Autism tackles Feminist censorship

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Laurie A. Couture, well known autism advocate has written an article about feminists/feminism and submitted it to a mainstream publication which tried to alter and censor the article (without telling her) where all the references she made criticising feminism were removed!

Doctor Couture has submitted the FULL article to another publication who promised to not alter it. I'm unable to post links on this page, but if you type the following title into a search engine you should be able to read the article: "Another story the Good Men Project didn?t want you to see" (Published on the website 'A Voice for Men').


I'm so pleased to see a woman on the spectrum challenging false feminist statistics and censorship.

Uh, the Good Men Project isn't feminist. It's a men's rights site.

It's also a media site, so even though they say they're about social change, really they're about page views. Feminism is in fashion right now so I can see why they'd edit anti-feminism sentiment out. It might alienate their readers.

Can we have a link to the published paper and the original version of it, it would be interesting to see what the OP is writing about

I don't think it is really either. It is aimed at men, but it isn't an advocacy organisation for men. It depends on your definition of "feminism", but ultimately it doesn't seem to explicitly identify as feminist.

wrt. the article, it raises good points but I didn't see the relevance of autism.

It depends on what your definition of "is" is.

The problem is that some critics of feminism are bigoted sexist men, but it is impossible to say that all critics of feminism are "bigoted sexist men". The problem is that feminist thought is not uniform, within feminism a very wide range of opinion exists.

I am sure that some critics of schools of thought within feminism are feminists themselves, also some of the more outlandish schools of thought within feminism are examples of bigotry. For example some of the mad fringe of femisim claim that "all problems and crime is becuase of men", this is clearly wrong.

Untill we know what type of feminist thoughts and ideas are being considered it is impossible to make a sensible judgement of what is going on.

They say they want to challenge "confining cultural notions of what a ?real man? must be". That's part of the men's rights movement. Just because they're not building shelters for male rape victims doesn't mean they're not advocates.

On the topic of Feminism and MRAs, I think it's important to highlight the fact that the former is not by default a "golden" advocate and the latter is a hate group. Both have had some important points, and both have crossed the line. Sadly, the former seems to use its prior success to try to push some frankly scary things, and sadly, those things aren't a minority. Anyone who says that a woman or a man should be [whatever] is a sexist, regardless of who is saying what.

If any feminist tells you:
> That there is something wrong with not being a feminist (especially if you're a woman)
> That if you're a woman, you should revoke your rights to voting and/or having a job if you disagree with feminism,
> That women should live their lives in a feminist approved way
> That women act one way, men act another
> Anything about harming, discriminating or being otherwise cruel to men

They are wrong and they are sexist, horrible people.

The first implies that women who aren't feminists are "bad women". There is no such thing as an ideal woman, unless by which you mean a woman who has accomplished what she wanted to do.
The second implies that women are not allowed to judge ideologies because of their past accomplishments. Ideologies change over time. If their argument were true, African Americans should vote Republican because a Republican wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.
The third is blatant sexism. There is no such thing as an ideal woman, again.
The fourth erases the individuality of people. I'm of the female sex, but I do not act in the prescribed "female" manner. I act like me. You act like you. The only thing that says that you "should" act in a certain way are these cretins.
The fifth is blatant hatred. If you are advocating for harming others, you are a bully. End of story.

Even though there are MANY people that are spouting out one or more of the four above, it is imperative to not generalize and assume and let them speak first. Nail them where they fall into one of these four groups.

Anyways, I believe both are pointless. At least in most western countries. I just find both silly in that they're targeting the same problem (social expectations of gender) that would probably fit under an envelope of gender equality and/or egalitarianism.

It is not beyond feminists though to erase autism, as I have had it happen several times. Then again, autism advocates have erased my autism, so it seems to be a problem that is found in many activist movements.

What?

No.

Every feminist thinks there is something wrong with not being feminist.
What do you think "being feminist" means (to feminists, not to MRAs)?
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
Do you expect feminists to be cool with the belief that women are not people?

This is a very clear and concise summary of the situation.
Radical feminists and MRA's are almost identical in the way they operate. Both are full of professional victims who blame every problem faced by their sex on an imagined boogyman. The rad fems blame the patriarchy for every ill ever faced by any woman and the MRA's blame the feminists for all of men's problems. Both make me want to vomit.




