The notion that men can be “oppressed” on account of their gender is not a mainstream position in feminist writing, despite a few exceptions. Why do I say this? Before I continue my series on whether or not men can be said to be oppressed, I want to back up and explain.
In Part 2 of my series on oppression, Jenny asks in the comments:
I’m going to have to go and search out these feminists who only think women are oppressed by men… Perhaps you can point me in the right direction…?
No problem. I should first clarify that I am talking about the gender oppression of men, not oppression of men on the basis of race, class, or sexual orientation, which, as we shall see, many feminists do admit the existence of. Also, I want to clarify that I am only talking about feminists who say that men can be “oppressed,” not just harmed or dehumanized, which many feminists also admit, such as bell hooks.
Let’s start with Marilyn Frye’s essay Oppression that I mentioned in Part 2. This essay is from her book The Politics of Reality, and it appears to be foundational in feminist thought on the subject, as we will see below. Frye claims:
Women are oppressed as women. Members of certain racial and/or economic groups and classes, both the males and the females, are oppressed as members of those race and/or classes. But men are not oppressed as men.
How common are perspectives like Frye’s within feminism? We can’t be confident about any answer to this question without large-scale quantitative surveys, and maybe not even then. In the absence of such measures, I still think there are strong reasons to believe that the notion that males can be oppressed on the dimension of gender is not typical of feminist writings. Notice I say “feminist writing,” not “feminist thought.” There may be many feminists outside of academia and the feminist blogosphere that do believe that men can be oppressed. But if they don’t speak up, nobody knows.
I have only seen two published feminists argue that men can be oppressed: Caroline New and Marilyn French. (Two brief words about Marilyn French: her name is easily confused with Marilyn Frye, and she also has some very bigoted stuff to say about men that I will discuss at a later date.) In contrast, I have seen many feminists say explicitly that men cannot experience gender-based oppression. When I argued to the contrary in a Feminist Studies class, which took some guts, nobody voiced agreement with me, and one feminist strongly disagreed with me.
I’ve also run into this discussion from the WMST-L Women’s Studies email list. Presumably, people on this list teach Women’s Studies. I count 23 unique posters, not counting Daphne Patai, who identifies as a “dissident feminist.” So what do they think about the subject of male oppression?
Basically, the consensus seems to agree with Frye. About 4 professors on the list endorsed her essay from above, and either used it or recommended it for classes. I count 7 posters who say explicitly that men are not victims of gender oppression. Here are quotes from each of them (emphases mine):
Kelley Crouse said:
I took the stance that men aren’t oppressed, though certainly they are harmed in important ways by gender stereotypes
Christine Smith said:
In my courses, I do clarify that certain men are oppressed, such as men of color, gay men, working class men, etc. But they are oppressed because of those categories. I do not believe men, as in the category men, are oppressed.
Michelle B. Gordon said:
(by the way I think that men cannot be oppressed on the basis of gender, though men can and are oppressed on the basis of race, class, etc — and those oppressions are themselves gendered).
Peter Hovmand said:
Nearly all of my work relates in one way or another to male violence
prevention/intervention, including workshops/ programs with males. The
notion of “male oppression” is a red herring in these groups. When the
issue of “male oppression” comes up, I usually confront it immediately.
Allan Johnson, author of The Gender Knot (which is also used in some women’s studies courses):
There is no doubt that men are in considerable pain as a result
of patriarchal dynamics. But ‘oppression’ isn’t the word for it.
Michael Kimmel, well-known sociologist of gender in the pro-feminist men’s movement, and spokesman for the National Organization of Men Against Sexism (NOMAS):
Men MAY be oppressed, of course, but not as men. They are oppressed by race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, region, physical abilities etc.
Michael Flood, editor of XYOnline, a major website of the pro-feminist men’s movement:
This notion is frequently espoused among ‘men’s liberationist’ and ‘men’s rights’ wings of men’s movement activity, and criticised by pro-feminist wings.
Next, we will move on to the posters on the list who thought that men can be victims of gender oppression. Oh wait, there weren’t any. Or if there were, they weren’t adding their views to the discussion. There was one person (Gina Oboler) who did seem more open-minded to the idea that males can be gender-oppressed, though I can’t quite tell what her own position is:
Very often, and granted, more often than vice versa, that ends up being an individual man oppressing an individual women, on the basis of his socially constructed power *as a man* — but it can also be the other way around (though I’d agree that the woman’s oppression of a man would usually not be on the basis of her socially constructed power *as a woman* but on something else.
[...]
To discuss the nature of oppression with an open mind, and with willingness to listen, can really create the teachable moment. That will backfire, however, if the point becomes to show the guy who thinks he’s oppressed how
wrong he is.
Another somewhat more nuanced position was an argument about the intersectionality of oppression:
seems pretty critical to me. Men can be oppressed on the basis of race, for example, but this oppression is also gendered.
So men can’t be oppressed as men, but minority men can be oppressed as minority men. This view at least acknowledges that gender can figure into the oppression of men, if only when combined with racism/classism/heterosexism. I don’t dispute that intersectionality is an important aspect of oppression, and I will discuss it more later in my series of oppression of men, but men can also oppressed as men.
What tentative conclusions can we come to from this discussion? Here are my observations:
1. 7 out of 23 feminists posting on the list explicitly denied that men can be oppressed on the basis of gender. Zero feminists expressed disagreement, although one left room for uncertainty.
2. A bunch of mainstream feminists or pro-feminist men (Marilyn Frye, Michael Kimmel, Allan Johnson, Michael Flood) argue in print that men are not victims of gender oppression. To my knowledge, none of them are considered radical feminists. The work of the first three are taught in Women’s Studies courses, especially Marilyn Frye’s essay which focuses on oppression.
3. Both Caroline New (an iconoclastic feminist arguing that men can be oppressed), and Michael Flood (a pro-feminist man arguing that men aren’t oppressed) think that many feminists or pro-feminist men disagree that men can be oppressed.
4. Only two feminists argue in print that men are oppressed on the basis of gender (Caroline New and Marilyn French). Marilyn French only mentions this in passing. New devotes a whole article to the topic, but she is not well known, and her article is in a sociology journal, not in a popular book like Frye’s, Kimmel’s, and Johnson’s views are.
The simplest interpretation of this data is that the vast majority of academic feminists don’t believe that men experience gender oppression, or don’t feel comfortable voicing this belief among other feminists. Furthermore, denial of male oppression appears to be widely taught in women’s studies classes. Of course, academic feminists may not represent feminism in general, though I think academic feminists will have some of the most impeccable feminist credentials.
All the available evidence I have seen so far suggests that denial of the gender oppression of men is the prevailing (hegemonic, perhaps?) feminist view of oppression.
I suggest “rebadging” as a vocabulary item – within feminism, you can only acknowledge the oppression of a man if he’s wearing some other label, such as homosexual, black, disabled, etc.
BTW, have you changed your password?
Good post. One other name that might be worth adding to the ‘short list’ is the late Ellen Willis (who just died two months ago). Now, I have to admit that it has been a long time since I’ve read her, but as a young adult I would read her columns in the Village Voice on a regular basis and she seemed thoughtful and empathetic when she would discuss how gender harmed men.
(I like ‘rebadging’, btw.)
This is exactly why I chose to take Gender Studies and not Women’s Studies. In fact, I was under the impression that Women’s Studies was a little out-dated and had, in most colleges and universities, been replaced by Gender Studies. I studied in mixed-sex classes, although the core course was mainly women. I know that all of those women considered themselves to move in and out of feminism (since I don’t believe we are ever fixed immovably in one political position) and I also know that all of them would have spoken out in support of the suggestion that men are subject to gender oppression. We had a number of classes dedicated to ‘masculinities’, and although I can’t remember the authors of the various articles we studied, the core text was Masculinities by RW Connell. These classes were largely focussed on exactly how men are subject to gender discrimination and gender oppression.
It seems the majority of your experience with feminists is in the context of Women’s Studies. I would argue such a one-sided gender ‘study’ is unhelpful, and it is certainly not the only forum for feminists and feminist debate. It would almost be inevitable that in the specific context of Women’s Studies you would have a hard time fighting your corner for the recognition of gender oppression against men.
Also, you can’t have a debate about oppression without discussing who (or which system), in any given situation, is doing the oppressing. You will get no argument from me that men also face gender oppression, because I absolutely agree. But in most cases (although this is always context-specific) the oppressor is male. That’s not to say that women do not oppress, because they absolutely do. But their generally lesser positions of power do not give them as much opportunity to do so.
Jenny
(no, no, I’m not stalking you – I just think you are worth debating) I’d like to come back to the problem of “oppression” as something that men can sometimes suffer, but only at the hands of fellow men. I mentioned on the other thread that I thought that the people who most oppress us – who most effectively regulate not just our actions, but our desires and ambitions too – are not typically “authority figures” in the usual sense, but rather those who are nearest and dearest to us. You mentioned that you considered yourself to be unusually lucky in having an entirely supportive family and circle of friends.
I could, by and large, say the same thing: my family and friends are not bigots or reactionaries, and none of them would presume to tell me how to live my life. But, but…what would my mother feel if I chose to accompany her to the shops dressed in women’s clothing? She wouldn’t lecture me, she wouldn’t disown me: but she would be mortified. That alone is enough to prevent me from so much as entertaining the idea. How would my uncle receact if I discovered sado-masochistic impulses in myself and acted on them in his presence? He, likewise, would not scold me or write me out of his will. But he could hardly help but think less of me, and that alone would be enough to keep me not just from exhibiting such tendencies, but from even discovering that they existed. I could go on, but you no doubt see the point that I am making. I could cross-dress from Hampstead to Soho flourishing a whip and wearing a “kiss me quick” hat and the puzzled or derisory looks from anonymous members of the public would serve only to strengthen my sense of being “special”. But the dismay of those I care about is a hugely effective constraint.
