Above, the unintentionally ironic MRA meme of the week, courtesy of A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, their main distribution center for unintentionally ironic and otherwise terrible memes. I’m not sure what specific week this is the ironic meme for, given that Emma Watson’s speech to the UN took place last September and this meme was posted on Facebook only this week, but just roll with it, people!
So what exactly makes this meme ironic? Well, for starters, Watson didn’t actually say the words in question or otherwise order men to talk to women about their feelings.
What she said was a good deal more subtle. She started by saying that one of the things that led her to embrace feminism was her realization, at age 18, that “my male friends were unable to express their feelings.” Then she went on to talk in more detail about the ways breaking down gender stereotypes helps to free, well, everyone.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.
If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
The big irony here? This is exactly what a real Men’s Rights movement should be promoting, not raging against.
Adding to the irony, whoever made this meme made clear that they aren’t just unwilling to listen to women’s feelings; they’re unwilling to listen to a woman’s logical argument. Which is why they simplified her comments and distorted their meaning.
But what wins this meme the grand prize for irony this week is meme maker’s assertion that “WE DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
Really? Because in fact MRA dudes and MGTOWs and the rest of their ilk talk about their feelings constantly, and loudly — with anyone willing to listen and some who aren’t.
Sure, it’s true that most MRA dudes and their ideological soulmates don’t like to talk about their feelings of sadness or anxiety or insecurity or doubt. You know, the sorts of feelings it would be good for most of these guys to explore and understand and, when possible, get past.
But they love, just love, to talk about how angry they are, how angry they think other men are, and how much feminists, and the women of the world generally, are going to suffer if they refuse to listen to angry men and do what they say. Hell, the so-called “father” of Men’s Rights in the UK? A guy who calls himself Angry Harry. (And he more than lives up to the name.)
The cherry on top of this Irony Sundae: the memester’s decision to use a picture of a homeless man to represent a man oppressed by demanding women.
Men don’t become homeless because some evil woman asked them to talk about their feelings. Indeed, given how many homeless people are mentally ill, most homeless men (and women) would benefit from having the opportunity to talk to a trained professional about their feelings and from better mental health services generally. (Not to mention better services for veterans suffering from PTSD and other war-related maladies.)
In the US, many homeless people who are mentally ill were dumped onto the streets by facilities that didn’t have the money to properly care for them; some of the facilities were and are so bad that their former inhabitants actually prefer the streets.
Oh, and one of the main reasons mental health services are so shitty in the US — and why, in particular, so many men are so poorly served? The old-fashioned notion that men “DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK … ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
So I award AVFM this week’s IRONY AWARD in MEMING, for once again promoting ideas that actually make the world worse for men!
Bryce sez:
You couldn’t compose an honest sentence if your life depended on it, could you? You’re comparing all the women to only the shy and awkward men, dipshit. You’re like the assholes who try to explain away the wage gap by going “Look, if you compare unmarried, childless women to all men, the wage gap almost vanishes! Checkmate femicommunazis!”
Re basic income:
megpie71, you hit the nail on the head and then missed the broader implications of what you said.
This is exactly right. De Parijs (who is a socialist) and McKay (who was a feminist) argued in favour of a basic income for precisely this reason.
I work indoors. The building is climate controlled, my chair is ergonomic and I get to listen to music while I build my spreadsheets. My boss trusts my expert judgement and gives me considerable latitude to customise my methods; as a result I feel in control of my work. I have reason to believe that I will end up earning more as I get more experienced and develop more skills, and I can probably carry on doing this until I’m old. The labour itself is physically safe.
Fruit pickers work outdoors. Fruit is picked in the hottest part of the year, often in hot countries. To pick from a tree requires you to crick your neck upwards; to pick from a bush requires backbreaking bending over. The work itself is simple and repetitive, with no opportunity to build up skills or to feel in control of the work. When you get old, you stop being as good at it. Inasmuch as machinery is used, it’s often the sort which can seriously injure.
In order to get me to pick fruit, you would have to pay me considerably more than I get paid to be an Excel worker. The only reason I would become a fruit picker is if I had no other option.