I totally agree. There is always a danger in activist movements that some people just go to far and become destructive to the very causes they purport to support. This is typically born of anger at a life of facing injustice so is understandable but nevertheless is almost always completely counterproductive. The radical feminists turn people off from supporting feminism which, in many places of the world, is still a really valid cause. The MRA's, with their blatant woman hatred, just turn people off from addressing real men's issues like, for example, the fact that men are 4 times as likely to commit suicide as women - that's issue that needs to be addressed but the MRA's just piss people off and so harm that issues. Another example is PETA and vegetarianism. I've been a vegie for nearly 25 years now, its something I believe in passionately but PETA do more harm than good, they just irritate people with their absurd over the top rhetoric and actually turn people off from becoming a vegetarian. Hell, whenever I see a PETA story in the media I am almost tempted to have a burger myself just to spite them!!

And, sadly, this phenomona also seems to be true in the autism rights movement as well. I can understand the righteous anger but don't let that anger become radical anti NT rhetoric. Don't become a PETA or "A Voice for Men" or "Radical Feminist". Such talk is self destructive and only damages autism rights. Remember no civil rights movement has ever succeeded without the support from majority population. You need us NT's and believe it or most people want to help. The NT population are not evil they are just ignorant. We need to educate no shout and accuse.

Actually, feminism is theoretically an equal rights movement for women. The "radical notion that women are people" line is a piece of rhetoric deliberately used by radfems to encourage a victim mentality among women.

There are several equality movements that do not revolve around women, but that nevertheless want equality for everyone, including women. There's humanists (even though that's also the name of a philosophy), equalists, egalitarians, even the vast majority of MRAs want equality - they're just coming at it from the male perspective. Of course some people don't call themselves anything at all, and still manage to have ideals of equality.

Any real feminist - that is, one who wants equality and not superiority - wouldn't have a problem with a person not wanting to identify as feminist if that person wished for equality.

Not to mention the number of feminists who object to men identifying as feminist in the first place...

The problem with assuming that is that feminism often contains doctrines that really aren't what many women want to support. Feminism tries so desperately to cling onto its dictionary definition ("Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.") despite their actual actions, and hold a very "my way or the highway" opinion of it. Most people, men, women and otherwise, would agree that women are people and deserve equal rights. This is by no means a radical opinion and has not been for quite a few decades. To think otherwise is really underestimating the empathy of others, with the only justification is the existence of a particular doctrine. This idea is thanks to the actions of feminists in the past (however, to assume that it would not occur without them is forgetting other possibilities of other movements). Many feminists prey on this fact and inject other, questionable doctrines (yes, it's tumblr, but it has plenty of external sources) into their ideology, and then tack onto the definition to try to justify it.

It's not okay.

The bottom line is, assuming that there is something inherently wrong with a woman not being a feminist, especially without hearing her out, is inherently sexist. It implies that women should not be allowed to decide for themselves if feminism is an ideology for them. It also implies that women who have thought outside of this box of thinking and do not want to affiliate themselves with these sorts of things are somehow inherently wrong, with no actual option to hear out. Such an assumption also carries the false presumption that you can only respect women's rights if you are a feminist, which is not true at all.

I tried to avoid generalizing since there are some decent people who call themselves feminists but they're quite rare these days, the movement has descended into radicalism in its third wave. Is there something wrong with me that I took the time to think about other people's actions, decide that they were not okay, and decided not to affiliate with them? The movement is filled to the brim with misinformation and victimization, not to mention plenty of generalizations that really don't gel well with people who are not like the general population such as myself.

Feminism, through my entire life in its third wave form, has told me that I owe it something. It's told me that without it, I would be weak and shriveled, bound by society's rungs to make me breeding fodder. It often tells me that this problem is so potent that I need a specifically female strong role model to look up to in order to be the best woman I can be. But frankly, that's all BS. If that works for you, that's rainbows and daisies, but for me, it's so wrong, that it's wronger than wrong. I was always extremely competitive. My only role model to speak of was a black guitar player (and that was more just me liking his guitar playing; at the young age of 5 I wasn't really able to understand the racial tensions behind it). I have fought my entire life, and frankly, almost none of my barriers were because I was a woman, but rather because I was an aspie. I'm happy that I can have a job and vote, but just like the example with African Americans and Republicans, movements can change, and we are not bound by previous accomplishments to necessarily agree with something. Third wave Feminism has only erased my experiences to further it's own ideals. Kind of ironic for a movement that supposedly believes in " the radical notion that women are people".

