So I did an interview about my Confused Cats Against Feminism blog with Catster.com, a site that devotes itself to collecting “helpful and hilarious information for the worldly but still infatuated Cat aficionado.” Alas, as a result of publishing this interview with me yesterday, they now seem to be collecting angry MRA commenters as well.
Here are some highlights of the, er, debate so far, which I’ve waded into myself, perhaps unwisely. (These are selections, with a bunch missing, though the comments that look obviously like they are responses to other comments, are.) Maeve Connor is the author of the post about me.
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Here, by the way, are some of the not-belittling, all-inclusive, non-mocking contributors to Women Against Feminism.
I’m just taking a wild guess here, but I’m pretty sure none of these gals are “tweens.”
I pretty much lost it at “abusing cats by shoving rotten ideologies down their throats”. Anyone who has a cat knows that you would, instead, be putting the rotten ideology in a Pill Pocket, flavoring it with tuna, or possibly getting it reformulated for transdermal delivery; at least that is what you would do if you didn’t want to end up at the ER getting rotten ideology washed out of your mangled fingers.
My name is kittehserf and I have been furzoned. My cat lets me pat her, then she turns around and bites me, and she’s never sat on my lap. She says she doesn’t feel that way about me and just wants to be patfriends.
Red Hairballers
My name is saphy, and I am being furzoned by multiple fluffy jerks in my life. There’s this one that lets me pat her sometimes, but then when we’re out in public she’s all “Do I even know you?” Then one day I come home from work and she’s sitting on my bed in the dark and I go to pat her and she freaks out and runs away.
Wtf? What are these mixed messages?? She’s just a filthy liar oppressing me with her fluffybutt.
Plenty of women don’t ID as feminist for good reasons. These reasons include feminism’s failures with intersectionality — racism and classism and homophobia and biphobia and transphobia and transmysogyny. White privilege, for example, does not disappear because a woman calls herself a feminist, and the tendency to speak over and disregard women of color, especially black women, is very real. One alternative label is “womanist”.
(Note that “equalist” and “egalitarian” and “MRA” are *not* alternative labels. They’re… just not. I think Lundy Bancroft in “Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men” put it very well when he noted that by adopting a “neutral” stance, by refusing to “take sides”, you’re always effectively standing with the person in power. That means standing with the oppressors, and noooopeeeee.)
If, however, you don’t ID as feminist because you “don’t need feminism”, then you are an asshat. Like, that’s literally the best case scenario: even if you’re right that you, personally, do not need feminism, when you say this you are saying that a movement for civil rights is not worth supporting (but is worth mocking, usually, and even actively opposing) because it wouldn’t personally benefit you.
And, uh, that’s an incredibly gross, narcissistic world view.
But again, this is the best case scenario. Most all of the women who say they “don’t need feminism” are just plain wrong. They’re wrong about what feminism is, and they’re ignorant about all that it has already achieved for them. They take “women shouldn’t have to be housewives” to mean “no woman is allowed to want to be a housewife” or “there is something wrong with housewives”, and they are, whether they know it or not, often full to brimming with internalized misogyny.
Many of them, for example, truly believe that women are weak. That women need a man, to complete them, to support them financially, to open jars and get things off high shelves. Many of them believe women are inferior, genetically prone to helpless emotional outbursts that make us ill-suited to positions of power and authority.
(By the way, the claim that David is making fun of tweens kind of shows that even the defenders of this movement don’t take it very seriously. That commentor just assumed that all people in Women Against Feminism would be in their early teens. They assumed David was mocking the ignorance and inexperience of very young women. They can’t conceive of these statements coming from adult women.)
@saphy
Plenty of cats seem to have an outdoor mode. Whenever they’re in it, they refuse to be approached and there’s nothing we can do about it. Outside, they only switch to indoor mode when they want somebody to open the door for them.
The only cat I ever saw who did not behave that way was one that was adopted from a pet shelter and came from a less than ideal home. Took her a few years of being allowed to just be a cat without suffering any abuse before she finally behaved like any healthy feline again.
I was friendzoned by the guy I dated and furzoned by his cat.
I’ve developed an 8-step program for revision, and maybe it could do with another 4 steps:
1. I admit I am powerless over my cats — they manage my life and self-respect.
2. I believe that maybe just once having the bathroom to myself without a single cat in it can restore me to sanity.
3. My will and my life has been turned over to the care of the cats.
4. I make ongoing searching and fearless inventories of the state of cat treats in the house.
5. I have admitted to the cats, to myself, and to my partner that yes, once, one of the four cat bowls was completely empty.
6. I am entirely ready to have the cats remind me of all my defects of character, particularly when I am trying to do something important, like sleep.
7. I have humbly asked the cats whether they bloody wanted in or out, again, and again, and again, and then gave up and installed a cat door.
8. I made a list of all cat food they liked, and became willing to only ever buy that cat food. And beg and plead with the pet food store if the pet food looks like it won’t get restocked.
I’m off to bed. I expect an entire 12-step program with edits agreed to by consensus, finished by the time I’m back up again. Homework. 🙂
I have never seen David do any mansplaining, and I’ve been reading for a long time. (And I am female!) For whatever it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with his operating the Confused Cats Against Feminism web site.
