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.
As far as I can understand (which again, is not much; I hope some folks here in the thread could explain better) it’s more like ‘there are some biological differences, but it’s complicated because brains are complicated things’.
Alan,
my sincerely held belief is that in a world and social order based on domination, subjugation and oppression, women can never be on an equal footing with men. Because of biological reasons like smaller bodies, less upper body strength, less scary voices and appearance, rapeability etc. the kind of woman who could compete with men at being an effective oppressor is rare. The average man is an effective oppressor against an average woman simply by virtue of is superior capacity for physical violence, even in the absence of a sexist culture. Therefore I believe a sexist culture is always highly likely to appear whenever there is a culture of power hierarchy in place.
If you fix domination and oppression, you end up fixing most war and most need for policing, too. You end up fixing class, racism and the kind of corporate culture that benefits some people at a cruel cost to others.
If we had gone through some kind of alternative matriarchal history, where being a woman had never been connected with being weak, then maybe we could have had a society run by Margaret Thatchers, Elizabeth Bathories, Indira Gandhies and Hillary Clintons. Maybe women would have built and dropped the atomic bomb, and engineered the Holocaust, and committed genocide against the native populations of North and South America. Who knows. But anything resembling that is probably ruled out now. Because of the history we did have, women are now inherently less well suited to take on the role of oppressor than men. I can’t see how we could get rid of one kind of deeply rooted oppression without aiming for total fairness and freedom.
I got it as:
Could well be wrong though; there were a lot of big words in there.
For the record, JPageUSMC is a whiny-ass brogressive troll who posts thousand-word rants on why feminism is destroying the world on Disqus. So I’m about as surprised to see he’s also a gross transphobe as I am to see the sun rise in the morning.
@ Mola
Been thinking about the points in your post. It would make an interesting historical counter factual to consider what would have happened if gender roles had been reversed throughout history.
I think there’s something in the physical difference bit at some stages of history. Government seems to have evolved from the Warlord model. The toughest guy grew power through force.
Having said that, many leaders were not of themselves necessarily physically strong; they used other people for muscle. The forces used weren’t always very large either. Even in the Warlord days, we’d be talking about a few hundred men at most.
Now, on average, it might be easier to find physically suitable recruits from the male population, but I bet in a pre-industrial society you could find a few hundred ‘amazon’s. The Norse after all didn’t seem to have trouble getting women fighters. If you were a local peasant faced with a dozen or so armed female warriors, would you expect the village to resist there demand for tribute and fealty just because there were a few big blokes in the village?
As Government became less ‘hands on’ the physical ‘disadvantages’ of being a woman would become less important. Although examples from history are few, it’s clear that women can command (Boudicca, Elizabeth 1, Thatcher). They were atypical examples, but I think that’s more a societal thing than any inherent gender difference. In a gender neutral or matriarchal history it would have been less surprising and probably easier for women to take such roles.
So, had history produced a matriarchy instead of a patriarchy, I’m not sure society would be inherently any different. The structure we have today is probably more about how power works generally than anything gender related.
It’s interesting to consider though. For instance, would there still be a rape culture? I understand what you say about the physical aspects of rape, but how often are women actually just overpowered through pure strength as opposed to forced to submit because of the context in which rape occurs? In a matriarchy that took rape seriously, would guys still think (a) women were lesser creatures to be subjugated and (b) that they could get away with it?
Lots to ponder.
Scented:
Actually I’m not, and you’re so wildly off base that alone is insulting.
RE: women as leaders
There was a neat fantasy series I got told about (but haven’t gotten the chance to read yet), that starts with the book The Compass Rose. Apparently in this universe, magic is an inborn trait, and women are more likely (though not exclusively) the ones who are born with it. Magic is an incredibly useful thing in the society, and since women control most of it, the culture developed into a matriarchy. It sounded like a really interesting take on matriarchical fantasy cultures, which usually just have all your standard patriarchy elements, but have women on top for some unexplored reason (and are generally evil).
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH
@Alan
The argument she’s making is very confused. It’s a mishmash of different branches of feminism, and very short on examples of what she would see in an “ideal’ world, which makes it hard for me to figure out what she’s after.
What she’s labeling “equalism” is what I’ve seen more commonly labeled as liberal feminism. There are a lot of valid critiques of liberal feminism, and she’s making a number of them. But what is her preferred alternative? I can’t figure it out.
@ej
In my defense, I was putting an example out there that involved chromosomes not matching up with what whatever precede notion of sex and gender they had. It seemed to me that if they conflated chromosomes with sex and gender, they were actively ignoring trans people anyway.
