So it turns out that Toronto poster promoting A Voice for Men (by snottily taking down to women) wasn’t actually an official AVFM production. Or at least it probably wasn’t.
Even the folks at AVFM are a little unsure on that point. But one thing is clear: AVFM thinks the poster is AWESOME!
Here’s what amounts to an official statement on the subject, from AVFM’s Facebook page.
I suppose they have good reason to be thankful, since the Toronto poster was a good deal less perplexing and offensive than AVFM’s typical posters and memes.
So, what the heck, let’s treat this development as an excuse to look at some recent memes posted on AVFM’s Facebook page. I don’t know if all of these are AVFM originals or not, but their appearance on the Facebook page is pretty much the equivalent of an endorsement.
You’ve already met Ms. Bathory, above. Now let’s meet a straw feminist, in the form of a stock photo of a crying woman that AVFM and other MRAs love to use, and a fake quote that has about as much relationship to reality as, well, AVFM does.
Huh, because no genuine rad fem I’ve ever met has been shy about identifying themselves as a rad fem. And non-rad fems aren’t exactly shy about criticizing rad fems.
I think one of the problems here is that MRAs tend to regard all feminists as radical feminists, because generally speaking MRAs know about as much about feminism as AVFM’s Paul Elam knows about good parenting. (Which is to say, approximately zero.)
And now for something completely different.
Just kidding! It’s more of the same, in the form of what you might call “straw history.”
That’s … not what “rape culture” means. Nor does the concept have anything to do with the Klan, or the Women’s Klan, or the lynching of black men. A fail on all counts.
Then there’s this.
Take it away, Mal:
Let’s end with a thought from AVFM’s grand poop, Paul Elam. The font may be a little unexpected — not to mention nearly impossible to read — but the sentiment is pure Elam.
You guys might want to consider appointing that “individual” in Toronto your permanent poster-maker. That poster of his was terrible, but at least you could read it.
One) Being a woman is a gender. Two) Intersex people exist.
@PI
Now I’m picturing an alternate Harry Potter universe where the sorting hat assigns people’s gender identity.
Panda:
No, being a woman is a biological, genetic sex, the lack of a Y chromosome.
As far as intersex individuals is concerned, I believe this is a gray area, since:
In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, the type of gonads, the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females), and the external genitalia.
(https://books.google.com/books?id=iVOXAp27iQkC&pg=PT64#v=onepage&q&f=false)
But I suppose that is enough to consider there to be not necessarily exactly 2 sexes.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/hhn.gif
Oh.
@jpageusmc
Listen, there’s a variety of chromosome combinations out there. A man can, in fact, be born with a penis but have XX chromosomes. This is because there’s a large variety of facts that go into determining genitals and such while in the womb.
There’s also many, many different genders throughout the world. You’ve heard of two-spirit some Native Indian tribes have, yes? And there’s three genders in parts of India. Some cultures even have FIVE genders. Google “genders in different cultures”. There is more than just man and woman.
Determining someone’s gender based on whether or not that have the right chromosomes or sex is biologically inaccurate in many, many ways.
What you’re saying is basically TERF talk. Don’t listen to TERFs. Just don’t.
Paradoxical Intention,
Now that’s what I call sharp cheddar!
“Now I’m picturing an alternate Harry Potter universe where the sorting hat assigns people’s gender identity.” -Spindrift
“Are you sure you want to be a lady? You could accomplish great things as a dude. Yes, great things….”
You’re conflating gender and sex. I was only discussing sex here, and I won’t disagree on your comments here on gender.
A man CAN be born with a penis AND have two X chromosomes, but he must necessarily have at least one Y chromosome as well. It isn’t possible to not have a Y chromosome and be born with a penis. (I will rescind this statement if you can show me through studies otherwise.)
@jpageusmc
No. You are incorrect. It is possible to have a penis without a Y chromosome (see below), not to mention the fact that you seem to think that there is a binary in sexual organs (penis v. vagina), when, in fact, there are people who are born with both male and female sex organs or people who are born with neither.
There are people who are born with ambiguous genitalia and very few people actually know their chromosomal status. There are multiple arrangements of sex chromosomes that are not XX or XY.
http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
Additionally, people born with ambiguous genitalia are often surgically “corrected,” sometimes at birth and may not even know that they were born that way.
http://www.isna.org/faq/concealment
http://www.isna.org/faq/standard_of_care
No, you are the one conflating gender and sex. Male/female is sex (and, as you’ve been told, it’s actually more complicated than just that). Man/woman is gender, not sex (as can be evidenced by, for example, transwomen and transmen; and here, too, it is actually more complicated). You might have meant well originally, but the way you stubbornly stick to a wrong position does not do you credit.
