So the execrable Andrea Hardie — Twitter abuser, violence-threatener, Canada-embarrasser — has been pondering a deep philosophical conundrum: “Do some women benefit from being slapped around?”
If you have even the slightest familiarity with Hardie — known on the internet as JudgyBitch and/or Janet Bloomfield — you probably won’t be shocked to discover that her answer is yes.
You might be a little surprised that she considers herself, at least hypothetically, one of these women.
“There are all kinds of reasons I don’t cheat on my husband,” she explains, “but an important one is that I assume he would beat the sh*t out of me if I ever did. And I would bloody well deserve it.”
While Hardie insists that her husband “has never hit me in any context that wasn’t erotic and consensual” or even acted in a threatening manner towards her, she tells her readers that she “very much assume[s] that he would, and further, that in certain situations, he should.”
Cheating on her husband would be one of these “certain situations.” Being “disrespectful” of him in front of other people would be another. As she explains:
There are many things I would simply never dream of doing to my husband, because I assume I would get a slap or worse, if I did. All of those things are linked to respect. To be clear: all of this comes from me. Tim has never said “Don’t ever think of doing x because I will hit you.” … I just feel that he would, and he would be perfectly justified in doing so. There are a multitude of reasons I wouldn’t be disrespectful of my husband, especially in public. The possibility of taking a well-earned beating just happens to be one of them.
But unfortunately, Hardie claims, not all women are as well-behaved as she is.
I don’t go around inviting my husband to slap me by screaming at him in public or humiliating him by flirting with other men. But lots of women do. How much of domestic violence is caused by women pushing men into hitting them because that level of domination is familiar, and in a f*cked up way, deeply erotic for the women?
Yep, she went there, conflating consensual kink with men “beating the sh*t” out of women to punish them for their “disrespect.”
“[S]ome women do benefit from being slapped around,” Hardie concludes. “Some women crave it.”
She isn’t the only MRA who has tried to erase or complicate the clear distinction between consensual BDSM and domestic abuse. Youtube bloviater Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan has suggested that many abused women “demand” their abuse, which Straughan thinks can lead to “scorching” sex. Anti-domestic-violence crusader turned domestic-violence apologist Erin Pizzey describes situations in which both partners are violent as “consensual violence.”
It’s not hard to tell the difference between violence in, say, sports and violence in real life — hitting someone in the face is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, if you’re a professional boxer in the middle of a boxing match; it’s not acceptable to just go down the street punching random people who annoy you.
So is it really that hard for Hardie and other MRAs to tell the difference between, say, consensual spanking and “beating the sh^t” out of your partner? I don’t think it is. As you may recall, Hardie made clear early in her post that she understands this distinction quite well, telling us that her husband “has never hit me in any context that wasn’t erotic and consensual.”
The point of this phony “confusion” between consensual kink and domestic violence is to support an old victim-blaming narrative in which male violence is considered an excusable response to deliberate provocation from women who, in many cases, secretly love being beaten.
“For lots of women, submission to a violent man is a bonding experience,” Hardie writes.
[I]t’s incontrovertible that many women find violence erotic and even comforting. How many women feel this way, but have no way to articulate it, and thus end up provoking violence that can easily get out of hand?
Even more perversely, Hardie goes on to suggest that, when things do get “out of hand,” the abusive men are also somehow victims of the abuse they themselves inflict on their female partners.
Sure, Hardie says, women “may provoke more violence and anger than they intend, and thus end up getting really hurt.”
But men suffer as well, she writes, from being “provoked” into inflicting “violence [that goes] well beyond what is beneficial or wanted.”
Should men be punished when they’re “provoked” into beating their partners? I doubt it will come as much of a shock to discover that Hardie says “no.”
Oh, hitting women should still be illegal, she says. But, she insists, female “provocation” should be seen as “a mitigating factor … [e]ven to the point that provocation results in dismissed charges.”