In my head, a truly feminist society is one where gender just doesn’t play a role in society. “Tough bitch” vs “tough bastard” wouldn’t exist because that language wouldn’t even make sense; why would you be talking about the ceo’s gender at all? It just wouldn’t even occur to people to make that distinction because there would be nothing notable about a female ceo of any temperament.
Like you, I’m all about “masculine” and “feminine” trait frequency being mostly cultural conditioning. I’m thinking that there would be a bit less conflict (wars might not change much, since those tend to be extreme anyway), but not because more women means more passivity. I’m thinking that men wouldn’t face the same sort of pressure to be overly aggressive in a culture where aggressiveness wasn’t tied to manhood. The extremes would even out across everyone.
I don’t know if businesses and governments would still consist of aggressive leaders… “Leadership” and “aggression” tend to be wrapped up together as male traits in our culture; maybe they’d still go together without being associated with each other through “manhood” and maybe they’d be separate.
I guess, in short, I think a truly feminist society wouldn’t look all that much different from a broad view. Up close, though, it’d definitely be off-putting, as people would think fundamentally differently than you’d be use to in our culture.
I don’t think having gender parity in government would lead to fewer wars. Most wars are fought over resources. Even wars fought for superficially ideological reasons are actually, almost 100% of the time, really about the control of resources. It’s not only gender-essentialist to think that women will be more inclined to share resources and not fight over them, it’s also naive. States will still fight over resources. There will still be a limited amount of stuff in the world and an unlimited amount of desire for stuff, and an unlimited capacity to hoard resources and an unlimited capacity to fear that another state will hoard and cause a shortage whether the fear is founded or not.
@ POM
The resources thing is one obvious cause. On a broader perspective though there’s a theory taught in places like Sandhurst that you can explain all ‘grand strategy’ by geography.
So if you remember that Pakistan lacks strategic depth, Tibet is an obvious jumping off point for any invasion of China and Sevastapol is the only port that can accommodate the Russian fleet with guaranteed winter access you can explain:
Pakistan cultivating the Taliban
China’s occupation of Tibet
Russia’s obsession with the Crimea.
jpageusmc has also posted here in the past, talking about ‘both sides’ being too extreme on any given issue, insisting that he sees the true middle ground (as if that were some sort of ideal in every situation).
He does this in this thread, which is highly amusing, since the ‘issue’ is “MRA memes: Shitty or really shitty?” Either that, or he was talking about the Bathory debate, it was kind of hard to tell from the context.
@POM
I agree with the situation you describe, but not the conclusion.
Men and women as groups also fight for resources, and if they don’t they should because men hold a monopoly on almost any vital and non-vital resources, and the political power to decide who gets what.
This disparity in power leads to a view of politics which is masculine: competitive, aggressive, mindless of the weak.
Women are not essentially more leaning towards peace, but we are conditioned to not rely on violence and aggression the way men are allowed to be.
Also, the difference between a person who experiences violence is substantially different from that of a person who benefited from violence. Not because they are “essentially” different, but because the role they are assigned makes them develop extremely different worldviews. Teal dear: victims of violence do tend to be more compassionate towards other victims of violence, compared to people who have the privilege of not being victims of violence.
And women do tend to chose cooperation over competence, again due to social conditioning not “essential femininity”, but the outcome remains the same.
Also,”gender parity” goes well beyond the numbers, in the sense that it’s not enough to have 50% of women in the Congress, we also have to make sure they are autonomous and independent enough to actually make their own decisions and not be someone elses’ (usually a man’s) tool.
Finally, more women in any workplace usually leads to less hostile/bigoted atmospheres, essentially men are not allowed to be such huge assholes when there are enough women to call them out and be heard.
I can see some pros and cons to that.
It’d be good because people would stop trying to fucking correct you all the time when you mention your gender identity, and the Sorting Hat does have a great insight into your mind when you put it on, but only when you put it on.
It’d be bad, however, because there’s no fluidity to it. You can’t just say the Sorting Hat’s “wrong”, and you can’t change your mind later, like so many people do.
Gender and gender identity is a constantly shifting thing. : /
@SFHC: Thanks for linking that. These dudes always blur together in my mind, so it’s hard to keep track of who’s who.
As for the wider men/women differences, I think it will be impossible to tell until we have a society with no gender conditioning.
There is no way yet to tell learned behavior from “instinctive” behavior, and I’m of the belief that any behavior was learned until proven otherwise because wtf are you serious?
I think a feminist society would be more likely to be a peaceful one, because enforcing limiting gender roles through violence kinda gets a lot of violence going on in the world.
People would be more likely to mind their own business because feminism is all about not minding other people’s personal business.
And I only hope power struggles are a little less struggling, and a bit more like playing games safely and consensually.