Fair enough, I rescind my earlier statement I made about males requiring a Y chromosome to be born with a penis.
Because you did go into detail about intersex individuals, I do want to point back to the definition I used earlier
(In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, the type of gonads, the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females), and the external genitalia.)
as well as the fact that I accepted intersex individuals as a sex and backed off of my binary argument. I only point back to these because you mentioned that I seem to think sex is binary, which I was leaning towards originally, but relinquished given the arguments presented here.
Glad you back off, finally, but you know what, I don’t even know why you took the conversation there to begin with. If you wanted to discuss that stupid ‘women should rule the world’ article, you could have done so without all this crap.
While I know posting dictionary definitions here is universally reviled as mansplaining, all of 4 dictionaries I referenced listed a woman as
“the female human being, as distinguished from a girl or a man.” I made sure to check the dictionaries beforehand to ensure I was not conflating these as you suggested I was.
*backed off
Dictionaries tend to be behind the times, by their nature. This is why using dictionary definitions in discussions about things such as gender and sexuality are usually frowned upon.
So seriously, just stop.
@jpageusmc
I made the comment about you seeming to believe in a binary because you said:
This comment comment ignores the fact that men can be born without a penis or can be born with a penis and ovaries. Sex is a spectrum and saying that man = penis + Y chromosome erases that spectrum.
@jpageusmc:
The words you’re looking for are: “I have not made a serious, years-long study of the sociology of gender. Could you recommend me a good introductory text on the matter, please?”
As I said, I was trying to only talk about sex, not gender. That’s a strawman.
Have you made a serious study of sex, either? If so, I’d like to learn from you. If not, there are people here who have and from whom we can both learn.
No, nor did I say I did. This is why I conceded many of the points I mentioned because I was incorrect.
@ Paradoxy et al
The whole “are men and women intrinsically different?” thing is something that interests me. I’m not talking about physical differences or that FGM is obviously not the same as circumcision, but in terms of how they think.
I’ve commented before on how I don’t think a feminist society would necessarily be pacifist for instance. To me that’s like saying a feminist society would not have engineers. I’m of the opinion that those stereotypes identified (Men are aggressive, women are passive; men like hard science, women are better at social sciences; men are inherently competitive, women are inherently cooperative etc.) are just products of the way society has enforced such stereotypes over the centuries.
I’ve often wondered what a truly feminist society would look like (or even my dreamed of matriarchy).
Take business for example. If it were the norm that you found women as CEOs of big companies as often as men and no one thought that was unusual, what would be the result?
Would there be a shift in the way business was conducted?
Would it be the same except strong women wouldn’t be seen as ‘bossy’ rather than a strong leader?
Would it just be that ‘tough bitch’ would be as complementary as ‘tough bastard’?
Would there be fewer wars in a feminist society? Is being passive an innate female trait or is it just something that women have been conditioned to be?
As I’ve said, I think all the purported attitudinal differences between men and women are social constructs; but I’d be interested to hear what other people say.
I was thinking about this the other day as I’d read an article by the barrister in the LinkIn controversy. She seem to be of the opinion that that is an innate ‘gendered distinctiveness’.
So for example she doesn’t think there’s anything feminist about women getting involved in things like horse racing or MMA as they are inherently male. Similarly she doesn’t think women joining the armed forces is feminism as the military and police are institutionally discriminatory.
So, what do people think about all this?
http://leftfootforward.org/2015/02/why-i-want-feminism-and-not-equality-and-why-they-are-not-the-same-thing/
Regarding inherent differences between men and women, even if we went by the simplistic (and outdated) ‘sex=gender’ notion, it is still very hard to know how much of the differences that show up in studies is biological, and how much is social; especially if you’re studying adults, who have already had years and years of socialzation. And even then, as far as I know the differences are incredibly minor – the bell curves are mostly overlapping, meaning that there are bigger differences inside each group (i.e. between different men/women) than there are between the two groups.
As a disclaimer, I don’t know much of the subject, mostly just your everyday popsci reading, but do have a friend who did a graduate degree in some neural/cognitive science field under Prof. Daphna Joel, who has a lot of research around the debunking of the ‘male/female brain’ idea. Here’s an example article, for those who are more scientifically-inclined than myself:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176412
(I apologise in advance if this posts twice, my browser went a little crazy there)
*jpageusmc:
Ah, my apologies. I didn’t see your rescindment.
@ Penny
She lost me at
🙂
but, from the Abstract I think she’s going down the ‘no biological difference; it’s all social” route?