We’re still running a meme surplus in the We Hunted the Mammoth offices, so I’m going to drop a few more on you today. Enjoy the FLAWLESS STEM LOGIC and KEEN GRASP OF REALITY displayed in the following memes, gathered from A Voice for Men’s Facebook page. I’ve lightly censored a couple of them.
WE INVENTED THE MAMMOTH TO FEED YOU
Ha Ha! Girls are stupid and can’t do math amirite fellas high five!
Damn you gals for keeping men out of this low-paying profession that men could easily enter if they wanted to because it’s not actually a “hiring scheme” that keeps them out!
THIS ISN’T ACTUALLY TRUE BUT MAYBE IF WE PUT IT IN ALL-CAPS NO ONE WILL NOTICE!
1) What do you mean by “when men’s right’s occurs”? Th
The emancipation of men, when men are free of oppression – when they have equal rights with everyone else, legally and socially.
2) Please define “equal parenting rights” and how things are not equal right now?
That’s pretty simple. Women get preference on the birth cert, a man cannot get himself on there, women get favour in family courts over access, yes even today, women get unilateral choices to have children – that effect other people, such as parents paying child support, or tax payers paying benefits – and the women has no responsibility to those parties. At the moment, women control parental rights in virtually every way.
3) Same as 2) but for Equal sentencing, family courts, and education and so on.
Men get worse sentencing in court, for identical crimes. At the very same time, feminist groups are arguing for even lighter sentencing, and more legal advantages in many areas. This is because feminism, and society, has cast men as villans, and women as victims. No matter how exactly the same their actions are, men will be perceived as more culpable. And this despite the fact that violence, the platform of achieving a lot of this villany, is pretty gender symmetrical in most areas (like DV), and more weighted to men as victims in the broadest sense.
I think this is a pretty serious inequality myself.
I could go on. But if you are curious you can look to yourself the many areas where men are being verifiably disadvantaged. The science, and the numbers don’t lie, and they are there for everyone to research. Just don’t be surprised if they overturn the bad science misrepresentations you may have been fed by feminists.
Jamie
8 years ago
I’m not right wing. I am all for equality for all. I’m completely opposed to the authoritarian state, or authorian agendas. I’m a liberal.
I just want men to be in the party, when the consideration of human rights and equality is being handed out. That doesn’t make me a bigot. It makes you a bigot if you think it makes me one.
Jamie
8 years ago
Ah social views. i should have answered that. It’s a historical story. Karen Straughan sums this up better than I can.
Basically you had patriarchy. It existed back in the 1800s etc. It was like a lot of traditional arrangements, where marriage and soceity like everything else was an exchange.
Basically what feminism did was, it cut off every element of womens part of those deals, while preserving all of the male expectations. At the same time it villanized men as rapists, assaulters, murders, child molesters – to the point being a man next to a playground is the instant assumption of guilt, and any court will give you a bigger sentence than a women with the exact same crime.
The combination of those things lead to a situation where what remains of those social constructs is now perilessly held together by benefit systems. Women, on average take more money from the govt. Men, on average pay more taxes. So this serves, for now, in the place of the contract of marriage, supporting solo mums and so on.
Basically what we want to do, is undo the legal disadvantages and bigotry created by feminism, so men can be seen something even in a positive light, as men – and step out of the social contract that women stepped out of ages ago – in terms of our social definition as men as being ‘important only as useful to women and children’, as disposable tools if you will. So military service, labour, romantic chilvalry, and our general treatment of women as being better than how we treat men.
Because there is nothing but entitlement flowing back down what used to be an agreement, however archiac, there is no sense in our slavery to women in terms of giving and not getting in return. In other words, there is no compelling motivation to treat women that differently from men any more.
So, hopefully we are moving, at some point in the near future, towards true equality. That’s the rough story of it, basically it all finds its roots in feminism ideology, and the story they have told and been telling.
And that’s part of why they oppose us so violently – we are directly challenging their ideas – we are telling them they are wrong, and why, ideas that have been so shrouded in jargon, and tied up in guilt and fear, that no one has really questioned them much.
The more you watch these videos, and read these articles on MHRA – from the intelligent spokespeople. Especially harsh and rude, but clever vloggers like karen – the more that happens, genuinely the more risk there is you will convert to our way of thinking. We call it ‘the red pill’, waking up to reality, like the matrix. Coming out of a lie.
Yes, you’ll think us harsh, saying delibrately inflammatory things sometimes, trying to rile people up to show their true colours, and simplifying and exagerating issues for punctuation sometimes. You’ll find that like the early feminist movement, and the early LGBT movement, at this very early stage we are full of radical thinkers, including some yes, bigots (just like those other two movements have had, and do still have)
The difference between feminist and MHRA, is largely, simply that our ideas haven’t reached the megaphone yet. That’s why it’s easy to cast us as villans, as feminists once were and gay activists too. The story flips, once our message does reach the microphone. Once this dialogue is in every home, and on every lip. And thankfully this website is helping that happen.
eloli
8 years ago
Jamie, I have been a white male for more than four decades now, and let me tell you, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Wherever you look and by almost any metric or statistic, it works out to be great to start out life as a white male.
So that’s why I’ll never understand why so many white men like me are whining about how tough it is to be one.
I mean, what could have happened in their lives to make them feel so beset on every side by feminists, minorities, and the system, when in fact, said system is so stacked in our favor, it’s not even funny?
It’s just mind boggling, if you ask me.
My take is that these guys are simply a bunch of whiners that can’t accept that the answer to the question “Why I’m failing at life so hard?” is pretty obvious if they care to look into a mirror.
Another thing that baffles me about these guys is their definition of masculinity.
My dad’s 73.
He must be the poster boy for classic masculinity, he actually think women shouldn’t be trusted with positions of power because their emotional natures can’t handle it.
But, on the other hand, he was raised by my grandpa to be respectful, chivalrous towards women, and would never, ever, under any circumstance think it’s ok to hit a woman.
Why? Because according to classic masculinity, only unmanly cowards who don’t deserve to be called men insult or hurt women.
Oh yeah, to MRAs, calling women cunts and hitting them is gender equality.
And that’s one of the only feminism related things I’ll ever agree with my dad: MRAs are not real men.
They’re pussies.
They’re cowards.
They’re betas.
They fail so hard at being good providers, they live paranoid fantasies about evil women exploiting them.
They are so insecure about themselves they feel the need to bring women down.
Their balls and penises are so minute they don’t have the courage to face women, so they whine about pretty girls not dating.
So yeah, Jamie, I’m revoking your man card right now. 😀
?
Viscaria
8 years ago
I absolutely cannot dig through your entire wall of copy & paste (which is the whole point, I assume), but I got this far before I absolutely had to stop.
Take job equality. The moan is constantly about CEO positions and so on. Well most men aren’t that. Most people aren’t that. But what men are by and large is underpaid, high labour, high risk workers, who work in the lowest paid jobs. But feminists don’t want equality in that. Just the things they want, not the equality they don’t.
The entire piece is worth reading, but here’s the relevant bit for you:
Of the 30 highest-paying jobs, including chief executive, architect and computer engineer, 26 are male-dominated, according to Labor Department data analyzed by Emily Liner, the author of the Third Way report. Of the 30 lowest-paying ones, including food server, housekeeper and child-care worker, 23 are female dominated.
You’re just making shit up. Or I guess, whatever source you’ve lifted this from is just making shit up.