How much “provocation” would be required to dismiss charges against a man who pummeled his wife so badly that he broke her nose and knocked out some teeth? Could this be considered a justified response to her cheating on him? To her flirting with other men in public? For her being late with dinner two nights in a row?
Hardie’s “logic” here is the same logic abusers themselves use to justify their abuse, spiced up a little with disingenuous references to kink.
Men who punch women for being “disrespectful” towards them don’t deserve that respect. Neither do the women who excuse this abuse.
@dust bunny
I’m so sorry he’s so difficult and I don’t envy you that task, but first let me say you’re doing something very brave and noble. 😀 wwth and Snork are quite right to recommend the stats, but I would bet your strongest appeal is actually going to be you yourself. He knows you and obviously cares about you, and knowing and caring about someone in a marginalised group is maybe the most powerful point of entry to thinking about inequality. If you’re comfortable and think he might respond well to it, don’t hesitate to tell him about times you or someone else he loves was hurt by sexism, and how it feels to be treated that way. The studies will then help you show him those weren’t isolated incidents. And I’d definitely recommend the YouTube videos of Laci Green; she explains things clearly, concisely, cheerfully, and without anger or judgement, which might help ease in someone with defensive hang-ups about feminism or impatience for long reads. And she often links good sources. Good luck!!
@Psyker01 @weirwoodtreehugger
Ooh, yes, “Cool Girls” is one of my favourite rant topics! 😀 Thank you! Sorry it’s gonna be long.
I’ve struggled with Cool Girlitis since childhood, as I’m sure many of us have. As soon as you realise that as a girl you’re inevitably going to be demeaned and sexualised in one way or another, it’s a lot easier to proverbially join them than beat them. To try to elevate yourself above other girls instead of trying to elevate the entirety of girlhood. It took years for me to convince myself that all those little moments when my instincts shouted that something was wrong weren’t just the manifestation of my personal failings at being sexy or secure or skilled enough.
I thought if a lot of boys liked something, even if it made my stomach churn, it was cool, and I was wrong to be uncomfortable about it, much less complain about it. I would sometimes complain anyway and my brother would call me “hypersensitive” and then I’d have a self-doubting rage stroke. I channeled my discomfort with sexism into snarky jokes, often at the expense of “those other” women (popular, fuckable, consumable, obliging, everything that I resented being compared against for a complex web of reasons). People sometimes complain that it’s hard to fit in as a nerdy boy, but I was bending over backwards as a nerdy girl to prove to my nerdy male friend group how cool and tough and thick-skinned and “legit” nerd I was.
It definitely fucks with your empathy with other women. Before my feminist awakening I gave only half-assed support to female friends who had been raped on two separate occasions, and judged them for their “overreactions” behind their backs. Underneath the surface I felt a smug superiority over my more conventionally styled female friends. I still have to consciously fight against that sometimes. I thought it was a super clever joke to call Yuna from Final Fantasy X the “sluttiest character in the game” because she kisses/gets kissed by two different men (and also one of those kisses is without consent as part of a forced marriage to a dead guy). And of course I made all sorts of run-of-the-mill comments about female characters’ “annoying voices” and went on hate sites for Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears and Relena (Gundam Wing). I wouldn’t have known to call what I was doing woman-hating. I thought I was just hating that OTHER kind of (straw) woman, the kind I didn’t want to be like, the kind I wanted to prove not all women were. I thought I was being fair by holding women to “my” standards. I didn’t realise that “my” standards didn’t just come from my head.
I constantly felt in danger of being exposed as some sort of fraud, and had identity crises fearing that if my interests were gendered male, then maybe I didn’t really like video games or science or LEGOs at all and was just fooling and denying myself (never mind that all those things are inherently fun for any gender). Every time a Manospherian says that women don’t have any real hobbies or interests I still feel a little self-doubting pang, even though I know intellectually that I wouldn’t staff at a game convention and listen to so much StarTalk and be in three fucking music groups if that were true. I also still do a lot of posturing and try to act nonchalant when I’m in a male-dominated space and feel that stereotype threat coming on. It’s an ongoing struggle not to devalue myself and other women, but I’m worlds better off for being aware of it and having a place to talk about it (thanks, feminist Internet!!). Any of you have a similar story?
