This whole “mocking misogyny” thing? Apparently we’re doing it all wrong. Over on Reddit’s Men’s Rights Subreddit, jmnzz has helpfully explained what misogyny is, and what it isn’t.
Misogyny: The hatred of women
Not misogyny: Bad taste jokes about rape/abuse/etc. Logic. Counterarguments. Disagreements. Harsh language. Saying cunt. Saying bitch. Calling women names. Being pro-life. Calling every woman who accuses a man of rape a liar.
Why are none of these things misogyny? Because you do not have to hate women to do any or all of these things. You might, but not everyone who does them hate women.
Seriously. What on earth is misogynist about calling all the fucking cunts who accuse men of rape of being goddamn lying bitches? When guys call women lying whores, they do it out of love.
But hey, in all seriousness, I have to give Maggie props here for actually raising the issue of misogyny in r/mensrights.
NOTE: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN …..
@ Heroic Man
Nope, sorry; you’re a typical MRA – confused and unintelligent.
“Okay, I am an MRA.. But I am not a misogynist. I have commented on A Voice for Men and The Spearhead,and there are legitimate mens issues on those sites.”
You lost me right there. I have never read an article on AVfM that is anything other than idiotic, bitter, anti-women, reactionary nonsense. The contributors include a proud domestic abuser and they have a martyr in the child abusing, weird and now deceased Thomas Ball.
“Feminists are not responsible for patriarchal gender roles, just for reinforcing patriarchal gender roles in feminists individual lives. That is what the MRM is annoyed about.”
No, the MRM claim to be annoyed about the war on men being waged by feminists who have infiltrated the government.
The MRM also claim to be annoyed about “cultural Marxism” which, they say, has led to a section of the population (women, minorities, gays) being able to erroneously identify themselves as oppressed and another section of the population (male, usually white, usually straight) as the oppressors.
How do they “fight” this? They utilize cultural Marxism, stating that their section of the population (male, usually white, usually straight) are oppressed and another section of the population (females, minorities, gays) as the oppressors.
The MRM hate women and “feminists” (thought they don’t know what a feminist is). The Spearhead often seems to have a higher content of reactionary fringe lunatics but for outright weirdness, AVfM is the saddest and most ridiculous website on the web. It is truly hilarious.
Take a look at the picture illustrating this article, and read the caption:
http://ncfm.org/2011/10/news/discrimination-against-men-news/leahy-bill-would-turn-every-college-male-into-a-rape-suspect/
Yeah, ncfm is a totally reasonable site.
“Woman reinforce the “male as unfeeling protector” ,”Knight in shining armor” stereotype. This causes men to deny their emotions to prove to women they are strong and can protect.”
Em… no. Maybe if you impregnated a woman, you might need to be responsible for looking after her cos that’s what being a good father is all about. If you help keep the woman healthy, your child will be healthy too. Though this is not entirely necessary these days.
There aren’t women that demand protection off all men everywhere cos that’s just silly. Really the whole “man competition” thing is your own insecurities in your “manliness”. Which is silly. I know perfectly straight men that wear pink in public and don’t give a shit. I know guys that are openly gay and don’t give a shit. Don’t you get it? You don’t have to be “manly”. Surely as a society we have evolved beyond these superficial frivolities.
I visited ncfm and nearly lost my breakfast – that caption is a shocker! There were plenty of links to the insanity over on AVfM, such as a wandering unfocussed rant by someone called Jared White on the reddit misogyny thread, which has a host of the MRA trolls who are already known here. ( http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/between-misandry-and-misogyny/ )
heroicman, are you for real? Do you actually read any of the things you link to? You posted this:
The blog post in question actually details the vicious, threatening misogynist comments The Thinking Housewife got from MRAs after she criticized them. I’m no fan of her work — she is a social conservative and if I remember correctly also an unapologetic racist — but that doesn’t justify the treatment she got.
Here’s one of the comments she got:
@David: Yup that’s why I didn’t click on any of his links–I recognized enough to know just how bad they were, and didn’t feel like wasting my time with the others.
