Why so much hatred for feminism?

[truethat]

It's not like you to be this irrational, Piggy. You chose not to address what I said and went with the straw man. Perhaps if I use bold and highlights ....

Confirmation bias much? Piggy is never irrational. He's a smart poster. (I think he's a he)

Soooooo if he's not agreeing with you then your obvious conclusion is that he's taken leave of his senses? Not that you are biased and blind to your own biases and prejudices?

 

[KingMerv00]

I don't get why you feel like this. It seems to me that women have come extremely far in the last century and that MOST of any kind of equality gap has already been narrowed in the western world. It seems that from a bang for buck perspective that working on other regions would be incredibly more likely to increase the overall quality of life for women. I say get the rest of the world up to the western world and then close that last bit.

I agree. Women have come an amazing distance in the last 150 years. It really is spectacular. I'm just one person, thought. I don't have the time, money, or ability to start changing national regimes. I mostly talk about America because there is an intellectually stimulating debate to be had. If I come on here and talked about how much it sucks to have an arranged marriage in India, the discussion would just be a chorus of "I agree".

A conclusion would have some sort of analysis explaining it. To me it's simply an assumption. There is zero proof that anyone was treated differently based on class. If you have analysis that shows this I would be interested in seeing it.

I'm not sure there's a point to analyzing the data for you because I'm not sure statistical inference could EVER sway you. It seems like you'd need a confession or an explicitly sexist written hiring policy. For the record, the court system allows for the use of statistics to infer discrimination in the same way the court allows us to infer the guilt of a defendant based on circumstantial evidence. You, on the other hand, seem to think an inference is impossible in principle.

"Yes I know the smoking gun was in my hand but you haven't done the analysis of HOW or even IF I fired it."

In the hopes of finding SOME common ground, let's consider some intentionally absurd examples: What if Wal-Mart hired zero women even though there are tens of thousands of applicants? What if they only hired 1% women? What if there 10,000 female managers but they all made 50% of what men made? Do we just assume that women are unambitions and lazy?

If it helps, there are a lot of eyewitnesses too regarding Wal-Mart's hiring culture but I'm not sure how valuable you think they are.

As for what could cause it? The choices of the employees working there. How hard they work. How available they are. How dedicated they are. How good they are at social networking within the company. Compensation isn't directly tied to role, it's based on what each individual brings to the party.

To win your argument, we have to assume (without any analysis on your end might I add) that women simply don't work as hard. Because...ya know...they're women. They work SO poorly in fact that salaried workers with an extra 8 months experience make $14,000 less than their male counter parts.

Ironically, it is using sexism to disprove sexism.

I'm totally fine with not assuming anything and trying to come up with an analysis that makes sense. That doesn't seem to have occurred though...I freely admit walmart could be sexist and that could explain some of the gap, but I seriously doubt it's the whole story.

It might not BE the whole story. Maybe some (though I can't imagine all) of the difference is made up by the fact that women spent time out on pregnancy leave. To correct for some of the wage gap Wal-Mart could look at the data of people who never got pregnant while working there. Have they done that? Not yet at least. They knocked the class action out of court on different grounds without doing a counter-analysis. If they present data that closes the gap I'll change my mind.

Until then, you'll forgive me if we simply don't assume that women suck at their jobs.

You have no evidence that any kind of "forced outcome" is even possible or that it would fix the problem long term. You might simply be trading one type of discrimination for another.

A discrimination lawsuit is a forced outcome. Whether or not you think it is a different kind of discrimination is another matter.

Bottom line I've seen zero evidence that walmart doesn't provide equality of opportunity.

That's right, I haven't proven your negative.

 

[curi0us]

I can only be held accountable for my own statements. *You posted a few lines and I agree it is sexist. I skimmed the rest of the article Some bits are sexist, others are not.

I am not holding you accountable for other peoples statements, I am referencing your OP:

It took a bit of reading on feminist websites to get how wrong I was. People need to understand the modern state of feminism is less about explicit misogyny and more about implicit sexism against women AND men.

There has been a lot said in this thread at this point so I am not trying to be jerk about the OP, just explaining where I was coming from as I am speaking to the issue of sexism against men in current femimism.

Sometimes people did cite radical feminists and I said as much. Other times, people stated their personal stories and I simply acknowledged their contribution. Other times I disagreed with feminists in this very thread. Please don't summarize my entire position as "dismissal".

OK, I will summarize with your exact words.

Early in this thread, I got the answer to the thread title. *Apparently, people think feminists hate men and victimize women. I can't "address" those concerns because apply to radical feminists who I also hate. Once I understood how people felt, I moved on to more factual discussions.