Ultimately it ends up isolating women from peers who might have helped them unlearn a bit of the sexist garbage. It’s the classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin dilemma. That’s why even though “Cool Girls” are often on the wrong side of really important issues, we’re all coping in some way and I can’t hate them for coping the way they cope. But there are antidotes, best described by cheesy second-wave terms that we really need to bring back. (Hooray for sisterhood! And solidarity with trans and non-binary siblings!)
Perhaps Zoe Quinn’s talk at XOXO 2015 articulates it best. She’s remarkably sympathetic towards gater idiots, since she imagines that if it “had happened several years ago and to somebody else,” she might have been one of them. Her personal Cool Girl history was really compelling for me:
https://youtu.be/vAcdKTXtx1k (from about 5:00)
Related: Female Chauvinist Pigs (Ariel Levy) – women who objectify other women and themselves in a specific, heterocentric, “raunch” way. The book arguably has some slut-shamey weirdness and I can’t speak to how accurate the representations of lesbian communities are, but it’s mostly awesome and definitely worth reading. It’s where I first learned what an asshole Camille Paglia is.
Also related: Postfeminism. Can be defined in several ways, among them the belief that feminism has already succeeded and therefore any current feminist efforts are excessive. Often associated with “shopping and beauty are empowerment” kind of shit. If you’d like a nice deep academic introduction, go for Rosalind Gill’s and Christina Scharff’s “New femininities: postfeminism, neoliberalism, and subjectivity.” 🙂
@Inkswitch Award for best gif. XD
Thank you, everyone! I didn’t even realise asking for advice here would also help by making me feel supported and give me faith that I’ll be able to handle it somehow <: as glad I am I have this chance to influence dad, it's also a difficult challenge and it's putting a lot of pressure on me. I don't really have anything to lose, but it doesn't feel like that for some reason.
@ wwth, Snork Maiden, Scildfreja re: stats
Sadly, the problem with statistics is that they're just data, and facts are just facts. The real work is in showing they should be interpreted in a certain way. He's very suspicious of "leftist academics", in particular the social sciences, so just pointing to a consensus in a field isn't going to weigh much. It's easy to come up with interpretations for any data that don't point to patriarchy, or that point to some aspect of patriarchy but deny it's patriarchy or unjust or a problem.
Being relatively well off white people without souls, we have a family moral code that simultaneously includes maxims "life isn't fair" and "the world is just". The first one is known because of course it’s a sign of weakness and naivety, and therefore immoral and worthy of contempt and ridicule, to ask to be treated fairly. Life isn’t fair, and you need to accept that and adapt. The second is known because naturally if you lack something, that’s most likely because you haven’t earned it, so it’s extremely immoral and shameful and a sign of a despicable massively entitled attitude to complain about it. The world is just, you’re already receiving the same fair treatment everybody else is, don’t ask for more than your fair share.
For example, if I was to use statistics to make the point that the cost of parenthood falls disproportionately on women, that wouldn’t justify feminism or prove patriarchy. Because women are free to not have any children if they don’t like the cost. It’s a matter of personal choice for individual women, not of gender equality. It’s biology! That’s just how things are, no one can change it. Men and women aren’t the same! Wanting to change this just means feminists are unrealistic and spoiled. And women love babies anyway, that’s why they choose to have them, and are willing to make sacrifices for them!
I don’t know what the fuck to say to someone who thinks that way. Sometimes (quite often, really) I have to take deep breaths and remind myself multiple times that it’s an actual human being saying this shit, and not a primitive AI programmed to act like an asshole.