@ Lux
The whole nurture/nature thing is fascinating.
To take one obvious and perhaps trivial example, do boys play with guns and girls with dolls because they’re inherently attracted to those roles or because that’s the toys people buy?
If you have a controlled environment whit no external influences and you just had a pile of guns and dolls and a random selection of boys and girls (who, in our hypothetical have not been influenced by outside factors. although in that case how would they know hat a gun or a doll was, but stick with me) would they gravitate towards one or the other? Or would they play with both equally? Or would some kids still prefer guns and some prefer dolls but with no gender component?
I have no idea.
I can see an argument for your theory that a feminist society would be less aggressive.
If there was a society where there were no gender expectations and a ‘gentle’ bloke would not be a subject of comment any more that a ‘combative’ woman then because
(a) aggressiveness was not seen as a masculine thing, and;
(b) masculine stuff wouldn’t; be seen as necessarily superior
then aggressiveness might not be seen as superior way of dealing with things.
Then again, it might be that even though aggressiveness was not seen as associated with the ‘dominant’ gender and therefore the first resort, where dispute did arise then aggressiveness might still be seen as the best way of dealing, regardless of the gender associations.
Again, I have no idea.
Aha, but that presumes that women would retain that conditioning upon attaining power, and that future women would receive said conditioning. I don’t actually see a world in which men and women are truly equal being compatible with the social training to which you’re referring here.
The interests of states are not going to change. The only thing that might change is the array of options for dealing with it that a particular state’s government sees as feasible. I honestly don’t think women are going to just sit around a table having tea with one another, and world peace is going to come out the other side. There’s no reason, other than gender essentialism, to think that peacemaking is some kind of innate female trait, and if it isn’t then there’s no reason to think women will retain it once the world changes.
But why would anyone want to invade China? You’re talking strategy, here, not motivation. I won’t deny that geography has immense impact on everything from the distribution of resources to the defensibility thereof, but we don’t talk about the strategic geography of Idaho as a jumping-off point for Wyoming to invade Oregon. All three of those political subdivisions are in a joint agreement to share resources, enforced by a more powerfully-armed actor. There was a time when this wasn’t the case and we had range wars over water.
@ POM
That’s the point. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know who might invade China; it’s that if *anyone* ever wanted to, then Tibet is the way to go. Hence China making sure it’s not available.
Preparing for unknown contingencies is the difference between grand strategy and just strategy. There might be no conceivable threat in the foreseeable future; but you’re thinking about infinity.
Except that strategy is a change of subject, because I’m referring to why states go to war, not how they do it.
@ POM
Yup, but I’m just saying that one of the theories of cause is geographic; and that geography explains a lot of military and political decisions.
There may be a superficial reason (resources, ideology, treaty obligations) but there’s often geography as an underlying reason.
So you can look at all sorts of reasons for Russia’s escapades in the Crimea (often the reasons are excuses that even the warring state believes) but ultimately it’s because they need to keep control of Sevastopol.
Given that MRA types tend to be racist against Blacks, I wonder why they’re bringing up the rape culture “history” as a bad thing. Dylan Roof threw this out as a reason for shooting down Blacks in Charleston so I assume it’s a generally accepted Rightwing meme that when one talks about rape one is referring to Black men raping White women.
LOL control of water, farmland, population and other resources is not a superficial reason.
@Alan
I studied a bit about instinctive behavior after reading The Selfish Gene. I read mainly from ethologists, biologists who study animal behavior.
The thing is, instincts are behaviours inherited through genes, but they are hardly what people refer to when using the word casually.
Instinctive behaviors are universal to a species. If it’s not, it ain’t no instinct.
So, when you see a behavior in one person and wonder if it’s inherited, you’re actually going backwards. You should (well, anyone should, I’m speaking to a figutative you) observe the whole species and then see what behaviors are constant.
Also, instinctive behaviors are triggered, and triggers can be ridiculously specific. Male aren’t usually attracted to “females of the same species” (in gene language) but rather attracted to “X color pattern in feathers”, “moves in a certain specific way”, etc.
Also, once triggered and instinctive behavior does not stop until it completes the action (or the action becomes impossible to achieve), whether it’s mating, feeding, building a house, etc.
Human behavior rarely matches any of those. We do have “instinctive” physical reactions, but they do not determine our behavior, least of all equally throughout the whole species.
This is also why MRA evopsych is bullshit, when they try to make it seem like “alpha male” can be coded in your genes and adapt to whatever “alpha” means to humans throughout history. if certain females are indeed attracted to strong males, the instinct won’t shift to “liking males who provide shiny stuff” just because it became the mark of power within the community.