That’s why I think you are wrong to assume that men can be oppressed, but only by other men. I think both sexes are oppressed by both sexes, and in ways that makes it hard to put up resistance. You remember that you said your Mum reads the Daily Mail and then spouts right-wing nonsense for a week? If your boss spouts anti-immigrant, sexist tosh, then there are procedures at your diposal by means of which you can legitmately protest. I have done this myself, and, lowly employee as I was, I didn’t get fired for it. But I find it a lot harder to deal with relatives and friends who spout such drivel, *just because* they are my relatives and friends.
I find that many modern feminists in an attempt to get men to support their gender neutral agenda claim that the patriarchy oppresses men as well and that acceptance of their brand of feminism will ‘help’ men too.
I’ve seen no evidence of that.
Jenny said:
I’m wondering what institutions your experience was with? I like the idea of Gender Studies instead of Women’s Studies, but I would suspect that Gender Studies would still be plagued with a lot of the same problematic feminist assumptions. If the “masculinities” field is an example of Gender Studies, this would confirm my suspicion.
Are “gender discrimination” or “gender oppression” the exact terms used in the literature you read, or is that your interpretation of their arguments? Because, in the “masculinities” literature, which I am somewhat familiar with, I’ve never, ever, seen anyone argue that men can be oppressed on account of gender. Does Connell ever say that explicitly?
Remember, in this post, I am making a specific argument, which is that feminists don’t explicitly say that men can be opppressed on the dimension of gender; I’m not arguing that feminists don’t recognize that men are under gendered pressures, or that feminists don’t recognize that men are “harmed” or “suffer” under the gender system (though I have some problems with how feminists make that recognition, as I’ve discussed in my post on hooks for example).
Indeed, Michael Kimmel, one of the founding fathers of the “masculinities” paradigm argues explicitly that males are not oppressed. I don’t see much opposition to him among other pro-feminist men. Michael Flood, for instance, obviously agrees with him. So does Michael Messner, I think.
While I think the “masculinities” field is an improvement on previous feminist ideas about men and masculinity (for example, acknowledging that “gender” isn’t a synonym for women, and making masculinity visible), I do not see it as acknowledging the oppression of men. However, I do think some of the arguments and evidence discussed in the masculinities field could be reinterpreted to support the notion that men are victims of gender oppression, even though the field itself rejects that interpretation.
Thanks for acknowledging this. I’m just not sure how different Gender Studies would be, at least if Gender Studies is based around the current masculinities paradigm which denies the oppression of men as far as I can tell. Yet perhaps different students would be attracted to Gender Studies classes, who might be more willing to challenge the denial of the oppression of men.
I’m glad you’ve raised this argument, because I am going to discuss it in my next post in the series on oppression.
Jenny:
Although I’ve haven’t taken any Gender Studies classes, I am suspicious of the rebadging. The word “gender” all to often is taken to mean “women”, so that “gender violence” is synonymous with “violence against women”. For example the book which introduced the word “gendercide”, specifically as a gender-neutral alternative to “femicide”, did not treat the selective extermination of men. (See this discussion for more details.)
One of my long-term projects is to develop the concept of “female privilege”. Following Peggy McIntosh, I define “privilege” to mean “invisible [interlocking] systems conferring dominance on [a] group.”, although I reject the “checklist” exposition as failing to identify “systems”. I have identified five systems of female privilege, two of which are “needs-visibility privilege” (Their needs are more visible than men’s.) which results in “service privilege” (It is easier for women to obtain services to meet their needs.)
Under this conceptual framework, “Women’s Studies” can be viewed as both a result of service privilege, and a contributor victim visibility privilege. A genuine move toward an inclusive “Gender Studies” would improve the situation, but a faux rebadging, with either no change in the subject material, or a token level of inclusion of masculinities, mean that instead of merely ignoring the oppression of men, it would instead be denied or minimised or perhaps subordinated.
But please, tell us about the gender studies classes you took. What masculinity subjects were covered? How were they treated?
You could be a feminist all your life, without being in a fixed political position.
I’ll have to look it up.
I agree with Tom’s point about much of the oppression we suffer is ‘societal’ which acts through people who have individual power with respect to us, our family, friends, bosses, and work colleagues, who are as often female as they are male.
But I agree that that many GOs and NGOs are oppressive, and that the majority of those controlling these institutions are men. There are several problems in the way feminists typically treat this fact.
Firstly feminists invariably, in my experience raise this matter whenever oppression or victimisation of men is being discussed. The effect, and perhaps the intent, is to refocus the discussion from men qua victims to men qua oppressors. They do not do this when the focus is on women qua victims. In fact, we see the converse whenever women qua victimisers is being discussed: they will point out that women are the more oppressed class, and thus attempt to refocus the discussion on women qua victims.
In other words, the argument is usually an attempt to enforce female victim-visibility privilege.
Secondly, they often attribute the oppression to men as a class, when the vast majority of men are excluded from these positions of power. In the context of a discussion about the oppression of men in general (or of individual men) this is victim-blaming.
Thirdly they do not actually “discuss” this fact when raising it in this context. They merely state it. When feminists actually discuss it, they do so in the context of women qua victims.
For these reasons, while I agree that this is a fact which should be discussed, it’s typically raised to dismiss male oppression.
The standard formulation is “But Patriarchy Hurts Men Too” (Edited: fixed link.).
No evidence that men are oppressed? Or no evidence that their brand of feminism will help?
No evidence that the patriarchy hurt most men.
As I stated before just about every form of governance, no matter how oppressive it might seem to outsiders, must of had the support of most men in order for it to exist…
I mentioned it even with respect to ancient Kings, which had the support of most soldiers in their societies…and since these were societies where all men had to bear arms at least part of their lives (the concept of the citizen soldier originated here) that translates into the support of most men…
Working on universal human rights will help the situation. All road don’t lead to feminism…It’s a movement that hasn’t existed very long after all. You write about feminism like it’s been around since the flood…and has had all this impact on the history of the world.
Well, This is “Feminist Critics” after all.
Sorry about the wrong link in my privious post. I fixed it.
I don’t agree with the concept of “Patriarchy”, so I’ll just reply to your post in so far as you deny that men are subject to systemic oppression.
You have said this before, and I apologise for not replying, but I’ve been rather busy these past few days. Perhaps you could expand upon why you think men “support” the prevailing systems (rather than “acquiesce” or “fail to conceive of an alternative”), and why you say that women do not.
I don’t see how being obliged to do something is an indicator of support. If the men truly supported their King, why didn’t they take up arms for him voluntarily?
Yet we must be realistic about the things feminism can accomplish. They can’t be responsible for the cure for cancer or wiping out worldwide poverty. Man’s inhumanity to other men in war is even too big an issue for feminism standing alone to address or be blamed for. Remember Chivalry’s roots are not men’s treatment of women, but men’s treatment of other men in times of war. I think maybe that’s what that other man was saying on Creative Destruction that feminism is morphining to be too big and becoming the cause and effect of everything.
It’s not.
It’s some things, good and bad, but not everything. It’s responsible for the shambles in higher education and political correctness. For some of the mess in family courts and the excesses of our criminal justice system, but when you try to link it to the UN and men killing other men during wars, that’s a little much even for a feminist critic. Remember most of the societies where these things are going on are probably not western and pay little or no attention to feminism…
I’m glad you’re on-board, Hugh. You have an academic background which I lack.
I would be grateful if you would consider blogging about “masculinities” at some point.
They did take up arms voluntarily. What do you think one man could force thousands to take up arms on his behalf if they didn’t wish to… Even in the Iliad, they voted on these issues. If you read it, you’ll see many times Agammemon had to go to the soldiers for a vote on some issue.
Alexander the Great had to be voted on by the army.
As did his father Phillip of Macedon before him….and I’m sure many others whose names are lost to history…Of course one could claim they failed to conceive of an alternative because they were satisfied with the one they had.
Only soldiers had the right to vote, so how could women be heard on these issues?
You appear determined to paint most men as helpless pawns throughtout history with no control over their governance. History, at least western history, is a story of exactly the opposite. Especially in England, where The Magna Carta was signed by a King held hostage by his own court and forced to sign it. There are endless stories like that both in England and other western countries…I mean look at Rome, that was nothing but a history of ordinary men trying to govern themselves…Some of their greatest legends were of farmer/generals who led armies and then returned back to farming after a war was over. Similar to the way we paint George Washington over here….
I don’t agree with you that most men had no control over the systems that governed them.
Who or what could oppressed men simply because they were men???
According to my definion (“feminism is the belief that women are universal victims and everything is men’s fault”) men cannot be oppressed as a class. Anyone who believes that is not a feminist — although they might label themselves that as a dissident feminist, who most feminists would reject as a feminist.
Therefore I am curious as to why you think Marilyn French said men are or could be an oppressed sex. She’s clearly a feminist and so that would falsify my definition if you are correct. You said it was just a small statement that led you to believe this. Could you say what that statement by her was?
Jenny’s position is a de facto dismissal of gender oppression of men.
You will get no argument from me that men also face gender oppression, because I absolutely agree. But in most cases (although this is always context-specific) the oppressor is male. That’s not to say that women do not oppress, because they absolutely do. But their generally lesser positions of power do not give them as much opportunity to do so.
She’s saying that she admits to friendly fire casualties of men in the Sex War. But women are the good guys and men are the bad guys always. When men do it to other men that’s their own fault as a sex so therefore it is not “oppression”. See that?
She also admits that individual women wrong individual men, but again this is not “oppression”. Why? Because only men oppress and only women are the victims.