I don't think we have had a functional definition of what a "radical feminist" is in this thread and that is where some confusion comes from.

When people think of feminists being haters is not in a form as blatantly obvious as the violent hatred of Valerie Solanjas and the SCUM manifesto. It's more like Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steienem pushing the ludicrous idea that a 150,000 American women a year were dying of anorexia in books about female self esteem. They literally thought of it as a "holocaust" which was being forced upon women due to the brutal insensitivity of patriarchal beauty standards. But the actual number was closer to 60 if one used verifiable sources. Consider how insane that is. But notice how that rhetoric isn't explicitly about hate, it is just about women being victims.

Yes, the one website you know about is the one I said I hardly read, contains mostly science articles, and the only other article referenced from that website in this thread defends men as not violent.

I never bothered to follow elevator gate but within a few minutes of looking where Dipayan pointed I encountered similar feminist rhetoric all over the place. Considering you were posting on "seeing the light" due to elevatorgate in the patriarchy equals the matrix thread I am skeptical that you've been reading other sites that were so different from what I saw. If there is feminism out there you think I should familiarize myself with I will read it if you care to share though.

It's very important to note that article didn't "defend men as not violent" at all. It argued that men being more violent wasn't due to biological reasons which fits perfectly with the radical feminist rhetoric against the patriarchy. The article is tapping into old bogus goddess revisionism and repressive Marxist Feminist theory.

An excerpt from the article:

Consider the biological fact that men have more upper-body strength than women, and assume that both men and women want to obtain as many desirable resources as they can. In hunter-gatherer societies, this strength differential doesn't allow men to fully dominate women, because they depend on the food that women gather. But things change with the advent of intensive agriculture and herding. Strength gives men an advantage over women once heavy ploughs and large animals become central aspects of food production. With this, men become the sole providers, and women start to depend on men economically. The economic dependency allows men to mistreat women, to philander, and to take over labor markets and political institutions.
http://my.psychologytoday.com/print/86893

If that author has actually tried to study the evidence for warfare and violence in societies that predate heavy ploughs they would have found copious evidence showing how ridiculous their theory was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization

You cherry-picked one small paragraph from one large article from one website I hardly read, present it to me, I agree it is sexist and you somehow use this to attribute sexism to me. You then call ME dishonest. Odd.

If you were paying better attention to the thread you would know I didn't cherry pick one small paragraph. I've posted links to a longer discussion on the topic (focusing on a different paragraph from the article as well) multiple times but you kept overlooking them. There are countless inequalities and injustices in the world and trying to evaluate them all in order to evaluate feminism is and impossible task but that is separate issue from feminism anyways. Why not evaluate the actual core concepts of feminism?

I also didn't attribute "sexism" to you, I said you were dishonest because by your own admission you had previously come across something that IMO showed you should have been aware of how endemic sexism was to mainstream feminism.

The short paragraph quote was an attempt to call your attention to something you had been ignoring. It is great example of the bigoted double standard commonly at play within feminist thought. Why is it normal for a feminist to be that sexist? Since feminism has been active in academia since before you were even born doesn't it strike you as more then a little weird that they still haven't figured out how to not be sexist?

If you really must know, I'm not a fan of the way male privilege is presented by a lot of feminists. If that makes me more liberal or radical than whatever the mainstream is, so be it.

Since you were earlier defending feminist theory on privilege did your opinion change?

You act as if feminism has one true manifesto that everyone adopts.

It's not about adopting the "one true manifesto" but one has to be aware of the major concepts of a ideology before defending it.

If I disagree with the majority of feminists, oh well.

That's probably the best attitude to have.

Even if I'm viewing most feminists through rose-colored glasses, it doesn't mean anything I've said in this thread is sexist or inaccurate.

If you view feminists with rose colored glasses, but not their critics isn't that an admission of an unfair bias on your part? (Rose colored glasses are great IMO if they can be applied to everyone. I could probably use some.)

Not sure what this means. Are you referring to yourself and how you feel about feminism?

In a sense yes, though I meant it more as broad response to the question in the thread title.

(It's also a very interesting meme that deserves to be looked at in isolation. I think a foundation concept to understanding modern bigotry is it usually takes the form of a "that group doesn't treat my group fairly" meme. Identity politics by encouraging group solidarity actually pushed that meme on a lot of people that have every right to push it right back. IMO the best way to kill that meme off is to encourage people away from group think identity while increasing fairness for everyone.)

 

[NewtonTrino]

I agree. Women have come an amazing distance in the last 150 years. It really is spectacular. I'm just one person, thought. I don't have the time, money, or ability to start changing national regimes. I mostly talk about America because there is an intellectually stimulating debate to be had. If I come on here and talked about how much it sucks to have an arranged marriage in India, the discussion would just be a chorus of "I agree".