I read the first step and choked on my Cheddar Shapes, you!
@ Kakanian
That does seem to fit the general cat behaviour when I try to show my love in public. Is it just, like, cat “me” time where they don’t want to be bothered?
Also it’s all a far cry from the other three who will come trotting up to me jingling and mewing when I walk down the driveway coming home from work. They have definitely decided that I belong to them. The funny thing? I’ve never had the task of feeding them, that’s someone else’s job so they’re not mooching for food. They just like the way I treat them like princesses and let them shed all over me.
My current girls don’t go outside, so I don’t know how they’d act in public. My previous kitties were all happy to hang around if I was outdoors.
I had a laugh a few months ago. There’s a big black tomcat in our street, very much king of the patch. He does quite enjoy being patted on the rare occasions I see him. This time, I was going to work, and he was heading home from night patrol, by the look of it – head down, trotting along all businesslike. I said hello and made kissy-kissy-kitty-puss noises, not expecting much reaction. He paused and peered over. I could almost see him putting his specs on; he’s not a young cat. Then “Oh, I know that human!” – the tail went full-mast and he trotted over for some pats.
I felt quite smug.
I’d still be critical of her if she were actively advocating that feminism be fought against, even if she weren’t hypocritical about it. She has the right to choose to give up the gains of feminism for herself, no one will force her to leave the kitchen or vote. She does not have the right to try to force other women to give up those things.
Oh, you furzoned people. I used to be just like you. Loving cats, desiring sweet kitten nuzzles, wishing that just once a cat would choose to sit in my lap instead of running for the alpha jerk with a bag of Friskies Party Mix. Then I grabbed the Red Leash. Dogs were loyal, you knew where you stood with them. To heck with cats. I was enlightened, man. But it turns out even dogs will let you down. What are belly rubs and games of fetch when somebody comes by waving a Big Mac? Those dogs take off like their tail’s on fire, leaving you throwing a stick at nothing. Hypersnacky, thy name is canine.
That’s when I decided to go my own way. Why spend all my time and money on the love and delight of being with animals? This way all the bacon is mine, the only time I get clawed is if I scratch an itch too hard, and if there’s hair on the floor, you better believe it’s mine. All the time I used to lavish on ungrateful pets I now devote to my five blogs, where I detail the horrors of owning domesticated animals. I also have google alerts set up so that any time someone on the English-speaking internet suggests that adopting a pet might be a good idea, I can show up in the comments section and tell them how wrong they are.
The movement is growing, and soon no one will pony up for expensive collars or liver-flavored Nylabones. I urge everyone who still thinks they need a pet to wake up and smell the litter box. One day those animals will be sorry for the way they’ve treated all of us good-hearted, adoring acolytes. By then it will be too late.
And that’s a gold medal for Flying Mouse! Love it!
katz, as a lover of the ginger kitties, I would have them all. Srsly, Except I live in Oz.. Sadness.
@saphy
I suppose it is. It’s just my own little explanation I made up from what I have seen and from what my parents and a few cat’s claws taught me, I don’t actually know why a lot of these animals behave that way.
@ katz
Ohhhh your babies are sho shnuggly!! Let us know how it goes!
@Kakanian
They get this little look on their face sometimes when they’re outside, like they’re in the middle of a fantasy that you’re interrupting. They are surveying kingdoms or hunting beasties or just being solely and expressively CAT. They can look so cross when you try to treat them like a housecat when they’re in this mood. It’s like the look that a teenage boy would have on his face when he posts a tough-guy status update and his mum comments saying “lol! so cute!”
I just noticed that the first letter of my nym is capitalised or not depending on whether I am posting from phone or laptop. Let’s go with capitalised.
May I join the Corner Of Grief of having a confused cat heartlessly rejected (or still in the queue, whatevz).
I can generally handle being put in the furzone, if by handle you mean muttering ‘screw you I didn’t even want to pet you anyway stupid rubbish cat’ halfway down the road. But most of the neighbor cats are well up for petting so thats ok.
As far as David daring to mock anti-feminists, I too am ok with that. That anonymous message sounded very much like ‘k pow’ above (tweens etc) so I doubt that comment was even in good faith.
Channeling anger and frustration via cats. Why cats?
HA! The other thing I was going to say was these anti-feminists are using really extreme over the top language to describe gentle parody involving pictures of kitties. I am not seeing any of this supposed ‘anger and hatred’. Do they just hope no one will actually LOOK at the site and decide for themselves?
First we were furzoned
Then we were picturezoned
WHERE IS THE JUSTICE
I would say this to Mads next time she pulls the my-bowl’s-empty-look-there’s-a-1cm-square-gap-in-the-middle stunt.
Except she’d just lower her eyes at me in that cruel, cutting way of heartless kitties.
Also Flying Mouse wins all teh internetz. With bon-bons and Friskies.
I’d rock that “slutty” (WTF, really?) Winehouse look all day every day if I could get the eyeliner right. Liquid eyeliner and I do not see eye to eye.