Men’s Rights Activists and other antifeminists always hate it when feminists point them to dictionary definitions of feminism as “the advocacy of equal rights for men and women” (or similar) rather than “a seekrit cabal of evil spermjacking sluts that want to genocide all men,” which is what all MRAs apparently think feminism really is.
In the meme below, one anti-feminist tries to prove that dictionary definitions aren’t always right so there, and if the dictionary can get “tomato” wrong then it must have feminism wrong too!
Aw, dude. You tried. But apparently you didn’t bother to check the dictionary definition of “tomato” first. Here’s what you get if you type the words “tomato definition” into Google.
D’oh!
@ sunnysombrera –
You said it, they have very little awareness of affairs outside their bubble. A while back I read a men’s rights article about Boko Haram that said:
The comment section was full of people demanding to know why the media was only mentioning this now. I posted a comment where I searched for all media mentions of the schoolboys with a custom date range to limit it to the days following the event, and included snippets quoting the articles. The list was looooong, every major national and international journalism outlet, even an official statement from the Whitehouse. The language of the quotes were also very emotionally charged, the boys were not described impersonally or reduced to a number.
Then I did a similar search to find out how many mentions the story got on AVFM or any other men’s rights forums prior to the controversy they raised over the BringBackOurGirls campaign. Results= ZERO.
Until the fact that people were paying attention to feeeeemales woke them up, it simply didn’t exist to them.
Of course, I had been aware of this before the search, because I had actually been paying attention to the news at the time and spent a lot of time delivering pizza and listening to many long hours of discussion about Boko Haram on NPR.
@ JustAsking:
1) Many feminists speak up against unconsensual circumcision. Just Google “feminists against circumcision”.
2+3) You mean like when NOW and ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project carried a lawsuit in the ’80s all the way up to the Supreme Court to include women in the druft?
By the way, the ones who voted against the inclusion of women in the draft? Men. (Senate: 98% male at the time; House of Rep. 97% male; Sup. Court 100% male).
4) Citation needed for such a law existing.
5.1) First: prove that such an imbalance in incarceration rates is due to bias and not, say, women not committing crimes that would require incarceration as much as men.
5.2) Yes, women actually do get shorter sentences for the same crimes as men. This is because of male judges giving female culprits lighter sentences. Female judges? Fair towards both genders.
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Racial-and-Gender-Disparities-in-Prison-Sentences-The-Effect-of-District-Level-Judicial-Demographics.pdf
5.3) First: citation needed for men’s prisons having worse conditions than women’s ones. Second: assuming that the above is true… you want feminists to “protest better conditions in female prisons”. Not “protest so that men’s prisons are improved”, “protest so that women’s prisons are worsened“. Really? You want to go with that?
6) Citation needed for “children automatically are taken away from fathers”. And it’s false, btw – if we consider only the divorces that are brought to a famnily court – thus excluding the cases where the couple pacifically decides who will get child custody – men have a 50% chance of getting some kind of custody. If we restrict the search to the cases where the fathers actually bother to demand for full custody for themselves, we’re looking to a 50-70% success rate.
http://geekandmisandry.tumblr.com/post/89744329425/but-women-get-unfair-advantages-in-custody
http://geekandmisandry.tumblr.com/post/97104186185/jmdoman-geekandmisandry
7.1) Alimony is necessary. Do you have any idea how much time and work is needed to raise a kid? Answer: a lot. So much of that, it’s often necessary for one of the parents (let’s call it Stay-At-Home, or SaM) to stay at home so that the kids gets raised, pluss all the housework etc. The other parent (let’s call that Bread-Winner, or BW) gets to work and, more importantly, gets to pursue their career and obtain financial independency for themselves.
The SaM parent doesn’t have that independency, so they either rely on the BW parent or, in case of a divorce, on alimony, which is compensation for the financial independency SaM sacrificied in order to tkae care of the kid and the house – work that the BW parent beneficiates of, by the way. Take away alimony, and you put SaM in a situation where they cannot ever leave BW, even in case of an abusive marriage. Because then, they wouldn’t have the money to survive.
7.2) Likewise, child support is necessary. Raising a child costs money, and it’s difficult for a single person to get that much money by themselves – especially if they’re SaM parents. Again: take away child support, and the SaM parents won’t be able to escape unhappy or abusive marriages, because then the BW spouse can use the threat of kicking the SaM spouse out of their ouse and into poverty.