That's fine but is this really a big deal in america? It seems to me we have way way way bigger fish to fry at the moment than worrying about this.

I'm not sure there's a point to analyzing the data for you because I'm not sure statistical inference could EVER sway you. It seems like you'd need a confession or an explicitly sexist written hiring policy. For the record, the court system allows for the use of statistics to infer discrimination in the same way the court allows us to infer the guilt of a defendant based on circumstantial evidence. You, on the other hand, seem to think an inference is impossible in principle.

It's entirely possible that the stats aren't enough and we need a real study. However, just because women make less doesn't mean there is anything fishy going on. At least until you show the casual connection.

"Yes I know the smoking gun was in my hand but you haven't done the analysis of HOW or even IF I fired it."

It's simply not a smoking gun. I don't see how you can possibly claim that.

In the hopes of finding SOME common ground, let's consider some intentionally absurd examples: What if Wal-Mart hired zero women even though there are tens of thousands of applicants?

That would be odd and problematic. However that's a strawman since they do hire women.

What if they only hired 1% women?

Then the question would be why. Again this is a strawman though because they do hire more than 1%.

What if there 10,000 female managers but they all made 50% of what men made? Do we just assume that women are unambitions and lazy?

We don't assume anything. We make a hyothesis of why and try to connect the dots. Again strawman though because the wage gap isn't anywhere near that large.

If it helps, there are a lot of eyewitnesses too regarding Wal-Mart's hiring culture but I'm not sure how valuable you think they are.

That data wasn't in the link you sent. If you have more data I will look at it.

To win your argument, we have to assume (without any analysis on your end might I add) that women simply don't work as hard. Because...ya know...they're women. They work SO poorly in fact that salaried workers with an extra 8 months experience make $14,000 less than their male counter parts.

No we don't have to make that assumption at all. You seem to assume that working hard = success. They aren't the same thing. I think is one of your fundamental mistakes. Time on job is not equal to value to company. Seniority just means you've been at that company longer not that you are creating more value.

Ironically, it is using sexism to disprove sexism.

Keep in mind I'm not proving or disproving anything. I'm just pointing out that this entire this is an assumption and nobody seems to have actually done any kind of science here at all.

It might not BE the whole story. Maybe some (though I can't imagine all) of the difference is made up by the fact that women spent time out on pregnancy leave. To correct for some of the wage gap Wal-Mart could look at the data of people who never got pregnant while working there. Have they done that? Not yet at least. They knocked the class action out of court on different grounds without doing a counter-analysis. If they present data that closes the gap I'll change my mind.

Maybe women aren't as productive for other reasons? Maybe they aren't as aggressive about asking for raises? There are plenty of reasons that people get compensated differently. Attitude and ambition level are both very important.

Until then, you'll forgive me if we simply don't assume that women suck at their jobs.

Again, I'm not assuming anything. I'm just point out that nobody has connected the dots here. You are basically saying "women get compensated less than men for the same or more experience" THEREFORE it's discrimination without actually investigating.

A discrimination lawsuit is a forced outcome. Whether or not you think it is a different kind of discrimination is another matter.

Well to win a lawsuit you need to prove the discrimination. The stats alone simply aren't enough to prove that.

That's right, I haven't proven your negative.

I'm not asking you to prove a negative. I'm asking you to show that your hypothesis is adequately explained by the data. You are jumping to the conclusion of discrimination without showing that's actually the cause of the stats. You are the one making a positive claim (wal-mart is discriminating against women) based on statistics that don't actually prove that in any way.

 

[Brainster]

Opposed to feminism? You just might be committing a hate crime:

The so-called “manosphere” is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general. Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express. What follows are brief descriptions of a dozen of these sites. Another resource is the Man Boobz website (manboobz.com), a humorous pro-feminist blog (its tagline is “Misogyny: I Mock It”) that keeps a close eye on these and many other woman-hating sites.

Yep, they recommend a site called ManBoobz. Here's a smattering of what passes for "hate":

Alcuin is a blog that promotes the “Intellectual Renaissance of the Western Tradition.” “Just as the Nazis had to create a Jewish conspiracy as a way to justify mass slaughter,” one post declares, “so feminists have to create patriarchy as a way to justify mass slaughter of innocent unborn, and the destruction of men and masculinity. Rape is now a political crime, not a crime of sex or violence. A man doesn’t have to rape in order to be a rapist. A man is a rapist until he somehow proves himself innocent.”

