stirring the pot >:)

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I'll drink to that.

I didn't make it past the Dr. Seuss thing, but blaming an entire group of people for problems you have suffered is such a waste of time. Any time I hear any general statements about men or women it makes me cringe.

Well, the pot was certainly stirred. That said, Dox's initial snippy comment led to three pages of what amounts to tone-trolling and not addressing any of the actual points of the article.

Individual points were addressed here and there. Most points did not merit addressing.

That's odd. I vaguely recall specifically addressing "Part One: Why Feminism Has "Fem" in the Name, or, Why Can't We All Just Be Humanists?" and "Part Two: Why Claiming that Sexism Isn't Real Is a Sexist Thing to Say" from the article on page 2 in this thread...

Oh, well. I guess my memory just isn't what it used to be...

Dox, personally I ignore the delivery and would attack her logic. If her reasoning is sound then to me she has a point but if it is unsound then I would show her where her logic was erroneous.

I have a feeling the whole topic was intended to troll others!

You may have missed a paragraph in the article that refutes what you say.

The author has this in there as well. It is the seventh paragraph up from where Part Five starts.

With respect to advanced maths and sciences a lot of women have been raised to believe this and discouraged from it.

Okay, I already addressed one of her points, but I'll address a few more.

Part one, the Dr. Seuss bit is frankly ridiculous and I'm not gonna give it too much time. I'll just say that it is not an argument against the existence of misandry, rather, it is a simple restatement of her belief that misandry does not exist.

Also, she says that "the world is not, currently, an equal, safe, and just place for women." The rest of my post is meant to demonstrate that the world is not "equal" for men either, so I'll just point out that the "safe" and "just" parts are a crock of s**t.

There is one type of violence, only one, where female victims outnumber male; sexual violence. In every other type of violence, from assault up to murder, male victims outnumber female by a comfortable margin. So, if the world is unsafe for women (and I won't argue that it isn't) it is just as, or more, unsafe for men.

As for being "just," it is also the case that men receive heavier sentences than women who commit the same crimes, and that female victims are taken far more seriously than male victims. Implies, to me anyway, that the world is not a just place for men either.

Part two, I already addressed.

Part three, my response to that ties into my response to part two; the thing about there being far more homeless men than women. It's not as simple as she makes it out to be. Yes, I would agree that there are systemic barriers preventing women from reaching the highest levels in society (note that, unlike her, I can state the problems that my gender face without feeling the need to deny those that affect hers), but there are also systemic safeguards that prevent women from reaching the lowest levels in society. There is far more help for women in extreme poverty than for men in the same position.

And it says something about her mindset that she can only see the inequality in those at the top of the heap when there are a whole hell of a lot more people at the bottom. That she can only consider "politicians, CEOs, film directors, law enforcement officers, comedians, tech professionals, executive chefs, mathematicians, and on and on and on" implies a level of privilege that is at odds with her portrayal of women as oppressed victims.

Part four, hurray for her for noticing and caring about men's issues. The way she frames them is a little odd though (by "a little odd" I mean that she deserves a gold medal in mental gymnastics). Apparently, in her mind, issues that affect primarily men are all a part of the patriarchy. That is, they are really injustices against women.

Well done. See, looking at that list, I would have concluded that maybe things aren't as good for men as the feminist movement would have us believe. That maybe men's lives aren't an unending parade of privilege. I am grateful to her for opening my eyes to the fact that, being part of the "patriarchy," all the injustices suffered by men are really disguised injustices against women.

For all her complaints about men hijacking discussion of women's issues, it seems a bit hypocritical for her to take a bunch of issues that affect primarily men and make them all about women.

And, even then, she's one of only a few feminists who claims to give a s**t about men's issues in the first place. I've heard far more say that they just don't care, or that it's none of their business, when men's issues are brought up. Including yourself, LKL, in a discussion about circumcision.

As for part five, I could just as easily say the same thing to her. That she should ask herself how many of her problems stem from actual misogyny, and how many come from people's dislike of her personally. I wouldn't bother though because, firstly, I recognize that saying such a thing does not actually address her complaints about anti-female discrimination. And, secondly, because I do not feel the need to deny the problems faced by others in order to make mine seem more important.

The whole article reeks of the self-serving "women oppressed, men oppressors" doctrine espoused by too many feminists, and I would encourage those who do not hold such a simplistic worldview to distance themselves from those who do.

Last edited by mds_02 on 03 Apr 2013, 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I prefer to attack both, and given the general shittyness of this article, spend as little time as possible doing so. I think my IP in this thread accomplished that just fine, pointing out that the author's argument and attitude generate additional misogyny is just as effective for my purposes as a point by point fisking would be.

My "snippy comment" did in fact address one of the points of the article, as have many of the replies in the thread. You might not like what they have to say (I don't count one positive response), but to say that everyone is "tone trolling (that's a thing now?) and not addressing the article is false; one would have to conclude that you didn't actually read the responses, or that you're intentionally distorting things.

That, plus your "snippy comment" didn't lead to anything. The rest of us are perfectly capable of taking issue with the tone in which the article was written all on our own.

But it seems like what the article is criticizing is also about tone and interpretation rather than pure logic. It don't see how someone merely claiming that misandry exists is an attack on feminism. It's not an attack unless you interpret that there's an intent to diminish or attack feminism.

In other parts there seems to be a clash over definitions. The author's definition is based on which group has more power as a whole. By that definition because males have more power misandry cannot exist. Other people's definition isn't based on who has more power, but on individual attitudes towards the other sex. It's not logical to claim that just because males have more power in our society, discrimination in the other direction doesn't exist. Also, saying misandry exists isn't the same as saying the relationship between misandry and misogyny is symmetric.

Another thing is the general complaint of the article doesn't make a whole lot of sense when it isn't exactly clear who or what the author is attacking.

Okay, I read the article. After reading all the hype about the supposed "dripping condensation" I have to ask: WTF is the big deal?

Might be that it was pretty clear once I started reading it that it wasn't addressed to me. The target is pretty clear: the archetypical "Men's Rights Activist" who shows up in comments threads on gender issues, complains that women are overprivileged, and blames feminists for ruining everything.

The only potential problem might be framing traditional gender stereotypes with respect to males in the private sphere as non-misandrist but rather just "patriarchal". I think you could argue that assumptions about male roles in childrearing/private sphere are misandrist as well as part of traditional patriarchy (i.e. a system of the division of roles where men are assigned to the public sphere - typically, the sphere where big, system-wide decisions are made). You could also argue that inequities in custody decisions constitute systemic misandry (albeit, one based on traditional gender role assumptions - nurturing women, working men) - so the article might be off base there, as well.

But all in all, it is not an awful or overly condescending. From what I heard people saying, I was afraid I'd be in for an illiberal, anti-pornography, trans-phobic, Andrew Dworkin type radical feminist.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 03 Apr 2013, 10:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Because the movement was named that in the 19th century & it's proved useful at specifying a continuing activist and intellectual tradition?

I think people reacted to the title and general tone and assumed the author must be attacking them personally. Maybe due to previous experience with angry bitter feminists who do have a misandristic attitude. These people definitely exist in feminist circles and definitely give the others a bad name. Maybe the rant is justified given that I'm not familiar with the comments of "MRA" types being referred to.