DavidByron said:
French says it explicitly in The War Against Women. If I haven’t taken it back to the library, I will look for the page number. The quote goes something like this:
“Some people say that men too are oppressed. This is true. I don’t know why men don’t start their own movement.”
I agree that this sounds somewhat strange coming from French. She definitely sees the vast majority of victimization from “patriarchy” as descending on women, not men, so I don’t think she would falsify your definition.
NYMOM: This is either false or extremely misleading, depending on how you define the word “support”. Man’s descent into ‘civilization’ generally led to tumbling standards of living as the vast majority eked out a marginal living under the thumb of a small and dominant military/religious elite. One can see this in the development of all of the early pristine states in what is now Latin America, the Middle East, India, and China (and in the ‘secondary state’ of Rome). The penalties for defying the rulers in these societies was quite brutal as can be seen from the prevalence of slavery and torture in those societies. Far from ‘all men bearing arms,’ an elite warrior class generally developed, and in many cases it was either economically unfeasible or even considered a grave offense for a peasant (that is, the vast majority of men) to bear arms. Successful armed peasant resistance against the state was exceedingly rare, and generally only occurred when the state was already undergoing upheaval due to some natural or political calamity.
HughRistik quoting Marylin French:
I would not regard a single such utterance (or indeed a single utterance saying anything at all) by a recognised feminist as falsifying David’s hypothesis, especially if buried in footnote 2 on page 234, and never mentioned again. What matters is the overall thrust of the discourse.
Hi David, welcome to our blog. Since you brought up the subject of moderation in CD, I should perhaps point you to the rules outlined here, which are applicable to my threads there, and generally applicable here.
David (quoting Jenny):
You’re reading a lot more into Jenny’s remarks than are there, and reversing 180 degrees what it there. She’s said nothing about a Sex War, or about who are the good guys. And she explicitly states that women “absolutely do” oppress, and that men can be the victims of this.
However we don’t know whether she would be accepted as a feminist if she expressed such views consistently within a feminist forum.
ballgame: You might be right about China, India and the middle east as they are not western civilizations and developed very different political and social systems from us. Perhaps S. America as well since S. America developed as a colony that broke away from its colonizer very late, unlike N. America. However, I believe we are talking about feminism and feminism is basically a movement only relevant in the west. So to bring in all ov these differing places is a red herring as their development has no bearing on this discussion. Also you are giving far more authority to feminism then it actually has. Since it exercises no impact in these places whatsoever.
But more importantly to conflate all of western civilization including Rome into one long history painting most of its male citizens as victims with no ability to participate in their own governance simply is a misreading of the west’s past. Not to mention that you’ve totally thrown Greece out the window by this assessment…
Rome’s armies became professionalized and staffed by mercenaries during the beginning of its end when population levels had fallen too low to sustain the levels needed to police its borders. At that point they couldn’t even raise a Roman Emperor never mind a Roman army.
“Man’s descent into civilization’ did not lead to tumbling standards of living at least in the west it didn’t. If nothing else you can see just looking around at Western Civilization now which is the smallest (land wise and in population numbers) as well as being the youngest of most of the civilizations that still existing today that just the opposite is the case. Everyone and his grandmother is either trying to immigrate here or imitiate us, so we must be doing something right. AND as cruel as slavery was in Rome, there existed mechanism for slaves to be freed and then support their former owners in elections. That’s the root of the ‘patronage’ system we see today. Roman citizens were not slaves, slaves were foreigners usually taken in wars and enslaved to work in Rome. So again, most Roman male citizens had a say in their governance for most of Rome’s history…
Like feminism this website appears to be very ready to negate any ‘good’ western civilization has accomplished in order to paint most men as victims…You’ll eventually lose credibility with people if you continue as ‘common sense’ will cause them to wonder about your motiviation to paint our history this way. Feminism has made that mistake and lost much goodwill and support along the way. Exaggeration has never helped a cause.
Daran: what Jenny is saying is correct. That for oppression to exist there must be an inbalance of power. I would go further and say insitutional legalized inbalance of power, otherwise you only have the random acts of meanness/cruelty you mentioned earlier.
Since men have always been in power in every institution until fairly recently, they have been able to oppress women. Men in power might also oppress differing men as well but it’s men from other tribes, racial groups, religions, etc., They weren’t oppressed just because they are male. Women as women were oppressed, that’s the difference. I mean if you support laws that could, in theory, discriminate against your own mother or sister, clearly there is something else going on, not just a random act of meanesss.
This is getting confusing with a David now cutting and pasting comments from Jenny and Daran…
But Daran (I think) Jenny would absolutely be accepted into a modern day feminist forum saying that women oppress men as it’s the lead in to the latest spin used to gather male support for their gender neutral re-engineering of our societies, which is that patriarchy hurts men too. You can’t push through the kinds of radical changes gender neutrals wish to see with 50% of the population against you particularly if that 50% comprises most of the armed forces, police and court personnel in your society…
So she’ll be accepted in their forums…
NYMOM
You’re being a bit selective in your examples of male approval (from which you deduce male influence on the same) of the powers that be, aren’t you. Sure, Greek mercenaries had a lot of leverage in the armies they fought in (cf. Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, in which Greek generals went in fear of their life vis a vis their own soldiery), and, sure, the aristocratic class normally had plenty of influence, when it didn’t have a genuine ascendency, over the monarchy. But, as you well know, the relationship of the vast majority of men to established power throughout history can be summed up in the words “unconditional obedience, or I wouldn’t want to be you, churl”. It’s true that their was plenty of ostenisible loyalty to the crown from both men *and* women – but that is easily explicable: both men and women knew in their hearts that it was far better to have an undisputed ruler than allow a power struggle in which the “petit peuple” were always the losers. If you are going to make the argument that the political quiescence of the menfolk proves that they approved of the power structures they were subjected to, then you must accept also that the quiescence of the womenfolk proves that they approved of male dominance. Perhaps you do. I must say that I find your opinions refreshingly unpredictable.
As illogical as this statement sounds it is at the core of the definition of feminism (“everything is men’s fault”). Of course in a sense it’s true, but only in the sense that it’s also true of all women too. However the sex-specificness is the whole point of course.
It’s interesting because NYMOM sounds like a traditionalist from other things she(?) says. Of course feminism and conservatism are two sides of the same coin with very similar views about gender (women are more spiritual than men, men are more violent, men are in charge). Where they differ is in respect to what should be done about their agreed on view of men and women. A gender transition or men’s rights view would deny that men are more violent or women more spiritual or that men are in charge. These are geuninely radical views comapred to the status quo (which feminism didn’t challenge) of the last few centuries of western history.
Are we not breaking rule 8 by mentioning the rules? But since you do mention it let me give you some advice: ditch them all immidiately. I have never seen such a group of rules work as intended EVER. Have you?
Anyway the implication is that you think I’m breaking them although you didn’t say how.
Or is it you that is reading far less than is there? You know you have to translate from the feminist sometimes — you yourself just did so with the sentiment of Marilyn French’s words which I tend to agree with. For example this word “oppress” is clearly being used in three different ways in the context.
The first way is the intended discussion here “oppression” of an entire gender. That means the broad and systematic discrimination or simply broad and systematic disadvantage of a sex. It does not mean to compare with the other sex – it’s not yet saying that both sexes can’t be oppressed, which indeed would likely be the opposite of the position of most of us.
The second as used by Jenny was the harm of one individual by another. This has nothing to do with class oppression.
The third is feminist specific and is this notion of friendly fire, men abusing men, or “the patriarchy hurts men too” as you put it. I say feminist specific because we do not think that the gender of the people doing the harm reflects on the quality of suffering. Nor do we think that just because men are the people most used by society as enforcers that the enforcement is a male evil.
So in trying to analyse Jenny’s statements in line with my definition I concluded there was no contradiction because she was not talking about (1) but about (2) and (3). If you read her carefully she denies (1) exists for men.
She says that men are oppressed “mostly” by other men (3). That word “most” is critical because if she had meant by that that sometimes, even a minority of the time, it was women oppressing men, or society as a whole (men and women) oppressing men, then should would contradict my definition. However in the next sentence she explains what she means by “most” by discussing the case of women “oppressing” men and it turns out that all such oppression is case (2). Women never oppress men as a class because women lack that power as a class.
Clearly she is bending over as much as feminist doctrine will allow her to but she does not contradict the definition IMO. Everything is still mens fault. To put it another way men are to blame collectively but women are to blame only individually.
Now I see NYMOM has said almost exactly that too. Let me be clear: I don’t beleive that men are not oppressed or that women lack power. I’m just explaining my view of the feminist view here.
NYMOM, because you don’t seem to doctrinaire I’ll try to explain the fault in your thinking, although it’s not what I normally do….
Your statement that society has (so far as we know) always been patriarchal in the anthropological (not feminist) sense meaning “leaders are male” is correct. But is an elementary logical error to deduce from “all leaders are men” to “all men are leaders”.
This mistake is called the frontman fallacy.
99.99% of men were never leaders which is scarecely any different from the 99.9999% of women who were not. (Not 100%; for example the Europeans’ tradition supported female heads of state such as Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I of England and so on).
The second mistakle you make is to assume that the two sexes are combative — as if there was a universal Sex War which pitted men against women. But in reality to the limited extent that gender is an issue in aggression, in both humans and animals, the aggression is between sexual competitors. It is men who compete with other men, and women who compete with other women.
Therefore the theory of gender competition dictates that if men are in charge it is other men who will be oppressed, not other women. Now this is borne out by the historical record as well as statistics from the present day. For example with men in power what has the law said about male behaviour since the earliest written laws. The laws were made to control male behaviour and protect women. They were not made — as you seem to think — to control female behaviour and protect men. Again in the modern day you can compare the way for example a female judge handles female accused’s cases with a male judge and the evidence says women judges are much tougher on other women than male judges are.