Edit: I skimmed and noticed that Jamie actually has quoted and responded to specific commenters. My mistake.
Jamie, are you Orange Tango Drinker? The love of Karen Straughn is pinging my radar a bit.
Anyway, you’ve Gish galloped too much for me to cover all of your points, so I’ll just address a couple of things. Contrary to what you seem to think, all of the MRA arguments on the evils of feminism have been seen, researched, and refuted hundreds if not thousands of times here. Telling us to look up the science is not going to cut it. You’re going to need actual sources if you want to be taken seriously.
Violence for example, is not a gendered issue. Not in any credible direct study. If anything men are overwhelmingly the victims of violence.
It depends on what you mean by gendered issue. No feminists are actually saying that women are the only victims of violence. But, what MRAs always forget when they point out that men are more likely to be victims of violence is that men are a vast majority of the perpetrators of violence. For example, according to the FBI, 90% of homicides in the US are committed by men. Violence is a gendered issue. Just not in the way you think it is.
Now, this is a legitimate men’s issue and something you should focus on. Sadly, you can’t and won’t because you’re not interested in helping men. You’re interested in hating feminists. Feminism is in no way to blame for the fact that men commit more violence. So, instead of talking about actual solutions to this problem; such as encouraging men to react to negative emotions in a more constructive way. Or addressing poverty, the school to prison pipeline (that one’s admittedly US centric), and the military industrial complex/hawkish foreign policy and how they contribute to a culture of violence that is hurting men. These are problems largely cause by your fellow men though and what’s the fun of discussing something if there’s not a woman to blame?
That’s pretty simple. Women get preference on the birth cert, a man cannot get himself on there, women get favour in family courts over access, yes even today, women get unilateral choices to have children – that effect other people, such as parents paying child support, or tax payers paying benefits – and the women has no responsibility to those parties. At the moment, women control parental rights in virtually every way.
I always love the breathtaking irony in MRA commentary about parental rights and responsibilities. You’re saying that fathers should be viewed as equal caretakers to the mothers and given, what? Equal custody? Primary custody? I don’t disagree at all that our culture should perceive fathers as nurturers and I don’t disagree that they should do approximately half of the child rearing work. But here’s your problem. In the very same paragraph that you’re arguing that men should get custody when parents split up, you’re also arguing that men should get to paper abort their children and not pay child support. You’re then going even farther and saying that their should be no publicly funded social welfare programs to keep children out of poverty.
So, which is it? You can’t have it both ways. Do you care about children and think fathers are nurturers just as much as mothers are? Or do you think children are hindrances to men’s freedom who should just starve to death if their father’s decide they don’t feel like caring for them.
Here’s the thing, the family court system’s job is figure out what is best for the child. It’s not about what suits the parent’s wants. I’m not saying the courts don’t ever mistakes in this regard. But the so called bias against fathers – while it may occur in some individual cases – is a myth. The reason mothers have primary custody so much more often is that fathers so rarely seek custody. When fathers seek primary custody, they more often than not get it.
Now, on to the paper abortion thing. The reason (cis) women have the right to terminate a pregnancy is that it’s her body that is the one gestating the fetus. That’s the only reason men don’t get a say. It’s about bodily autonomy, not gender. I only have a say about what lives in my uterus, not what happens in the uteri of others. Trans men who get pregnant have the right to abortion, no feminists believe they shouldn’t control their own uteri simply because they’re men. For someone who thinks trans people are going to start joining the MRM because feminists are so horrible, your views on reproductive rights are extremely cis-centric.
I’m sure you think it’s unfair that a man can get a woman pregnant and she can carry the pregnancy to term even if he doesn’t want to be a parent and be awarded child support. But here’s the thing, children don’t have control over whether or not they’re born and they can’t help having financial needs once they’re here. It probably isn’t fair that you can be a father when you don’t want to be. But life isn’t always fair. It’s also not fair for a woman when she gets pregnant, her partner tells her he wants the baby, and then he abandons her when the child is born and he discovers that parenthood carries a lot of obligations with it. But that happens all the time too!
If we’re not going to obligate fathers to pay for child support, what do you propose we do to care for children? It’s bad for individual children to grow up in poverty, but poverty is also a societal ill and we all have an interest in making sure kids are healthy, well fed, educated, and cared for. If they aren’t, the chances of them growing to be productive and well adjusted adults are diminished. The options are child support or an expanded welfare state. Pick one. If you pick the latter, your beef isn’t with feminists who are mostly for social safety nets and you should be working with us.
If the paper abortion is going to work out, there needs to be a living wage or universal basic income. There needs to be universal healthcare and free or cheap higher education available. We’ll need more subsidized childcare. Also, the paperwork for the financial abortion will have to be completed early in the pregnancy. Once the kid is born, there are no takesies backsies. A child isn’t a toy that can be tossed aside once you’re bored with it. They’re human beings with needs. I think paper abortions are actually something feminists could get behind if we could be certain the children are actually cared for.
Unfortunately, the MRA position on fatherhood seems to be all about what is in their best interests. No consideration for the actual children who are viewed as property by you.
Oh, and BTW most feminists are for paid paternity leave and support the right of families to have a stay at home dad, breadwinning mom arrangement if that’s what works best. But sure, keep telling yourself we all just men and want to make them pay for kids but never see them.
Reading Jamie’s incessant comments (talk about spamming the thread, dude) makes me realise that there is no group on earth quite as reality detached as masculinists. Their willingness to reject facts in favour of their fantasies is on par with anti-vaxxers, for fucks’ sake.
opposablethumbs
8 years ago
wwth
The options are child support or an expanded welfare state. Pick one. If you pick the latter, your beef isn’t with feminists who are mostly for social safety nets and you should be working with us.
If the paper abortion is going to work out, there needs to be a living wage or universal basic income. There needs to be universal healthcare and free or cheap higher education available. We’ll need more subsidized childcare. Also, the paperwork for the financial abortion will have to be completed early in the pregnancy. Once the kid is born, there are no takesies backsies. A child isn’t a toy that can be tossed aside once you’re bored with it. They’re human beings with needs. I think paper abortions are actually something feminists could get behind if we could be certain the children are actually cared for.
Well said.
Common-or-garden feminist here.
I oppose the draft for anybody. Oops! This would mainly benefit men!
I oppose FGM and MGM. FGM is more damaging in the vast, vast majority of cases, but they’re both completely unacceptable. Oops! In some countries, like the USA, this would mainly benefit men!
I support a universal basic income. Oh, sorry – while this would be enormously beneficial to men, it would benefit women even more because there are even more poor women – and they are on average even poorer – than poor men.
I support more and better mental healthcare – with outreach – for everybody. Oops! This would be of slightly greater benefit to men and boys, who are less likely to ask for help because of patriarchal gender roles.
I support prioritising rehabilitation over punishment and better conditions in prison for everybody. Oops! This would mainly benefit men!
I could go on, but I have to get back to work now what with having a living to earn for me and my family. Oops! I financially support two men!
I look forward to seeing MRA activism that actually focuses on helping men more than it does on vilifying women. I’m not holding my breath.
Hambeast, Social Justice Legbeard
8 years ago
davidknewton
…having a British accent that makes anything I’m saying sound about 50% more intelligent than it actually is
Does that still work among others with British accents?
