Men and feminism

So here's the thing. I don't find what you're posting persuasive.

I am still willing to believe that it is possible that there are some radical extremist feminists out there doing very bad things in the name of feminism. And Lord knows there are plenty of feminists who have said things I disagree with-- vehemently. I am just skeptical about the material you're posting. From the random sampling I took of the massive flood of links you've posted, they all either seem like rather typical internet postings of a rather shrill screedy variety that are short on reason and nuanced discussion and long on quotes taken out of context and the authors synthesis of the statements or arguments of the individuals with whom they are disagreeing (rather than well-sourced and contextualized quotes from those individuals) or they are leaning starkly toward the conspiracy-theory variety with feminism being the flavor of the month, or they are personal opinion pieces.

I admit, not having slogged through every link you posted, it is certainly possible that I have overlooked something well-reasoned, clearly thought-out and constructed, well contextualized and sourced, and not in the least hysterical or paranoid. But I confess that I am not holding my breath for this to be the case.

I pay relatively decent attention to news, and do not limit myself to mainstream media sources to get it. I have never heard of pretty much any of these cases of heinous feminist atrocities. Of course that doesn't mean that none of them happened, or even that some of them might not have happened precisely as described in your posts and the links therein. But somehow I am not holding my breath for this to be the case.

Like I said before, I have known a vast number of feminist women (and men) and still know a very large number, as well as overlapping activists and thinkers-- GLBTQ, civil rights, human rights, religious, progressive, you name it. Not only have I almost never met any misanthropic/misandristic radical feminists, I haven't even heard about them second- or third-hand. And if you think that feminists are a monolithic block who never disagree with one another or talk smack about one another, then you don't know your feminists. It's no different than any other political, social, or philosophical movement: there are dozens if not hundreds of schools of thought, with innumerable disagreements between them ranging from polite differences over nuance to aggressive rejection and resentment over issues percieved as critical. If there were a virulent movement of raging man-haters rising to dominance over feminism in North America, people would be talking about it. They would be arguing about it. Even if such a movement of raging man-haters were in the majority, there would still be deafening debate and discussion of them. There isn't. Nothing.

The feminists that you single out for especial infamy are a motley group, only some of whom seem to be legitimate feminist scholars. Others seem to be scholars in other areas (though no doubt influenced by feminism, as the vast majority of female academics in humanities and social sciences are at least in some measure influenced by feminism), or popular writers or bloggers. But there is nothing binding them together, no commonality except that they are targets of your dislike or the dislike of those you have quoted. Some are radical. Some are probably less truly radical than provocative for the sake of being provocative or to increase readership or whatnot. Some do not appear to be either radical or provocative, and the dislike of them seems largely based on the analysis of their work or statements made by the authors you have linked to. But none of these women, like them or loathe them-- and personally, I found little compelling in the more provocative writers-- seem like the driving forces behind a vast crusade of anti-male repression and sabotage. At worst, they are annoying and provocateurs (provocateuses?) for the benefit of their blogs or writings.

I'm sorry, but the rising tide of man-hating feminism just sounds like a conspiracy theory. The "evidence" you have posted in support sounds like "evidence" posted on conspiracy theory websites. Questionable analyses of documents that otherwise seem innocuous or relatively uncontroversial; decontextualized quotes; a lot of hysterical sounding walls of text; and (at least in the links I sampled) no women writing or joining the discussion or being quoted in support at any length...honestly, I've seen more convincing evidence in discussion of who was shooting from the grassy knoll than I've seen here.

I don't say this to be callous or dismissive of you, and I'm sorry that it seems inevitable you will take it as such. But the truth is that your lengthy, hostile, martyrish, somewhat feverish (especially in terms of refusing to hear what other posters say, or twisting their intent, and so forth) posts in this thread make me less convinced I should worry about feminism and much more convinced that I should worry about you.

There's a saying in the Talmud, that translates out roughly to: "If one man calls you an ass, ignore him. But if ten men call you an ass, purchase a saddle for yourself." Now, I am not calling you an ass. But what I am saying is that if a multitude of people (some less constructively than others, I grant you) are suggesting to you that what you are saying does not seem to be borne out by reality or rationality, perhaps it is worth considering whether you may be in error. And in considering that, perhaps consider why you have come to this belief, and what inside you-- what in your past, and in your environment-- has made such a belief so appealing to you.

