Over on the technically still alive Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men, our old friend August Løvenskiolds deposits a piece of “political analysis” that is so completely contrary to fact and logic and basic historical understanding that we might call it a Wrongness Onion — no matter how many layers of wrongness you pull off of it, there are still more layers lurking underneath.
Also, it stinks, and might make you cry, though mostly out of embarrassment for Mr. Løvenskiolds, also known in these parts as McLøvenskiolds.
Near the beginning of a post titled “How will Nominee Trump pander to women?” but which in fact argues that “Nominee Trump” won’t “pander to women,” McLøvenskiolds drops this onion:
Women are 52% of voters, and so technically women control the outcome of all elections in ways that men do not: should women desire it, no man could ever win elective office.
In Imaginary Hypothetical Land, I suppose. In the real world, even though women do make up the majority of voters — both because women slightly outnumber men in the US, and because women are more likely to vote — women don’t vote, and never have voted, as a bloc. Neither do any other large demographic groups.
Also, as is clear to any political observer who does not have their head up their posterior, there is a lot more to politics than the gender ratio of voters. Women may slightly outnumber men, but the overall power structure, in the US and around the world, is heavily dominated by men, Men control the party apparatus of both major parties in the US; wealthy men (and groups of mostly men) skew election results by pumping money into the system to cover ads and other expenses.
I could go on and on about this one sentence from McLøvenskiolds, but like I said, this thing is an onion.
And we haven’t even gotten to the best bit. Let’s continue:
Men cannot control elections in the same way because men as a class are not the majority of voters.
Men “are not the majority of voters” in part because individual men are less likely to vote than women. If men started voting in higher proportion than women, they could easily become the majority of voters.
Also, all the stuff I said above. Political life in the US is so heavily dominated by men that men can opt out of voting and still expect men as a class to get more than their fair share of power.
So far, so bad. But it’s at this point that McLøvenskiolds sets forth his most, well, unique perspective on human history:
That’s right, feminists: your alleged “patriarchy” was created and maintained by the female electorate. Everything elected officials do is the responsibility of women as a class, not men. It is all YOUR fault, not men.
Er, dude, the patriarchy has been around for literally thousands of years. Historian Gerda Lerner’s celebrated The Creation of Patriarchy argues that the mixture of legal subordination and lopsided social power that we now call patriarchy developed “over a period of nearly 2500 years, from app. 3100 to 600 b.c.”
Women in the US got the vote less than a hundred years ago. They only became the majority of voters in presidential elections in the US in 1980.
Yes, women were involved in the creation of patriarchy — as Lerner notes, elite women benefitted from it in various ways, thought obviously less than their male counterparts — but unless there was some gigantic rift in space-time that sent modern American women back to the ancient Near East that I’ve never heard about, women didn’t vote patriarchy in.
Demonstrating an understanding of politics as keen as his understanding of history, McLøvenskiolds goes on to suggest that Trump might get a bump in the polls if he were to pick Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as his veep.
She is a successful author and businessperson like Trump himself; Trump and the recently widowed Sandberg would make a formidable pair that would make progressives like [nickname of college student currently being harassed by MRAs and other terrible people deleted by DF] fling her toddler arms so fiercely they would surely fly off her well-marbled torso.
And that whole “widow” thing puts her over the top!
Asking a recent widow to be his running mate would strike a chord of sympathy with women that would ring on for months. It would be a masterstroke worthy of The Donald.
Never mind that Sandberg is a feminist and a longtime donor to Democratic causes who supports Hillary Clinton.
Also, Trump would probably have to apologize for this:
Just watched Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on 60 Minutes. She should spend more time trying to get the F stock price up & less on her ego!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2013
You see what I mean by that Wrongness Onion thing?
EDITED TO ADD:
Here’s how AVFM teased McL’s post on its main page:
Concur? Do they mean “conquer?”
And, no, AVFMers, women are only “the leisure class” in your delusional minds.
Who the hell “edits” these things?
Except for hundreds of years of not having voting rights, or general rights equal to a white voter until around the mass civil movements and still not having a situation where the ratio of men and women in power is 1 to 1.
The irony in Trump’s statement is astounding, considering that he won’t release his liability financial papers and how his companies are run into the ground for his quick bucks.
Also I’d like to shill for this person, doing good work in taking down the pseudo intellectual windbag Sargon.
I wish there was more people knocking him down a peg.
Another little-known fact: Colonel Sanders was really a chicken in disguise.
It’s true, I tell you!!! Prove me wrong.
I still prefer “fractally wrong” for the concept but “wrongness onion” ain’t bad
@Judas Peckerwood
Colonel Sanders is a race traitor who sends his people to the chopping blocks and the oil grills for Corporatism at the expense of poultyism.