And:

The Counter Feminist
Its tagline probably won’t be set to music any time soon, but it does capture the flavor of the site: “The female-supremacist hate movement called ‘feminism’ must be opened to the disinfecting sunlight of the world’s gaze and held to a stern accounting for its grievous transgressions.” Recent headlines, like December’s “More Proof That Feminism is a Social Cancer,” reflect the same sensibility. “Fidelbogen,” the otherwise unidentified Washington state man who operates the blog, also runs the False Rape Task Force and Women Doing Lousy Things blogs and is heavily involved in the Counter-Feminist YouTube Channel.

Some of the sites do seem antagonistic towards women, but others seem to be opposing the style of feminism that hates men:

A Voice for Men
A Voice for Men is essentially a mouthpiece for its editor, Paul Elam, who proposes to “expose misandry [hatred of men] on all levels in our culture.” Elam tosses down the gauntlet in his mission statement: “AVfM regards feminists, manginas [a derisive term for weak men], white knights [a similar derisive term, for males who identify as feminists] and other agents of misandry as a social malignancy. We do not consider them well intentioned or honest agents for their purported goals and extend to them no more courtesy or consideration than we would clansmen [sic], skinheads, neo Nazis or other purveyors of hate.” Register-Her.com, an affiliated website that vilifies women by name who have made supposedly false rape allegations (among other crimes against masculinity), is one of Elam’s signature “anti-hate” efforts. “Why are these women not in prison?” the site asks.

 

[Meed]

Piggy's posts in the thread articulate my feelings on the subject very well.

 

[DavidByron]

I'd say feminism is a popular hate movement currently. It's a tough question and it's not answer I'm dogmatic about but it seems most likely to be correct. So I think that might answer the OP question. There's a lot of hatred for feminism because feminism is a deeply unpleasant movement when it comes right down to it.

This is a long thread and I haven't read it all yet but I do wonder if anyone ever really offered an explanation on the basis of the culturally defaulted "explanation" that feminism is a sweet and innocent movement that's just about equality for everyone. Clearly on the basis of that hypothesis there really is a need to explain why so many people hate feminism. It would be like hating apple pie.

I suspect instead it would have devolved into a general defence of feminism by feminists although if that actually happened in a rational way that too would be of considerable benefit I think because it just seems like this is one of those topics that people just cannot talk about. It's in the top three I'd say. Would this board be able to tackle this question any better?

 

[Debaser]

Apropos of nothing...

IOM has received requests for assistance from male and female victims from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, China, and Poland working in the sex industry, agriculture, construction, unpaid domestic work, and door-to-door sales. Although the majority of the victims are males, IOM has only been able to provide assistance to some 25% of the cases due to lack of funding for male victims of trafficking.

http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/194
(My bold)

At least the boy's club that is international community care about their fellow males with;
"The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children"


Oh...

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

The only odd thing was that she was quick to throw out compliments regarding how "sexy" someone was. To both the ladies and the guys. "Hey Greg, nice pants, wish my husband had a butt like that" and so on. It tended to make the guys a bit unnerved and I'm not sure how I would have reacted if she had ever thrown a compliment my way.

In this very sad thread, that makes me shake my head with shame at our species, this has to be the saddest moment. Travis was in a class with a horny old hippie who threw out inappropriate sexual comments like drugged candy, yet never felt he was worthy of being made to feel uncomfortable.

Travis; we all want you to know that you have shapely thighs and an impressive trouser bulge. Any of us would be proud to be mastered by you, melting in to a pool of sexual pudding at your whim. Those of us with husbands wish, nay, demand, that he have a butt like yours.


I hope this went some way toward salving an old and deep emotional wound.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

Of course fathers aren't just sperm donors. That's precisely the point I'm trying to make. Men can and do make wonderful caregivers financially and emotionally. That's why I don't understand why they aren't stay-at-home parents more often.

Because they are, generally, ridiculed by both men and women. A man who is not doing a REAL job is a loser, plain and simple. I'm a stay at home dad, and we constantly find ourselves feeling the need to exaggerate or pad what I do because you get the "yeah but what does he DO?" response.

I'll tell you something else, lots of women are not prepared, often resistant even, to men invading their sanctified ground. I have a vivid memory of taking part in a hospital sponsored child raising and infant CPR course, and when we mentioned I was going to be the caregiver the woman running the class laughed and said "Like Mr. Mom!" She called over another couple of the women and they thought it was incredibly precious, like a bear that could balance a ball on its nose.

Lack of changing stations, being watched like a hawk whenever you take your child to the park, there are plenty of reasons why men don't choose to be primary caregiver. It's every bit the fight for recognition that women had to break in to having careers, with all the sexism and lunkheads.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

I think this effect does exist, and would even go a step farther and attribute it to the testosterone driven hyper-competitive nature of males in the 20’s and 30’s.