Anarchonist
8 years ago
@Jamie
We live in society that is demonstrateable bigoted towards men.That basic reality, such as equal sentencing for equal crimes, equal parental access, equal treatment in family courts
Since WWTH made an excellent point-by-point post on the latter ”realities”, I’d just like to ask what crimes are not being equally sentenced? There’s a documented racist double standard for sentencings for white and non-white crime (such as drug possession, where white defendants systematically receive a lower sentence, if any at all, for the same crime), but I would like to know more about this supposed unequal sentencing based on gender. Do you have studies?
Besides, patronizing dismissal of women’s capability to make moral decisions is a product of a patriarchal society, not of feminists wanting special rights for women. I’d think that’s pretty obvious, considering that the idea has been around for far longer than feminism. It is a byproduct of women not being considered full humans.
those are all too reasonable to be ignored for ever, whatever attempts feminism does to censor what it doesn’t want said, or shame it, those seem like inevitable events. You can’t resist the reasonble, the truth, forever.
Oh, yeah. This right here definitely proves you ‘re not here solely because you have an axe to grind with women’s rights. Nosirree.
Newsflash: Feminism does not control the media. Feminism is not capable of governmental propaganda. Feminists are still in the minority in public discourse. Attributing the supposed control of public discourse to a minority group sounds just a teeny weeny silly, does it not?
All men’s rights activists want is utterly gender symmetrical treatment is what mens rights people want and feminists demonstratably. For everyone to actually be treated as actual equals, rather than feminists always pushing whomever else stands in the way of their power back.
Are you serious right now? Tell me you aren’t serious. ”Gender symmetrical treatment” is not on the MRA to-do list. Have you ever actually read a single thing MRAs say? As luck would have it, David Futrelle happens to be quite an expert on the subject. Just type ”MRA” in the search bar on the right and start reading what actual, self-described MRAs have to say on the subject of equality. Go on, I’ll wait.
Also, nice slip of the ”we both want the same thing” mask at the end. Oooh, so close.
When it comes to a you or me proposition, feminist dialogue will always pick benefit for them over anyone else, or equality. It will always say that women are always victims, men always oppressors (which is silly nowadays), and it will distort the science and the facts, misrepresenting them in propaganda to sell it’s lies.
This is projection of the highest degree. Contrary what political conservatives such as MRAs say, not everyone is driven primarily by a lust for power, just they and people like them. What feminist has said that ”women are always victims, men always oppressors?” Have you ever read any actual feminist publications, or have you filtered everything through Men’s Right-vision goggles?
Violence for example, is not a gendered issue. Not in any credible direct study. If anything men are overwhelmingly the victims of violence. And women control the majority of spending money, and make the majority of household decisions.
Wow. Just wow. Where to begin?
As was pointed out before, focusing solely on the victims of violence is convenient for anyone disinterested in understanding – and changing – power dynamics in our society. Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence, including against other men. In other words, even if your claim of men being in the majority of victims was true, blaming it on women would still make no sense, since they are not the primary cause of violence. Unlike you, feminists are actually interested in the subject of social programming and how to deprogram harmful beliefs, not in playing the blame game. Look up the concept of toxic masculinity and be on your way to understanding the everyday ideas that perpetuate the link between masculinity and violence in our society. Would it help if I shared the first question I had on my way to understanding gender issues? ”Why are men socially conditioned to act shitty towards both women and each other?” I trust you’ll find that train of thought enlightening.
As for your last point, now you’re not even trying. Are you seriously saying that being burdened with the majority of housework and other unpaid responsibilities around the house in addition to having a job is some kind of a privilege?
We live in a gynocracy. I am very serious, and to me, as a man, it kind of feels like i image being a women in the sixties felt – negatively stereotyped, stripped of many forms of power, and yet unrecognised by the oppressing parties.
That is… stunningly stupid. I stand in awe before the utter inanity of this paragraph.
Do you really believe ”the pendulum swung too far” in the span of mere fifty years? Your ignorance of the pace of how long culturally ingrained ideas take to die out (and to be replaced by opposing beliefs) is frankly staggering.
Your feelings are important, but they are just that: feelings. They are not an objective truth supported by decades, even centuries of research. I’m a cishet man living in modern society, and I don’t feel anywhere near as you do. In fact, I think I have it pretty good, all things considered. All the bad things happening in my life right now can certainly be attributed to social forces, but none of those forces is the imaginary concept of ”misandry”. Gender does not factor in the hardships of men, just like race does not factor in the hardships faced by white people. Or sexuality in the hardships faced by straight people. And so on. Getting the picture?
Take job equality. The moan is constantly about CEO positions and so on. Well most men aren’t that. Most people aren’t that.
Ah, the pretentious egalitarian’s version of ”not all men.” The fact that the majority of CEOs, politicians and other people in power are men is the result of social ideas of power and gender even if not all men hold those positions. A capitalist system, or any system built on power hierarchies can’t possibly include more than a handful of people in positions of power, despite the ridiculous bootstrap mentality far too many people believe in. I’m always wondering about this argument, though. Many MRAs subscribe to it, and it just seems so baffling to me. Are you suggesting that sexism isn’t real as long as there is one man in existence who has it worse in any way than any woman? Because that sounds enormously sexist to me.
But what men are by and large is underpaid, high labour, high risk workers, who work in the lowest paid jobs. But feminists don’t want equality in that. Just the things they want, not the equality they don’t.
Stop strawmanning feminists, who have been fighting since forever for women’s right to work in traditionally male-dominated fields. Seriously, you need to stop blaming women and feminists for men systematically keeping women out of certain occupations because it’s ”a man’s work”. Also, in my experience in male-dominated high-risk jobs, indifference to work regulations is a fairly frequent cause of injuries. Again, it’s toxic masculinity (and the misogyny inherent in the mindset) that’s causing men to believe that proper regulations are for women, and therefore beneath them. Also, as far as I know, the lowest-paying jobs today are in the service industry, not coal mining or somesuch.
Congratulations, you’ve discovered classism. But just like the example about violence, it still doesn’t explain away the fact that most of the perpetrators of an unfair capitalist system are men, by virtue of being in positions of power. Gender has fuck all to do with men who are suffering because of capitalism.
And sadly the majority of women don’t even know when they are being sexist, or that the ideas they echo are founded in what has been turned into a hate movement.
Wow. The projection is truly a wonder to behold. So close to getting it, and yet so far…
Men have a right to equality, and we will get it. You can say what you like about our rude, radical members. They are only matching the tone of the extreme sexism and hate we see from gender feminists. And that extreme tone? Well the moderates, and the polite PC, men’s rights activists get just the same violent, rude, contemptable response as the radicals do. They are treated identically.
MRAs are not treated identically to feminists. If the ridicule MRAs face for having such ridiculous, backwards ideas is, in your mind, identical to the rape and death threats and actual violence that feminists face every time they suggest we should reconsider harmful ideas about gender, then you really are a lost cause. Anyway, where are the ”moderate” MRAs? I have yet to see even one.
And *sigh* to your belief that men have fewer rights than women. You are truly ignorant of anything outside MRM echochambers.
So don’t complain about our behaviour if you are going to label and treat us all the same anyway, it’s pointless.
Notice that you don’t care about fixing problems within movements, just stopping all discourse? That’s a very typical MRA trait: ”No problems here, since everyone gets shit! Now let’s sit around, whine and not get anything done!” Not really a movement deserving of the ‘activist’ label, don’t you think?
That’s just how feminists react to everything that disagrees with them. Anger and shaming, and any other tactic they can think of to silence people.