As you point out, basic income gives people another option. This means that fruit pickers would end up earning more than Excel workers. You’re entirely right when you say that it would redress the balance between physical labour and management. It would redress the shit out of it. This is by design: De Parijs is a socialist, after all.
Here’s where you start to miss the implications of your point.
If the UBI is $14 and the extra amount offered to pick fruit is $5, then that means that there are essentially two job options for fruit pickers: pick fruit for $19 or spend time with their children for $14. Given this choice, you might have trouble finding people to pick your fruit. The only reason pickers are willing to accept $19 right now is because their alternative is $0. If they have a reliable $14 alternative, then you might have to offer them something more like $40 (that is, a cost to the employer of $26) to get them to be willing to do unpleasant work outdoors.
This results in orchards only being viable businesses if they’re as profitable as merchant banks, which means fruit become a luxury item.
Lest you think I’m exaggerating with the $40 an hour number, that is if anything an understatement. Again, using the example of Alaskan fishing boat crews, they routinely earn 4-6 times as much as fishing boat crews in places without a UBI. The most unpleasant of Australian fruit picking might have to compensate people with almost $100 an hour (that is, a cost of $86 to the employer.)
@sevenofmine
Just about everyone there is on the introverted end of the spectrum.
@ Bryce
Maybe it’s just you they don’t want to talk to.
Yeah…kind don’t think Emma Watson is using ANYBODY as her personal cash machine….
*kinda
@sevenofmine
Oh wow, is this where you come up with some nasty narrative about someone you don’t know, haven’t met…?
The majority of my friends are people from work.
@ Bryce
It was a joke, cupcake.
So how come so many orchards/ vineyards have their fruit picked every year by teams of our famous grey nomads. These are people who have retirement income of some sort, certainly more than the pension but not a lot more for many of them. They like to do the work with familiar people in familiar surroundings. They don’t get paid much, but they don’t mind. They do it mainly for the exercise and the camaraderie.
Many of them also volunteer for outback restoration projects – fences, parks, cemeteries, pubs and all sorts of other things you don’t think about until you see them on Landline or hear about them on radio. They’re an extremely valuable “resource” because they have a bit of cash and having their own transport and accommodation / facilities in the form of caravans ensures they’re not a drain on the limited facilities/cash of such projects.
The other issue of course is that – when everybody has enough income to get by on – the pressure on producers to sell as cheaply as they currently do would ease a bit because there are more willing consumers. Not a lot, but a bit.
Worth rereading this Nick Hanauer piece …
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#ixzz3cT4bkfPt
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/economic-theory-science-scam/
Question for the folks talking about basic income:
First, I’ll preface this by admitting that I have never cared much for money, and I haaaaated economics in school, so this may be a super obvious thing that I’m missing. But if a basic income is initiated, where does the government get the 30k a year from to distribute to everyone? Is it still tax revenue, counting on lots of people making well above the 30k, or…?
I grew up in Conservativeburg USA so this is 100% new to me.
(If there’s a reputable link I can go read and educate myself I will gladly go do so)
Amazing how so called ‘geo strategic; sites gives the same anti women nonsense quoting from MRA sites….
Here is one: Fabius Maximus, quite well respected in certain US geo-political areas. Ex Marines and Intelligence people.
Stated aim:”This blog discusses geopolitics — broadly defined as economics, government, sociology and the military arts — from an American’s perspective.”,
Then there are the anti women stuff…
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/06/08/changing-state-of-marriage-82047/#comment-313655
My reply which will be deleted real soon…..
“Straight off the MRA (Male Rights Activists) trope…nonsense of course.
There are huge class differences in this. High class people are marrying at high rates and have low divorce rates, albeit at later ages than in the past. High, ‘alpha’ sucessful males marry high ‘alpha’ sucessful females. Not doormats…..
Lower class people have lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates, overall.
Therefore, there are big economic forces in this.