You mean Gangsters in pin-striped suits? They certainly seemed to like shooting at each other with machine guns.

 

[DavidByron]

So to sumarise the last 25 pages......

This thread started out as the feminist equivalent of George W Bush's "They hate us for our freedoms" speech. "Why do they hate us?" ask feminists / Americans? It's pretty obvious they do hate us but we're so nice. Gee, that is a tough question.

Well it turns out the answer is not so tough for the people who were not feminists / Americans. "Hey maybe it has something to do with this huge list of grievances that you've been hitting people with for decades?" No, no, feminists / Americans are entirely 100% innocent of everything but maybe trying too hard to be wonderful. Couldn't possibly be any of those reasons and you obviously just hate Equality / America if you even suggest it. no the real reason they hate us must be because we're so NICE. Doesn't that make sense?

As a result anyone who actually attempted to answer the original question was immediately attacked by KingMerv and all the other feminist except tyr_13. As a result of that, the thread quickly became a defence of feminism thread and after about page 12 KingMerv was actually attacking people who tried to answer the original question still, usually with passive aggressive attempts to present himself as the victim of their attacks by eg complaining that it was unfair to talk about men on a thread about gender equality.

Most of the conversations were critics rubbishing feminist (poor) arguments and factoids. Some others include:

truethat I thought was very interesting up to around lets say page 8 when she was increasingly distracted by barbs from Skeptic Ginger. But before that happened she presented a very good case for how feminists are sexist against women who are SAHMs. This exchange was with KingMerv. There was some frustration as it developed. So I'll just explain how I see it ought to have continued (but wouldn't have). After both sides admitted that men are pressured by society to pursue high paying jobs that are dangerous or otherwise tend to suck, KingMerv wanted to argue that pressure on men must mean discrimination against women (because in the feminist mind any difference between men and women must be sexism and the sexism must be against women). truethat denied there was sexism because of her strong belief in individual responsibility. They were both wrong. There is sexism in that situation but the sexism is against men, not women. That's pretty obvious when you consider that the societal pressure on men is giving them fewer choices than women, and so, less power. So the conclusion is that the gender wage gap is caused by men and women having different work patterns, and that this is due to our society's sexism and discrimination against men and is a sign of men's relative powerlessness compared to women.

tyr_13 made some great remarks about the phrase "white male privilege" which Kingmerv answered with I think his most weirdly inarticulate comment in the thread I thought (comment #516 - I can't post links yet). Tyr_13's comment said that the use of "what male privilege" was likely to spread resentment and hatred. That's a great observation which of course I am saying because I have long agreed with it but so rarely seen anyone else realise independently. In my opinion much of what feminists say is hate language designed to divide men and women and stir up hatred of the other sex. That argument basically went nowhere because only KingMerv replied and only with the most half-baked comment of his in the entire thread. I'd love to see him or anyone else try to refute that line of thought.

Got to give Tyr_13 another mention for his suggested explanation of the wage gap "logic" employed by feminists. This is in reference to the way they tend to try and say "it must be sexism" as an explanation of the remaining gap every time they factor out say five or six things and there's still some small gap left "unaccounted for". Again KingMerv was the victim of this observation and again it went nowhere. Tyr_13 said it was like the way people think they've proven the existence of UFOs when they have "ruled out" Venus and weather balloons. same with the way ghost hunters assume they've proven ghosts exist if they "rule out" a few reasons why a clock might have stopped.

I have to say in general the feminists were given too much rope because people didn't doubt their initial statements enough. As others said in attempting to answer the original title question, there's too much "lying for Jesus" in the feminist movement. Question everything. The more so if the feminist is saying how obvious it is.

For example one statement KingMerv said was completely agreed upon many times was "that there is a raw wage gap". Sorry KingMerv but I disagree. I disagree with that framing. How about we say instead that "there is a raw work gap"? Women are too lazy to work as hard as men, why is that? Now that's every bit as true as presenting that same data as a "wage gap" isn't it? But it doesn't sound quite as good for trying to make out women are oppressed. Or if you think that's too nasty how about we talk about the "death gap" of workplace fatalities?

I don't accept the legitimacy of the "raw wage gap" because it's based on the wholly false assumption that we should start from the premise that men and women are essentially the same as to their working habits and therefore it's legitimate to compare their raw earnings as if they ought to be the same. That's not true.

Just one more example from dozens, bookitty made a number of references to the so-called War on Women which is a bogus concept. We have two hypotheses here. (1) Republicans motivation for attacks on abortion is their belief that life begins at conception -- stupid as that belief is. (2) that in fact Republicans don't care about conception but are using that as a pretext to cut women's rights because they "just hate women".