Men tend to be overly empathic towards women. Other women know what real bitches women can be. This all goes back to the animal instinc. Men compete with other men. Women compete with other women – for sex. The feminist “Sex War” position is 180 degrees removed from reality.
A third issue you didn’t articulate so clearly is the amount of power an individual has to direct the views of their society. I am talking about ordinary people not leaders here. You claim that men have such power and women do not. May I remind you of the Jsuit saying, “show me a boy at 7, and I will show the man”? or another saying “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”?
These are reminders that children are very easily indoctrinated, which is necessary for a species like ours which has so much to learn from one generation to the next. Traditionally, and still today this job has been mostly female. That is one reason why women are generally more conservative (small ‘c’) than men. Women generally are in charge of passing on their society’s values and therefore of shaping it. And whereas very few men are leaders, a great many women have children.
Your position is based on these three fallacies, the frontman fallacy, the Sex War fallacy and the idea that women don’t contribute to passing on their society’s values.
Wow, erm, I’m not sure where to come in on all this!
Firstly, thank you Daran for correctly reading what DavidByron had misread from my original ‘oppression’ comment. I appreciate it!
I was mildly amused by there being a debate concerned with whether I (or my views) would be accepted in ‘feminist’ forums! Once again, I’d just like to reiterate that there is no such thing as The Official Feminist Viewpoint!
There are many forums for every possible kind of feminism – and there is SO much diversity that where I might be rejected from one forum, I will surely be embraced by another. There is no ‘correct’ form of feminism, just as there is no ‘incorrect’ form of feminism. Feminism was founded upon the concept of speaking up and hearing the voices of women silenced by society, so if any feminist was to dismiss my views because s/he did not consider them ‘feminist’ enough, it would be s/he who was not the ‘feminist’, not me!
DavidByron wrote: “According to my definion (”feminism is the belief that women are universal victims and everything is men’s fault”)”
Well, who made you the official definer of feminism?? There is a great deal of debate within feminism about whether the term ‘victim’ is at all politically useful to anyone, since it doesn’t much allow for women to shake off their negative association with weakness and vulnerability. I’d be very surprised if any feminists’ definitions of feminism would include the words ‘victim’ or the word ‘universal’, since women differ greatly from one another (just as men do).
And I get quite tired of the feminists-think-everything-is-men’s-fault declaration, since it seems only ever to be expressed as a knee-jerk reaction to women daring to express that maybe, just maybe, men haven’t always played fair, and is rarely something you’ll actually ever hear a feminist say!
NYMOM, judging by the tone of some of your comments regarding feminism, I’m reading your remarks about modern feminists agreeing that…
“women oppress men as it’s the lead in to the latest spin used to gather male support for their gender neutral re-engineering of our societies, which is that patriarchy hurts men too…”
…as being meant somewhat cynically! Firstly, although your negative feelings towards this possibility saddens me, you do have (albeit from its rather skewed angle) a point: feminism, as a movement, a political viewpoint, a discussion forum, and a philosophy, has realised the need to open itself up for discussion with everyone and anyone who has an interest if it is to have an affect upon our ever-diversifying societies and cultures. If feminism did not adapt and remain flexible to the directions and ideas of the society it wishes to be relevant to, then it would be quickly dismissed, as most reactive and unchanging movements eventually are.
Your negative feelings about this make it a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t situation. Since if feminists try to exclude men from debate they are instantly deemed man-haters, and now when men are finally being welcomed (at least in the circles I move in!) into feminist debate, it’s being deemed a cynical act of: lets-lure-them-in-and-feed-them-biscuits, and-then-take-over-the-world!!
It’s not an act of cynicism to concede that everyone’s voice must be heard: it’s vital to every kind of equality issue, and gender equality is no exception.
(Can someone explain to me how to do those indented quotations thingys ‘cos they’re really useful! Are you guys writing on Word and then pasting? I can be a bit of a cybermuppet sometimes!!)
NYMOM, you wrote:
“Yet we must be realistic about the things feminism can accomplish… Man’s inhumanity to other men in war is even too big an issue for feminism standing alone to address or be blamed for”.
…Yes, how DARE feminism try to be ambitious! What a damned cheek! (Ok, I’m being facetious!) And who says feminism is trying to stand alone?? Pacifist, Socialist and Libertarian movements all connect and converse with feminist movements, since there are many points of connection between them all. And yes, feminism actually does have an awful lot to say on “Man’s inhumanity to other men in war”!
Feminism seeks to be analytical of, revealing of, and affect change upon, the ways in which the world is gendered, since most feminists believe – or have varying opinions expressing the ways in which – this gendering is implicit to, and deeply rooted in, the structuring of the world’s cultures and societies (among other things). So many feminisms wish to use these ‘revelations’ on gender to make movements towards a restructuring of society. Damned right this is ambitious!! I don’t take well having what is ‘realistic’ defined for me!
And last but not least, before I fall exhausted off my soap-box (there’s so much to respond to here, I think I’m going to have to have a tea break before I have another go at the rest of it…!), I’d like it if NYMOM could elaborate on the ways in which feminism is supposed to be…
“…responsible for the shambles in higher education and political correctness. For some of the mess in family courts and the excesses of our criminal justice system…”
…because I don’t see it myself.
And although, NYMOM, you didn’t mention Africa in your analysis of historical social structuring, you did remark that feminism is only of concern to western countries. Well, I can tell you that from an African context, this is absolutely not the case. I currently work on a project in very rural Angola, assisting the Angolan Women’s Co-ordinator. I am the only white western woman ever to have to come to this region to do so. I expected my attempts to install certain programs associated with feminism to encounter resistance from the Angolans here. What I found instead is that I was actually struggling to introduce any “new” ideas, since most of my so-called ‘controversial’ plans had been operating already for quite some time, and had been implemented by the Angolans as the ‘obvious’ thing to do for social ‘development’. Feminism is VERY relevant to many African women, and men!
Jenny, these are “tags”, and basically you want to do this …
(blockquote)This would be an indented paragraph.(/blockquote)
… only use < and > instead of the parentheses. You can find more info here.
Tom, on a side note, those Greek mercenaries fighting for the Persian armies were considered traitors and could have been subject to execution if they had been caught. Not just because they were fighting for a foreign power against their own city-states but because they were fighting for a power that had such differing ideas of governing that ordinary Greeks were totally opposed to…the bowing before a king for instance was one big one…as even the lower classes of Greece were not forced to bow to anyone….
Also mercenaries in Greece itself were rare, probably non-existence although sometimes in times of crisis one city-state would send soldiers to help another. A good example of this is how Sparta sent troops to Athens to help defeat the Persians. All Greece recognized that allowing a win for Persia was an unacceptable attack on their way of life which in spite of what you believe did include the participation of all citizen-soldiers within it. As Greeks did not use mercanaries. All abled bodied male citizens of Greek served. Socrates and other philsophers served alongside upper class Greeks and commoners. Women did not serve for obvious reasons and thus had no say in the franchise…
You’ve very invested in painting men as helpless victims. This appears to be related to spending too much time around feminism…
Addiionally I never claimed all men were leaders. I said they had a role in selecting their leadership in western society and not only a role in selecting their leadership but a role in chosing the sorts of govennance they would be ruled under. I never claimed it was a perfect democracy, yet to paint most men as helpless pawns of a few is not correct either.
Just to let you know, you will have a hard time winning this argument with me. As I was an American History major but could have been an Ancient History one, except I didn’t want to bother with the language requirement at my age. Thus I finished all of the required text in English translations not the original Greek or Latin. I graduated late in life and didn’t feel up to learning one of the ancient languages but I did all of the readings and I still attend classes in these subjects just for fun, not credit, if I happen to like a particular professsor’s works….So I happen to know that what you are implying about western civilization is not the case, although it might be of some others. I suspect not however as I don’t believe men in any society are that easy to victimize. They must see benefit to themselves to support a system…
Concerning passing on values of women, even the most patriarchal societies such as the Spartans and Islam today recognized the value of the mother/child bond and allowed children to remain with their mothers up to about the age of 7 or 9, then removed them (boys) from their care and placed them in with their peers for most of the rest of their lives. Generally these years were spent under the supervision of older boys with male teachers, what we would call school today. So the formative years of most boys was in ancient times and still is today under the aegis of men for the most part…although many women have gone into teaching these days. But now even this, men object to and are trying to change by having more men in elementary school…
Re Jenny’s comments regarding feminisms’ work everywhere on everything in the world. I would say this is a perfect example of the hubris feminism has fallen into…
I’m actually not conservative in the least. I just know history and western history, for the most part, has been a fairly conservative march forward with a few detours every century or so but then back on track. I’m far more radical on my issues then most feminist. Actually I try to tone down my rhetoric on their blogs in order to be allowed to post on them….
NYMOM: I disagree with most of your 4:56 am comment. There are very few places in the world where feminism hasn’t had some impact, although its deepest impact has been in the West, of course. (I liked Jenny’s African example. It’s also a little-known fact that the one of the sparks which precipitated the armed revolt against Soviet Communist rule in Afghanistan was when the Communists began granting equal rights to women in that country. Heh.)
But I think your two main erroneous ideas are: 1. that the development of civilization in the West led directly to sustainably improved standards of living; and 2. that the average man wielded significant political power during most of Western history. Both of these ideas are blatantly false, though #1 is commonly held.
I initially found your belief in #2 — which you reiterate in your latest comment — to be a bit puzzling, but it’s more understandable given your fixation on classical Greece. Greece is obviously critical given its huge cultural contribution to Western civilization, but both chronologically and in terms of population the ‘reign of Greece’ was only a very small part of the ‘reign of the West’. Outside of classical Greece, the average man in the West did not even begin to acquire the ability to vote until the late 18th century. The notion that the average man “… had a role in selecting their leadership in western society and not only a role in selecting their leadership but a role in chosing the sorts of govennance they would be ruled under” is quite plainly false for most men, in most of the West, most of the time.