They don’t believe in free speech, or true equality and they just want the disagreeing party to shut up, so they ragefit.
Stop talking about free speech. Someone criticizing you for your inane ideas is not censoring you. It takes a government to silence you to make it censorship, and, as pointed out before, feminists don’t have anywhere near the political power to make that happen even if they for some reason wanted to.
Events in Japan, the Uk riots, gamergate, have highlighted a sea change, a paradigm shift.
Umm… What events in Japan, exactly? If you’re talking about the 2011 UK riots, they were a consequence of the shooting of Mark Duggan (who was shot by the police not because of misandry, but because of racism) not because of people being ”fed up with feminism.”
#GamerGate was, in fact, a misogynistic hate movement started by Zoe Quinn’s jealous ex-boyfriend, and it was attacking practically any vocal woman who had any dealings with the video game industry. Nobody besides gators saw it as a success, except perhaps in highlighting the enormous problem of misogyny within the so-called “gamer culture.”
Which is why feminists, clinging to the power that this provides them are so threatened by it. Because they know it’s significant. They know it’s a threat to their way of thinking. We are still early days. Feminist radical, LGBT radical early. We still haven’t organised. So early. But already you feel it, the momentum, and the compelling rational core behind the intelligent speakers.
Why react so viscerally, if you didn’t think it a threat? If it was irrelevant, you’d ignore it.
A sea change is coming, and you folks, will find yourselves on the wrong side of history.
Or if you don’t you’ll find yourself continueing to subjegate anyone that isn’t at the top of the feminist power base pecking order- and I am sure that plenty of other groups will be denied voice, or stripped of voice in that greedy power mad struggle.
Such pompous prose. Much wow. Unpacking all the wrong in that piece would take away from the hilarity, so let’s just sit here and admire the grandiose bullshit in its natural habitat.
Ok, a couple of things. Firstly, MRAs are not a socially radical movement. They are trying to push back progress, not advance it, just like Guy Fawkes in his time (which makes people admiring him as some sort of an anarchist icon completely ass-backwards). You’re siding with a movement that seeks to eliminate all the rights that minorities have gained over the last century.
Secondly, for the last time, feminists react strongly to sexism because feminism is primarily for women’s rights, against sexism. If you’re constantly being corrected by feminists, could it be that the things you say are consistently sexist? Because so far, I’d have to agree.
One last thing: Could you recommend any ”intelligent speakers”who align themselves with the MRM? Because so far, I haven’t found any. Throw in an example of the alleged “moderate” MRAs while you’re at it, thanks.
Pie
8 years ago
Does that still work among others with British accents?
Only if he sounds like Attenborough.
Rhuu
8 years ago
Thank you for pointing out Ordinary Women: Daring to Defy History! I donated, and passed on the link. A big regret of mine is that I saw the original kickstarter, meant to donate, and then forgot until after it was over. :C
At least I caught this one in time!
Rhuu
8 years ago
also @Anarchonist: HOLY CATS!! All the internet cookies to you, my eyes just glazed over as I read through that screed.
DepressedCNS
8 years ago
Violence for example, is not a gendered issue. Not in any credible direct study. If anything men are overwhelmingly the victims of violence.
How can you say violence is not gendered in one sentence and then in the very next sentence say violence disproportionately effects men? YOU just said it was a gendered issue!
Not in any credible study? citation needed here. If you look at the Bureau of Justice statistics you can see that the majority of homicides are men killing men (65.3%), followed by men killing women (22.7%), followed by women killing men (9.6%) and trailing is women killing women, extremely uncommon at only 2.4% of homicides. There are some very clear gender trends here.
I don’t know why I bother looking this up every time because no one who makes this claim (violence is not gendered) ever replies to me but here is the source http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf
isidore13
8 years ago
@depressedCNS, i think one of the big problems is, as soon as there is a study that points this out, it becomes not credible in the heads of people like this. It’s why they qualify it that way in my opinion; that way they can claim any study that disagrees with them is not credible.
Pie
8 years ago
they can claim any study that disagrees with them is not credible.
If you look at the “Homicide trends in the United States” paper, you’ll see that the statistician involed was a women. Misandry, everywhere!
It’s fascinating to look at librarianship in the context. Partially to look at the justifications:
“women shouldn’t be librarians because they’re too emotional and will fill the libraries with trashy novels rather than Important Works”
becomes
“women should be librarians because men are too emotional and will be easily corrupted by immoral works and women’s natural purity will prevent that”
becomes whatever it is now where the librarian/IT divide becomes increasingly blurry (I know one school librarian who ended up also becoming the “computer teacher” because budget cuts).
You also get the weirdness where librarianship is still predominantly a female profession but management positions are overwhelmingly held by men.
Speaking of jobs that are also vastly underpaid for the level of education they require…
DepressedCNS
8 years ago
@ Isidore13
If only those pesky numbers would stop getting in the way of what they believe is true!
Hambeast, Social Justice Legbeard
8 years ago
Wow! I haven’t seen such a big herd of teal deers around here in a long time! I hope Jamie is going to be back soon to clean up all the teal deer poop.
I have to get back to work (I’m at my dad’s still going to appointments and cleaning out the house) but I wanted to add this about teachers:
In my non-lamented former job cashiering at a national (U.S.) craft chain, I regularly saw parents buying supplies for various class projects which are mandated by the state. BTW, I live in a very white, upper middle class area and the parents tend to spend what I consider to be a LOT of money on said supplies. Most of them complained about this, even when I suggested that they use, say, cardboard instead of styrofoam since cardboard is, you know, free. Not only did they not take my advice, they kept complaining; frequently including teachers (who have no choice in giving these projects)!
I wish I had dared to tell them* of the many teachers who came into our store to buy BASIC SCHOOL SUPPLIES with their OWN MONEY!
*At the very least, I wish I’d had some knowledge of when I’d be quitting, so I could do that sort of thing without fearing for my job!
Skiriki
8 years ago
isidore13:
@depressedCNS, i think one of the big problems is, as soon as there is a study that points this out, it becomes not credible in the heads of people like this. It’s why they qualify it that way in my opinion; that way they can claim any study that disagrees with them is not credible.
I had a “hilarious” case of this in Yet Another Anti-Trans Debate.
Hambeast, Social Justice Legbeard | March 29, 2016 at 1:48 pm
I wish I had dared to tell them* of the many teachers who came into our store to buy BASIC SCHOOL SUPPLIES with their OWN MONEY!
*At the very least, I wish I’d had some knowledge of when I’d be quitting, so I could do that sort of thing without fearing for my job!
There are ways you could have casually dropped it into conversation. Like when they start to complain about how expensive it all is, just agree with them and say “I know! I talked to another person, and they were buying stuff for a whole class of kids they teach! Man, that must be expensive!”
[/waitressing experience and hindsight]
As for Jamie’s herd of teal dears: I would rather make up other shit to do (Not that I don’t have shit I’ve already said I’d do) than slog through that cesspool of bullshitted self-martyrdom. Cookies for the people who made a stab it though.
Women actually do just as well as men (some variation, but not significantly worse or better) in most STEM field coursework in college and graduate school. Women have steadily been receiving more master’s degrees and PhD’s in STEM fields as it’s become more socially acceptable for women to be scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. That’s mostly thanks to feminists challenging cultural attitudes.