@ Axecalibur
I’m kind of looking for some unknown unknowns. All input widens the search, so it’s very welcome whether I end up using it or not. And that point about starting from something smaller I definitely needed to hear, thank you.
@Boogerghost
I feel you. Reminds me of how when I was a kid in a super sexist family, I would join my brothers in putting other girls down. Because (obviously) we grew up together, they saw me as a person and accepted me as one.
Until they very abruptly realized that I am, in fact, female. Now I am a pariah in my family after a tremendous amount of backlash. (The backlash was because I act as if I am their equal, and am therefore an evil feminist, and also because they are furious at having been tricked into treating me as one for so long.)
My mother is the other kind of “Cool girl” whose main personal goal is looking attractive. (To her credit, her main goal has always been to set her children up for their lives.) Because I don’t give a damn about make-up and all that, she can’t even put me on her Acceptable Female list. Heck, I’ve had glasses since I was six years old, and she still hasn’t been able to forgive me for that. When I got a pixie cut, she accused me of being disloyal to my fiance and said I was too ugly to get a job.
Long story short: sexism is just a way for insecure people to put themselves above others. Men, Cool Girls, Mean Girls, you name it.
@dust bunny, I understand! That’s a big problem with STEM folks. It sounds like the stats/rationality angle won’t work well, then :\
@Boogerghost has the right of it, I think. You yourself are your biggest asset in this. He wants to understand. I don’t know of any particular book or video that will help – I like the vlogbrothers quite a bit, and Laci Greene is great, but there’s no quick fix and a lot of people don’t respond well to the video format. Patience and time may be your only options. It’s rough :s But again – he wants to! That’s worth so much, right there. Personal experiences of yourself (if you can) or those you know (if you can and they’re okay) will help. Again – if you dig through the forums here, I’m sure you can dig up personal stories and arguments that might hit home when combined with some facts. I hope so!
How about if her husband in fact wouldn’t hit her for non-violent actions like screaming at him or cheating on him?
Isn’t it rather shitty of her to slap the “potential violent abuser” label on her own husband, on a public forum for all the world to see, merely on the grounds that she “just feels that he would” hit her if she “disrespected” him in such a way?
If I were a guy, I don’t think I’d feel AT ALL pleased at the prospect of having to deal with suspicion and distrust from people who now believe I’m a violent abuser because of my own wife’s gratuitous and made-up slanders about how she imagines I’d respond to hypothetical “provocations”.
Being known to be married to this woman must already have been a huge embarrassment to her husband, but now it’s actually identifying him as an alleged potential criminal. If Hardie’s husband does not actually share her views on the acceptability of his hitting her, then she’s put him in an appalling bind here and I’m sincerely sorry for him.
OT
I just recently found out about “stimming”, and it explains a whole lot.
I’ve managed to escape cool girlism for the most part. I think I just got lucky. I’ve had both female and male coded interests and my parents encouraged both. They didn’t mind that my brother liked to play with My Little Ponies either. I got lucky again in that I had friends who didn’t pin me down into either a girly-girl or tomboy role. Plus, I’ve always felt more comfortable around female people than male people.
Not that I’ve been perfect or anything. I’ve made some regrettable body shaming comments in the past. I used to buy into the narrative that girls and women were more catty, gossipy, and dramatic. Then I actually looked at the people I knew and realized the guys were just as bad! But I was never the girl who hates other girls either.
Here you may need to deviate from facts and stats and move into the realm of morality and privilege.
Yes, it’s a choice for some women to have children. It’s not a choice for all women, because not all women have access to contraception. If they have sex, they run the risk of getting pregnant. So the real choice here is whether or not to have sex.
Is it actually moral to tell women that if they have sex, they have earned a lower quality of life than men who have made the same choice? Resorting to “it’s biology” doesn’t answer that question in the slightest. The answer is either yes or no, but you need to show your work as to why (or why not) the outcomes for women and men for identical choices, ceteris paribus (holding SE status, equivalent talent/ability, etc. constant), ought to be different.