The idea that the development of civilization in the West led directly to sustainably improved standards of living is, however, a more understandable misconception owing to its status as a deeply held cultural myth at the heart of our idea of Western progress. As Marvin Harris explains in Cannibals and Kings, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture represented at step down in quality of life in many important respects (including hours of work, for example).
The reason for this isn’t self-evident. After all, initially the shift to agriculture would lead to tremendous increases in the ability to produce food, and thus permit (and even incentivize) couples to have more children and avoid the crude and often risky forms of birth control practiced by hunter gatherer societies. Unfortunately, the incentive to bear and raise more children — though almost always better for the individual family — became self-defeating for the society as a whole, as society’s ability to provide material sustenance for its members became severely taxed. Malthusian population pressures would quickly come into play, leading to wars, famines, and a way of life which entailed working far longer, harder, and with much less freedom than the hunter gatherer societies from which humans emerged. As Harris points out, the discovery of a new technology or the conquest of an unexploited land might provide relief from this phenomenon, but until (roughly) the 17th century or so such relief was only temporary.
It was only the discovery of the vast unexploited American continents and the onset of industrial capitalism at that time that led to improved standards of living for large numbers of people for an extended period. The development of benign forms of birth control offered the promise that these improvements might be sustained and the Malthusian cycle avoided (though global warming may thwart that hope). In many respects birth control contributed to the feminist movement we are debating right now, and the undermining of the patriarchal restrictions which circumscribed the lives of women.
Finally, NYMOM, nothing I’ve written should be construed to mean that I am ‘anti-Western’ as you imply … if anything, the opposite is the case.
Regarding your mention of the Greeks as a small part of our civilization, you have to be kidding me. From the Romans (who even though they conquered the Greeks still admired and imitated them) right through to the US, our civilizations have been based upon the ideas of the Greeks. They are our own founding myths…Actually Roman upper classes considered it mandatory to have their sons educated by a Greek philosopher…and the English upper classes until the Victorian era sent their sons abroad to tour Italy and Greece as a standard part of their education.
The Iliad, the oldest written document we have in the west mentioned voting amongst the men numerous times and how even their kings had to be wary if these votes turned against them….
Also your comments about hunter-gather societies sound like some kind of hippie myth. Are you from California?
Regarding Afganistan, treating women differently was one reason amongst many that the Islamic population rebelled against the Soviets…but it proves one of my points: which is that men will not willing submit to a system of governance they don’t approve of…no matter the strength of their opponents…We in the west might consider democracry the best system anywhere with women and men being treated exactly alike, but other peoples have other forms of governance where rule by clerics plays a stronger role in their traditions. We might not like it but we’ll have to accept it…There might even be some forms of democratic processs that take place in cleric selection that we’re not aware of….I don’t know. I understand many women in Afganistan did not wish to go outside unveiled as well…they felt uncomfortable around men unveiled. Each to their own.
Your views about hunter-gather societies vs. agricultural ones remind me of Marx….and I don’t mean Groucho.
ballgame: I think you are misreading the reasons for the decline of agricultural societies. As eventually stable agricultural societies, in the west anyway, begin to self-regulate their own populations. Which is exactly what happened to Rome and Greece as well…
After all birth control didn’t really become widespread until the late 60s but families had been getting smaller in the west anyway…the 50s saw a slight boom but even that wasn’t really as large as traditional families used to be…
NYMOM
I’m very invested in painting men as victims? C’mon, nothing I have said could be fairly be read as implying that. When I point out that the vast majority of men throughout history had no say whatsoever in selecting their rulers I am doing no more than state the obvious, and you know it. The Greek city-states and the Roman Republic, while they lasted, did, as you say, allow varying degrees of participation for male citizens in state governance, but for thousands of years before and after they were a historical anomaly. In my own country, England, for instance, from the early middle ages until the 1830s only an infinitesimal number of men exerted any influence at all on who governed them. That’s not “investing in the notion of men as victims”: it’s a fact.
So you were, and perhaps still are, a mature student? Brava! So am I. I can read Latin and a little Greek (but Xenophon, simplest of Greek authors, already tests my reading ability to the limit!), but I am sure that my knowledge of antiquity cannot hold a candle to yours!
Oh, and as P.S: The Iliad is by no means the oldest document we have in the West. Where did you get that idea from?
Tom: What is older then the Iliad (in the west I’m talking about now, not China or India I know they have older documents then we do)…
I am an American but Scotch/Irish by ethnic heritage and I have to disagree with you about the common man’s participation in English history….I’m shocked that you would think that when anyone who knows anything about English history knows that the common people were very involved in English politics. Knowing this, frequently they were manipulated by the church in Rome to force changes at the top…that’s why excommunication was such a powerful tool as it impacted the common man. When he couldn’t attend church or confession or receive communion because the King had done something Rome didn’t like, unrest would break out and change would be made. Henry the VIII didn’t go through such manipulation of the church to get his divorce just for church or his court’s approval, he was trying to avoid angering the common English citizen by the penalities his excommuniation would bring to them….
It’s probably no accident that the North American colonies rebelled due to taxation w/o representation in parliament…as they expected to be treated just like their English cousins. I’m surprised that you would believe that until the 1830s common men in England had no say in their form of governance….
Maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree on this point as we’ve strayed far afield from the orginal question and you’re never going to change my mind about this….
Somehow it seems critical to the question, however, if men were ever oppressed just because they were men. So I guess this debate will never end….
But clearly not sufficiently familiar with it.
You can eat Scotch beef and Scotch eggs, drink Scotch broth and Scotch whisky, and wear Scotch plaid, but if you meet a Scotsman, call him Scottish, or a Scot, and he will reply to you in Scots English.
Documents in Linear A and B (both forms of early Greek) predate the Iliad by nearly a thousand years. Earliest estimates for the Iliad: 800 BC. Linear A and B found on documents (mostly clay tablets, apparently) dating to 14-1500 BC.
When you say Scotch/Irish, you mean that your ancestors came from Ulster, don’t you? Not that you your family has an Irish and a Scots side? In the UK Scotch/Irish is rarely used to describe inhabitants of Northern Ireland – hence Daran’s confusion.
As to the supposed power of the English common man to influence political leadership: they might register their disapproval of Mary’s Catholicism or Elizabeth’s Anglicanism, if they were prepared to die at the stake for it. But that fact alone should make it clear to you that they had no legitimate influence in the matter. You seem to believe that the common man was implicated in the political and religious choices of his monarch because, after all, he could sacrifice his life to express disagreement if he really felt strongly about the matter. Well, so he could. And so could women – who, as I recall, were martyred in rather fewer numbers than their menfolk. So should we conclude that they were even more implicated in the establishment of their time? Bet you don’t.
Linear A and B are just examples of writng. They tell us nothing about archiac Greece. The Iliad is based upon a form of narrative story telling. Probably it might have been more accurate for me to say it was western civilization’s oldest novel or poetic form…Linear A and B tablets might fit the bill for writing but I don’t think they are precisely what I was talking about…I think they were just a list or an alphahet or something…If you are going to use them as examples of ‘writing’ then you might as well claim that the cave drawings discovered in Spain (probably done by early man during the ice ages) were Europe’s first art form.
My ancestors were from Scotland, emigrated to Ireland and then to the US…I’m not sure if they came precisely form Ulster or not. But I consider myself a mix of all of them and have interest in the history of Ireland, Scotland as well as England…
Daran I don’t consider the fact that the Scots or the Irish speak English to negate anything I said about English history. It still was mostly a source for good. Some bad but most good.
Let me ask you both, do you consider England or the US to be legitimate heirs of Greece and Roman civilization or to bear any resemblance to their political system. ideas or philosophy whatsoever…since if you don’t then this whole discussion is pointless.
Since that’s a basic assumption we must all share for any of this to make sense.
Anyway I still don’t agree that most men were helpless pawns of an overarching ruling class…I simply don’t agree that accurately describes the historic political evolution of the west. Maybe if you’re Karl Marx it’s an accurate description.
I said that common men had influence over who their leaders were. Even the inheritability (if that’s a word) of various positions was not always a given as most royal titles evolved from military ones…
I beleive the roots of the titles knight, count and perhaps duke evolved originally from positions in the Roman army, not heritary royal titles initially. Now many of them also have a land grant that follow the title. But that’s the end game not the beginning.
The roots of our democrary probably extend from the army, a wholly male institution. It allowed for advancement through merit for oridinary men who distinguished themselves in battle (you can even see this thought process in many of the Greek myths where ordinary humans could become Gods through extraordinary deeds). The same with the Romans and the Germans and the English, the Danes, etc., Women were excluded for obvious reasons.
NYMOM: You said:
My exact words were …
… and I stand by those words. It is one thing to say that the West inherited a rich intellectual tradition from classical Greece which ultimately helped provide the foundation of our developing democracies. That is something we can both agree on. It is quite different to claim that overall the West was functionally democratic prior to the establishment of democracies in the 18th and 19th centuries. That notion is completely baseless.
Indeed, Wikipedia rather strongly implies that even classical Greece wasn’t nearly as universally democratic as you imply:
BTW, although insinuating that I’m a hippie Marxist from California is a rather amusingly mild insult for the Internet — frankly it’s not even an insult unless you happen to be some kind of neocon wingnut — I would hope that in the future you would afford me the same respect I’ve afforded you and focus on substantive discussion points.
I did not interpret NYMOM’s remark as an insult. If it was so intended, then I would ask her to refrain. I would also suggest that your request to be treated with respect would be more credible if it didn’t contain the words “neocon wingnut”.