Evidence for hypothesis (2) by feminists is zero. But let's go over some obvious evidence against. Republicans never attack any other women's rights. Republicans attack men's rights where they intercept these issues too - eg prosecuting men who terminate a pregnancy as if they committed a murder. If hypothesis (2) were correct that's the exact opposite of what we'd expect. We'd expect to see attacks on all sorts of women's civil rights and no attacks on men's rights even when they intersected the issue of abortion.

Those two examples are not representative; they were the two most interesting to talk about.

....oh I should note a hilarious take down of the Frontman fallacy but I didn't jot down who did it. It was all about how India must be the most egalitarian woman friendly country because it's had 3 (out of 14) female premieres and feminists seem to think that the fact that the USA has had zero female premieres out of 40 or 50 is one of the most significant signs of sexism in the US. Very funny. That comes in late around page 19 maybe? OK only funny if you're an anti-feminist probably, or anyone else who has had to explain the Frontman fallacy more times than you'd like to admit.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

Re: women in political high office in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan . . . Do some posters not know the difference between dynastic family rule and meritocracy?

Then why mention American presidents? America has the same dynastic families running politics, so, shockingly, we see mostly old money white male politicians.

 

[bookitty]

Just one more example from dozens, bookitty made a number of references to the so-called War on Women which is a bogus concept. We have two hypotheses here. (1) Republicans motivation for attacks on abortion is their belief that life begins at conception -- stupid as that belief is. (2) that in fact Republicans don't care about conception but are using that as a pretext to cut women's rights because they "just hate women".

Evidence for hypothesis (2) by feminists is zero. But let's go over some obvious evidence against. Republicans never attack any other women's rights. Republicans attack men's rights where they intercept these issues too - eg prosecuting men who terminate a pregnancy as if they committed a murder. If hypothesis (2) were correct that's the exact opposite of what we'd expect. We'd expect to see attacks on all sorts of women's civil rights and no attacks on men's rights even when they intersected the issue of abortion.

You don't mind if I cherry-pick your cherry-pick, do you?

You are saying that there is no war on women's rights because Republicans are only attacking abortion and they are doing it for the babies, not against women. I get what you're doing here. If all that abortion, birth control, right to privacy and right to autonomy is no big deal, there's nothing for feminists to get all "shrill" about.

But as long as we're here, please tell me:

One law that forces men to undergo an unnecessary, invasive procedure in order to obtain legal health care.

One law that forces a mandated, unnecessary waiting period before receiving legal health care.

One law that denies life-saving treatment to men.

One law that forces men to forgo medical treatment or undergo involuntary medical procedures.

One group who is working toward making men involuntary donators of their internal organs.

One panel to discuss men's issues that was made up entirely of women.

One bill that forces men to go to undergo state-mandated, medically inaccurate counseling before obtaining legal health care.

One law that removes from men the right to privacy.

One bill that allows employers to question men about their birth control or ED drug usage and to fire them if the employer has a moral issue with that usage.

One government official who has compared men to farm animals when they need medical treatment. (That is Mr. Terry arguing that women should be forced to carry still-born fetus to term because cows and pigs do.)

The above is just the obvious stuff. Texas just cut off it's nose to spite its face, turning down $35,000 in federal funding so that they wouldn't have to give any to Planned Parenthood. There were the 916 measures related to reproduction that were introduced in the first quarter of 2011 alone. The birth control brouhaha is not based on religion, if it were it would have come up any of the dozens of times that similar laws were introduced. It goes on and on.

Outside of the right to privacy, the right to life, the right to freedom, and the right to bodily integrity, what is there? What other rights are the republicans not attacking?

You've tipped your hand, Mr. Byron.

 

[DavidByron]

Yeah this is the sort of stuff I was talking about. Misinformation and bad faith debating that feminists hope never gets questioned. The "lying for Jesus" stuff as someone put it. I have to say you're pretty brave to double down like that. Either that or you actually believe what you are saying. I hope that is the case. If it is maybe you'll take this chance to think about what you've been saying all this time.

You are saying that there is no war on women's rights because Republicans are only attacking abortion and they are doing it for the babies, not against women. I get what you're doing here. If all that abortion, birth control, right to privacy and right to autonomy is no big deal, there's nothing for feminists to get all "shrill" about.

Not quite. Firstly I actually simplified the Republican motivation so as to avoid getting into corporate party politics which seems a largely unrelated issue. All that's important is that it is politically motivated and not motivated by an obviously ridiculous conspiracy theory that you hypothesise whereby Republicans hate all women "just because". In fact I'd say there was a big difference in motivation of the Republican elite and their base. But I guess at least some of them actually believe all that nonsense about pro-life.