I agree that Trump should pick a female running mate, and I think the odds of this actually happening in reality are reasonably high. But I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t, and no running mate currently alive will substantially improve his numbers.
Them’s fightin’ words.
http://i.imgur.com/bNcm9RG.png
FiveThirtyEight.com had this article:
What Fiorina has in common with Palin and Ferraro other than gender.
If you don’t want to read the whole article, here’s the gist:
It’s not always possible for the electorate to find a candidate to their liking in practice; to claim women ‘vote for patriarchy’ is to ignore the flaws of purist representative democracy.
@brooked
That just confirmed my suspicions, whelp. It’s kind of funny cause when you point out the same for minorities and their disenfranchisement they put their heads in the pit and claim that it either never happened or the problem is gone lalala.
Same old whining, same old strawmen same old ass-derived facts, same old crappy arguments, same old misogyny, same old shoddy writing. No wonder the old style MRAs have fallen out of flavor.
Yaaaaaawn.
http://i374.photobucket.com/albums/oo188/dhag85/Mobile%20Uploads/20160508_013734_zpsc5c0c10k.jpg
thank you for sharing, OoglyBoggles! Good takedown of Sargon, that. I’ve considered making some youtube videos as well, but I can’t bear to watch their horrible, horrible videos.
Hi David:
Love your website. This is the first time I have posted. Just a few thoughts.
I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying the uh brilliant rhetoric of the gentleman in question until I read your piece. What depth, what insight, what bullshit! I mean, does he really, really not understand that women couldn’t even vote (in every state) until 1920? I understand that the MRA community tends to turn its collective nose up at anything that even hints of womens’ history, but this is also social history and political history. All you have to do is take a minute to google it dude.
Also love the Sheryl Sandberg VP suggestion. Yeah, having her on the ticket would definitely make me forget any petty objections I might have to Donald Trump. And should I still have reservations the fact that she’s a widow would win me over because everyone knows that women vote on emotions rather than logic and facts. So says the ultra logical and rational August Lovenskiolds.
In regards to the June 30, 2013 tweet, The Donald chastising someone else for egotism is well, mind blowing!
Love the the cat, dog, goat, alpaca, well all animal pictures! Pleas keep posting them.
Yes because women are responsible for every evil in the world. Hence Pandora’s box…… Which is a made up story. Its just years and years of the bigger bully getting their way, which involves trampling the masses!
Oh and on a totally different subject due to recent articles read. Why aren’t periods made fun of or even acknowledged in comedies? Its really annoying as pooping is referenced alot in pg settings and not periods. Its just as natural! (Plus I got a hell of comedy material for it.) I just want it to be talked about in any setting. (I am a woman so I got the experience)
Why do wankers, especially from dead sites, always feel this distressing need to
I also just love that this argument can be boiled down to “You outnumber the people in groups more powerful than you, therefore that power rests with those groups by your consent.” Why haven’t women voted all men out of office? Why hasn’t the populace overthrown a genocidal dictator? Why haven’t insects wiped out humankind? It must be because they all want things exactly how they are. Checkmate, feminists!
Thanks for posting that video, OoglyBoggles! I really enjoyed watching that. It’s always nice to re-affirm that I’m definitely not alone in thinking that Sargon and his ilk are full of self-important crap.
Isn’t that their argument for a lot of things though? Feminists object to thing, but thing exists, and since we’re all part of a government conspiracy hivemind, therefore it must be because we want it, but we said we didn’t, so it’s part of some kind of conspiracy!
The idea that any of these people know what’s going on in my head (or in our Secret Feminist Hivemind) is laughable.
Maybe they should stop talking to ye olde Straw Feminists and sit down with some living, breathing ones. Of course, that would require someone from our side to actually want to sit down with them.
Hi 14 Cats And Counting! Your username is hilarious.
Ya know, a lot of people go to the polls to vote against a candidate, or more often, “for” the less terrible of 2 candidates. The available options are heavily filtered, by education, background, career choice, finances, opportunity, and the parties themselves. It’s rare that a candidate is going to match your ideal platform 100%. Politics just isn’t that black-and-white. Candidates don’t run on a single issue, unless they’re cranks. Where does he get the idea that women go to the voting booth and find Patriarchy: Yes or No? written on the ballot? Or that majority candidates always win? (See: Al Gore, 2000; Idiot Tea Party Governor Of My State, Elected Twice With 31% Of The Vote)
I love how these guys complain bitterly about the side effects of patriarchy (paying for dinners, the draft) and then act like women are to blame for the whole system. “If it weren’t for you meddling females, we wouldn’t have to oppress and compete all the time! Stop making us do this!” Dudes, this is YOUR SYSTEM. You invented it, you own it, and if you don’t like it, feel free to join the rest of us in adjusting it to better suit the modern world, instead of trying to pretend women are behind it. It’s as transparent as “Stop hitting yourself!”, but a good deal less mature.
