let him sleep on their couches, and taking away his right to vote. None of these issues are due to him being male; they are all connected to other things. Focusing on their maleness simply obscures the real issues.
Er… This has turned into more of a tirade, than what you were hoping for, which I think was probably stats and stuff. It’s just infuriating that MRAs both make up issues and appropriate the genuine issues of other groups (men of color, people with mental illness, veterans).
Oh, brussel sprouts. For me it’s a must on the xmas table.
Cauliblower and broccoli I like best creamed.
That is, brusel sprouts boiled for a few minutes, the pour melted butter over them
Potatoes : Anya or Pink Fir Apple for boiled or for potato sald (so much flavour)
King Edwards for roast – there is nothing better, crispy on the outside fluffy on the inside.
YES IT WILL. Nequam, you have no idea what you’ve done now. If/when my daughter decides that she’s tired of her Barbies, we are totally going to trick them out in this style. And they will all creepily decorate the plant ledge along my living room for the month of October. It will be the greatest Halloween ever.
Re: brassicas – I agree with kiki and Harlan on roasting/dry frying. Brussels sprouts are also delicious shredded and quick-sauteed at high heat, like in this recipe (which also contains tofu, and is delicious enough to make most tofu and sprout haters, aka my entire extended family, admit that maybe they might not be so bad all of the time).
@cloudiah at 11:39 and 12:04 – ::Standing ovation, throwing roses, shouting “bravo!”::
The thread seems to have moved on a bit, but I wanted to add something about the conference and “men aren’t all pedos.” In addition to the good points mentioned by other commenters about how not all men are painted that way and that the MRAs seem only to be worried about het men (while inviting a speaker who seems to really believe this about gay men), it also seems odd to me to make this complaint and have a person at their conference advocate lowering the age of consent to 13. I don’t find “we aren’t pedophiles, we’re ephibophiles” a comforting thought, personally.
I added a link in the sidebar to make it easy to contact us mods.
RE: gender symmetry in IPV
[CN: abuse, trauma]
I think one of the strongest objections to the theory of gender symmetry is that most research that supports that theory uses the CTS/CTS2 (Conflict Tactics Scale) in their survey methodology. Surveys based on the CTS have behaviorally specific questions that screen for both perpetration and victimization, so basically every respondent is asked whether they were ever abused or have ever abused someone else. And that methodological design opens up a huge realm of respondent bias.
To start, there is no reason to assume that screening for perpetration will actually help researchers circumvent the problem of victims’ reluctance to disclose their victimization. Respondents who are asked to report perpetration can be reluctant as well, especially if those perpetration-specific questions as explicit as “In the last 12 months, has an intimate partner ever punched or slapped you?” I know from my experiences of abuse that abusers will often rationalize the fuck out of their behavior through disingenuous semantic arguments. They’ll say things like “I didn’t slap you in the face, I just tapped your cheek in order to give you a warning about your behavior.”
On the flip-side, victims of abuse who disclose perpetration may be completely overestimating the severity of their action(s). Trauma often induces intractable feelings of guilt and self-loathing that lead victims to talk about their actions as if they are “just as abusive”. For example, one day my dad was screaming at me and insulting me, telling me to shut up and stop crying. At one point I mustered the courage to stand up for myself and yelled “NO, YOU SHUT UP!” Although I have healed from this incident, for years I felt like I was even worse than him for harshly telling him to stop hurting my feelings. Surely this same abuse dynamic applies to other forms of abuse as well. And so a victim who is asked the same question about slapping and/or punching an intimate partner in the last 12 months may think “I think I did punch them, that’s what they [the abuser] have always told me.”
There is also the issue of context. Abuse is inherently defined by its power dynamic. My father abuses me because his status as my parent establishes an imbalance of power between us, and he maintains this power imbalance by treating me in ways that are supposed to “confirm” my status as a thing to be hurt and exploited for existing. This is certainly not the only form of abuse, and abuse can exist beyond non-familial relationships and even intimate relationships, but it is nonetheless very common. Therefore, a domestic abuse survey has to account for power in the relationship, not just acts of harm against others. It’s remarkably easy to call a lot of situations “mutually abusive” as MRAs say when we completely decontextualize violence to the point that we come to understand all aggression as inherently abusive (including defensive aggression).
I hope at least some of that made sense.
@historophillia
Most MRM have little notion of intersectionality, so they consistently get social issues just plain wrong. An example is male suicide. MRM says that it is a gender issue. However, indigenous men have had the highest rates of suicide in the Untied State and Canada long before society supposedly became unfriendly towards men. It has been that way since the early-1940s (and likely earlier than that). it is not a gender issue; it has more to do with systemic racial discrimination, poverty, social isolation on reservations, and substance abuse. When combined, men of color (African-American, Hispanic-American, and Indigenous men) kill themselves at higher rates than those of Euro-American descent. Again, this indicates that it probably has more to do with discrimination, poverty, and substance abuse problems.
As far as higher rates of incarceration for men, this is easily explained by rates the differential rates of reoffense among men and women. Reoffending virtually guarantees a prison sentence.Men recommit crime at a rate of 2-3 times higher than women.
I’m Canadian so I’m far more familiar with Canadian studies:
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/rcvd-fdffndr/index-eng.aspx
http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/research/r169-eng.shtml
I’m not sure about the U.S. I’m just doing this on the fly with studies I know about already. I’d be very surprised if they were radically different. An interesting note is the second study is that police seem to arrest women accused of sexual crimes at higher rates then men, despite the fact there are far less female offenders in the criminal court system.
MRM have little notion of history or case law when it comes to selective service and seem to believe that feminists demand that women be excluded from it. This article from 1981 demonstrates otherwise. Having NOW and the League of Women Voters support the lawsuit indicates to me feminists aren’t averse to having women included in selective service registration, at least in the early 1980s ( I admit that I don’t have a full understanding of their contemporary positions). When confronted with this, Misters will often ask why haven’t such organizations challenged these rulings since then, which reveals a pretty shocking ignorance of how the judicial branch actually function (this is a Supreme Court case and it is only recently that women have been cleared for full combat roles by military higher-ups).
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/26/us/justices-6-3-rule-draft-registration-may-exclude-women.html
MRM are pretty stubborn when faced with evidence that is contrary to their worldview. Best of luck!
“MRM are pretty stubborn when faced with evidence that is contrary to their worldview. ”
Definitely. Also, I like Lea’s comment from a few days (?) ago about reality having a “liberal bias”