Well, ballgame’s remark may be interpreted as insulting towards neocon’s, but I don’t think it was insulting towards NYMOM.
[...] David Byron: Are we not breaking rule 8 by mentioning the rules? [...]
It looked to me as if it was, and NYMOM may have taken it as such. Whatever. Everybody, please be mindful that remarks not intended as insults may be taken as such, so be careful.
NYMOM, assuming that your comment was intended the way I read it, perhaps you could elaborate upon how ballgame’s views could be considered Marxist, and how that implies that they are defective (assuming that you think it does). Marxism – by which I mean the philosophy of Marx, not the vulgarised world-view of current-day Marxists – is a well-formed scientific theory of history which has been falsified in so far as its significant predictions have failed to materialise. That doesn’t mean that its description and/or interpretation of the historical world is incorrect. I’m not sufficiently familiar with the theory to know what it said, if anything, about the pre-agrarian era.
NYMOM
I think we are at the very limits for acceptable thread drift here, so I’ll keep this short and say no more about it.
Are England and the US *legitimate* heirs of the Hellenic and Roman tradition? No idea. How and by whom could they be legimized? Both countries, and just about every other western country besides owe an enormous debt to the classical tradition, certainly: but an admiration for the classical world has never implied a commitment to constitutional government of any kind, let alone representative democracy.
Documents in Linear A and B are far more than mere alphabets (otherwise we could hardly know that they represent archaic Greek) but far less expressive and interesting than the Iliad, that’s for sure.
Latin Comes (companion) and Dux (leader) give us Count and Duke. Knight is Germanic (cf. modern German Knecht – underling).
And to finish: the problem with your argument was not that it assumed too great a continuity between the classical Golden Age and what went before and after, but that you frame the question of men’s responsibility in the power systems they were subjected to in such a fashion that they are bound to be found guilty. If they were quiescent, you suggest, then it was because they approved of the political set up and its leadership. If they revolted, then – hey presto! – that’s evidence that they could change things if they wanted to. So quiescence and activity are both taken as evidence of political engagement (and thus responibility), and there is no third way to be taken. I could adopt exactly the same argumentative strategy to prove that women were likewise politically efficacious and that the bad things that happened to them did so with their tacit consent. If I did so, you would have no difficulty spotting the deception.
It’s Hugh’s thread, so I guess it’s for him to say, but speaking for myself, I have no objection to this discussion. In fact, I’m enjoying it immensely.
Well I was hoping that Jenny would respond. She did respond but not constructively.
Could you explain how your view differs from my interpretation of it then? it’s not helpful for you to just say you didn’t mean it that way without saying what way you did mean it. Thanks.
For example if (contra my interpretation) you see women as oppressing men as a class could you give an example of that?
I find it ironic that this is the first post in 30 comments to return to the subject of debate yet I was the only one accused of breaking the rules by going off topic!
Nobody’s accused you of breaking the rules. Nor is there a rule which says you can’t go off-topic.
It wasn’t intended to. It was to point out that your use of the word “Scotch” to refer to the Scots people would be regarded as ignorant or offensive by many of them. (I live in Scotland, BTW.)
That’s a rather strange question. We’re debating whether ordinary men have supported the regimes throughout history which have treated them rather badly. That question cannot depend upon whether a group of people centuries later do or do not regard their nations to be the legitimate heirs of Ancient Greece and Rome.
The resemblance or otherwise of later systems to those early democratic experiments is obviously relevant but also redundant, if we know enough about a regime to be able to say that does or does not bear resemblance to them in any significant manner, then we can answer the question directly. For example Prior to the signing of Magna Carta and its predecessor documents the Kings of England had absolute power in the realm. MC granted rights to the nobles, but the common man still had none. Thus, whatever resemblance the then regime had to Greece and Rome, it wasn’t sufficient to grant effective power to men.
I’m sorry, we don’t ‘do’ assumptions here. If you wish to assert, for any particular time and place in history, that the common man, but not the common women, had effective power over the regimes, then the onus is upon you to adduce evidence to support your position.
Bear in mind that you have two tasks: To show that men had effective power, and to show that women didn’t. Part of the problem here is that just men are rendered invisible as victims in our culture, so women are rendered invisible as actors. Women have always been far more involved in wars and revolutions that history perhaps records.
You did accuse me of breaking the rules here, saying, (in reference to something I wrote):
You’re also wrong when you claim there’s no rule against going off topic. Not only did you admit that above, and considered but rejected the idea of complaining about the huge amount of off topic posting here, but in the same post linked to above you say there are 4 such rules:
One of those (rule 8) was the one you did actually accuse me of breaking. So, yes Daran, you did accuse me of going off topic in this thread despite the fact that most of the comments on this thread violate that idea far more, and in fact you accused the person perhaps least guilty of the “crime”. Hence “irony”. I mentioned this as a joke but I guess it also illustrates the problems your rules are going to bring you every time. You’ll never apply them consistently and rules that are never applied consistently are worse than useless. They breed partiality and then resentment. Why did you jump all over me for a mote that you provoked (you not me, brought up the whole rules topic), but felt ok about the beam of others going on about whatever the heck it is – Scotland and ancient Greece or something? Answer: because you’re biased, which you admited. If you’re determined to be a biased moderator then rules will work against you. Why? Because it is the nature of rules to suggest an impartial standard. That’s the whole point.
But as you’ve made perfectly clear you don’t need anyone’s advice, certainly not mine, because you’ve experienced so many boards. Two or three at least!
Well I guess the conversation about Oppression is over. I don’t think anyone replied to what I said really other than to dismiss it without any conversation. Again, does this make me want to post lengthy comments here? Where’s my motivation?
From your attitude it seems to me that you don’t want me to post here at all, although for some reason you don’t want to come out and say it. I’ll save you the bother. See you around…. unless Jenny posts again (if she can find my post among the discussion of ancient Greece). I suspect she may not have much time on-line if she really is posting from Angola. In departing I don’t have any animosity towards you Daran, although I get the feeling that sentiment isn’t returned.
“rule 8)” should be “rule 8″
Hugh, you asked me before:
‘Are “gender discrimination” or “gender oppression” the exact terms used in the literature you read, or is that your interpretation of their arguments?’
You’ve got me on whether these terms are used explicitly, because I can’t honestly remember for certain and I don’t have the texts with me here in Angola to read again. However, your addition to the question seems a pertinent one, since whether they did or they didn’t explicitly use the terms, that men face gender oppression is most certainly the impression I was firmly left with. Whether it was explicitly stated or not, I recognised in those texts, and from the general debate surrounding those texts, what you yourself recorded of Caroline New’s text: that feminists have
“seen ‘femininities’ as misrepresentations constricting women’s development and limiting their options, and therefore as oppressive. By the same token, masculinities may be oppressive”.
(I’m cross-referencing from your other posts on the same subject… hope that’s permissible…)
It seems a perfectly reasonable argument to me and one that, if recognised widely, can support some of feminism’s desires to tackle persistent and oppressive notions of ‘femininity’.
You go on to remind me that you are…
“making a specific argument, which is that feminists don’t explicitly say that men can be oppressed on the dimension of gender; I’m not arguing that feminists don’t recognize that men are under gendered pressures, or that feminists don’t recognize that men are “harmed” or “suffer” under the gender system”.
I do realise that this discussions is seeking to draw some explicit differences between ‘harm’, ‘suffering’, and ‘oppression’ itself, and that you are suggesting that I’m confusing the terms. If I am, it’s only because systematic harm and systematic suffering are some of the very ingredients of oppression, and if it can be conceded that men face harm and suffering on account of their gender, then you’re well on your way to exposing how men are also subject to oppression.
If you still think I’m not seeing a distinction clearly enough, perhaps someone could give me an example of what they consider to be gender-specific male oppression, so that I also feel sure myself that we are all on the same page.
…If I was to be asked to give an example, I was thinking about the “all men are potential…” (fill in the blank: rapists, paedophiles, etc.) culture that seems to come and go, depending on the news stories of the moment. Since this can actively prevent men from, say, taking their kids swimming, or seeking work in childcare or nursing, such gendered generalisations have an oppressive affect upon men and their image and positioning in society.
Another point that you recorded New makes (again in an earlier post) – and perhaps the most complex in some ways – is I think relevant to something Daran wrote in his last post. Hugh recorded New as highlighting how, in the…
“inescapably relational character of gender, the two oppressions are complementary in their functioning—the practices of each contribute to the reproduction of the other. In particular, the very practices which construct men’s capacity to oppress women and interest in doing so, work by systematically harming men.”
To respond to Daran’s last comment, women have been left out of history records on just about every account, not only on what their involvement in wars and revolutions might really have been. (Although, the ‘special treatment’ in history of figures such as Joan of Arc suggest that women’s direct combative involvement may well have been as limited as their absence from records implies). In relation to men’s invisibility as victims, applying New’s theory that “the very practices which construct men’s capacity to oppress women (in this context of rendering women historically invisible), work by systematically” rendering men invisible as well.
I was thinking about the idea of men being invisible as victims, especially in the context of war, whilst watching ‘the Last Samurai’ that was on TV this evening! To give a pop culture slant on the issue, I realised the film was annoying me because it seemed to be yet another film about men and war and everything that goes with it, and there seem to be an awful lot of this particular genre, and because women in any role, beyond the token wife waiting at home for the (brave/dead?) soldier, are usually missing (invisible) either as aggressors or as victims.
In support of our current debate, I believe that many of these films serve to exacerbate and perpetuate damaging generalisations about the nature of ‘masculinity’, but in opposition to the debate concerned with the extent to which men as victims are rendered invisible, films concerned with war and combat give a great deal of coverage to the various ways in which a man might be a victim of war – from internal military pressure and abuse, to the physical harming or death of both aggressors and their targets. I’m wracking my brain, but I can’t think of a war film that neglects the suffering of men in war, whilst promoting the visibility of women as victims.