(Oh, and also: the average monthly payment for child support is WAY less than half the amount of money necessary to raise a child. And no, men aren’t thrown in prison if they are unable to pay child support for that day – in fact, child support is tailored depending on the financial resources of the person who has to pay it.)
You want women to be able to support their children/ex-spouses as much as men do? Tear down gender roles that dictate that women have to be SaM and men have to be BW. And while you’re at it, stop trying to kick out women from “male” remunerative jobfields, and stop devaluing every “female” jobfield.
@Kat
Thanks and yes, it was. It was scary, then it was over but the pain began, now a few days later I’m slowly going back to normal life.
Too much going on in my life to post a lot here, but I’ll drop some words on the next open thread I catch…
Plus the working parent gets to add that time to their resume and advance their career, while the stay at home parent is SOL and has to start on the bottom when they return to the workplace. That’s why demanding equal contributions in housework and parental involvement are just as relevant to social equality.
Under ‘Thank Katie for Small Favors,’ at least David didn’t run that tomato aspic picture through Google Deep Dream, like he had been doing a couple months back.
Your other shit has been address more than adequately by others, but I’ll take this one: carceral justice is heavily slanted toward incarcerating men over incarcerating women because of racism and patriarchy. When boys are raised to believe that their manhood is defined by their paycheck (which is a patriarchal idea), and then crushed into the poverty pipeline so that no paycheck is possible, crime results. Black communities are disproportionately affected by this because: racism.
There is also a strong motive for a racist justice system to push for felony charges for literally everything, because many states disenfranchise felony offenders for life.
Where are the MRAs protesting this? Where are the MRA marches against lifelong disenfranchisement for felony offenders? This is a problem that affects men far more than it affects women. Seems like it’s more of a men’s rights issue than a feminist one.
Not sure why feminists ought to be objecting to that? Not sure why you ought to be, either. Your complaint should be that conditions in men’s prisons are too harsh and should be improved, not that conditions in women’s prisons are too cushy and should be degraded.
Of course, the fact that you don’t care if men’s conditions are improved but you care a whole lot about dragging women down into worse conditions tells me all I need to know about how much you actually care about men’s rights. Namely, how little you care about improving men and how much you care about shitting on women.
Just JAQing off? Seems legit.
ParseThePotatoes:
What, like this?
http://i.imgur.com/BtEVWmt.jpg
So if the MRM is really about advancing the rights of men…….
Where are all the MRAs protesting against the routine surgical mutilation of infant boys in the US?
Where are all the (USA-based) MRAs demanding the end of selective service?
Where are all the MRAs protesting against the 20th century wars which have (allegedly) killed 300 MILLION male soldiers, marines, seamen, etc? (Not to mention all of the civilian casualties; men, women, and children)
Where are all the MRAs protesting unequal domestic violence law that (allegedly) requires the removal or incarceration of the MAN in all incidents of domestic violence?
Where are all the MRAs protesting the classist and racist justice system that leads to staggeringly high incarceration rates for men – particularly men of colour?
Where are all the MRAs protesting the (not actually) unequal family courts where children automatically are(n’t) taken away from fathers?
Where are all the MRAs protesting alimony and child support payments? (Though how this would advance the rights of men I haven’t the foggiest)
Answer: Nowhere, because the MRM doesn’t do shit. Whining about it on the internet doesn’t count. Whining at feminists to do your activism for you double doesn’t count.
@JustAnnoying!:
Yeah, sure. You’re really “just asking”, but it sure sounds like a harangue from where I sit. Mainly because I’ve already heard it a thousand times, and it’s so stale it’s not worth even trying to engage with. Can’t you guys debate WITHOUT resorting to copy-pasted crap that we’ve all seen before and are dead tired of debunking?
Also: Gish Gallop. Look it up. And kindly don’t do that here again.
(But I bet you’re too cowardly to even come back and read any of these responses anyway. I mean, aren’t you all?)
PS: Please change your name to JustBoring, because that’s what your arguments are.
I wanted to address this bit here with a bit of fact-checking, because I believe that JAQingOff has a bit of an incorrect assumption going on here about how awesome women’s prisons must be to suggest that we should be talking about ways to make them more inhumane to create parity with men’s prisons, the poor ignorant turnip.