That’s funny, because for all but the last 100 years or so, women have not even been allowed to vote! And in that time, the patriarchy not only became well established, it fucking FLOURISHED. And the fact that it did so was the doing of none other than men. As is the fact that we still don’t get any real choice between patriarchy and not-patriarchy. We are raised and educated in patriarchal systems, and whether we know (and like) it or not, we make our choices within a patriarchal framework. We can’t escape it, no matter what proportion of the voting population we may be. We may have female candidates, but whether they are all (or even many) of them good for women is highly debatable. And voting for them hasn’t brought equality. Maggie Thatcher? Kim Campbell? Sarah Palin? Non- (or anti-) feminist woman of your choice? What are they if not patriarchs in skirts?
Don’t fucking yank my chain, dude, I did not vote for patriarchy, because it was never even explicitly listed on the goddamn ballot. And if it were listed — along with a tangible alternative — I know which way I would vote!
(Fucking victim blamers. Idiots all.)
WTF does this even mean? Can anyone parse?
Meanwhile, I’m pleased to see that the real hero of the Pankhurst family of suffragists is getting some semblance of her due:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/06/sylvia-pankhurst-honoured-at-last
She’s the one, incidentally, who OPPOSED World War I, and was an actual socialist whose feminism didn’t get compromised by expediency. In contrast to her mother and sister, who got dragooned into the whole white-feather bullshit (which was the brainchild of a general, A MAN), impugning the masculinity of men who refused to fight, were needed at home, or were physically unable to go in the first place.
(I mention this because isn’t war-conscription of males a pet peeve of A Voice For Petulant Little Men?)
Ah yes I’ll just vote for the non-patriarchy candidate.
Also I love the implication that such a running mate would work because women “vote on emotions” and would fall over for a widowed woman when they are talking about VOTING FOR DRUMPF!
A candidate free of facts and running purely on emotion.
Men are so logical.
@Bina
It means she’s fat.
@Oogly
Oooooh, Oogly, that vídeo is gorgeous, thank you.
By the way, I REALLY appreciate receiving good, convincing vídeos of people answering to Sargon or Tfart or the likes, since, as some of you know, the guy I happen to love enjoys watching that bulshit and finds it hilarious. And before I receive this advice again, yes, I have considered a break up, but he is making very good progress, and I appreciate and admire him in all the other fields of life, the only problem is he is completely blind to social issues, and I am willing to try.
And as their vídeos are horribly long, I can’t UNDERSTAND what they are saying and their tone make me sick, I can’t do it myself, nor have the patience to find a good response among the tons of them. So please, I really appreciate receiving some pearls as this, both for humor and, uhm, educational (?) purposes, either at this comment section or at pchiomara@gmail.
thank you thank you thank you!
I have tried to explain this SO MANY EFFIN TIMES.
this isnt a damn preschool class president election, its not perfectly representative and un-corrupt and simple, its complicated and MEN HAVE MOST OF THE MONEY AND STATUS.
People want to act like the second the last black woman got full voting rights in less than 50 years ago, every oppressed person was handed a million dollars and every bigot had his memory wiped. They think that because they’ve been alive for a whole 25 years that’s a super long time. They also believe thst things like melanin and estrogen effect things like intelligence & that being born a white cis het dude does make them naturally better in all ways. They want everythign both ways, they want to abandon reason and evidence and yet be considered brilliant and right. augh. eck. auck. yuck etc
Donald Trump Calls Hillary Clinton ‘Nasty, Mean Enabler’ of Husband’s Affairs
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/trump-calls-clinton-nasty-enabler-of-affairs.html
Also:
He’s working hard to improve his image with women.
@Chiomara
I’m glad to help : D, hope your boyfriend continues on his path to being more socially aware.
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina
Now, the big question is, would he actually? I mean doing so would completely destroy his loyal base, who strangely enough after he said he didn’t want raised wages, went back was okay with raised wages. And he still has his loyal base of populist middle class bigots. So I wonder if it would he would even attempt it. Because even the alt right and anime nazis even would concede at points to get women supporters into their movement.
Now here’s my theory, now what he said is pretty much reaffirming the beliefs of his fanbase, his opponent weak he strong. This narrative in the voters mind also sees things in black and white, this meaning no faults or ability to see hypocrisy. If he would do so, he’d probably espouse things such as maternal leave or backpedal on abortion or something like that. Things specifically that promote and propagate the 50’s household waif. That would be the extent of what he can do with the parameters of bigotry con he set for himself.
Any further would result in the death of his voter’s base trust in him and the collective hate from the corporatists, progressive and conservative parties would ensure a high turnout and his demise.