Because while I don't find any of what you posted convincing as to the topic of discussion (such as that is), I do find it convincing in showing me that you have a lot of pain and rage you are channelling through this belief, and into these posts. I'm guessing that you won't take what I say much to heart here, but just in case-- have you discussed all of this with a therapist? Because it seems to me that it wouldn't hurt to do so.

 

This reminds me of the Dilbert comic strip, where the character Wally says that, when he comes out of the shower, his body is the cleanest thing in the house. Hence, he says, other objects become cleaner by contact with his skin. Therefore, the towels he uses to dry himself never need to be washed.

In other words, it's faultlessly logical, yet ungrounded in reality.

I'm thinking specifically of people outside alone at night who are assaulted by strangers. Though surely this is less common than it was thirty years ago, it still happens often enough (especially in high-crime areas) to reasonably concern people.

It would be interesting to know the gender ratio of assault victims under those precise circumstances. Let's say 75% of these assault victims are men.

A number like that would seem to suggest that men were at great risk!

But what about the denominator? Of people out alone at night in the same areas where assaults by strangers took place, how many are men, how many women?

From my own experience in high-crime places like Detroit, NYC, and Washington DC, I would venture to guess that, of unaccompanied pedestrians at 2:00 am, away from crowds, about 99% are men.

If those numbers are valid, then a woman alone is more than 30 times as likely to be assaulted as a man.

In general, women are less likely to become victims of violent crimes because they usually avoid risky behavior.

A woman walking alone at night would attract attention in the same way (albeit cruder and more threatening) as a woman alone in a bar would attract attention.

Um, what? So it's not legitimate to discuss an individual's risk of harm from people of the other gender?

 

And again somewhere around 4 full orders of magnitude more men are trapped in the Glass Cellar than are sitting above the Glass Ceiling. You can't say gender counts when it supports your position and doesn't when it contradicts your position, and you can't have a theory that is both itself and its opposite. Since the theory that maleness puts you on top of society is contradicted by the incomparably greater number of men who are the most absolutely disenfranchised and oppressed people in society there must be a different explanation, that explanation is class.

The gender aspect is explained much better by a combination of generational delays (going to take a bit for newer generations to filter into positions), and research showing that women as a whole choose to prioritize work/life balance whereas men don't have that choice and so simply throw themselves into work. Until we come up with artificial uteruses or women start being willing to make the kind of profound life/work balance sacrifices men are simply given by default this isn't going to change.

Or alternatively about 30 of our top legal scholars at one of the top law schools in the nation.

Their exact words: "Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation. Here our concerns include but are not limited to the following: ..."

You realise that actually helps my point right? What does it say that such a significant and long-term public undertaking can be subject to such a blackout. What does it say that even though this was explicitly the result of feminists protesting his shelter's very existence and attacking it and him every step of the way until he was driven to take his own life no other feminists ever came to his aid, and you still refuse to hold feminism culpable?

Feminism as a whole almost universally denies even the existence of male victims of female sexual predators and domestic abusers, let alone that such men are half of all victims of each category. Feminism as a whole takes this denial and narrative of erasure to such an extraordinary degree that the very crimes themselves are called "Violence against women" and entire studies have been done on the harm this false narrative has caused.

His shelter was the only one because of feminist led erasure of male victims, his shelter was attacked by feminists, and the same feminists who constantly insist "feminism helps men too" stood by and did nothing the entire time.

Imagine what would have happened if MRAs had bankrupted and shut down a women's shelter and abused the owner so much she took her own life. Imagine the thousands that would fill the streets screaming for blood and jail time.

Again there can be no such thing as "anti-feminism" if "feminism is not monolith". Like I said before what you're saying you want isn't critique or meaningful criticism, it's critique equivalent of the humblebrag. If we were talking about gun control I'm willing to bet you would be willing to earnestly hear out arguments for everything from swiss style mandatory issuance to an outright revocation of the 2nd amendment and give each consideration on its merits, but when it comes to feminism the only things you're willing to consider are arguments that do not substantively challenge feminism in any way.

That's not a discussion, it's a church service. It's asking people "Did you like the food or did you REALLY like the food?" without giving them the option to say the food was bad.

My position here isn't based on the premise that "feminism is wrong". My premise is that feminism (like any other movement/ideology) needs to be judged based on the facts and its actions irrespective of its claims about itself or its own moral authority. My conclusion is that feminism as a whole has serious problems and is wrong about many things; Things very core to feminism's current dogma are directly contradicted by evidence and the actions of feminism as a whole do not line up with its PR of "equality".