Here’s an article written by a woman who spent 18 months in a women’s prison for drug trafficking.
Here’s another article about the unsanitary conditions in California women’s prisons
Here’s an article where a woman talks about her daughter having to give birth in an Arizona prison. (Graphic gorey details in this one)
Oh, hey, California banned forced sterilization of female inmates in 2014.
Yeah, we totes should be talking about how we should make things more awful for women in prison because “equality” amirite?
@skiriki
…NO
@Skiriki,
David stopped using Deep Dream because multiple commenters with trypophobia said the pictures made them very uncomfortable. Please don’t post them.
@Skiriki, thanks. I didn’t want to sleep tonight, anyways.
@ImaginaryPetal, @Orion, my apologies – knowing why he stopped, I should have said something about “Please don’t do it for him.”
As usual feminists only want to discuss when they have overwhelming numbers, so I will pick JUST ONE poster and respond. Frankly most of you are too fact-free to be worth my time, but at least Freemage TRIED to make a logical argument.
Gonna address these three together. Feminists are not out protesting against every bad thing under the sun. They are, instead, focusing on those issues that affect women.
Feminism is about for equality but only for issues that affect women? THAT’S NOT WHAT EQUALITY MEANS. This is a tactic admission that “feminism = equality” the whole point of the blog post, is indefensible bullshit.
That said, feminists do not support cosmetic male infant circumcision, and would, in fact, generally support efforts to ban it.
Nope feminists make a lot of noise about female circumcision, but not a peep about male circumcision. So much for equality.
The draft is more nuanced. There’s two different common schools of feminist thought:
1: Pacifist feminists generally oppose conscription entirely.
2: Non-pacifist feminists agree that women should be subject to conscription equally.
Note that both of these are positions of equality.
Finally, feminists support the right of women in the military to serve in combat roles. It’s been men who’ve been resisting that change.
Where are these anti-draft feminists? I haven’t seen them. Were they the ones handing white feathers to boys as young as 12 to encourage them to go fight and die in the Great War? WHOOPS…..
The fact remains women got the “right” to vote a century ago but still can’t be drafted. They have the privileges of citizenship without the obligations and duties. They don’t have skin in the game. Men fight and die in the wars that women vote for.
So much for equality…….
Care to cite an actual law that does this?
Sorry kid but I won’t do your homework for you. It’s called Google look into it.
You’ll need to clarify what you’re looking for here. Generally, no, feminists aren’t going to be out there demanding longer sentences for women convicted of theft or what have you. That would be stupid.
So much for equality…….
However, they also aren’t demanding that men receive longer sentences than women; that’s a product of a racist society that’s decided the best thing to do with a large number of poor young black men is lock them up on the flimsiest pretexts available, so as to ensure that they cannot get out of the poverty trap.
Of course you wouldn’t be a liberal if you didn’t bring racism into every discussion for NO REASON. Who was talking about race???? Not me. Is giving men longer sentences than women okay if they’re WHITE men??
Also blacks can speak for themselves thank you very much. They don’t need your white knighting to save them.
Again, your ignorance of the law post-1950 is rather appalling. Men can be awarded alimony, and if they do get custody, can seek child support payments as well. The reason that this is comparatively rare is because society pushes women into lower-paying jobs, making it far less likely that a woman is going to have the superior income. As noted above, she’s also more likely to get custody because the man isn’t interested in it.
Society doesn’t “push” women into any job and the “pay gap” is a myth. Men earn more because they work LONGER and HARDER. Go to any white collar employer and he’ll tell you, OFF THE RECORD, that women simply work less time and shorter hours. Sorry but it’s just a fact. I work in STEM and I see it all the time. Friday at 5 the girls run for the door. The men stay and work late because we know we will be rewarded for it in the long run.
Modern western women are also flighty and prone to quitting with very little notice. Sorry but I met the perfect man and we’re moving to LA together! Whoops I got knocked up so I’m quitting. (But give me 9 months paid maternity leave!!)
Sorry but the free market has spoken. Girls get MORE attention in school, and more women go to college, but STEM jobs are 98% men. If you want to change that, instead of screaming “MISOGYNIST!!” and demanding ever more quotas, why not address the culture of female entitlement that feminism actively aids abets and promotes?