Now, men doing a Galt, is laughable. It is women that are no longer prepared to sacrifice ther lives for a ‘boy’. A man that has not grown up. That treats them terribly that is not capable of a good working relationship. Why should they?
Being more independent and self sufficient than males, most women would rather be on their own than put up with that nonsense. And they do increasingly.
As all men do, they blame women for this..instead of having a cold hard look at their behaviour and society. Questoning it and their programming that they have been given…. and becoming a man… Like sorry your sexual urges are actually controllable, like (my Grandfather) sew, cook and fought at the battle of the Somme …and bring up 3 children on his own……and filled the house with books and learning and taught me chess and was great engineer…..
There was, lost the link, an article in the Melbourne Age newpaper just recently about a guy going around schools trying to teach boys to be men. Unreal. Part of this is self discovery, asking young boys (14 years old) to go through their facebook pages and describe them….they classsified people into ‘sluts’ and ‘fags’…. that was their world. The only way they could express themselves was through violence and prejudice.
What is wrong with them and they way they have been brought up?
So the problem is not females they are just walking away from this, even though they want, desperately, a good partnership with a man. The problem is boys not growing up…… filled with prejudice and anger and hatred. That treat women like a piece of meat and a domestic slave…..
Despite all the MRA propaganda, those males who treat female like equals, that work together in a partnership…well they have no problems finding and keeping relationships…Probably great sex lives too….lol.
Being fairly right wing here, older and mostly ex military…the standard narrow gender roles are attactive to people like you. Did it work for you? Did you ever queston it? What about your wives? Did you ever appreciate that they threw their lives away and all their hopes and dreams and talents…just to make you feel better…and the bitterness so many of them feel now because of it. They gave everyhting and in many cases got nothing back
Still catching up wth your buddies for beers? .Flirting (trying to, they despise you) with young women, telling your sexist ‘jokes’, whinging about your wives? Quick trip to a brothel now and then? Maybe secret, no one knows this, ‘kinky sex’…..?
Oh, you are statistically are more likely to use domestic violence. 1 in 4 overall in the US, 1 in 2 for police officers…male military?
Hey I am trangender I lived amongst you ‘men’ for decades I know all your secrets. I Know how you think and act……. I know what you tell other ‘men’ when you get drunk. “
@mildlymagnificent:
Volunteers aren’t fungible. Grey nomads sound like a blessing for the companies and also for the community, but there are only a given number of them, and they’re doing it for their own enjoyment so you only have them until they find something else they enjoy more. You can’t build an economy on that labour model because it doesn’t scale and isn’t forecastable.
The sadly defunct “Stuff White People Like” blog once said “you can’t feed the world with white people’s hobbies.” It’s a fairly abrupt statement but I like it because it puts the issue squarely in perspective. Eventually, hopefully, we will be able to feed the world with white people’s hobbies; when we can do that then post-scarcity will have arrived.
That Nick Hanauer piece was awesome. Thanks for reminding me of it.
“Despite all the MRA propaganda, those males who treat female like equals, that work together in a partnership…well they have no problems finding and keeping relationships…Probably great sex lives too….lol.”
It’s true, it’s easy to ignore the healthy relationships where the man isn’t actually all that confident, just a worthwhile human being.
Hey Dave, mod, whoever,
Could you warm up the ban bat and give it a good whack? There’s been a string of assignments for a course lately; another due soon and since I’ve embarrassed myself, no more.
@Kootiepatra:
Firstly, A basic income isn’t actually that expensive in government terms, because the state provides a great deal of services to poor people anyway, and a basic income will replace those programmes (not to mention cutting out a lot of bureaucracy) and so save costs. Remember that having people sit in offices running programs is extremely expensive, so anything which can unify multiple teams and replace a complex process with a simple one saves a lot of money.
Here’s a link to a serious study done in Ireland:
http://www.bien2012.de/sites/default/files/paper_253_en.pdf
They concluded that it could be done with a higher income tax rate on people who were earning more than the basic income. This would not be regressive because everybody can afford to live: there’s the basic income, after all. A similar study in Canada in 2004 (Pascal J.) found that a lower level of basic income could be provided without any tax increase at all, simply due to the simplification in government that it provides.