To use the same metaphor as before: My premise is not that "The GOP is wrong". My premise is that it needs to be judged based on facts and its actions regardless of its claims about itself. My conclusion is that the GOP as a whole has serious problems and is wrong about many things; Things very core to the GOP's current party dogma are directly contradicted by evidence and the actions of the GOP as a whole do not line up with its PR of wanting to reduce abortions, support the middle class and small businesses, and stand up for personal liberty.

You on the other hand are doing this backwards, starting from the premise that feminism can't be wrong and then working backwards to determine what evidence and arguments you'll accept or reject from there. Anything meaningfully criticizing or challenging feminism is wrong, anything that doesn't is fine.

To say "feminists are often wrong [but saying] feminism is wrong is fallacious" is itself the logically invalid argument. Feminism is not a thing that exists and projects into the universe from outside, feminism is nothing more than the name of the constellation of beliefs centering around patriarchy theory, privilege rhetoric, and nowadays rape culture shared by feminists as a whole. As you yourself say repeatedly "feminism is not monolith". If it's not monolith then it must be capable of being wrong.

Patriarchy is "debated" within feminism along the "did you like the food or did you REALLY like the food" lines I mentioned earlier. The very fact it still exists as a theory is testament to the flaws at the very heart of feminism itself. "Patriarchy" is a circular and unfalsifiable theory that can never be wrong, never be disproven, and never be contradicted. No matter what circumstances or evidence are presented everything is always, and will always be "Patriarchy". It's not a theory, it's a religion. And like all good religions anyone who tries to say "Yknow we're not in a patriarchy, the facts just don't support that" is branded a heretic and chased out.

"Rape Culture" is a circular conspiracy theory that claims society so condones and normalizes rape that women face a staggering and unprecedented epidemic of rape because of just how normal raping is for men. It also claims that evidence of rape rates going down is ipso facto proof of how bad rape culture is because what's really happening is there's even MORE rape but nobody's reporting it.

It's a "theory" so regressive and backwards that even RAINN publicly stated there is no such thing as rape culture and that the "theory" is genuinely harmful to actual victims. It's completely unsupported and wholly contradicted by every shred of non-feminist evidence we have, to the point of the "1 in 4" figure actually being six in one THOUSAND, and is continually held up by fraud like the erasure of male rape victims to preserve the male-on-female violence narrative and attempts at stirring up moral panic like the UVA hoax.

Speaking of which: Prove it. Half of all rape victims are still being erased and virtually all of feminism continues to uphold the denial of male victimhood. Where's the change? Where's the protests? Where's the outrage? Where, in short, are ANY of these people ANY time ANYTHING happens that they could have shown up and done something about? Where is any meaningful proof of action, as opposed to merely the assertion they exist?

Also once again you're tripping over Nussbaum and feminism treating men as a borg collective.

If you're not willing to have a discussion with someone who actually disagrees with you you're not willing to have a discussion period. You consider feminism a monolith because you have stated in plain language you consider feminism == to the monolithic concept of "equality".

And again my premises are that I judge ideologies/movements based on the facts and not based on their claims about themselves. My conclusions are that the evidence, and elementary school level knowledge of logical validity, shows feminism is wrong at the very least about many of its core tenets and a majority of feminist action is anti-equality wrapped in claims otherwise.

And now we're back to problems caused by your complete inability or refusal to see "Feminism" the ideology/movement as separate from the very concept of "equality" itself. Feminism is an ideology based around concepts such as "patriarchy" "privilege" and "rape culture" which claims to be seeking gender equality. Egalitarianism is an ideology which also claims to be seeking gender equality but does not include those ideological concepts, instead being based principally off of evidence rather than ideology.

Egalitarianism can undermine Feminism in exactly the same way a magical-example-land resurgence of Pre-Reagan conservatives that are pro-small business anti-corporate welfare and anti-religious right could undermine the Republican party's version of conservativism.

The problem comes when the determination of whether it's well-reasoned, clearly thought-out and constructed, well contextualized and sourced, and "not in the least hysterical or paranoid" is based principally on whether or not it agrees with feminism.

The labeling of anything meaningfully disagreeing with feminism or feminists as "hysterical" "angry" "bitter" or "paranoid" is so common, so routine, that it's literally been turned into a color coded chart (posted a page or two back).

