Once upon a time, you may recall, women were denied the right to vote, couldn’t own property, were prevented from having careers of their own. Well, it turns out that all of these pesky “restrictions” weren’t really restrictions at all! They were protections that men provided women out of the goodness of their hearts. Men protected women from the terrible burdens of voting and property-owning and so forth, because they just cared about women so much.
Or at least that’s what a lot of Men’s Rights Activists seem to think, judging from this highly edifying discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
![rogersmith25 325 points 1 day ago As I read /r/mensrights[1] more and more, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the primary female privilege is empathy. If a woman or girl is hurt, people care. If women are kidnapped, there is international media attention. If women are killed, their deaths are highlighted. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, then people will jump in to defend the woman. If women are under-represented in an area, people want to take action to make things "equal". If a man is hurt, it's funny. If men are kidnapped, we hear silence. If men are killed, their deaths are glossed over. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, people will attack the man. If men are under-represented in an area, the president will call it a "victory" (as he did regarding the female majority in colleges). Basically, people are programmed to have more empathy for women than men. 200 years ago, that empathy manifested itself in keeping women safe from harm by having them stay home to raise the family rather than die on battlefields or toil in mines. It was empathy not misogyny that kept women from having careers. Present-day, work is safe in offices, so today we have campaigns for women to earn more money and yet have more "balanced" lives where they can both raise a family and earn an "equal" career and, in other words, "have it all". permalink save report give gold reply [–]sierranevadamike 82 points 23 hours ago wow... as a history major, I never looked at the "repression" of women throughout history as empathy rather than misogyny. I NEVER considered this option.. blew my mind.. thank you](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/empathy1.png?resize=567%2C594&ssl=1)
It wasn’t just sierranevadamike who was “blown away” by rogersmith25’s comment: the Men’s Rights mods were so impressed that they reposted it and pinned it as the top post in their subreddit.
Apparently every day is “Opposite Day” on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
EDIT: Here, courtesy of Cloudiah, some more pictures of girls and women protected from that big nasty world out there.
On the subject of women leaving work, I know that in England even into the 1930’s and 40’s, women were ‘legally disqualified’ from working upon marriage. In this book ‘Can Any Mother Help Me’ it documents the lives of women who were able to attend university and work but who had to give it all up when they married. Among them were journalists, playwrights,bankers and physicists. One of them earned a lot more than her fiancee. http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2007/mar/04/society
@unimaginative– So, in other words, a bon-bon eating wife who loafs about all day on sofas. I thought MRAs HATED those women? EMPATHY
It seems like in the US and maybe other first-world countries, the ideal that a woman didn’t do any work outside the home developed in the 1800s, but it was only for a few decades in the mid-twentieth century where significant numbers of women could go without paying labor, and it turned out to be a highly unstable situation.
My understanding is the “housework” for most of history was (a) much more time consuming than it is today and (b) often included doing crafts or small-plot agriculture both for home use and, if possible, for sale, and therefore was very much employment–even outside any other employment a woman might have had. In the mid-twentieth century, the standards for housewifery increased, but the sheer physical necessities of feeding and clothing the family were not full-time jobs in themselves, and it didn’t bring in extra cash.
The general rule, so far as I can tell, is that under most conditions, women and men of the same class work basically as hard as each other–i.e., a privileged class of women is usually married to a privileged class of men (lets not forget that keeping up with the social requirements of a rich man’s wife is a job of its own) and down the line.
“Once upon a time, you may recall, women were denied the right to vote, couldn’t own property, were prevented from having careers of their own. Well, it turns out that all of these pesky “restrictions” weren’t really restrictions at all! They were protections that men provided women out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Except for the lower classes. I’m always compelled to point this out because every one of my female ancestors worked, my mother for the phone company, my grandmother in the shipyards, great grandma was a house maid until her death. My family is full of women who had careers, who worked both at home and outside, who built businesses, who sold eggs, who took in laundry.
In the lower classes, men really did provide protection. Not all men of course, some where too busy drinking or hanging themselves to be of much use, but that pair bonding, that male protection has always been far more important and far more evident among the poor than among the elite.