I didn't say it was "no big deal" what I said was it obviously was not a war on women. The question of whether it is a big deal or not is complex because part of the motivation of these laws is to deliberately cause a lot of fuss and seem like a "big deal" so in responding to them you don't actually want to make a lot of fuss or else you're falling into a trap. Unless of course feminists are actually collaborating with the Republicans on this matter as both stand to win from creating an artificial "big deal".

I don't think that's the case despite evidence of increased feminist/imperialist co-operation in recent years.

What I was challenging was your framing of this matter as a war against women. That is feminist anti-male propaganda. It's designed to tell women that men are evil people who want to oppress them. It's a conspiracy theory. I'm not accusing you of that because I assume you've never stopped to think about the words you are saying.

But as long as we're here, please tell me:

Do you comprehend that while you complain about attacks on women's abortion rights men have no abortion rights at all? Do you understand that you are arguing for more rights for the people who already have far more rights than others here? Have you come from a planet where men have a whole range of reproductive and family rights that actual dwarfs those that women enjoy?

Let me put it really simply for you: would you want to swap? Would you want to let men have all the reproductive and family rights that women currently "suffer" under while women "gain" the wonderful advantages of being male?

I guess people around here just let you go on about this stuff without ever pointing out the obvious. It doesn't make any sense to try and complain about how bad women have it when they have it far better than men, OK?

One law that forces men to undergo an unnecessary, invasive procedure in order to obtain legal health care.

Would you rather swap? You women can have absolutely no control over your reproduction whatsoever and men can be the one with all the rights except in some states they have to now deal with this dumb law which is a tiny tiny inconvenience?

You personally are against men's reproductive rights. You've previously said you oppose abortion for men. How hypocritical do you have to be to ask a question like that of me? Get back to me when you think men deserve rights on the same basis as women.

You know what? Today I spent four hours at a rally for women's rights held by a bunch of man haters who almost all to a woman would strenuously deny to men ANY of the reproductive rights that they were complaining about being under attack. When was the last time you did something like that?

One law that forces a mandated, unnecessary waiting period before receiving legal health care.

Men would crawl on their belly over broken glass to get the same rights you women enjoy. I'm sorry some Republican women and men are harshing your experience of power over men in relationships but it's a bit hard for me to sympathise with you all that much while you have you boot planted firmly on my neck.

So basically all these questions of yours are about abortion aren't they? Can we just take it as read that my answer is the same to all of them? ie to point out that women are far ahead of men in terms of reproductive rights, not behind them.

You've tipped your hand, Mr. Byron.

I said above I was an anti-feminist with the hypothesis that feminism was a hate movement. That didn't tip you off? Tip you off to what? I'm a lot more left wing than you are because I believe in gender equality and civil rights for 100%, not equality and civil rights for 50% of the people.

 

[psionl0]

You've tipped your hand, Mr. Byron.

Actually, I think he tipped his hand in his response to your post.

His first post appears to be a paragon of common sense. Abortion is not a feminist issue. It is just that only women can have abortions.

 

[Morrigan]

You've previously said you oppose abortion for men.

What the... how exactly would you go about having an abortion as a man, anyway? Force your wife to have one??

 

[epepke]

But as long as we're here, please tell me: ...

The male-only military draft hits many of those. Sure, we don't have an actual draft now, but does believe that none of the Republican contenders for the Presidency will increase the probability of a war with draftees?

One government official who has compared men to farm animals when they need medical treatment. (That is Mr. Terry arguing that women should be forced to carry still-born fetus to term because cows and pigs do.)

What a Male Chauvinist Pig!

Er...

Outside of the right to privacy, the right to life, the right to freedom, and the right to bodily integrity, what is there? What other rights are the republicans not attacking?

Yep, the Republicans are doing this.

However, to conclude that they are doing this out of sheer, simple misogyny (which I see a lot but am not accusing you personally of doing) is, at minimum, a poor political strategy, because it fails to address their actual reasons. It amounts to mere preaching to the choir.

Let's take a less hot-button situation. In addition to opposing contraception and abortion, the Catholic Church also opposed medical cleanliness, anesthetics, and analgesics. Most places, they lost that battle eventually. However, those sensibilities remained in the person of Mother Teresa, who did not allow washing of linens at temperatures high enough to kill bacteria and virus particles and forbade effective pain-killers.

From my perspective, it would be simple to call her a sadist. That's obvious, right? But it would be wrong.

Mother Teresa has gone on record as saying that pain and suffering are gifts from God to bring people closer to Jesus. (I can probably find a quote, but I don't think it's obscure information.) She operated according to something that was, to her, love. I think that's pretty sick and twisted, but almost everyone I've ever met thinks that she was a wonderful person, the epitome of good.