“Ought” is a powerful word. Ought is a normative word, a word that tells you what the desired or ideal outcome is. By saying that a woman ought to have a different outcome than an identically-situated man, you’re making a statement that the ideal is unequal outcome for equal starting conditions. Why is that ideal, exactly? It’s hard to answer that question without somehow involving women being intrinsically inferior in some ineffable way. Which feminism rejects.
You can move the question around to eliminate the contraception problem, but the formulation remains the same. Why should a woman who has a baby be more impacted by raising the child than the man who equally contributed to the making of that baby? Again, show your work. The default “just world” outcome would be that, ceteris paribus, two identical actions by two identical people should have two identical outcomes. I mean, in a just world, where you get what you put in, putting in X should result in Y the same for a woman as for a man. But it doesn’t in our real world. You have to explain that. You can give up the idea of a just world, or you can rationalize that women deserve inferior treatment because of X quality that women have that men don’t (or that men have that women don’t).
IP:
I’m just gonna say that Didi is an excellent cat for that.
1) Silky-soft fur, lovely to touch, LOTS of surface area to stroke (she’s a tank-size cat).
2) Immediate, strong purring reaction.
3) Responds to petting and seeks out affection, now that we know where we stand.
I’m definitely more relaxed these days, and allow myself to get silly for the kitties. Didi loves it when I pet her and sing her the “Purr” song. (Basically, I just croon “purr purr purr, purr purr purr” at her and she just looks at me like I’m some sort of opera diva gracing her with my song and demands for more pets.)
So soothing. So, so soothing.
So…what are women supposed to do when men “disrespect” or cheat on us, Hardie, hmmm?
@snork maiden
Overblown statements are her thing. Specious ideas, in academic-sounding language, presented with sublime unassailable self-confidence: that’s Paglia’s schtick. Research has no part in her MO.
@dust bunny:
I hope, for your sake and his, that this is actually what he’s trying to do. All I ask is that if it turns out he’s not really making a good-faith effort to understand you, but is simply trying to set you up to constantly engage with him in arguments where he’ll be constantly dismissive so he can go on feeling smug and still feel he has some power over you, that you won’t blame yourself for it or think that you should have been able to explain it better.
People (especially smart and confident people) who sincerely want to understand a different point of view tend to seek that viewpoint and try to engage with it independently, in literature or on the internet or wherever, rather than requesting that the person they’re disagreeing with should “explain” the viewpoint to them.
Asking to be “explained” to is usually just a way of reinforcing the barricades: the explanation will be nitpicked to death from the same closed-minded perspective, and the nitpicker will feel confirmed in their belief that that viewpoint was all bullshit from the get-to. I hope that’s not what your father is doing, but if it is, it’s not your fault.
Then, just maybe, he’s at last becoming able to understand how it feels not to be in a position of privilege.
Try to approach him on the subject of how he feels when disparaged or dismissed for being old or in poor health. Is it a “harmless joke” when he’s called an “old fart” or “old codger” or “gramps” by people who don’t know him? When nurses patronizingly call him “dearie” or “sweetie” all the time instead of using his name, or talk to you or another carer about him as though he were incapable of intelligent understanding, is he fine with that?
Would he have a problem with you constantly lecturing him about what “old people” should or shouldn’t do, because they’re old? Is it okay for you to assume that his default physical state is defective and disgusting, and he needs constant “corrective” maintenance to avoid negative attention? Is it fine for you to fuss over his putting on a hat or gloves because “nobody wants to see” his “ugly old bald head” or “ugly old wrinkled hands”? Is it acceptable for other people to offer unsolicited opinions on what he should be wearing or how he should behave, and act as though he ought to be grateful for their guidance?