People are talking about it, and they're getting labelled as "hysterical" "paranoid" "misogynist" "bitter" and many other flavors of ad hominem. They'd talk more about it but there's this little problem of feminists showing up and screaming so loud nobody can talk, pulling fire alarms or attacking people to shut down the event, and other wonderful inclusive methods of expressing disagreement.

Almost 30 of our nation's top legal scholars went so far as to say that the feminist policies adopted by their university "lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process", with the very first signee saying (in her own words) that "our society will look back on this time as a moment of madness, and that Harvard University will be deeply shamed at the role it played in simply caving to the government’s position".

Major mainstream coverage was given to the most recent feminist bullying campaign, one so vicious and so widespread it drove a grown man to break down in tears, and which drove even The Guardian to print an article concluding "The life blood of feminism is in danger of becoming bile." It should be pointed out that even this article still can't bring itself to drop the empirically unsound anti-male rhetoric.

People are very much talking about this. And they're punished severely for daring to speak out against it, especially if they're women or minorities.

Levite you just literally said you consider me a threat and a danger because of words on the internet, but you refuse to even consider the toxic, abusive, and even criminal and violent conduct of feminists so widespread and widely supported that even Julie Bindel fears for the very future of Feminism itself as more than a "conspiracy theory".

Also cute catch-22, gender based dismissal, and erasure of women.

There's also passages in the Talmud saying that kissing or even looking at a vagina causes birth defects in children, and going by your logic of truth-by-consensus the Jews should be considered the worst group of people in the history of everything since so many people keep saying the same things about us.

You might want to reconsider your position.

Damn, one more and I would've gotten bingo. (Cute catch-22 again btw)


Now for the record I'm not actually making an argumentum ad bingocardium, I'm just having a little fun with a method of pointing out the prevalence of anti-male cliches and how strongly they can color responses to something challenging feminism in any meaningful way.

This entire line of getting personal and saying I'm hysterical, paranoid, dangerous, full of "pain and rage", and need therapy comes from one place: The conflation of the ideology/movement of Feminism and the monolithic concept of "equality". The end result of holding something in higher and higher esteem until it can no longer be questioned is to equate that thing with goodness, morality, and rationality itself.

Meaningfully disagreeing with feminism is thus not just offensive, it's the ultimate transgression. To say "no" to feminism is to say "no" to goodness itself. It is to be the opposite of good, rational, and moral. Therefore because I challenge feminism I am hysterical, paranoid, full of "pain and rage" (a rationalization of how I could reject Christ), and even dangerous and in need of therapy.

It's directly analogous to how the Catholic Church originally dealt with Protestantism.

 

OK, I don't like to respond to anything with silence, so I will just note that this response does not seem materially different from anything I noted previously (up to and including twisting my words). Nor do your attempts to turn my concern back upon me surprise me, or offend me.

However, having had my say for the record, expressed my legitimate concern should you ever decide you are open to it, and indicated that I had read your response, I consider my need to post in this thread over.

 

I'll just focus on one talking point for shits and giggles.
It does seem like a fave rave for you so let's rock and roll.

As I pointed out in my earlier post I tend to count Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsderg as examples of preeminent legal scholars.
Sorry, people like Alan Dershowitz, Henry Steiner, and David Steiner hardly come close.
I'll give you Charlie Nesson but only because he represented NORML and changed race based juries.
And yes, I do realize that there are woman on the list.

But looking at the text of their complaint I would say their main complaint is not with "feminism" or harassment policy, just how the college chose to set them up.
They did it in a rushed fashion to comply with the federal legislation in order to get funding and in the process managed to create a flawed process.
Big surprise.
I have never seen a bureaucracy that has ever came up with a system that works right off the bat.
I'd argue what they came up with is better than other schools that tip entirely the other direction but what ev's.

Is it some kind of conspiracy?
No.

 

Either I agreed with you that I was a litany of negative personal traits and straw men, or I disagreed with you in which case you got to make a post saying I'm "turning [your] concern back upon [you]" and basically saying that disagreeing with you proved you were right about me.

Catch-22.

The policies harvard adopted are textbook examples of the policies feminists demand, and have gotten, across the nation.

Because as I've repeatedly said the only way something can be "anti-feminist" is if "feminist" were a monolithic Good (capital G significant). However since "feminism is not monolith" there can therefore be no such thing as "anti-feminist" at all because otherwise all of feminism would be "anti-feminist" since every feminist is anti-feminist to at least some other feminist.