I dislike the perception that promotes this idea that our mothers and grandmothers were just sad oppressed women until feminism came along and freed us, because I think it’s kind of dismissive towards who those women were. Like it or not, feminism has always been an ideology of the upper classes, the elite, who have had a tendency to look down on those they claim to be speaking for.
That was your takeaway from all of this?
Did you read the thread? We’re all aware that women we’re obviously all aware that women worked. There was no need to come along and ‘splain it to us.
Where did you get that idea that being in a marginalized class = being sad all the time? That’s not how it works. People make the best of what they have and find happiness on their own terms. That doesn’t mean oppressive structures weren’t and aren’t in place.
Also, are you under the impression that we’re all members of elite classes here? Do you really think all feminists are upper class white women anymore? Feminism has come a long way since the days of Betty Friedan. Upper class white feminism gets discussed in the media more often because the msm is by and for the elites of our society but that doesn’t mean that represents all of feminism.
insanitybytes22:
Yep. Protected their wives right out of their paychecks, they did.
What? What world do you live in? “Male protection” has always been a code word for benevolent sexism. And what exactly are men protecting women from, eh?
Well, good thing that’s not what’s going on here then.
You don’t know what feminism is, do you?
And please, do not presume to speak for this working-class feminist, thank you very much.
“Upper class white feminism gets discussed in the media more often because the msm is by and for the elites of our society but that doesn’t mean that represents all of feminism.”
Really? When was the last time we had a poor black woman on TV talking about what she thought about women’s rights? When was the last time feminism didn’t look down on the so called “oppressed” and dictate a solution? Where’s the support for stay at home moms, for blue color women, for those who don’t seek higher education as the answer to everything?
The truth is, feminism has become a very elite presence, where even the alleged “oppressive structures” are identified and defined for us. The vast majority of women in the US don’t care about intersectionality, hierarchies, and structures, they worry about militarized police, having their kids shot, and the skyrocketing suicide rate among men.
The other issue, of course, is what happened after the man died or abandoned the women. In NZ, the widow’s benefit was the first social security benefit introduced after the old age pension, see http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/welfare-services/page-2
In order to receive the benefit, I’m pretty sure that the woman had to demonstrate that she was suitable, i.e. wasn’t a prostitute or a drunk. Maori were still heavily rural at that time, the visible issue would have been destitute women in cities where the bulk of the MP voters lived.
So barring women from work also had severe repercussions for women whose relationships broke up, who had relied on a man for income. It’s not like they could replace the man in the workforce even if they had the exact same skills.
And people forget how some recent female jobs like secretary were originally all performed by men.
I also remember a case from a university paper when the printing typesetting shifted from moving type(?) to electronic type, in I think the 1970s. The women in the printing organisations were the only ones who could touchtype. With the printers’ union behind them, the women were all made redundant and replaced by the men who couldn’t touchtype, even though typing was the key task in the new occupation. Empathy my arse.
Oy vey. Yeah, please don’t speak for the working class.
Wow. The unintentional irony is amazing here.
Was insanitybytes22 always a troll?
*working-class feminist is what I meant.
When did feminism become a US-only cause? I missed that memo.
I think insanitybytes is pulling our collective leg — or maybe trying to live up to her moniker, I dunno.
“In the lower classes, men really did provide protection. Not all men of course, some where too busy drinking or hanging themselves to be of much use, but that pair bonding, that male protection has always been far more important and far more evident among the poor than among the elite.”
Yeah, sure — in that imaginary land of the lower class milk and honey.
You’d have to show some evidence that in the lower classes “male protection has always been far more important and far more evident.” Your imagination is not enough.
What exactly do you mean by “male protection” here, anyway? Protection from hardships of labor necessary to sustain the family, which is what these “empathetic” MRA talk about? That most certainly does not apply (and never did) to lower classes, where women’s paid labor, in addition to their domestic duties, was always essential to survival.
“Was insanitybytes22 always a troll?”
There’s a real irony within feminism these days. Anytime a woman attempts to speak for herself, she is immediately shut down. You will not speak or think for yourself, evah!