Because, “viciously attacking a woman blogger you disagree with” is not the same as criticism of social conservatism by male-dominated groups aimed at eliminating women’s rights, plus, criticism or debate of ideas is not done by calling names.
Whoa, is Heroicman Samuel or the other one that was around not too long ago? Same kind of syntax and lack of BQ ability.
David I posted http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/02/the-bullies-speak/ just to exemplify how the MRM is made up of liberals and conservatives. Many MRA”s criticize conservative women for reinforcing traditional gender roles.
Basically, I there has been a lot of critical comments made towards A Voice For Men. Actually a Voice for men has http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/. This is a website hosted by
http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/about/ Dr . Tara helps men deal with their feelings.
I do not agree with all in A Voice for Men or The Spearhead. I basically align myself with the liberal wing of the MRM. I like Dr, Warren Farrell and the National Coalition For Men. I linked some good MRM sites earlier. This is a god piece on the wings of the MRM
http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-is-wrong-with-mens-rights-movement.html
heroicman: And the only example you could find to support your position is people making horrendous threats against a woman? You remember that you used to be arguing that the MRM wasn’t completely misogynist, don’t you?
So … a bit off-topic, but just in case anyone ever feels like whinging about the feminist justice system and the feminist educational system, the ncfm post that David linked to there talks about a male UND student who was suspended from school and banned from campus after being found responsible for rape in a campus hearing, even as his accuser had been issued a warrant for filing a false rape report with the police.
This intrigued me, so I tried to find more details on the case. The accuser (1) dropped out of school to move back to her home state, and thus has been denied an education as well (something that the man’s rights blogs and publications talking about this case seem hesitant to acknowledge); and (2) was found to have filed a false report based on a text she sent the male student prior to the encounter indicating that she’d like to have intercourse with him “combined with other evidence.” Now, possibly the police released the very least convincing evidence they had, and they’re just keeping all the good, convincing evidence a sekrit. Or possibly they (and the DA’s office), like many other people, think that consent to anything once given cannot be revoked and is consent to everything. Based on this evidence, the male student has since been invited back to campus, the ban against him dropped by the school.
If that’s our feminist justice/educational system at work, I sure would hate to see what the non-feminist version looks like.
From heroicman’s “god piece”:
I can’t imagine why the 1250-word blog post doesn’t include a single quote or link.
heroicman: Tell you what…
You keep saying the MRM isn’t misogynist.
Ok. I’ll take you at your word if you can link to… six, posts which aren’t actually full of misogyny. They have to allow comments, and the comments count. What someone allows in the comments section is telling. If the OP, or his commentariat, condemn misogyny that’s in the plus column. If they don’t (supposing there to be misogyny in the comments; you could find blogs with none), then it’s going to be marked against them.
So come, prove us wrong.
@Hman: Newsflash: liberal men can be misogynstic: i.e. all the men viciously attacking Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter on their appearance, or perceived lack of brains, instead of critiquing their ideas.
Feminist blogs spent a lot of time calling out liberal men on their sexism and misogyny toward conservative women (and at times, liberal women like Hilary Clinton).
Read my lips: personal attacks are not criticisms of ideas.
And misogyny can exist among liberal men–and among women.
MRAs are an idiotic bunch of jokers who are going nowhere fast.
Late to the party and with no illusions it will matter: I’m a mother and I’m pro-choice.
Yeah, like Kristin, when I was very young, I used to be on the other side of the fence. But then, I watched a lot of really bad parents. I watched babies, toddlers, all ages of children, suffer at the hands of people who never really wanted them.
It made me reanalyze it. So much pain in those situations; insidious and likely life long.
Condensed findings: Not everyone likes children. Not everyone should be caretakers of children. It’s better for everyone if people actively choose to be around children.
I’d never trade a millisecond of the time I have with my babies, but THAT’S ME. I chose it. I’m happy for people to make choices for what works best for them. Pro-choice.