Secondly, there’s a thing called a Keynesian multiplier. This requires a bit of understanding of macroeconomics but I’ll do my best to explain simply.
Everybody who has money can only do two things with it: they can spend it or they can invest it. If everybody spends, then the economy grows: more things are bought, which means that companies do better, more people are employed, etc. However, sooner or later we’ll run out of things to buy and sell, meaning that all that extra spending goes nowhere. This causes inflation.
Inflation means that your money will be worth less in future, so you should spend it immediately rather than saving it. This means that even more people spend instead of saving, so we get a situation where nobody’s investing anything in the future. If this goes out of control then it’s bad.
If everybody saves, then the economy’s overall capacity increases. It’s easier to start companies, cheaper to take loans, and we can increase the total number of things that the economy produces. However, sooner or later we’ll end up putting in capacity we don’t need or will never use, meaning that all that extra investment is wasted. This causes deflation.
Deflation means that your money will be worth more in future, so you should save instead of spending. This means that even more people save instead of spending, so we get a situation where nobody buys anything and so nobody has a job. If this goes out of control then it’s very bad indeed.
A sensible government will therefore try to balance the amount of money that’s being spent against the amount of money that’s being saved. In times where everybody’s spending (for example, in the pre-2007 bubble) they’ll raise interest rates to make saving more profitable. In times where everyone’s saving (for example in the post-2007 crash) they’ll lower interest rates to make saving less profitable. In an emergency, they can just print money in order to cause inflation directly, which makes people spend rather than save.
(As a digression, this is Greece’s current problem: Because she doesn’t control her own currency she can’t just print money. This makes everything much more painful than it would otherwise be.)
Generally, poor people tend to spend most or all of their money, whereas rich people tend to invest more of it. This means that one way of steering the economy and keeping it on track is to balance the amount of money that rich people get versus the amount poor people get. In situations where too many people are saving, you therefore want the poor to have more cash. In situations where too many people are spending, you want the rich to have more cash. (Capitalism often takes care of the latter for us, but doesn’t always.)
When people spend money, it doesn’t just disappear. They pay sales tax, and the rest of the money goes to the company they bought stuff from. This company then pays its employees, paying income tax. Those employees buy things, paying sales tax. And so on. More money being spent (economists call this “aggregate demand”) means more taxes are paid.
This means that if the government simply prints money and gives it to people to spend, the increased aggregate demand will cause extra taxes to be paid. For example, the government might find that out of every £1 they print, they get back an extra 20p, so in effect they only printed 80p. This is called the “Keynesian multiplier”, after John Maynard Keynes who discovered it.
Some forms of government spending can have a very high Keynesian multiplier – that is, the amount they increase the aggregate demand can be very large, and so the total taxes raised from it are large too. If you get it right, the amount of taxes raised from that extra spending can often be greater than the amount initially put in. Historically, the two best types of spending for this purpose have been military spending and a welfare state. Which one of the two you prefer depends largely on your politics.
In theory, basic income would work much like a welfare state in this regard: by channelling money to the poorest in society, it increases the overall amount that gets spent (the aggregate demand) and therefore increases the tax revenue which makes it affordable.
Does that make sense? Lemme know if you want me to break it down even more.
@EJ – Thanks for taking the time. Yeah, I think it makes sense. It’s just a little weird to get my head around the idea that you can just print money and not end up in a situation where a loaf of bread costs a bazillion dollars or something.
@Kootiepatra: Loaves of bread costing a bazillion dollars happen when you print more money than people can spend because there are physically not enough things around for them to buy (or “aggregate demand rises above economic capacity” in academic words.) However, if there’s capacity that isn’t being used, then printing money can be a good thing.
Orthodox wisdom says that governments should spend more than they receive during bad times (that is, print money) and spend less than they receive during good times (that is, destroy money) in order to keep the economy balanced by promoting saving or spending as applicable. This is called “counter-cyclical spending” and makes Austrian School economists’ heads explode. This is a good thing because fuck the Austrian School.