The same thing is going on with the Republicans. It's easy to think they are just misogynists. That's obvious, right? But it's wrong.

 

[DavidByron]

It's easy to think they are just misogynists. That's obvious, right? But it's wrong.

Since about half of all women in the USA are pro-life you'd have to say it was obvious that half of women are misogynists. OK so you agree that the "War on Women" is a bogus slogan. It's notable then that this slogan can get rolled out so frequently without any challenge.... but that's not the real point of interest to me.

My interest is why is this distortion... literally a conspiracy theory... being put out there? I see two possible explanations which are not incompatible. One, Democrats are putting this out there as a way to stir up hatred and paranoia and make people identify with the corporate party duopoly ready for the elections. But that doesn't explain the gender aspect really.

I was at a rally today about all this stuff and almost uniformly all of the speakers (regardless of their sex) were hostile towards men. Almost uniformly "men" were blamed for this "War against women". Democratic party speakers would even concede that some Democratic legislators had helped pass these laws, but not one speaker used wording that recognised that female legislators helped (and in some cases initiated) passing these laws.

Men were the enemy throughout the entire event and the closest that anyone came to saying anythign positive about men was one speaker who said something like, "We're here for women's rights so men don't have any skin in this game" (which is utter sexism) but then continued "so I'd like to thank the men who have turned out for this anyway". And that was the most male positive moment of the entire three or four hours. This speaker immediately followed up by saying, "They're probably here thinking they can get laid" as a joke.

So there's a thick anti-male message behind this "War on Women" framing. It might be deliberate or it might just be a reflection of the general anti-male hatred of the sort of people (ie feminists for the most part) who have been pushing this meme. The framing is "Women! Men are trying to oppress you again. Men are evil and powerful and they use their power to hurt poor oppressed women every chance they get!" It's complicated by the fact that it's obviously also being used as a corporate party recruiting tool to say that Republicans = men.

Since you believe that the feminist movement is no longer full of anti-male hate I wonder if you could comment upon this sort of behaviour?

 

[bookitty]

Since about half of all women in the USA are pro-life you'd have to say it was obvious that half of women are misogynists. OK so you agree that the "War on Women" is a bogus slogan. It's notable then that this slogan can get rolled out so frequently without any challenge.... but that's not the real point of interest to me.

My interest is why is this distortion... literally a conspiracy theory... being put out there? I see two possible explanations which are not incompatible. One, Democrats are putting this out there as a way to stir up hatred and paranoia and make people identify with the corporate party duopoly ready for the elections. But that doesn't explain the gender aspect really.

I was at a rally today about all this stuff and almost uniformly all of the speakers (regardless of their sex) were hostile towards men. Almost uniformly "men" were blamed for this "War against women". Democratic party speakers would even concede that some Democratic legislators had helped pass these laws, but not one speaker used wording that recognised that female legislators helped (and in some cases initiated) passing these laws.

Men were the enemy throughout the entire event and the closest that anyone came to saying anythign positive about men was one speaker who said something like, "We're here for women's rights so men don't have any skin in this game" (which is utter sexism) but then continued "so I'd like to thank the men who have turned out for this anyway". And that was the most male positive moment of the entire three or four hours. This speaker immediately followed up by saying, "They're probably here thinking they can get laid" as a joke.

So there's a thick anti-male message behind this "War on Women" framing. It might be deliberate or it might just be a reflection of the general anti-male hatred of the sort of people (ie feminists for the most part) who have been pushing this meme. The framing is "Women! Men are trying to oppress you again. Men are evil and powerful and they use their power to hurt poor oppressed women every chance they get!" It's complicated by the fact that it's obviously also being used as a corporate party recruiting tool to say that Republicans = men.

Since you believe that the feminist movement is no longer full of anti-male hate I wonder if you could comment upon this sort of behaviour?

Please tell me the name of this rally you attended. Actually, never mind. Even if such a rally did exist, your confirmation bias would have honed in on what you were already looking for.

Let me see if I can sort this out. You say that men don't have "abortion rights" i.e. the right to force a women to have/not have an abortion. You do not believe that women have the right to bodily autonomy, to medical privacy, or the right to health. (That's what I meant by tipping your hand. Although I hardly expected you to be so blatant.)

Because you believe that women have no right to autonomy, you do not believe that there is a reason for a feminist movement.

The male-only military draft hits many of those. Sure, we don't have an actual draft now, but does believe that none of the Republican contenders for the Presidency will increase the probability of a war with draftees?

Yes, and we've discussed this. I am against the draft. It is a human rights violation to make our boys register at 18. It needs to be stopped. Unlike many feminists, I do not believe in adding women to the registration because I do not believe in expanding this violation.