The disparity comes in when you look at stuff like whether someone’s dissertation is considered especially impressive in his or her field or whether someone gets tenure at a “good” school. Men seem to have an advantage in those areas for a few different reasons, not just because women would rather take care of children than have an academic career. There can be a “boys’ club” environment in many departments, professors can unintentionally see more potential in male graduate students, male professors having abusive relationships with graduate students is common, etc.
littleknown
8 years ago
Ignoring the troll to thank Moocow for this:
If we didn’t exist in a patriarchal society, teachers and especially kindergarden teachers would get the same level of respect as doctors, scientists and engineers.
This, so much this. It has been amply demonstrated that increased funding for early childhood education (including even before kindergarten, which is generally unavailable for the working poor) is tightly linked to performance in elementary school, which is tightly linked to performance in middle school, etc., etc., etc.
When it comes to making a positive impact on a society and on an economy, there are few people who make more of a difference than those who teach children in their earliest years, and do it well. And yet there are few jobs that are less respected. The customers — the parents — don’t see the benefits, or lack thereof, for years (perhaps even a decade) down the road, so they don’t make the link. There is this general attitude that pre-school and kindergarten are just glorified daycare, and that those teachers are just caretakers until the kids are old enough for the “real” part of their educations.
The less money we spend funding the earliest years, and the more impossible we make the jobs for those teachers, the more we feel the weight of those decisions at every step along the way thereafter.
Spending real money on those years — to provide pre-school to all, to reduce class sizes at those ages, to hire better aides, to attract skilled and dedicated teachers, and to support them — pays back so much for every dollar spent that it’s not funny.
It really, really isn’t. And yet I fear that our society will never understand the source of the problem and have the political will to solve it. You can spend however many billions of dollars you want on STEM initiatives for middle and high school students, and it’s not going to do jack if the kids don’t come out of kindergarten well-socialized and liking and valuing school. Testing doesn’t solve anything, so long as every teacher has to do not only her job, but the job of the students’ previous teachers, because as a society we decided that teaching kindergarten is no more important than making sure that the kids don’t hurt themselves.
There’s a trend of wanting teachers to record solid data for each and every student at that age and develop more individualized instruction plans. This is fine — a public good, even — but to make it possible for someone dealing with 20 five-year-olds to do this, we need to: provide more planning time, reduce class sizes, provide better and more aides to implement the plans, and actually value that work and the skill it takes to do it. All of this (except for the last point) costs money.
(Unless, of course, you’re capable of taking a longer view of expenses and returns than quarterly or annual statements, and instead actually devote some time, energy, and analytical and mathematical skill to create and evaluate 10- and 15-year forecasts. Then, it’s cash money. But, hey, who’d want to put their STEM-friendly brains to work and actually do math that’s that difficult? Especially if it shows that a job that mostly women do is one of the most valuable jobs out there?)
/rant
Skiriki
8 years ago
I don’t have much time nor desire to chase teal deers, but I kind of found this thing very useful in pondering what dudes are doing to themselves when they cling to those toxic masculinity ideas: they are literally killing themselves with it.
1) What do you mean by “when men’s right’s occurs”? Th
The emancipation of men, when men are free of oppression – when they have equal rights with everyone else, legally and socially.
2) Please define “equal parenting rights” and how things are not equal right now?
That’s pretty simple. Women get preference on the birth cert, a man cannot get himself on there, women get favour in family courts over access, yes even today, women get unilateral choices to have children – that effect other people, such as parents paying child support, or tax payers paying benefits – and the women has no responsibility to those parties. At the moment, women control parental rights in virtually every way.
3) Same as 2) but for Equal sentencing, family courts, and education and so on.
Men get worse sentencing in court, for identical crimes. At the very same time, feminist groups are arguing for even lighter sentencing, and more legal advantages in many areas. This is because feminism, and society, has cast men as villans, and women as victims. No matter how exactly the same their actions are, men will be perceived as more culpable. And this despite the fact that violence, the platform of achieving a lot of this villany, is pretty gender symmetrical in most areas (like DV), and more weighted to men as victims in the broadest sense.
I think this is a pretty serious inequality myself.
I could go on. But if you are curious you can look to yourself the many areas where men are being verifiably disadvantaged. The science, and the numbers don’t lie, and they are there for everyone to research. Just don’t be surprised if they overturn the bad science misrepresentations you may have been fed by feminists.
I’m not right wing. I am all for equality for all. I’m completely opposed to the authoritarian state, or authorian agendas. I’m a liberal.
I just want men to be in the party, when the consideration of human rights and equality is being handed out. That doesn’t make me a bigot. It makes you a bigot if you think it makes me one.
Ah social views. i should have answered that. It’s a historical story. Karen Straughan sums this up better than I can.
Basically you had patriarchy. It existed back in the 1800s etc. It was like a lot of traditional arrangements, where marriage and soceity like everything else was an exchange.
Basically what feminism did was, it cut off every element of womens part of those deals, while preserving all of the male expectations. At the same time it villanized men as rapists, assaulters, murders, child molesters – to the point being a man next to a playground is the instant assumption of guilt, and any court will give you a bigger sentence than a women with the exact same crime.
The combination of those things lead to a situation where what remains of those social constructs is now perilessly held together by benefit systems. Women, on average take more money from the govt. Men, on average pay more taxes. So this serves, for now, in the place of the contract of marriage, supporting solo mums and so on.
Basically what we want to do, is undo the legal disadvantages and bigotry created by feminism, so men can be seen something even in a positive light, as men – and step out of the social contract that women stepped out of ages ago – in terms of our social definition as men as being ‘important only as useful to women and children’, as disposable tools if you will. So military service, labour, romantic chilvalry, and our general treatment of women as being better than how we treat men.
Because there is nothing but entitlement flowing back down what used to be an agreement, however archiac, there is no sense in our slavery to women in terms of giving and not getting in return. In other words, there is no compelling motivation to treat women that differently from men any more.
So, hopefully we are moving, at some point in the near future, towards true equality. That’s the rough story of it, basically it all finds its roots in feminism ideology, and the story they have told and been telling.
And that’s part of why they oppose us so violently – we are directly challenging their ideas – we are telling them they are wrong, and why, ideas that have been so shrouded in jargon, and tied up in guilt and fear, that no one has really questioned them much.
The more you watch these videos, and read these articles on MHRA – from the intelligent spokespeople. Especially harsh and rude, but clever vloggers like karen – the more that happens, genuinely the more risk there is you will convert to our way of thinking. We call it ‘the red pill’, waking up to reality, like the matrix. Coming out of a lie.
Yes, you’ll think us harsh, saying delibrately inflammatory things sometimes, trying to rile people up to show their true colours, and simplifying and exagerating issues for punctuation sometimes. You’ll find that like the early feminist movement, and the early LGBT movement, at this very early stage we are full of radical thinkers, including some yes, bigots (just like those other two movements have had, and do still have)
The difference between feminist and MHRA, is largely, simply that our ideas haven’t reached the megaphone yet. That’s why it’s easy to cast us as villans, as feminists once were and gay activists too. The story flips, once our message does reach the microphone. Once this dialogue is in every home, and on every lip. And thankfully this website is helping that happen.
Jamie, I have been a white male for more than four decades now, and let me tell you, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Wherever you look and by almost any metric or statistic, it works out to be great to start out life as a white male.
So that’s why I’ll never understand why so many white men like me are whining about how tough it is to be one.