A prosperous white man who’s old and sick has a rare opportunity to experience what it feels like to be objectified, deprived of agency, and treated as inferior. However, it’s fairly rare to find one with enough spontaneous empathy to think about how that relates to the typical experiences of non-white and/or non-male people, rather than seizing on it as an excuse to become even more self-absorbed and demanding even more attention and validation from others. I wish you and your father the best of luck with this.
@skiriki
Sounds wonderful. :p
Fingie is also a massive cat with large surface area. And also tiger stripes.
But that’s not really the kind of thing I tend to do. I tap with my fingers, slap with my hands, punch my thighs and feet, slap my head, etc.
@Boogerghost
Thank you for sharing. Yours is a perspective I’ve never understood very well.
@dustbunny
I’d love to offer some rhetoric for the gamergate nonsense. A few questions. What exactly does he believe?
Does he believe that there’s some elaborate conspiracy by the media?
Does he believe that Anita Sarkeesian “fabricated” the harassment? Also, what does he think of her videos
Is he aware of the origins of the gamergate movement?
Ooh boy. Well, between the two statements of “the world is just” and “life isn’t fair” are pretty incompatible. “Life isn’t fair” is probably the truer of the two, so let’s focus on “the world is just”.
Because ultimately it’s very easy to prove that the world is not just and it ties into discussion about privilege. Some people are born into wealth, others are born into poverty. That second group will never have the same opportunities as the first group. What is just about that?
If you have any specific examples of sexism you can point to in your life, bring them up. For example: Slutshaming. “You say the world is just, but when I get sex I get labeled as a slut, whilst when my male friend has sex, he gets high fives. How is that just?”
Make sure you pick examples with very clear discrimination such as how the women’s soccer team won and were payed less than the men’s soccer team who lost.
For men who lack perspective, I like to turn the situation around. “How would you feel if you did the same job as someone, knowing you did a better job than them, and recieving lesser pay. How is that just?”
I wouldn’t advise to start off on this. While it’s a valid problem, there are too many variables, making it too easy for him to rationalize his way out of it. I’d advise to start with the low-hanging fruit. The incredibly obvious sexism that no amount of rationalization could possibly justify. (double standards, like why do so few stories feature a female protagonist?)
When he spits forth a deluge of rationalization and stereotypical bs, don’t try to refute them all at once. Get to the root of the problem:
Prod this one ^, ask what he means by that, why are they not the same, why does that justify discrimination against women. Bring up the correlarry to racism (tho I dunno if that’s a safe can of worms to open).
Rebuttal script: “What’s unrealistic about expecting women to be treated no different from men?
Rebuttal script: “That’s not true. I (or my friend) am/is a woman and I/she don’t love babies. Remember, women are individuals, each with their own interests and desires. Some women want children and some don’t. That’s as ridiculous as saying “All men like [insert stereotypical male activity that your dad happens to despise]”
Remember, his arguments (because they are sexist) are your ammo. Question his statements, then call out the blatant sexism that he uses to justify those statements.
Hope this helps!
@bunny
Your welcome. If this continues, and you feel up to it, keep us posted 🙂
@PoM
Dayum
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/glitterypinkdiva/Gif%20Central/truth.gif
BTW, y’know what I hate. Absolutely fucking despise, tho. It’s people who care so much about ‘muh saiyuns’, until it’s a science they don’t like. Misogynists hate social sciences, unless it’s economics (supply and demand curves for vaginae), psychology (how else are they gonna psychoanalyze game targets), anthropology (Western vs Eastern women), or whatever field is convenient for them to stick in a blender to make a point that day. D’ya think Sargon, for example, knows that all of those mentioned in the previous sentence are considered STEM fields? Somehow I doubt it
It could also be lazy entitlement. “Come teach me about your oppression” is a common refrain, in my experience, from people who can’t be fucked to go do their own research because they are really privileged and accustomed to others catering to their whims. With lower stakes, I have been known to turn that demand into a lesson in itself. “Why exactly do you think I am obligated to be your unpaid instructor? This is literal work that people are literally paid to do in universities, and you took it absolutely for granted that I would do this valuable work for you for free. Why do you think my time and expertise are valuable enough for you to want, but simultaneously worth nothing? Answer these questions and get back to me with true answers, and then maybe we’ll talk.”
dust bunny probably doesn’t want to risk that, because the stakes are much higher when it’s your dad. I get that same sense of entitlement there, though.