No, I'd tell you that banning safety features like head shields or useless bits like little nubbins on the barrel while demonizing one of the least criminal demographics out there is counter-productive to the stated aim of reducing gun crime, an overwhelming majority of which is fallout from the disastrous "War On Drugs" and committed with already illegally trafficked handguns.

You're saying "I liked the food but didn't REALLY like the food", not "this food was bad and shouldn't have been served".

1. It's not a fallacy of generalization, you're just utterly reliant on the No True Scotsman fallacy to protect feminism to the point of saying "that's not a beach it's just one grain of sand, and one grain of sand, and one grain of sand, and one grain of sand..."
2. "Problems IN" but not "Problems WITH". You refuse to accept even the possibility that feminism itself is capable of being wrong.
3. You keep using emotionally manipulative language to dismiss my evidence but the thing is facts don't stop being facts after a certain number of citations, I keep adding new ones as they come up, and I use them because they're excellent examples of major public instances where if you were right things should have turned out completely differently.

You keep saying this, then when actually challenged to put that assertion into practice you return to old habits. Hell in this very post you contradict this assertion of openmindedness...

... such as right in the very next line. You say you think "aspects of feminism can be wrong" but literally the very next sentence is you returning to rejecting wholeheartedly every single example of feminism being meaningfully wrong about something. You reject them as facts and insist they're fallacies because they contradict feminism. You reject my facts asserting that feminism is wrong about "rape culture" because feminism can't be wrong, therefore my facts must be wrong. You reject that they ARE facts at all in order to maintain a facade of rationality.

Your defenses of feminism are what is based almost wholly on fallacies. Every single example no matter how damning is "No True Feminist" or dismissed by some other handwave. Every single statistic no matter how backed up is wrong because it contradicts feminism. Every feminist statistic is perfect no matter how many times it's debunked.

Patriarchy will never NOT exist because it's circular and unfalsifiable. EVERYTHING is claimed to be patriarchy, even things that directly and totally contradict it, even things that feminists are behind. Patriarchy will never not exist for the same reason McCarthy would never admit he wasn't surrounded by communists.

That's EXACTLY what it does. It negates the very existence of "rape culture" because it points out how "rape culture" is an even more facially invalid "theory" than Patriarchy. It's a "theory" that literally claims evidence it doesn't exist is proof that it secretly DOES. That's ridiculous on its face.

These last two lines are exactly what I'm talking about when I say you prove repeatedly that you reject the possibility of feminism ever being wrong no matter how much you assert otherwise. You're rejecting the very possibility of these inherently invalid fallacies-branded-as-theories being anything but indisputable truth, and holding that accepting them is a necessary prerequisite for any discussion.

And why am I not surprised you would cite Jessica Freaking Valenti. I mean the name basically speaks for itself here, you're citing one of the David Duke's of feminism. The only major players worse than her today are Megan Murphy and Cathy Brennan.

RAINN's position IS the be-all and end-all in this matter because it's the position supported by the facts and not a circular conspiracy theory. It's time to end "rape culture" hysteria.

Considering Feminists constantly insist "feminism helps men too" and "feminism is about equality" and will go to the point of committing felonies to stop anyone ELSE from dealing with Men's issues YES I cam expecting a campaign of action from feminists. The MRM deals with feminists because feminists are the ones causing the problem.

The complete destruction of due process for accused sex offenders? Feminists demanded those policies and continue to campaign that they're still not enough.
The total lack of aid, facilities, or even awareness of male victims of domestic violence? Feminists are the ones campaigning that IPV is "Violence Against Women" and passing laws like VAWA and "primary aggressor" laws.
The total erasure of male rape victims? Feminists are the ones insisting virtually all rape is male perpetrated "Violence Against Women", and feminist researchers are the ones redefining male rape victims as "other".
The lack of any real world events or actions from the MRM? Feminists are the ones committing felonies to shut down their events and attacking the MRM's very existence, going as far as blood libel.

Also once again by YOUR own standards there can be no such thing as an "anti-feminist".

And now we're back to the cloud-of-bees tactic. Feminism isn't monolith therefore feminism is uncriticizable, but feminism IS monolith therefore you're a misogynist "anti-feminist" for criticizing it.