On a personal note Freemage you seem like a bright kid if a bit naive. So let me help you out with a little secret the feminists don’t want you to know: Kowtowing to feminism will not get you laid. Women scorn and mock “male feminists.” They hate you and want you to die a virgin. Trust me dude they will never even let you sniff it.
“Just asking questions“, you know? Just JAQin’ it anonymously online. It’s only way I can feel significant; JAQin’ off while being a PRATT.
@ SJA
Speaking only from my experience and what I’ve seen, there’s a lot more hate for men from men (self-labeled feminist or not).
Ironically, those very few woman feminists you name don’t even hate men all the time. It seems like plenty of TERFs love cis men if they’re as transphobic as they are. Go figure.
@dlouwe – That response was golden.
@GenJones: This:
is a telling example of what I call solipsistic denial. In other words, “If it wasn’t on my radar, it never happened, and any suggestion/evidence/search engine results demonstrating that it did are part of a vast feminsit conspiracy/coverup/misandrist practical joke.”
It’s frightening how many people reflexively rely on this worldview (although maybe not defining it as explicitly feminist and misandrist) instead of understanding that they do not possess the totality of information, or that new knowledge sometimes supplants the old instead of reinforcing it, and that’s okay.
Oh. And I’m a feminist with an uncircumcised adult son. Did James’ brain just explode?
@Tragedy of the Commas
Yep. A lot of them hate men but their hatred for trans people often overshadows that by quite a lot.
Meant to put *cis men.
I appreciate skiriki making the mistake before I did–I honestly had missed David’s reason for no longer using it, and just figured he’d gotten tired of the bit. So I was about to do the same thing, in the same (intended to be) lightly humorous vein. Obviously, we don’t want to actually set off folks’ phobias, so… yeah, I’m gonna stick that one back in the box, then.
I didn’t mean to sound angry. 🙂
But yeah, those pictures make me feel very uncomfortable.
That long ago, eh? And when were MEN ever forcibly sterilized in prison? JustTrolling?
Affirmative consent was invented by man-hating women to enact the same level of life destruction upon men through dating that women enjoy through divorce (forced wealth transfer from men to women).
As a man, the worst of all time contracts you could possibly sign would be the marriage contract. Affirmative consent was invented by man-hating women to ensure you married them after having sex. The consequence of not marrying her after sex is of course your life annihilation – through false rape/sexual assault allegations.
At no other point in history has a contract been written to so badly screw one gender over the other.
Do you know what happens if you’re falsely convicted of DV, rape or sexual assault? You’re unemployable. Do you know what it means to be unemployable? It means you’ll likely take your own life or starve to death. Do you know what’s necessary to be convicted of DV, rape or sexual assault? A woman’s word alone.
Women are your deadliest enemy. Women are preying mantises. Any man that tells you otherwise is on his way to his own destruction.
Never give a woman the ring of power or any power over your life. Never give a woman any legal, social or financial power over your life.
Women work tirelessly to make up ways to forcefully transfer wealth from men to women. Don’t be a woman’s sucker. Don’t be a white knight’s sucker.
I say feminism is cancer because feminism is cancer.
“Tch, how typical, I posted on a forum and actually received replies.”
Oh, I see you elected to ignore the posts that already addressed this, gave you names of organizations and even linked you to a whole book on the subject.
Oh and by the way, it was not feminists who were handing out white feathers. It was an official military propaganda campaign that was founded by Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, who appropriated enlistees from the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and gave them new orders to do it. Meanwhile, feminists were protesting the war. You can learn all about it by going back and actually reading the information people already spelled out for you.
My gosh there are a lot of trolls on this thread. Anyone wanna address I’mAnAsshole? I don’t have the energy right now.
Yes, let’s all listen to the guy who doesn’t know the difference between getting someone’s consent to have sex and shotgun marriages. He really sounds like someone who knows what he’s talking about.
At a school or daycare maybe. You already know everything, but maybe you should actually look up what the hiring laws are concerning ex-cons and sex offenders.
LOL! Tell it to the mass of evidence and conviction rate that says otherwise pal. Even cases with physical evidence of unlawful entry and injuries are routinely dismissed. Even in a case where the police responding to screams caught the guy in the act and found his fingerprints on a pried off window screen it got dismissed because the victim was known for going to establishments that serve (GASP!) alcohol!
“A woman’s word alone”? Get the fuck outta here with that shit.