True story.
@dust bunny
Good for you for being willing to talk with your dad about feminism.
The other commenters have given you terrific advice.
I’m going to tell you a secret: Your dad is aware of the challenges that women face. He’s seen it. He might not be the most psychologically astute observer, but he’s seen it. He probably had a mother in his life. Maybe a sister. Maybe a wife. He definitely has a daughter. He may be in denial, but he’s aware of these challenges.
Here’s another secret: All women, from the beginning of the patriarchy — or at least all women that I’ve observed — have chafed against the patriarchy, even if they would not call themselves feminists. Your dad is also aware of this, even if only dimly.
Good luck to you & your dad!
“There are all kinds of reasons I don’t cheat on my husband, but an important one is that I assume he would beat the sh*t out of me…”
Well, that just spoke volumes about your relationship, didn’t it now? Shouldn’t an “important one” immediately first in thought be something to the extent of “I love him and would never want to hurt our marriage”?
“All of those things are linked to respect. To be clear: all of this comes from me.”
Actually, I’m willing to bet it comes from the example your parents set. Esp after claiming that many women find violence “erotic and even comforting” and they supposedly can’t “articulate it” (way to suggest abusing someone and telling them they wanted it) really sounds like it stems from an abusive childhood home.
Another reason not to cheat in my world, that has nothing to do with fear of uxorial beatings: “I have integrity and do not cheat or break my word.” Not in Andrea-land, apparently.
Also: she has posted, extensively, about her father beating her and her siblings unconscious. For which she now blames her mother but has forgiven her father. I am the last person who would argue that your childhood determines who you’ll be as an adult, but she clearly has not remotely overcome the trauma inflicted on her as a (completely innocent and precious) child. This is tragic.
There are all kinds of reasons not to beat children, too, from the moral to the legal to the “why bother having children you don’t want to cherish?” Another one is that child abuse can turn people who might have been good into truly hateful people who make the world a worse place.
A little clarification on “ought” as relates to feminism:
We note in the real world that women have a lower earning potential and lower quality of life when they have children. (We’ll ignore for the moment that this is also true of women who do not have children, because of sexism, because the example dust bunny brought up explicitly related to children and the having thereof.) This is descriptive: this is an “is” statement.
However, we can move from an “is” statement into an “ought” quite easily, and in fact this is inevitable when it comes to anything to which morality applies. When you say that women earn less when they have children, you must make a choice as to whether or not this ought to be the case. Once you have noted the status quo, there is no option but to make a choice; no choice is a choice in favor of the status quo, the same as an affirmative choice that the status quo is correct and the way it ought to be.
Feminism says that no, this is not the way it ought to be. Feminism is normative. However, a lack of feminism is also normative. By excusing unequal outcomes for women and men from the same choice (to have sex/have children depending upon the relative privilege level involved) by saying “it’s just biology, full stop,” one makes an implicit normative statement that this situation is fine and nothing to concern us. That it ought to be this way, in other words.
Let’s use a different normative statement: that the outcomes for women and men ought to be equivalent. Since mothers bear, biologically, an unequal burden in gestation and infancy to grow and then nourish a baby, fathers ought to take over with an equivalent level of responsibility once the child is weaned for an equivalent length of time. Fathers should be more impacted, in other words, than mothers during the 1 year to 3 year age range, to redress the imbalance imposed by biology earlier on. After that point, mothers and fathers should be bear an equal impact.