Feminism isn’t about dictating life choices to individual women. It’s about giving women choices. I’m a stay at home mom, my husband is the breadwinner, and I am a feminist. I can’t make enough money outside the home to break even after paying for daycare, gas, and taxes. It’s the pragmatic choice for my family. Why is it any of your business what my family does as long as we’re happy and not bothering other people? If a woman wants to be an astronaut, she can. If she wants to be a homemaker, she can. You’re the one being judgmental about women’s choices, not feminists.
If I were offered a job that pays more than my husband’s, we’d trade places and he would be a stay at home dad. That’s because I am a feminist, and I don’t buy into the sexist ideas that men can’t be nurturing caregivers and women can’t be ambitious professionals. If you want to marry a women with a career, that’s your prerogative. Nobody can force you to be a breadwinner supporting a wife and children.
Which is exactly what happened with me. My wife went part-time when our first child was born, and last year she decided to find out what her salary would be if she went back to full-time work. The answer was “considerably more than mine”, since mine had been frozen for five years thanks to a longstanding budget crisis.
So she mentioned this to me, and asked if I had any serious prospects of promotion, and I said no, because going up a grade would involve a management position that I deeply, deeply didn’t want. So she said “OK, so why don’t we swap? I go back to work full time, and you can combine childcare and freelance work from home”.
Which is what we did.
Nearly a year on, I haven’t regretted the decision for a millisecond – we’re earning more money and spending less (simply no longer having to commute saves a fortune), my wife’s back on the career ladder in a far more challenging and responsible position than anything I ever did, my kids see far more of me than they ever used to when I had a long commute, and the quality of our lives has shot through the roof.
And that’s because we believe in genuine equality of opportunity.
And of course, if I get a better offer somewhere along the line, we’d probably swap again.
Wetherby, that sounds great. Your family is doing what works for you. It really shows how feminism has helped you, your wife, and your children by challenging old fashioned gender roles which say men have to be breadwinners and women have to be caregivers. It also shows how giving women equal economic opportunities helps men by giving them more opportunities to take on bigger roles in their children’s lives. Feminism for the win!
MRAs are an idiotic bunch of jokers who are going nowhere fast.
You seem mad about something.
Mistyped.
FF…
Bostonian:
If you accept the lump of labor fallacy, allowing women to enter the workforce would have, if women hadn’t been in the workforce previously, reduced the number of jobs available to men.
It should be noted, of course, that there are two assumptions there that I think are wrong, and indeed that I believe are considered wrong by most people who know what they’re talking about.
Factfinder:
Ok, so you’re a Type 2 Antifeminist (“Feminist principles are good, but around when I started noticing it, it moved away from thjose principles and got twisted.”)
Rutee:
Though I for one would love it if you had to take a special class in college to get a male-centric view of history, while HS and core-ype college history classes were more all-encompassing.
heroicman:
Citation needed
I know it was yesterday. I haven’t seen the citation yet.
The U.S. — where November 11 is called “Veteran’s Day” — hasn’t had a draft of any sort since 1972.
Male only selective service was upheld based on the rational that a draft is only for the purposes of recruiting combat soldiers (the US has never needed a draft to fill noncombatant positions) and women are proactively banned from combat under federal law. NOW (National Organization of Women) filed an amicus brief against sex based selective service, arguing that both it and the women’s combat ban were unconstitutional and harmful to women. The legal history of this issue does not reflect the way MRAs talk about the notion behind it being hatred of men (esp. as the US Supreme Court has had about a handful of women members ever and has never had a female majority).
This reminds me of people who split hairs over the definition of “homophobia”. Yes, fine, the Latin roots, if taken literally, indicate someone who is literally afraid</i of teh gey, but clearly how it is meant in common usage (which is all language is, ain't it?) is more general. Same with misogyny. If you want to parse it as only having a literal and self-proclaimed hatred for all women, well… that's not what people mean when they say that word. Get over it.
Clinically, a phobia is “irrational fear or aversion”. People tend to forget the aversion option.