I mean, what could have happened in their lives to make them feel so beset on every side by feminists, minorities, and the system, when in fact, said system is so stacked in our favor, it’s not even funny?
It’s just mind boggling, if you ask me.
My take is that these guys are simply a bunch of whiners that can’t accept that the answer to the question “Why I’m failing at life so hard?” is pretty obvious if they care to look into a mirror.
Another thing that baffles me about these guys is their definition of masculinity.
My dad’s 73.
He must be the poster boy for classic masculinity, he actually think women shouldn’t be trusted with positions of power because their emotional natures can’t handle it.
But, on the other hand, he was raised by my grandpa to be respectful, chivalrous towards women, and would never, ever, under any circumstance think it’s ok to hit a woman.
Why? Because according to classic masculinity, only unmanly cowards who don’t deserve to be called men insult or hurt women.
Oh yeah, to MRAs, calling women cunts and hitting them is gender equality.
And that’s one of the only feminism related things I’ll ever agree with my dad: MRAs are not real men.
They’re pussies.
They’re cowards.
They’re betas.
They fail so hard at being good providers, they live paranoid fantasies about evil women exploiting them.
They are so insecure about themselves they feel the need to bring women down.
Their balls and penises are so minute they don’t have the courage to face women, so they whine about pretty girls not dating.
So yeah, Jamie, I’m revoking your man card right now. 😀
?
I absolutely cannot dig through your entire wall of copy & paste (which is the whole point, I assume), but I got this far before I absolutely had to stop.
I know you’re not actually reading through this thread. You’re just here to drop your copypasta and move on. If you were actually participating in the conversation, not just pooping on it, you would have had the opportunity to read this excellent article that Skiriki linked earlier: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=0
The entire piece is worth reading, but here’s the relevant bit for you:
You’re just making shit up. Or I guess, whatever source you’ve lifted this from is just making shit up.
Edit: I skimmed and noticed that Jamie actually has quoted and responded to specific commenters. My mistake.
Jamie, are you Orange Tango Drinker? The love of Karen Straughn is pinging my radar a bit.
Anyway, you’ve Gish galloped too much for me to cover all of your points, so I’ll just address a couple of things. Contrary to what you seem to think, all of the MRA arguments on the evils of feminism have been seen, researched, and refuted hundreds if not thousands of times here. Telling us to look up the science is not going to cut it. You’re going to need actual sources if you want to be taken seriously.
It depends on what you mean by gendered issue. No feminists are actually saying that women are the only victims of violence. But, what MRAs always forget when they point out that men are more likely to be victims of violence is that men are a vast majority of the perpetrators of violence. For example, according to the FBI, 90% of homicides in the US are committed by men. Violence is a gendered issue. Just not in the way you think it is.
Now, this is a legitimate men’s issue and something you should focus on. Sadly, you can’t and won’t because you’re not interested in helping men. You’re interested in hating feminists. Feminism is in no way to blame for the fact that men commit more violence. So, instead of talking about actual solutions to this problem; such as encouraging men to react to negative emotions in a more constructive way. Or addressing poverty, the school to prison pipeline (that one’s admittedly US centric), and the military industrial complex/hawkish foreign policy and how they contribute to a culture of violence that is hurting men. These are problems largely cause by your fellow men though and what’s the fun of discussing something if there’s not a woman to blame?
I always love the breathtaking irony in MRA commentary about parental rights and responsibilities. You’re saying that fathers should be viewed as equal caretakers to the mothers and given, what? Equal custody? Primary custody? I don’t disagree at all that our culture should perceive fathers as nurturers and I don’t disagree that they should do approximately half of the child rearing work. But here’s your problem. In the very same paragraph that you’re arguing that men should get custody when parents split up, you’re also arguing that men should get to paper abort their children and not pay child support. You’re then going even farther and saying that their should be no publicly funded social welfare programs to keep children out of poverty.
So, which is it? You can’t have it both ways. Do you care about children and think fathers are nurturers just as much as mothers are? Or do you think children are hindrances to men’s freedom who should just starve to death if their father’s decide they don’t feel like caring for them.
Here’s the thing, the family court system’s job is figure out what is best for the child. It’s not about what suits the parent’s wants. I’m not saying the courts don’t ever mistakes in this regard. But the so called bias against fathers – while it may occur in some individual cases – is a myth. The reason mothers have primary custody so much more often is that fathers so rarely seek custody. When fathers seek primary custody, they more often than not get it.
Now, on to the paper abortion thing. The reason (cis) women have the right to terminate a pregnancy is that it’s her body that is the one gestating the fetus. That’s the only reason men don’t get a say. It’s about bodily autonomy, not gender. I only have a say about what lives in my uterus, not what happens in the uteri of others. Trans men who get pregnant have the right to abortion, no feminists believe they shouldn’t control their own uteri simply because they’re men. For someone who thinks trans people are going to start joining the MRM because feminists are so horrible, your views on reproductive rights are extremely cis-centric.
I’m sure you think it’s unfair that a man can get a woman pregnant and she can carry the pregnancy to term even if he doesn’t want to be a parent and be awarded child support. But here’s the thing, children don’t have control over whether or not they’re born and they can’t help having financial needs once they’re here. It probably isn’t fair that you can be a father when you don’t want to be. But life isn’t always fair. It’s also not fair for a woman when she gets pregnant, her partner tells her he wants the baby, and then he abandons her when the child is born and he discovers that parenthood carries a lot of obligations with it. But that happens all the time too!
If we’re not going to obligate fathers to pay for child support, what do you propose we do to care for children? It’s bad for individual children to grow up in poverty, but poverty is also a societal ill and we all have an interest in making sure kids are healthy, well fed, educated, and cared for. If they aren’t, the chances of them growing to be productive and well adjusted adults are diminished. The options are child support or an expanded welfare state. Pick one. If you pick the latter, your beef isn’t with feminists who are mostly for social safety nets and you should be working with us.
If the paper abortion is going to work out, there needs to be a living wage or universal basic income. There needs to be universal healthcare and free or cheap higher education available. We’ll need more subsidized childcare. Also, the paperwork for the financial abortion will have to be completed early in the pregnancy. Once the kid is born, there are no takesies backsies. A child isn’t a toy that can be tossed aside once you’re bored with it. They’re human beings with needs. I think paper abortions are actually something feminists could get behind if we could be certain the children are actually cared for.
Unfortunately, the MRA position on fatherhood seems to be all about what is in their best interests. No consideration for the actual children who are viewed as property by you.
Oh, and BTW most feminists are for paid paternity leave and support the right of families to have a stay at home dad, breadwinning mom arrangement if that’s what works best. But sure, keep telling yourself we all just men and want to make them pay for kids but never see them.
Reading Jamie’s incessant comments (talk about spamming the thread, dude) makes me realise that there is no group on earth quite as reality detached as masculinists. Their willingness to reject facts in favour of their fantasies is on par with anti-vaxxers, for fucks’ sake.
wwth
Well said.
Common-or-garden feminist here.
I oppose the draft for anybody. Oops! This would mainly benefit men!
I oppose FGM and MGM. FGM is more damaging in the vast, vast majority of cases, but they’re both completely unacceptable. Oops! In some countries, like the USA, this would mainly benefit men!
I support a universal basic income. Oh, sorry – while this would be enormously beneficial to men, it would benefit women even more because there are even more poor women – and they are on average even poorer – than poor men.