This is where a normative “ought” can take us if we decide that things ought to be different from the way they are. One can make the argument that the way things are is the way they ought to be, but “this is the way things are” is only half of the statement. The other half is still there, but by leaving it unspoken one evades the responsibility of explaining why the current situation is the normative ideal.
dust bunny
One thing I might recommend. Firstly, I presume you’ll follow the advice to say ‘I don’t know’ if you don’t know something.
I’d go further than that. Tell him that you’re noting needed questions-facts-references when various issues come up. What you really need to do to be clear on this is to get him to do the simplifying for you. If he has problems with some idea, statistic, paper, analysis – get him to Spell It Out.
Whatever he really wants to understand or grasp or perceive – all of that is his problem to explain to you. It’s not your problem to mind-read and solve by magic.
Most importantly, get him to write it down. This is not an opportunity for him to lecture you about his viewpoint. This is his chance to write down his questions and required clarifications so that you two are — literally — on the same page.
Back to women deliberately provoking violence by men. Some women actually do this. Why?
Because they’re married to an abusive, violent arsehole and they can feel a violent incident coming on. As the tension builds, they worry about how bad it will be this time. So they try the pressure cooker approach – if they can get him to let off a lesser amount of steam before he’s built up the atmosphere to an intolerable pitch, maybe he’ll go easier on her or, more likely, on the kids.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But for someone who hasn’t yet worked out how she’s going to get herself, the kids and the pets out of the house safely, it can be worth trying.
@dust bunny At the very least, you’re very skilled at articulating your family’s philosophical contradictions. I imagine that will come in handy in this process too.
@mildlymagnificent Totally. A pointed line of questioning is often a great way to get at the heart of the disagreement and/or logical fallacy.
Haha, yes, @Lady Mondegreen, you could easily infer from this piece that women are supposed to smack our husbands if they misbehave too, theoretically. Except I’m guessing Janet not only has much higher standards for what constitutes a man-on-woman act worthy of retaliatory physical abuse, but also thinks only women need disciplining and in the very unlikely event that you don’t DESERVE the mistreatment (because you’re not working hard enough to make your man happy), I suspect she’d tell you to either work it out yourself or get a divorce by which he gets all your assets. It’s only fair.
@Kivutar Thank you. I’m sorry you had to go through that and I hope you’ve found a family that acknowledges your kickassery.
@Moocow 😀
@Axecalibur THANK you. The bloody social sciences are just as legit as the physical sciences and it’s simply the matter of reporting on results correctly (especially non-sexy results) that makes people doubt them.
@weirwoodtreehugger Hahaha, yes, let me tell you, NO ONE gossips like young male game convention organisers. Hooo-wee.
@midlymagnificent
Or they mistake conflict and domination for love due to years of experiencing this from people who were supposed to care about them (a parent and/or previous partner), sometimes seeking to repeat those experiences. It’s been the subject of a lot of research a lot of people would have a passing awareness of.
So Hardie is not entirely incorrect; however, it isn’t an accurate representation of healthy relationships.
She’s attempting to make the case seem more credible by relating it to herself, while more than likely comfortable in the knowledge that her (long suffering?) husband almost certainly wouldn’t react that way.
@Boogerghost
Thanks for that fascinating insight into cool girls.
I have a different story. I was a bookworm goody two-shoes who scorned the boys’ insensitivity (#NotAllBoys!) and stood up for girls.
I would have loved to be cool but didn’t have it in me.
I come from at least four generations of bookish goody two-shoes women who scorn male insensitivity (#NotAllMalePeople!) and stand up for girls. And my dad was a proto-MRA who understood his emotions not at all and took everything out on his family, especially my mother. So naturally, I stood up for my mother (even when all I could do was turn away from him and turn toward her).
I felt driven to make the case for elevating the entirety of girlhood.
@Policy Of Madness Do you mind if I save this for later use? I have a feeling it will come in handy at some point in the near future