Most women, it is fair to say, don’t want to be deprived of education; they don’t want to be considered little more than baby-making machines; and they don’t want “independent” women to be maimed or murdered.
But according to the influential manosphere blogger Vox Day, women who object to any of this just don’t know what’s good for them. In one of the most repellant manosphere rants I’ve run across yet, Vox attempts to rebut PZ Myers’ critiques of evolutionary psychology with a series of bizarre and hateful assertions about women, offering his own “scientific” rationales for keeping women down. Is this all somehow satire on his part? He certainly seems sincere.
TRIGGER WARNING for all that follows; Vox explicitly defends the maiming and murder of women.
Vox starts out by arguing that depriving women of education makes solid evolutionary sense:
[E]ducating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves. Educating them tends to make them evolutionary dead ends. … 40% of German women with college degrees are childless. Does PZ seriously wish to claim that not reproducing is intrinsically beneficial to women?
Instead of being educated, Vox goes on to argue, girls should be married off young so they can start popping out babies:
[R]aising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children allows them to pursue marriage at the age of their peak fertility, increase the wage rates of their prospective marital partners, and live in stable, low-crime, homogenous societies that are not demographically dying. It also grants them privileged status, as they alone are able to ensure the continued survival of the society and the species alike. Women are not needed in any profession or occupation except that of child-bearer and child-rearer, and even in the case of the latter, they are only superior, they are not absolutely required.
Next, he defends the practice of throwing acid in the face of “independent” women:
[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.
He moves on to honor killings, arguing that they too are good for women, because
female promiscuity and divorce are strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills, from low birth and marriage rates to high levels of illegitimacy.
He offers a similar rationale for female genital mutilation, before launching into this bizarre racist attack on abortion rights:
[F]ar more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.
Vox wants “girls” – presumably teenagers — to be married off young and start popping out babies. Yet in his mind female fetuses are “unborn women.”
Despite Vox Day’s repellent ideas about women – and his proud racism – he’s an influential figure in the manosphere, mentioned approvingly and regularly cited by others who present themselves as more moderate voices. It may not be a shock that the reactionary antifeminist blogger Dalrock includes Vox in his blogroll, and cites his work with approval (see here and here for examples). But, astoundingly, he’s also regularly cited approvingly by antifeminist “relationship expert” Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart (see here, here, and here). And she has even written at least one guest post on Vox’s “game blog” Alpha Game.
At this point I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by any of this. But I still am.
Dan — let’s hypothetically say everyone immediately concedes that Myers attacks religion without using science — so fucking what?
VD didn’t need to justify honor killings and acid attacks to make that point (you’re attempting to do exactly that aren’t you?)
Except utilitarianism is a logical basis, so no, we’re not conceding the point (or I’m not at least). You do get that whether, say, out of wedlock birth is “morally wrong” actually cannot be scientifically proven? And that correlation is not causation?
not-at-Dan — I really need a Greek choir for correlation is not causation — I sure do end up saying it often enough.
I’m not. I’m just plain old Dan.
katz — yeah I’m curious on that too, but no sign of He Who Can Check IPs
That’s the whole point is what. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but Myers chose the subject matter.
Dan — let me be more specific then — let’s hypothetically say everyone immediately concedes that Myers attacks religion without using science, how does that negate the logical, philosophy based, argument Myers is making?
And how’s it negate that VD seems to regularly say shit like this and thus is not using satire but actually providing “justification” for acid attacks, honor killing, etc.
You ignored the rest of my questions and instead answered just the one where I swore, I do hope you aren’t offended by the word fuck, or you aren’t going to last long around here.
This one’s for Glenn Beck: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3pmlxv/
dannyboy, if youre entire bone of contention is something pz originally conceded, what exactly is the crushing ‘gotcha’ you’ve manage to get yourself into a tizzy over?
also for the record, dan- are you pro or anti terrorism against women. why or why not?
No, he does no such thing. I didn’t even realize that’s what he was going for, so his communication is *terrible*. What you think he demonstrates is that, but the fact is he’s only making himself look like a fool.
Or you just applied the same level of reading comprehension to him as you did to them, I suppose.
An assumed conclusion if ever there was one.
…Are you completely lacking in reading comprehension?
Dan: You are confused. I didn’t say he didn’t use logic, I said that it’s not a realm in which, “science” applies.
It’s an important distinction, even if you refuse to admit it exists.
And how, from that, does VD get to needing to justify dehumanising half the population, and attacking them with acid/death? That’s an appeal to emotion, at least as strong as any you see Myer’s making; futher it’s not rational; under the terms VD has proposed.
That’s the real problem. I don’t care if someone is using pathos in an argument, so long as it serves a reasonable appeal to logos. VD doesn’t manage that, and what sticks in your craw is that Myers does.
The other thing… I’m still not talking about Myers. It does’t matter if I agree with him, or I don’t. what I am concerned with is 1: the content of VD’s writing (which isn’t something ex nihilo, see the quotations above), and 2: the structure of his argument His argument is all pathos and no logos because the only places he tries to use logos he commits fallacy.
I’ll ask you the same questions I asked David Marshall:
1: What is VD’s point?
1a: How is it satire.
1b: If none of his other works are to be considered, how can we know it’s satire?
2: How does this batch of over the top points differ from his other writings? (see 1a-1b above as to why this matters, your attempt to dismiss it as irrelevant notwithstanding)
3: What about his “mocking” makes the logical failures, intellectual errors (e.g. the mis-statement of utilitarianism), etc. worth ignoring?
You say the answer to No. 1 is to show that Myers is a poor scientist.