(Ballgame: I failed miserably with blockquoting! No idea why it didn’t work…)
(Just caught your last post, David. Yes, I really honestly twulee am posting from Angola!! And yes, internet here is unpredictable at the best of times! And I also got a bit lost amongst the Greeks, which was, combined with internet trouble, a reason why I dropped out of the discussion…)
DavidByron
You mean that, not content with being allowed to comment here, you feel that Daran and Hugh ought to encourage you to do so?
Well, gast my flabber!
Please direct firther rules-based discussion here, where I’ll respond to David shortly.
Please don’t bother yourself Daran.
ballgame: I didn’t mean my hippie comment to be offensive. I meant it to be funny actually…like the Groucho one…
I really found your argument interesting particularly since I’ve been recently disgnosed as diabetic…which I now realize after doing some research is really a disease not from eating sugar, but from eating domestically crops (too much starch is the culprit really). Cereals, breads, rice, pototoes, all the domesticated foods are things I must avoid. Basically I can just eat meat and some green vegs. (hunter/gatherer foods) Which goes to the basis of your argument that an agricultural society is more of an unhealthy one then a hunter-gatherer one…I think you meant unhealthy politically (as in making private land-ownership valuable and alienating people from being allowed to use it freely) which is classic Marxism as well as California hippie (another joke), but I was thinking along the lines of it being unhealthy medically as in making people sick (like 30 million people in China are diabetic from rice, over 35 million in US from everything). I just threw out the hippie comment as a joke really. But seriously I don’t think we would survive long if we all tried to eat a hunter-gatherer diet…we wouldn’t have enough land to grow all the greens we need as well as the greens that we need to feed our domestic herds/flocks, etc., to get enough meat.
Tom: The Iliad is not just an interesting story. It’s like saying Hans Christian Anderson’s stories were just fairy’ tales for children.
The Iliad showed us how people lived. That’s what was important about it. It shows us that even that far back in our history, western man was involved in his governance, and that his opinions were considered important enough that the kings of the period had to take them into account before making any decisions.
All of you refuse to accept that for some reason…clearly western democracry has its early roots in the military and that was a wholly guy thing. Regarding the comments about everyone who was excluded from Greek democracy, you left out an obvious one: female citizens were excluded. Freedmen were former slaves so the reasons for their exclusion is obvious as was the exclusion of slaves or citizens from other places (what you called non-athenians). Why in the heck would they allow men from other places a vote? The US doesn’t even do that. So the odd exclusion is not the non-citizen men, which many societies even today, exclude non-citizens from voting. The odd exclusion is clearly the women who were citizens (which you conveniently ignored their exclusion) probably because it supported my case.
Anyway I still wouldn’t say that the Greeks were not a democracy just because the Greeks didn’t allow everyone including people from other cities a vote in their society(the reason being obvious). I never said the Greeks were a perfect democracy. You are apparently trying to argue the perfect vs. the good here. The Greeks weren’t a perfect democracy thus, no male citizens ever had a say in anything seems to be your arguement. Actually the same arguement made about England.
Anyway, I shall have to investigate the origins of the titles I mentioned as I believe I am correct and every one of them comes from a military connection. None were heritary and none originally came with a land grant as exists today. Those were all later developments.
You all appear determined to argue a point which I feel you’ve already lost but keep going further afield rather then admit it…I believe I made my case already but you all just won’t accept it.
Btw, it’s not me saying men are guilty of anything if we accept these things, it’s you. I never used the word guilty in reference to men running society. I accept why they did it, how they did it and the obvious results of those decisions which we live with today. I’m about going forward with realistic changes to society taking man and woman’s essential nature into considerion. AND yes, I do believe there are essential things about male and female nature. I don’t believe we are or can be gender neutral.
Sorry Daran you were right about the Scot versus my mistake of saying Scotch…clearly I’m not as good a Scot or an Irish, or Gaelic I guess they call themselves today, as I should be to have made that critical error…I guess when all is said and done I’m just a classical American mutt (another joke).
“a bit lost amongst the Greeks”
I did too as my main point was that historically men were allowed partipation in their governance via military service. As the only ones allowed to vote were current and former soldiers. Women were excluded for obvious reasons.
This simple and honest idea has now led to the accusation that I’m trying to accuse men of something. I actually like the societies that the west has created. I know they are not perfect, they never were, but I look at how they should be made better not to historically finger point…I get angry because they can be so much better then they are even now, not angry because of how they evolved a few thousand years ago…
DavidByron said:
Here’s what Daran said:
So I don’t think Daran is really being as accusatory as you are perceiving. On the other hand, I’m a bit confused why he brought up the rules to you after your first post here. I really think that you and he have simply been miscommunicating. I can’t tell who is in the “right” here, if anyone, and I’m not going to go through previous posts with a fine-toothed comb trying to figure it out. I suggest that you and he simply start over. I find your posts interesting, and I would invite you to continue commenting on the blog (if you cannot settle things with Daran, you are welcome to participate in my threads).
Anyway, I think further discussion about that should be diverted to the rules thread, since Jenny has brought the thread back on topic (and I will be responding to her soon).
Jenny from Angola,
Wow. What an extraordinary male sympathetic comment for a feminist. I retract — it’s extraordinary for anyone. Even most men’s rights types do not really get this one. Even I don’t usually mention it.
It’s an evil and insidious social stigma that is so pervasive that most people simply don’t see it at all. It’s so deeply buried. Consequently there’s little appreciation of its importance. I guess I was a little socially awkward when I was younger so I’d never picked up on this vibe. As a result I used to talk to kids as a youth (eg 20 years old) and had to be taken aside by friends and told in no uncertain terms that as a man I simply couldn’t talk to children because people would assume I was a sexual predator.
For example I was told that if I found a kid lost in a shopping mall I should under no circumstances attempt to help the child but instead find a woman (any woman) to look after the kid because if I did, they’d think I was a pervert and maybe arrest me. In short I was told that as a man I was too toxic to handle something as pure as a child. By my friends.
But I am curious how you came to bring up this issue as the first example because nobody mentions this in my experience. It’s an extraordinarily negative attack on men, which feminists have encouraged IMO, but it’s something … it’s almost as if men are not allowed to complain about it. If they do they must be a pedophile, right? Plus it sounds like nothing. Gee, your feelings are hurt big deal. Most people would lead with something like, say the higher death rate for men, something less easy to dismiss or laugh at.
Yeah you get a lot of brownie points for that one. And for being in Angola too. But please tell me why that example came to mind.
“men as a gender cannot be oppressed” is in itself a sexist statement. One of the things that annoys me is sexist feminists…..
My own question is: do other societies have the same impression of men being around children, that they are doing something wrong? Or is it just western ones?
I think in some other places men displaying too much interest in women and children (and yes, it’s generally a package deal, again for obvious reasons) that are not their relatives is considered bad form and discouraged.
I find this comment about ‘gendered generalizations’ to be an example of the sorts of insidious attempts frequently used to insert the gender issue into everything. Since if a behavior can be explained rationally why look for reasons of gender to explain it? That’s my question.
It’s similar to the comment made about why women were missing in films made about wars unless it was to picture them at home waiting for the return of a soldier. Well what other role could women realistically be expected to play in war? Especially before technology was upgraded to allow weapons rather then brute strength to play a larger role? Clearly this is not a ‘gendered generalization’ that society invented just to keep women from being given starring roles in war films, but an obvious fact of biological differences. In the same sense that films about maternity wards won’t feature too many men being wheeled into deliver rooms. Again, for obvious reasons…
So my question is what about other societies? Do they have the same reactions to men talking with or interacting publicly with children, that are not their own? If so then we need to look for other reasons for it happening.
NYMOM: you pose the question:
“do other societies have the same impression of men being around children, that they are doing something wrong? Or is it just western ones?”
And then answer it:
“I think in some other places men displaying too much interest in women and children (and yes, it’s generally a package deal, again for obvious reasons) that are not their relatives is considered bad form and discouraged”.
So clearly there are similar issues that western and non-western countries feel about interaction between men, women and children. You’ve drawn your own comparison. And what are you defining as “too much interest”? Where are you drawing lines between what is and is not considered appropriate?
And I think the reasons for why women and children become a “package” aren’t – or at least should not be – so ‘obvious’. Do you package them together because you consider women to be as vulnerable as children? Is it because you consider women not to be entirely adult? Is it because children are only the prime, or specific, concern of women, and not of men? Or is it because women give birth to children and are therefore bound to them by invisible cords of ‘maternity’ for the rest of their lives?
In the end, it doesn’t really matter which one of these it is, since once you ‘package’ women with children for any of the above reasons, all the others get wrapped up inextricably in the equation.
I’ve yet to see an example of anyone ‘inserting gender issues into everything’, as you put it, since regardless of whether you yourself can see it or not, the gender issues are there already. From the moment we are born, (in fact, even from before), we are classed, raced, aged, coloured and sexed, and there is nothing that then happens in our lives that is not in some way (however small, or trivial-seeming) affected by these factors.
You go on to say that “if a behavior can be explained rationally why look for reasons of gender to explain it?” I may have missed something, but I’m not sure what it is you’ve just explained rationally?
If you have a proper explanation for the suspicion that befalls men who interact with children not their own, that has nothing to do with gender, then I’m all ears. My opinions on pretty much any subject are not set-in-stone, and if I hear a convincing enough argument, then I will alter my opinions. I mostly apply ‘feminist’ theories because they have so far been by a distance the most convincing upon just about any subject I’ve encountered. But that’s not to say that this will always be the case.
You continued with:
“It’s similar to the comment made about why women were missing in films made about wars unless it was to picture them at home waiting for the return of a soldier. Well what other role could women realistically be expected to play in war?”