And once again you prove despite your assertions of openmindedness the reality is you're quite the opposite. "inherent propaganda and misogyny". "inherent". Because of course feminism IS goodness itself therefore anything un-feminist is also un-good. Double plus ungood in the case of the MRM.

We'd still have the same problem because it's feminists and feminism that's making specific issues worse, or causing them in the first place.

"Feminism is this monolith... (hence: not monolithic)".

No, they don't, not in the slightest. That's feminism you're thinking of which has made everything a zero-sum game because at its core feminism can not survive without the victimhood/oppressor dichotomy. That's why feminists go so far as to redefine rape to erase male victims and shut down men's shelters, an ideology entirely predicated on the notion that rape and IPV are "violence against women" and examples of "rape culture" simply can't survive if forced to admit that women rape men just as much as men rape women.

Absurd on its face. You may as well say Catholicism has no beliefs or tenets, only individuals do.

Egalitarianism can and if the statistics are to be believed has undermined feminism. Overwhelmingly even women reject the toxic bigoted professional victimhood that feminism has become and pursue equality without the ideological baggage of "male pattern violence" "patriarchy" "privilege" and "rape culture".

 

I've explained repeatedly exactly how and why your positions are unfalsifiable, circular, and factually unsound. The only person who's weaselled you out of this conversation is you, you've backed yourself into a corner by getting to the point where you contradict yourself multiple times in the same post. And if you want to talk about caricatures which one of us has been called everything from hysterical and feverish to dangerous and threatening enough to need therapy just for daring to be a heretic from the Church of Feminism.

I'm "engaging with what imagine [you] to be" for the same reason in your eyes I've never successfully shown serious malfeasance on feminism's part, feminism can never be meaningfully wrong therefore working backwards any evidence must be invalid. They must not be a True Feminist or some other such handwave. Since you can't claim yourself to be No True Feminism it must therefore be that I'm "not engaging" with you. You can't engage with me because fundamentally we're operating in two completely incompatible ways. I'm using evidence to try and reach a conclusion, you're using a conclusion to determine which evidence you'll accept.

Since for you acceptance of the conclusion and being a good/rational person is one and the same (much as being an obedient catholic and being a good person were one and the same around the time of the reformation) you can't accept that I can be rational/good and not accept the same conclusion as you, therefore I must be un-good or irrational. To you I'm no different than Martin Luther was to the Catholic Church, it's inconceivable that the church itself could be wrong about something or that someone could be a good christian and not also be a loyal and obedient catholic. There is no equality without feminism, there is no feminism without equality. Anyone saying otherwise MUST be wrong because these two statements can not be contradicted.

That lack of energy and difficulty you're feeling is the strain of cognitive dissonance. Given that you've gotten to the point of contradicting yourself multiple times from one line to the next I'd imagine it's starting to take a toll, few people can keep up that level of blackwhite and doublethink while still maintaining any pretense of rationality and civility.

 

Speaking of Martin Luther: really really really believed in witchcraft.

 

Here's my problem (as it seems the problem for everybody else).
While I'm happy to debate things like if the rules Harvard set up for rape and sexual harassment are textbook examples of policies the 'federal government' (which is about as non-feminist as you can imagine, trust me I know people who work there), the fact is the feminism you constantly berate is nothing like the one I grew up with or my daughters currently practice.
As a single mother, the first female paramedic this state, a volunteer firefighter, a peace activist who smuggled draftees into Canada, and a small farmer, my mom raised her sons as feminists.
I learned about the suffrage movement and woman's contribution to the labor movement from my grandfather.
When it came to class and color woman fought on all fronts.
There wasn't any of the perspectives you talk about, none.
My daughter grew up in the age of the internet and took woman's studies classes.
She doesn't read Jezebel but she does listen to Ani DeFranco.
She teaches and is going out to the Bush (here that means to places you can't reach by road) to teach.
I do understand my experiences are not yours and that you will never see the world as I do but in the interest of having a conversation you have to take these things into account.

 

Can we not just have a conversation that either:

a) Ignores, or minimizes the impasse with Shadowex3 (but still includes him)
b) Just ignore Shadowex3

I would prefer a but will live with b if that's what it takes.

 

a = a more productive solution and one that would be less like beating my head against a concrete wall.