To put this in perspective, last week I went out with lunch with two female coworkers. The discussion delved into deeply into feminist ramblings.

They claimed that all the male coworkers were "inherently misogynistic" because of the fact that they were men. Not only is this a completely unprovable statement, it is also one that men cannot really defend against either, and assumes they are "guilty until proven innocent". It also dehumanizes them, claiming that they are incapable of seeing beyond what they supposedly were indoctrinated into believing. As a woman I kind of understand that this is complete nonsense and is completely disrespectful. Frankly, it upset me, because the current coworkers I have are fantastic and are very tolerant of my difficulties, and respect my entire identity, which is more than can be said about these two.

They claimed that women were inherently weak always unless lifted up by others through having a female role model. As stated previously this was not true in my case. When I tried to refute this, I was essentially shut up and ignored. Do note that I also have been having increasing difficulty with speaking in the last few months, and it is already difficult enough to talk about abstract subjects. Not only this, but one of the women has a daughter with a similar (but more severe) problem - how does it not occur to her that perhaps it is WRONG to talk over people who are speaking about THEMSELVES especially those who have trouble talking?

They claimed that men are a certain way and that women are a certain way. Well, technically I don't act like EITHER representation. And don't you think that it's kind of wrong to assume that people will always act in a certain way based on YOUR perspective? Isn't this the thing that feminism was supposedly trying to fight AGAINST? Not only this, but, while I haven't told them, I technically consider myself androgynous, to the point where pretty much everyone else in the office "gets it". But because they kept trying to push what THEY believe a woman is and what THEY believe a woman should be they ignored how I identified myself, something that I have been content with for literally almost a decade.

I was absolutely infuriated with the level of erasure that they were doing to my face. To make it hurt even more, they said at the end of their conversation that, "Oh, Rachel, you at least understand what it feels like to have to fight". Yes, I do. But that doesn't mean you can use me, especially in this misrepresented form, to further push your ideals. I especially do not appreciate the level of censorship that I endured. I was so infuriated by how they were acting that I almost walked out on them, and I frankly should have, because there is no other way that they would get that idea across.

It doesn't help that they continue to have this perpetual attitude that every man in the office is out to get them. It doesn't help that they continue to believe in the idea that an "ideal woman" exists and she's "strong", whatever the hell that means. It doesn't help that they had to resort to erasing the voice of one of their peers to further their opinions (which can best be described as an echo chamber with positive reinforcement). And this doesn't even include everything that pissed me off about the conversation.

Never have I ever felt so uncomfortable, offended and upset around my current coworkers. Never have I felt subject to such infuriating attitudes towards an opinion. So please, tell me, why am I somehow lesser of a woman because I do not agree with an ideology which tells me how I "should" be? I am me, and I am nothing else. I will not be robbed of this identity for the sake of a petty political ideal.

Finally, while some MRAs are awful people (the same can be said for feminists), they do bring up some important issues (the same cannot really be said for most feminists in the west). Just because they are MRAs doesn't mean they are horrible people; in fact, their existence shows that there IS a disparity in treatment in both sexes, and therefore both movements should be retired. And honestly, the fact that I'm saying that "feminism has long overdue its welcome" is a good thing - where I live, gender equality has frankly been achieved and there are more important issues to tackle than a constant vagina victim complex that majority of third wave feminism has become. Feminism is something we should WANT to die out, because upon its death, we know that it has accomplished its goal of equality. And frankly, right now, the fact that it has to resort to bullying other people around, act like women that don't agree with feminism are somehow inferior, and taking advantage of the "sympathy status" that women get in western culture indicates that it has far overdue its welcome.


I agree with most of your post but I need to point this out - "real feminist" is not only a fallacy (which is oft called out against), but has the logical problem of "why is it that so many feminists seem to represent an opinion that goes against what a "Real feminist" is? Why is it that "real feminists" do not diverge from them and form their own separate group?". It's honestly a nitpick but it's a nitpick that other people are going to ravage on. A better approach would be to simply say that some feminists are true supporters of equality and would support others who also believe in equality who do not want to use the feminist label.

Back to the original post, I think OP is referring to a tweet where some chick referred to someone as a "filthy disgusting aspie" or something. I've looked on it and yes, it is every bit as hypocritical as it sounds. They claim to be supportive of human rights and then this. Typical.