Ok, if that’s his point it’s a meaningless one. This is an issue of ethics, not “science” (i.e. it’s not an aspect of the “hard sciences” [though anyone who thinks the majority of the, “soft” sciences have no math, etc. needs to look again). This could be expressed in symbolic logic, pathos and all. So that interpretation of the, “problem” is wrong.
So go ahead, show how this is an issue of Myers failing to use the scientific method. You may use symbolic logic if you like.
If you want to argue a new answer to No. 1, go ahead. I won’t fault you.
The other two questions stand, as written.
I am offended by it, but I won’t be here long anyway. I follow Vox Day’s blog and he linked here. I’m a one-timer.
Then you’re into a totally different debate, completely unrelated to VD’s point. I didn’t answer your questions because they don’t make sense. You’re not conceding the point that Myers isn’t using science to attack religion because you think he IS using philosophy?
Of course he’s not using satire. You can make a case to make a point. It doesn’t mean you believe it necessarily.
Offended by what? Us pointing out what a douchenozzle VD is?
How is it we are debating different things? We say VD has failed to make his points.
You say he has.
You aver his points are one thing, we see them as another. We’ve used VD’s words to support our position.
You’ve not.
So, on balance, you’ve made nothing but appeals to either emotion or your authority.
On what basis should we treat your authority over our own? Why should we be swayed by your emotional appeals (the claim that Myers needs to use science, is an appeal to emotion. It’s saying that he’s, “not doing it right”, for no other reason than, “it’s not science”.
Since he never claimed it was, “science” but that it was ethics, that argument, still, fails on its face, just as it did when VD made the appeal to the OpEd (itself using no, “science” to show the error of Myers’ ways; it was nothing more than an appeal to the emotions [i.e. “Science is better”], in an attempt to rig the game, and so make PZ Myers grant a legitimacy which hasn’t been shown to apply to him, but I digress).
If you, and VD are seriously making that claim, it’s not just poor logic, it’s dishonest.
But I’m amazed that so many seem to have the impression that he supports acid attacks and honor killing. Do you also think he actually supports aborting all black fetuses?
Oh wait… were you pretending to answer Sharculese question about terrorism against women?
Because I’m offended by war. Some wars I am in favor of, some I am opposed to, but I am offended by all of them.
So if that was a reply to Sharculese, try again; this time actually answering the question.
Dan: As I said, from reading his writing over the course of the past nine years… I don’t think he supports it, but I don’t think he’d be all that against it were it legislated.
I was responding to someone else, not to you. Anyway, this is a mess. I’ll just say one more time, VD’s only point was that Myers doesn’t approach religion from a scientific point of view. That’s been my only point. Not whether that’s good or bad. “We cannot, though, say a priori that it is wrong because abusing and denigrating half the population [or throwing acid on women, my note] is unconscionable and vile, because that is not a scientific foundation for the conclusion. It’s an emotional one; it’s also a rational one, given the premise that we should treat all people equitably…but that premise can’t claim scientific justification.” -Myers
That’s the point. You’re all bogged down in the rhetoric, which is precisely why VD used it. I hate these online debates. I gotta stop
I was responding to someone’s question of whether I was offended by the use of the word fuck
“I am offended by it” — my use of fuck I assume? More so than by VD’s justifications for acid attacks and honor killings? You seriously need a priorities check if so.
“You’re not conceding the point that Myers isn’t using science to attack religion because you think he IS using philosophy?” — pretty much, yeah. Too many hours of a psych degree taught my plenty of logic, philosophy, and math and science — you’re doing science wrong if you think the ethics of anything can be empirically determined (and I’d swear this was discussed already).
“You can make a case to make a point. It doesn’t mean you believe it necessarily.” — I think we’re all familiar with the concept of playing devil’s advocate, yes. One does generally note that that is what one is doing, if that it what one is doing.
“I’m a one-timer.” — too bad, I enjoy fucking with people who get offended by the word fuck, upsetting delicate sensibilities is also making a point (particularly in this context!)
I see what you did there.
… and then I scrolled past all those other comments, so someone else has probably caught it before me 🙁
Pecunium — he’s reply to my asking if the word fuck offends him, apparently yes, it fucking does.
I’m a little behind on this one, but I wanted to point out that VD’s (made up) definition of scientific validity is completely asinine. He’s worked quite a bit to obfuscate it, but all he’s actually saying is that his statements meet the incredibly rigorous requirement of being falsifiable ( and I imagine that’s not even actually true, but I don’t care enough to pick apart his statements to see). The idea that literally every falsifiable statement imaginable is worthy of serious scientific inquiry is pretty silly. I also like that he just can’t resist making that dig at social sciences, even though it seriously undermines his entire premise.
And as plenty of others have mentioned, we’re talking about a question of right and wrong here (even if it’s phrased as good vs harm), and those are fundamentally non-scientific concepts. That is what Myers was saying in the earlier piece that Day quoted. Science has absolutely nothing to say on the morality of anything.
I was responding to someone’s question of whether I was offended by the use of the word fuck
Quick, to the fainting couch… I’ll get the smelling salts.
That’s the point. You’re all bogged down in the rhetoric, which is precisely why VD used it. I hate these online debates. I gotta stop
So… VD is right because he made an appeal to emotion, to prove that Myers is wrong because he made an appeal to logos, and incorporated pathos.
That’s some clever reasoning there.
And that he was so over the top (never mind that it’s consistent with other things he’s said) that no one understands him is proof of his brilliance?
The mind reels.
I have a feeling a lot of things don’t make sense to Dan.
Falconer… you were the first to mention it.
(thanks, I try)