I support more and better mental healthcare – with outreach – for everybody. Oops! This would be of slightly greater benefit to men and boys, who are less likely to ask for help because of patriarchal gender roles.
I support prioritising rehabilitation over punishment and better conditions in prison for everybody. Oops! This would mainly benefit men!
I could go on, but I have to get back to work now what with having a living to earn for me and my family. Oops! I financially support two men!
I look forward to seeing MRA activism that actually focuses on helping men more than it does on vilifying women. I’m not holding my breath.
davidknewton
Does that still work among others with British accents?
@Jamie
Since WWTH made an excellent point-by-point post on the latter ”realities”, I’d just like to ask what crimes are not being equally sentenced? There’s a documented racist double standard for sentencings for white and non-white crime (such as drug possession, where white defendants systematically receive a lower sentence, if any at all, for the same crime), but I would like to know more about this supposed unequal sentencing based on gender. Do you have studies?
Besides, patronizing dismissal of women’s capability to make moral decisions is a product of a patriarchal society, not of feminists wanting special rights for women. I’d think that’s pretty obvious, considering that the idea has been around for far longer than feminism. It is a byproduct of women not being considered full humans.
Oh, yeah. This right here definitely proves you ‘re not here solely because you have an axe to grind with women’s rights. Nosirree.
Newsflash: Feminism does not control the media. Feminism is not capable of governmental propaganda. Feminists are still in the minority in public discourse. Attributing the supposed control of public discourse to a minority group sounds just a teeny weeny silly, does it not?
Are you serious right now? Tell me you aren’t serious. ”Gender symmetrical treatment” is not on the MRA to-do list. Have you ever actually read a single thing MRAs say? As luck would have it, David Futrelle happens to be quite an expert on the subject. Just type ”MRA” in the search bar on the right and start reading what actual, self-described MRAs have to say on the subject of equality. Go on, I’ll wait.
Also, nice slip of the ”we both want the same thing” mask at the end. Oooh, so close.
This is projection of the highest degree. Contrary what political conservatives such as MRAs say, not everyone is driven primarily by a lust for power, just they and people like them. What feminist has said that ”women are always victims, men always oppressors?” Have you ever read any actual feminist publications, or have you filtered everything through Men’s Right-vision goggles?
Wow. Just wow. Where to begin?
As was pointed out before, focusing solely on the victims of violence is convenient for anyone disinterested in understanding – and changing – power dynamics in our society. Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence, including against other men. In other words, even if your claim of men being in the majority of victims was true, blaming it on women would still make no sense, since they are not the primary cause of violence. Unlike you, feminists are actually interested in the subject of social programming and how to deprogram harmful beliefs, not in playing the blame game. Look up the concept of toxic masculinity and be on your way to understanding the everyday ideas that perpetuate the link between masculinity and violence in our society. Would it help if I shared the first question I had on my way to understanding gender issues? ”Why are men socially conditioned to act shitty towards both women and each other?” I trust you’ll find that train of thought enlightening.
As for your last point, now you’re not even trying. Are you seriously saying that being burdened with the majority of housework and other unpaid responsibilities around the house in addition to having a job is some kind of a privilege?
That is… stunningly stupid. I stand in awe before the utter inanity of this paragraph.
Do you really believe ”the pendulum swung too far” in the span of mere fifty years? Your ignorance of the pace of how long culturally ingrained ideas take to die out (and to be replaced by opposing beliefs) is frankly staggering.
Your feelings are important, but they are just that: feelings. They are not an objective truth supported by decades, even centuries of research. I’m a cishet man living in modern society, and I don’t feel anywhere near as you do. In fact, I think I have it pretty good, all things considered. All the bad things happening in my life right now can certainly be attributed to social forces, but none of those forces is the imaginary concept of ”misandry”. Gender does not factor in the hardships of men, just like race does not factor in the hardships faced by white people. Or sexuality in the hardships faced by straight people. And so on. Getting the picture?
Ah, the pretentious egalitarian’s version of ”not all men.” The fact that the majority of CEOs, politicians and other people in power are men is the result of social ideas of power and gender even if not all men hold those positions. A capitalist system, or any system built on power hierarchies can’t possibly include more than a handful of people in positions of power, despite the ridiculous bootstrap mentality far too many people believe in. I’m always wondering about this argument, though. Many MRAs subscribe to it, and it just seems so baffling to me. Are you suggesting that sexism isn’t real as long as there is one man in existence who has it worse in any way than any woman? Because that sounds enormously sexist to me.
Stop strawmanning feminists, who have been fighting since forever for women’s right to work in traditionally male-dominated fields. Seriously, you need to stop blaming women and feminists for men systematically keeping women out of certain occupations because it’s ”a man’s work”. Also, in my experience in male-dominated high-risk jobs, indifference to work regulations is a fairly frequent cause of injuries. Again, it’s toxic masculinity (and the misogyny inherent in the mindset) that’s causing men to believe that proper regulations are for women, and therefore beneath them. Also, as far as I know, the lowest-paying jobs today are in the service industry, not coal mining or somesuch.
Congratulations, you’ve discovered classism. But just like the example about violence, it still doesn’t explain away the fact that most of the perpetrators of an unfair capitalist system are men, by virtue of being in positions of power. Gender has fuck all to do with men who are suffering because of capitalism.
Wow. The projection is truly a wonder to behold. So close to getting it, and yet so far…
MRAs are not treated identically to feminists. If the ridicule MRAs face for having such ridiculous, backwards ideas is, in your mind, identical to the rape and death threats and actual violence that feminists face every time they suggest we should reconsider harmful ideas about gender, then you really are a lost cause. Anyway, where are the ”moderate” MRAs? I have yet to see even one.
And *sigh* to your belief that men have fewer rights than women. You are truly ignorant of anything outside MRM echochambers.
Notice that you don’t care about fixing problems within movements, just stopping all discourse? That’s a very typical MRA trait: ”No problems here, since everyone gets shit! Now let’s sit around, whine and not get anything done!” Not really a movement deserving of the ‘activist’ label, don’t you think?
Stop talking about free speech. Someone criticizing you for your inane ideas is not censoring you. It takes a government to silence you to make it censorship, and, as pointed out before, feminists don’t have anywhere near the political power to make that happen even if they for some reason wanted to.
Umm… What events in Japan, exactly? If you’re talking about the 2011 UK riots, they were a consequence of the shooting of Mark Duggan (who was shot by the police not because of misandry, but because of racism) not because of people being ”fed up with feminism.”
#GamerGate was, in fact, a misogynistic hate movement started by Zoe Quinn’s jealous ex-boyfriend, and it was attacking practically any vocal woman who had any dealings with the video game industry. Nobody besides gators saw it as a success, except perhaps in highlighting the enormous problem of misogyny within the so-called “gamer culture.”
Such pompous prose. Much wow. Unpacking all the wrong in that piece would take away from the hilarity, so let’s just sit here and admire the grandiose bullshit in its natural habitat.
Ok, a couple of things. Firstly, MRAs are not a socially radical movement. They are trying to push back progress, not advance it, just like Guy Fawkes in his time (which makes people admiring him as some sort of an anarchist icon completely ass-backwards). You’re siding with a movement that seeks to eliminate all the rights that minorities have gained over the last century.
Secondly, for the last time, feminists react strongly to sexism because feminism is primarily for women’s rights, against sexism. If you’re constantly being corrected by feminists, could it be that the things you say are consistently sexist? Because so far, I’d have to agree.