A) Feminism is an umbrella term. If you don't agree with some people under it, that's fine, but that doesn't mean you can't fall under the umbrella or even try to improve it. You think the crazies are taking over feminism, even though you agree with its ideas? Perhaps you could try to inject some sanity from within and build a better movement.
B) I don't have an issue with not identifying as feminist. I think this discussion may be getting a little too hung up on "identifying as feminist" versus "generally agreeing with feminism's basic ideals/goals." I think there is something wrong with being against gender equality. I don't think it's wrong to not identify as feminist. I don't care what the label says so long as the jar is full of good marmalade. (That was an odd analogy. Oh well.)

This is a strawman. Most of the time, the people feminists are saying this too are women claiming that feminism has never done women any good, or that every aspect of feminism is bad. In that context, it's valid to point out that feminism has gotten women the right to vote and have more than a limited set of jobs. (Even when sexism was at it's worst, some jobs were open to women, but they were very low-paying and menial jobs that fit with women's gender roles. And only the working class women typically worked, middle to upper class women were expected to stay home because they could afford to.)

Also, there's a big difference between political parties and advocacy movements. Political parties often completely change around their policies while keeping the same name, or claim their policy is one thing when it's really another thing, or keep the same policy while changing their name. It's all about branding for them - what will get them the most votes so they can stay in power. That sort of stuff happens a lot less with advocacy movements, so the feminists who got us the vote are a lot more like modern feminists than the Republicans who emancipated slaves are like modern Republicans.

You don't think things like women still on average earning less than men, or having higher rates of sexual victimization are important? You don't think the epidemic of female eating disorders (yes, men get eating disorders, but less often than women) is important? You don't think restricting jobs to attractive females only when unattractive males can get the same jobs is important?

Those are issues that most feminists in the west are very concerned about. It's only a minority who are rabidly anti-men - the majority just want to stamp out the continuing inequality faced by women, even now.

It is not a strawman. It is not required for anyone to agree with any sort of ideology whatsoever. Those who believe that you should are bigoted individuals.

"women claiming that feminism has never done women any good,"

This is though. Very few women claim that feminism hasn't done any good, but quite a few feminists throw this excuse at them when they disagree with them. Some fems say this when you simply disagree with them. The reason why I brought up every single one of those instances (including this one) is because they have happened to be personally in the past - and in no case have I ever claimed that feminism in prior forms was "wrong" or "never did any good". Anyone who claims that is not paying attention. As stated previously I have recognized that feminism has done good in the past. Perhaps you're missing the point of what I was trying to say, but to rephrase it - claiming that because women have received benefits from the movement's past actions do not imply that it must always be respected. Movements can and will change. First wave feminism is remarkably different than second and third wave, and those waves are different from each other as well. To assume that they are the same entity shows ignorance to current events and history.


They are different but to claim that Feminism is not political is a failure to understand the role it has played. It has always been political, has fought with politics in every resurgence and therefore should be treated as a political entity.

Advocacy movements, while having a main, basic ideology, can and will change on their issues over time, in some cases for better or worse. Just because they don't change as often or as dramatically does not mean that change should outright be ignored. The current resurgence of feminism is very different from previous forms and should be treated as such. Some people claim that because they are activists they have no right to call out problems, through devices such as Devil's Advocate and other similar debating practices, because "civil rights" (before you say anything I have heard this one as well). However, because people's rights are on the line, if an advocacy movement acts inappropriately, it should be called out as such. Many feminists seem to have this attitude that they can latch onto their past to protect them from criticism from their actions now, but just like we do not carry on the sins of our ancestors, they do not carry on their achievements. In order to effectively continue their activism they must present their activism in a manner that is actually promoting civil rights. The actions of many feminists and even some major players and their attitudes do not reflect this. I cannot side with people who advocate for unfairness.


On the wage gap, this is debatable due to different measuring practices. For example, women have a tendency to take occupations that pay less, and when they are in the STEM fields, because they were not in them for quite some time, there is an experience gap that exists between the sexes. Now, you might ask, why do women not occupy those STEM fields? Well, I think the biggest reason personally comes from how they're raised. Feminism tends to not target the family though and instead focus its efforts on companies, universities, ect. Why should they be held responsible for the fact that women are not truly doing "the same kind of work" as men?