(Printing money can also help by relieving consumer debt, which is another reason that Greece is as screwed as it is. However, that’s a more complex topic.)
Wow, way to keep mansplaining people’s emotions at them. I’m sure WWTH’s emotions were a complete mystery until you showed up to diagnose them.
How about you exhibit some self-control and ban yourself.
Didn’t Mr. Conservative Dress Code also ask to be banned at one point?
A desire to have the world organize itself for your personal convenience and satisfaction must go hand in hand with an inability to show yourself out and download a site blocking browser app.
If we’re trading anecdotes, as a writer and fan of SF&F I spend a lot of time around shy, nerdy people, and most of them are partnered, but the ones who aren’t don’t fall into any obvious pattern.
So I’m inclined to think that anybody observing such a clear pattern is indulging in confirmation bias.
MRA types come across like toddlers perpetually throwing an I HATE YOU MOMMY tantrum. So of course women “have all the power” if you’re a toddler and that woman is Mommy. But most women (especially feminists) are Bad Mommies, who tell you that you can’t have all the cake and you have to clean up your room and behave yourself in public. So they cling to Good Daddy figures, who promise they will stand up to Bad Mommy and tell her she’s being mean to your poor little self and you can SO have all the cake.
Of course, these Good Daddy figures don’t actually have the power to give you any cake. All they can do is pat you on the head and tell you how much you DESERVE all the cake.
Right, Bryce, let’s have a little thought experiment.
There are approximately equal numbers of men and women, yes? And you live in a society where polygamous marriage is illegal, I presume. So, how can it be that all the socially awkward women are married to (presumably) non-awkward men, and awkward men get nothing?
Do non-awkward women just not marry? That sounds like an odd prospect; if marriage is supposedly equally desirable to both genders then you’d think women with more social resources would have the pick of the litter.
Are there just fewer socially awkward women than there are socially awkward men? Aside from that being a sexist stereotype, that wouldn’t even make any kind of sense, because the more social butterflies men have to pick from, the less likely socially awkward women are too be chosen, logically.
Really, this anecdote of yours makes no sense. Unless you assume that men are attracted to vulnerable and low self esteem women because they’re easier to manipulate, I suppose… That doesn’t reflect terribly well on men, though, does it? Nor does it sound like a great deal for all these married, socially awkward women.
On a less annoying/repetitive note, your posts on economics are really interesting and informative, EJ. Thanks for taking the time to write them up!
Juuuuust stooooop coming here Bryyyyyyce, you don’t need to drag David into something you can do yourself.
Chiming in to compliment EJ–you’ve done a great job explaining these concepts very clearly.
@Mouse
Ten bucks says it’s a combination of attention seeking and nailing themselves to the cross. Taking the standard failed flounce to the next level.
@ EJ, could you link me to your info about the permanent fund (their version of basic income) in Alaska hurting its fishing industry, I can’t find anything. Though apparently Alaska’s fishing industry is one of the best run in the world, in terms of not overfishing.
I did see however that last year’s payout was $1,884.00 per person. While in a large family that would certainly provide much needed income, is that really enough to discourage fisherman from going out to work?
With regards to fruit pickers, I still think this not a good example, because in many countries that industry depends upon foreign, often illegal labour. To an extent, what you predict has already happened, in Britain and the U.S. the local population is not prepared to accept such working conditions, so poorer people from other countries are brought in who will. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Woodie Guthrie song ‘Deportee’ from 1948, so this is nothing new. Sadly such people would not benefit from a basic income, and their plight is a separate issue which belongs to another discussion.
It’s true that a basic income would distort incentives to work, as do all forms of welfare, but it would work better than the current convoluted and heavily stigmatized benefits system. To work it would need to part of a greater system of reform, like the introduction of a land tax. The amount received should not be an arbitrary figure, but one determined by the overall productivity, if the country’s productivity declined, then the basic income would also decline, thus incentivizing people to earn more. So ideally a universal basic income would be self regulating.