One last thing: Could you recommend any ”intelligent speakers”who align themselves with the MRM? Because so far, I haven’t found any. Throw in an example of the alleged “moderate” MRAs while you’re at it, thanks.
Only if he sounds like Attenborough.
Thank you for pointing out Ordinary Women: Daring to Defy History! I donated, and passed on the link. A big regret of mine is that I saw the original kickstarter, meant to donate, and then forgot until after it was over. :C
At least I caught this one in time!
also @Anarchonist: HOLY CATS!! All the internet cookies to you, my eyes just glazed over as I read through that screed.
How can you say violence is not gendered in one sentence and then in the very next sentence say violence disproportionately effects men? YOU just said it was a gendered issue!
Not in any credible study? citation needed here. If you look at the Bureau of Justice statistics you can see that the majority of homicides are men killing men (65.3%), followed by men killing women (22.7%), followed by women killing men (9.6%) and trailing is women killing women, extremely uncommon at only 2.4% of homicides. There are some very clear gender trends here.
I don’t know why I bother looking this up every time because no one who makes this claim (violence is not gendered) ever replies to me but here is the source http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htius.pdf
@depressedCNS, i think one of the big problems is, as soon as there is a study that points this out, it becomes not credible in the heads of people like this. It’s why they qualify it that way in my opinion; that way they can claim any study that disagrees with them is not credible.
If you look at the “Homicide trends in the United States” paper, you’ll see that the statistician involed was a women. Misandry, everywhere!
re: gender balance by profession
It’s fascinating to look at librarianship in the context. Partially to look at the justifications:
“women shouldn’t be librarians because they’re too emotional and will fill the libraries with trashy novels rather than Important Works”
becomes
“women should be librarians because men are too emotional and will be easily corrupted by immoral works and women’s natural purity will prevent that”
becomes whatever it is now where the librarian/IT divide becomes increasingly blurry (I know one school librarian who ended up also becoming the “computer teacher” because budget cuts).
You also get the weirdness where librarianship is still predominantly a female profession but management positions are overwhelmingly held by men.
Speaking of jobs that are also vastly underpaid for the level of education they require…
@ Isidore13
If only those pesky numbers would stop getting in the way of what they believe is true!
Wow! I haven’t seen such a big herd of teal deers around here in a long time! I hope Jamie is going to be back soon to clean up all the teal deer poop.
I have to get back to work (I’m at my dad’s still going to appointments and cleaning out the house) but I wanted to add this about teachers:
In my non-lamented former job cashiering at a national (U.S.) craft chain, I regularly saw parents buying supplies for various class projects which are mandated by the state. BTW, I live in a very white, upper middle class area and the parents tend to spend what I consider to be a LOT of money on said supplies. Most of them complained about this, even when I suggested that they use, say, cardboard instead of styrofoam since cardboard is, you know, free. Not only did they not take my advice, they kept complaining; frequently including teachers (who have no choice in giving these projects)!
I wish I had dared to tell them* of the many teachers who came into our store to buy BASIC SCHOOL SUPPLIES with their OWN MONEY!
*At the very least, I wish I’d had some knowledge of when I’d be quitting, so I could do that sort of thing without fearing for my job!
isidore13:
I had a “hilarious” case of this in Yet Another Anti-Trans Debate.
Original poster goes on about “there being only two sexes”, I disagree, and I link to an article at Nature.
“Oh damn, Nature has gone downhill and is bowing down to SJWs, what happened to it, it used to be so good and factual.”
…yeah, you sure know this thing better than people researching this stuff, don’t you.
Aris Boch before getting banned: “I don’t care if I’m banned! In fact, I dare you to get me banned! If I’m banned, I win!”
Aris Boch after getting banned: *spams every thread with more identical sockpuppets than I care to count*
Such a sore loser.
There are ways you could have casually dropped it into conversation. Like when they start to complain about how expensive it all is, just agree with them and say “I know! I talked to another person, and they were buying stuff for a whole class of kids they teach! Man, that must be expensive!”
[/waitressing experience and hindsight]
As for Jamie’s herd of teal dears: I would rather make up other shit to do (Not that I don’t have shit I’ve already said I’d do) than slog through that cesspool of bullshitted self-martyrdom. Cookies for the people who made a stab it though.
Women actually do just as well as men (some variation, but not significantly worse or better) in most STEM field coursework in college and graduate school. Women have steadily been receiving more master’s degrees and PhD’s in STEM fields as it’s become more socially acceptable for women to be scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. That’s mostly thanks to feminists challenging cultural attitudes.
The disparity comes in when you look at stuff like whether someone’s dissertation is considered especially impressive in his or her field or whether someone gets tenure at a “good” school. Men seem to have an advantage in those areas for a few different reasons, not just because women would rather take care of children than have an academic career. There can be a “boys’ club” environment in many departments, professors can unintentionally see more potential in male graduate students, male professors having abusive relationships with graduate students is common, etc.
Ignoring the troll to thank Moocow for this:
This, so much this. It has been amply demonstrated that increased funding for early childhood education (including even before kindergarten, which is generally unavailable for the working poor) is tightly linked to performance in elementary school, which is tightly linked to performance in middle school, etc., etc., etc.
When it comes to making a positive impact on a society and on an economy, there are few people who make more of a difference than those who teach children in their earliest years, and do it well. And yet there are few jobs that are less respected. The customers — the parents — don’t see the benefits, or lack thereof, for years (perhaps even a decade) down the road, so they don’t make the link. There is this general attitude that pre-school and kindergarten are just glorified daycare, and that those teachers are just caretakers until the kids are old enough for the “real” part of their educations.
The less money we spend funding the earliest years, and the more impossible we make the jobs for those teachers, the more we feel the weight of those decisions at every step along the way thereafter.
Spending real money on those years — to provide pre-school to all, to reduce class sizes at those ages, to hire better aides, to attract skilled and dedicated teachers, and to support them — pays back so much for every dollar spent that it’s not funny.
It really, really isn’t. And yet I fear that our society will never understand the source of the problem and have the political will to solve it. You can spend however many billions of dollars you want on STEM initiatives for middle and high school students, and it’s not going to do jack if the kids don’t come out of kindergarten well-socialized and liking and valuing school. Testing doesn’t solve anything, so long as every teacher has to do not only her job, but the job of the students’ previous teachers, because as a society we decided that teaching kindergarten is no more important than making sure that the kids don’t hurt themselves.
There’s a trend of wanting teachers to record solid data for each and every student at that age and develop more individualized instruction plans. This is fine — a public good, even — but to make it possible for someone dealing with 20 five-year-olds to do this, we need to: provide more planning time, reduce class sizes, provide better and more aides to implement the plans, and actually value that work and the skill it takes to do it. All of this (except for the last point) costs money.
(Unless, of course, you’re capable of taking a longer view of expenses and returns than quarterly or annual statements, and instead actually devote some time, energy, and analytical and mathematical skill to create and evaluate 10- and 15-year forecasts. Then, it’s cash money. But, hey, who’d want to put their STEM-friendly brains to work and actually do math that’s that difficult? Especially if it shows that a job that mostly women do is one of the most valuable jobs out there?)
/rant
I don’t have much time nor desire to chase teal deers, but I kind of found this thing very useful in pondering what dudes are doing to themselves when they cling to those toxic masculinity ideas: they are literally killing themselves with it.