On sexual victimization cases, there is the problem of how sexuality is defined in culture. Many issues related to sexual assault are very unfairly skewed in the benefit of women. First, should I mention that the FBI's definition of rape requires penetration? This in of itself begins to slant sexually related cases, due to the fact that some rapes can't be reported as rapes (specifically, if a woman sexually assaults a man without a penetrating object). What about the huge stigmatization of men admitting being victims of sexual abuse? What about the fact that when young boys are touched and sexually molested by adult women that they are called "lucky"? Statistics in of themselves do not necessarily reflect a possibly very different reality, which is something that these "sexual abuse" statistics hinge onto.

Some statistics are outright wrong. We can debunk these with some simple, transparent math. How about the 1 in 4 myth? First off, it should be noted that 1 in 4 (25%) is a ridiculously high number of cases. While this in of itself is not enough to necessarily debunk it, it is enough to at least warrant questioning. Let's look at the stats. At the end of 2012, the US had a population of around 315 million. Cut that in half and we have 157.5 million females in that population. Now lets get how many rapes occurred. This value was 84,376 for reported forcible rape, source here. So let's do the math. 1 in 4 of 157.5 million is just a bit over 39 million. Thus, at this rate, it would take (39,000,000/84376 = 462.6) years to reach this proportion, assuming that rate of change does not change (it has been decreasing, just looking at the table sees a decrease of about 20% over 2 decades). But you might say, "corvuscorax, what about unreported cases!!". Okay, let's accommodate that. Assuming that women will, on average, live to be 80 years old, it would require (462.6/80 = 5.78) times as many unreported cases. Perhaps, says corvuscorax, the claimed statistic is outright wrong.

Another fun statistic that can be easily calculated from that is that (315000000/84376 = ~0.0002) of the population are rapists. That's .02%! To put in perspective, the population of New York City has around 8.4 million - this accounts for less than 2000 people. This, again, fails to take into account most male cases, because they are usually unreported for reasons mentioned above.

Rape itself has reduced in frequency notably in recent decades (however false accusations have increased).

Quite frankly, how I see it is this. We can continue to blame everything on misogyny. But misogyny is beyond our control. We can't go and make someone "not a misogynist". The world doesn't work like that. It may be there, but logically it makes more sense to accommodate for other factors first - because those factors are within your control and you can actually work around them. I have lived by this policy my entire life and I have never personally encountered sexism, outside of like one cat call. And the bottom line is with that - there's always going to be that one as*hole out there. No number of rules or changes are ever going to eradicate them. There will always be muderers, rapists, ect. and what we do as society is punish them severely (under most circumstances). The best you can do is treat them like the scum they are and move on, no need in wasting time over a piece of dog crap hidden among the leaves.

Maybe it's time to take control of our lives and stop listening to people who constantly tell us that we will be abused by people who we haven't even met. Stop listening to people who claim we are constantly oppressed when we fail to encounter it personally. Stop listening to people that tell us that we are told to be weak. The only people who tell me that I'm "weak" are the feminists claiming that I need to join their ranks to become "strong". Such things are meaningless anyways, as there is no ideal woman. What have feminists done to make your lives easier? I've always been fed the same garbage about how I'll get paid less, about how I'm constantly objectified, about how men are always trying to milk me for what I'm worth. But perhaps that isn't fair. Nobody knows my future but me.

My mother always told me, "The truth is not the truth until you know it is the truth". I may be cynical, but I do not believe a thing until I see the evidence.

I'm not sure if you glanced over my personal experiences with lunch last week, but erasing your demographic that happens to disagree with you is not how activism should work. This is also the reason why I tend to avoid autism activism as well, by the way. But seriously, I get the excuse that "my experiences do not reflect the general population-" So because a minority disagrees with what you encounter that means they should be silenced? How can you have an accurate world view of your population if you purposely leave out the opinions of minorities that may disagree with yours? That is intellectual dishonesty at its most blatant.

If it works for people in other places, then so be it. There are still gender discrepancies worldwide, and women are often the victim. But, for a culture that exists halfway across the planet that I will never encounter, should I feel that the same issues that affect women there affect me here? No. I will support their goals in equality (keyword being equality) but I will never support an agenda that has done nothing but lied, deceived, and expected me to obey like a good little girl. I have changed from the person I was a year ago, I used to support them, but then they showed their true colours. I walk alone.