 

So yeah. I read through the first and the last pages of this insanely drawn-out, convoluted thread before my head started to go numb, and when I finished I was so much more confused than when I started. Now I'm not even sure what "feminism" is (and still pretty much don't care - I'd still identify as some nonspecific flavor neutral Humanist Egalitarianist), and I haven't the foggiest notion of what Shadowex3's actual position/point of view/belief system is. He just rabidly attacks anyone that speaks, and then badgers them with entire essays.

@Shadowex3, what is your life like? I have to wonder. Are you actually one of those guys that feminism is always targeting? Like an obese neckbearded Omega virgin or something? And I'm not trying to make fun, I'm really curious at this point. I mean sure, lots of feminists are deluded wackos, and Feminism has largely become a diluted parody of itself and trapped in a never-ending identity crisis these days, but you seem to have this really... personal hatred for it. Did you get fired from your job because of a feminist or something?

 

I know some wonderful accepting and rational card carrying Republicans. To them small government means leaving gays alone, legalizing weed, and protecting middle/lower class workers with strong but uninvasive labor laws and business regulation. Their party is still one of the most damaging backwards influences on this country hell bent on taking us back to the Gilded Age and no matter how passionately they insist that's not what conservativism means to THEM that's still not going to change what the GOP is as a whole.

You are in the exact same position. Ardently insisting that because you believe in raising the minimum wage, legalizing gay marriage, and legalizing marijuana the rest of the GOP must believe in it as well and nobody should be able to point out that no, actually, the rest of the GOP is not only not helping on those issues but is on the whole actively seeking to make them worse.

The question here is when are you going to stop enabling that corruption by participating in the "feminism is equality that's not true feminism"/"you're an anti-feminist for opposing them" two-step that lets these people use the weight and backing of feminism to carry out their agenda and then turn to hide behind feminism as a shield when they rightfully are opposed. It's only because of people like you caring more about the brand of "feminism" than the values it supposedly represents that these (other) people are able to continue using that brand as a weapon and shield.

And the suffragettes were classist racists who didn't want poor women, poor men, or non-whites to be able to vote. Yknow what both of these factoids have in common? They're irrelevent to the metaphor.

Those "entire essays" aren't "entire essays", they're many smaller individual responses to multiple different posters. If you think I'm the one "badgering" people with "essays" consider that my response to Levite was half as many words as he wrote to me... and then multiply that by the number of people I'm responding to. I can either not respond and get called on that, or make an effort to respond to what I can and get called on "badgering" people with "entire essays". Catch-22 again.

As for my position I've repeatedly stated it over the years and threads. I believe in facts, evidence, and the the requirements of logical validity. The facts and evidence do not support feminism's claims, nor are its "theories" logically valid. The facts and evidence point to feminism not only not solving any of the problems it claims to be working on, but in fact aggravating or outright causing many of the problems that aren't simply fabrications used to control women through fear and lessons disempowerment.

Since all attempts at going about solving these problems independent of feminism have resulted in attacks by feminists escalating up to the level of crime and violence, and feminism's social and political influence continues to grow and distort public policy causing great harm, feminism can not simply be ignored and left to wither. It requires active opposition to minimize the harm it causes and either bring about a successor movement or restore it to a non-dysfunctional state where it accepts facts and evidence rather than "feels > reals" and no longer has at its core the structural flaws which inevitably lead to this kind of corruption.

Yknow how if people see a guy take a right hook they probably will just call the cops or walk away, but if they see a woman take a right hook it's basically the start of an instant lynch mob?

This is that. Anyone arguing against feminism is automatically subject to a number of hyperbole laden stereotypes and straw men because it's perceived in the same way as someone getting into a fight with a woman, and despite assertions otherwise almost no one actually sees women as equals rather than as deserving special protection and privilege. People can't accept that feminism can be legitimately opposed so rationalizations are sought. This person must be bitter because they're a fat ugly unlovable nerd, they can't get laid, someone hurt them, they're mentally unstable, it's personal, they're angry, they're scared of women, or they're just plain misogynist.

Anything and everything but "this person took a rational coolheaded look at the facts and decided feminism was not just wrong, but so wrong that harm needed to be undone and worked against".

There are similarly problematic things in society, like the GOP's assholes-and-elbows dead sprint back to the dark ages, but the thing is that's widely recognized and opposed and the GOP's in a nearly historically unprecedented losing streak. Feminism on the other hand is still seen as unquestionable, uncriticizable, and unopposable.

 

I suppose it is.

Whatever. I just want to move on.