And that is precisely what I mean about feminism now being a game played by the elite and privileged, who could really give a crap about the issues facing women today.
You’re being criticised for saying things that aren’t backed up by evidence. This isn’t shutting you down, it is calling you out on BS. Learn to tell the difference.
Learn reading comprehension. I already said that the corporate media, being controlled by elites, generally only represent their interests. Of course there aren’t many poor or working class feminists, let alone non-white poor or working class feminists and womanists on TV. The exception being Melissa Harris-Perry. She frequently has working class or poor women of color who are community activists as guests
Just because you ignore feminists who aren’t Sheryl Sandburg types doesn’t mean they aren’t there. You can find many feminists who are non-wealthy, non-white or both right here on this site. I’m white but I’m sure has hell not an economic elite.
You keep claiming feminists are all wealthy white women who look down and whitesplain but you aren’t providing any evidence of this. There are some wealthy white feminists who are clueless and privilege blind. I’ll certainly admit that, but to claim that’s all we are is ridiculous.
If you go back and read those reddit MRA posts and Mammotheers posts you’ll find the former are the group that are condescending, clueless and privilege blind. Not us.
Citation needed for all of this.
Feminism undoubtedly has a history of only focusing on a small subset of women, but you are being either disingenuous or ignorant. Alongside feminism’s history of exclusion is a rich history of marginalized women espousing feminism. In fact, intersectionality itself was a methodology invented by Kimberle Crenshaw, a black woman and a feminist. There have also been plenty of radical feminists who aren’t straight, white, abled, neurotypical, middle-class and cis.
Also, your irony is impressive. You say that feminists tell women what their oppression is, yet you disregard the fact that marginalized women themselves have advocated for their interests in the name of feminism. Again, I don’t deny the oppressive things that have been done by privileged feminist women, but you are just as oppressive as them if you talk about marginalized women as if they never had a voice in feminism or have ever benefited from feminism.
These are… not things that are mutually exclusive, actually. In fact I’d say that they are pretty mutually inclusive. I’d also say that people can totally be talking about intersectionality, hierarchies, and structural oppression without actually saying those specific words. The terms are certainly useful in academic discussion, and have their place in non-academic discussion as well, but you don’t actually have to use the jargon to talk about the concepts or the realities that they bring.
This blog post suggests to me that insanitybytes22 has a combination of beliefs that I would find odd for a feminist to hold:
http://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/plain-speaking-about-abortion/
I don’t think they are arguing in good faith.
Who is censoring you? You said some things the rest of us thought were bullshit and so we’re disagreeing with you.
I’m not going to apologize or shut up. If you were too ignorant or lazy to do some basic internet searching so you could find out that there are plenty of working class and poor women who identify as feminist and plenty of women of color who identify as feminist or womanist that’s your own fault.
redpoppy, Hazardous job worker here, I am a feminist and continually astounded by the MRMs complete ignorance of workplace safety, a practice that would lower their men on the job death rate. I might allow an ounce of respect for these fucking children if they spent a moment discussing methods of improving workplace safety instead of blaming women for their imagined problems.
“You’re being criticised for saying things that aren’t backed up by evidence”
No I’m not, I’m challenging the idea that some people believe they have the right to dictate their own perception of reality onto the rest of us, as if they are more qualified to define it than we are. In the lower classes, men often provided protection, financial protection, emotional protection, protection from crime, protection from invading armies. Acknowledging the fact that men and women have been residing together in a kind of mutual symbiosis for centuries and that men were often in a position of protecting women, isn’t complicated rocket science, it’s reality.
QFT
And honestly, I don’t even have any ideological interest in this argument since I’m a womanist, not a feminist. Regardless, I’m tired of people like you who lecture feminists about being dismissive of margianlized women yet ignore the same women you claim to be in support of. I am a disabled trans lesbian of color, and I don’t feel supported by you one bit.
Yeah… especially since intersectionality is the facet of feminism that most WOC and poor (and trans, and etc) critics of feminism think that mainstream (read, white and at least middle class) feminism fails at hardest.