NYMOM, if you have somehow missed out on hearing that there are women in combative positions currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as we speak (quite possibly with boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands waiting at home) then this only supports my belief that women in war are made invisible, at least by forms of media. The Israeli army now conscripts women into almost all of its combative units – units which fought in Lebanon. In the west women make up a great deal of the behind the scenes war efforts and thus end up ‘behind the scenes’ in every other way. Dating back to WWII women were recruited as de-coders, translators, interceptors, as well as secret agents and spies. But you won’t see them in most war films. And then there’s the ‘victim’ position in war: how many Vietnam war films tell the stories of the affect of war upon the lives of Vietnamese women? Or the affect of war upon Russian women under siege in Leningrad during WWII? Or the affects of displacement and destitution, especially once their husbands have been killed in combat, upon women in almost any war? Your remarks suggest you think war only takes place on a battlefield.
When you ask, “what other role could women realistically be expected to play in war?” You show very little belief in women’s abilities. My boss, the Angolan women’s co-ordinator for this project, was a Major commanding a number of combative female units during the civil war. But whereas there might one day be a film made about Savimbe and Angola’s thirty-year civil war, I’d be very surprised if it features these units. But as I can’t pre-empt an absence, this will remain to be seen… I would like to see also how many of the stories of the women ‘waiting at home’ in Angola – not only of the terror and horror they were subject to as the armies from both sides wreaked murderous havoc in their villages – but their incredible stories of survival as they did their ‘waiting at home’.
And what is this “obvious fact of biological differences” you mention? I regret that I can’t think of any “obvious” differences that separate men from women in any clean and tidy way. If you’re referring to socialisation’s favourite points of reference, and the crudest – the “male” penis and the “female” vagina – since there are babies born with both, none, or indistinct forms, of the above, they do not prove reliable as gender indicators. And even babies who are born with one definite version of each, sometimes these babies will grow up to lose these gendered accessories later in life: there are women who, for a squillion reasons, cannot have babies, and impotency and testicular cancer can have similar affects on the ‘male’ gender accessory. So, yes, there may be some debatable “biological” differences between “men” and “women”, but they are very far from obvious!
(David: I’m not overlooking your enquiries, but I’ve used up my on-line slot…)
I can confirm that she honestly twulee is. Alternatively, she’s found an open proxy in Angola to post through, and if she knows how to do that, she can probably do blockquotes too.
See this and this.
In Beit Hanoun, a group of women attempted, partially successfully, to break an Israeli siege on a Mosque. In Srebrenica, the women and children mounted a blockade. In both cases they were unarmed and non-violent, and in both cases they were effective. But what these stories really demonstrate is that the women and older children are organised in their community’s defence. Do you believe that, having been organised, the women in these communities sat around waiting for a UN official to blockade or a siege to lift? Of course not. You can bet your bottom dollar that they were doing all kinds of things. Jenny is correct, in war, women do a lot of the non-frontline support jobs.
They’re also involved as frontline combatants probably more than you realise. For example, did you know that about one in seven suicide bombers is female? I didn’t, until I came across this report. That’s on average. In some places, Turkey and Chechnya, 40% or more are female. I bet you’d never have guessed it was that high.
Amp has blogged about it:
Jenny,
Well on the subject of geology or arithmetic you may find feminist theories more convincing than others — because you know of other theories to compare with feminism. But on the subject of gender issues what are you comparing feminism to? Are you aware of other views on gender issues? Most people are not. Without a knowledge of the criticisms of feminism it simply isn’t possible to rationally say what you just said.
It’s actually quite easy to demonstrate that feminism as a movement opposes gender equality and manipulates public perceptions of gender by creating mythological factoids that deceive people (such as the idea that women are paid less for the same work). It’s also easy to show that as a movement feminism advocates for gender discrimination against men in law (such as the Violence Against Women Act). These activities are not restricted to “radical” feminists unless just about every feminist group is considered “radical”. It’s the normal behaviour. Just about all feminists supported VAWA in it’s sex discriminatory form and just about all feminists help spread the myth that women are paid say 75% of men’s wages for the exact same work.
The data isn’t hard to present. The text of a law isn’t hard to read. It isn’t hard to look at a simple wage statistic and realise that it isn’t saying what the feminists claim. But feminists have the influenced required to block criticism of their movement and dismiss charges of lying and sexism.
What books have you read that are critical of feminism? Have you read anything by Warren Farrell for example?
Your sense that feminism is convincing is most like the same sense people once “knew” that the Sun orbited the Earth. The alternative data was surpressed.
Daran, I asked her, not you.
Jenny that is such a distortion about women fighting in conflicts, particularly regarding Israel that I must address it first. Women are not out there fighting in any of these conflicts except for the rare female terrorists, who are used because we in the west have begun using racial profiling and quite simply middle-eastern men cannot get around so easily the way they used to, so some few women have filled in now.
However in Israel, your implication that women are front line fighters isn’t true…mainly they are mobilized to take on the jobs that men have to leave behind when they go to fight.
This is really a distortion of the conflicts going on today and who is involved in fighting in them to claim it’s women…Women are not seen in war because they are apt to not be doing anything of significance in war and rarely did anything in the past either, not because of some great conspiracy to ignore womens’ military history. Quite simply there is little or nothing to ignore…
The US already did studies on this in the 90s trying to placate Clinton’s feminist allies and have women in the front lines more. It turned out that the best women with special forces training could not beat the average male recruit with no special training. That’s when Les Aspin banned women from all special forces and from front line combat…Clearly countries fighting for their lives cannot afford to take risks with losing major battles or even minor ones in order to be politically correct the way we can in the US…
This is a clear distortion of reality to claim that women are very involved in these conflicts…it is only the US that allows so many women to be involved and this was due to political pressure on the part of people like Kim Gandy of NOW. Congress actually wanted to bring the women home from Iraq but she and other gender neutral feminists interfered…
You keep trying to act like men are keeping women out of combat just for reasons of sexism. The real reason is because women have little to offer the armed forces and we haven’t found the enemy yet who is willing to gender norm his troops in order to let us win a war against them and guess what Jenny, I don’t think we ever will…unlike what has happen with the gender norming of standards for our police and fire dept. in our society, other countries are not willing to just give up and lose a war to be politically corect….
Regarding the issue of womens’ linkage with children. That one should be obvious and I think it is to most thinking people. But the reason I asked and answered the question was because I was curious as to whether anyone was going to try to blame this on feminism or the media or liberals…and I didn’t want to embarrasss them when I countered with the fact that this behavior goes on everywhere even in societies where feminism, our media and liberals have no influence. AND in spite of what you’d like to believe outside of the west, feminism, our media and liberals have little influence….
I believe you already know the biological diffences between men and women but like many gender neutral proponents are trying to downplay them to make a point.
“Jenny is correct, in war, women do a lot of the non-frontline support jobs”
That’s not war Daran in case you’re interested. Doing a job for someone so they can go fight is not war….Women have always done that, running farms and stuff while men went off to fight.
War is killing people and risking getting killed yourself. Not doing inventory or purifying water because men are too busy fighting to do it…
“But I am curious about how you came up with the issue of men as potential paedohiles”
Clearly she knew she would hook you all by bringing it up and acting like it’s a major concern of feminism….
Daran: Amp blogged about the issue from the perspective of a gay man. The public perception of gay men is very different from the public perception of straight men and there are many many situations where men can interact with children and not be viewed with suspicion.
Of course everyone picked the most risky one which is to walk up to kids you don’t know in a public place and start talking with them. In a world where children are told not to speak to stranger clearly this will not work. But male police officers, firemen, religious figures such as priests, (in spite of the scandals) rabbis, and male doctors, for instance, are still seen as authority figures to be respected by children and others.
Just because men don’t work with children in daycare centers or as nurses doesn’t mean society discriminates against them. Men self-select out of these fields or at least did in the past. Why work in daycare when you can be a professor at a college or a doctor versus a nurse. The fields you picked are secondary professional ones with nursing only recently becoming a decent paying job and even that’s changing, since salaries are being driven downward by the entry of foreign nurses who will work cheaper then others….
I didn’t just mean running farms. I mean smuggling weapons, and spying, and transmitting messages. And yes, running a farm in wartime is war because the frontline troops can’t fight if they’re not fed.
If you define war to mean people with guns shooting at each other, then yes, it’s mostly men, but only a handful of men in any war are actually shooting at each other. For every man with a gun, there are literally dozens of men and women supporting them.
If you want to have a private discussion with her, ask her for her email, or give her yours.
I don’t see that he made any reference to the sexuality of the men affected.
It doesn’t matter if he made a reference to it or not. He is a gay man thus, his perspective on the issue reflects that fact.
Just as my perspective on many issues stems from me being a woman even if I don’t remind everyone of it throughout a post.
I think David has a good point Daran. I’d like to hear her answer as well.
What exactly was the reason that Jenny brought up this paedophilia issue out of the blue like that.
The small number of women serving in an ancilliary capacity in the armed forces usually has the effect of displacing men from the relatively safe jobs available in the armed forces and putting more of them into the most dangerous and immoral positions on the front line. Therefore the limited amount of “sex equality” allowed currently looks a lot like pandering to women at the expense of endangering men. (The same thing can happen when women apply for other dangerous careers where they are often automatically given the “safe” job, that the men would otherwise have shared.
However I remember one conversation I had with a feminist who impressed me (one of the 1%-ers) with her sincerity. Her view on the draft allowed for an element of genuine sexism against women of a certain kind.
She said that the current situation denied her the opportunity to fully accept the risks and responsibilities of citizenship inherent in the possibility of a draft. I found it hard to sympathise since I view war and the draft as an almost universaly immoral activity from which anyone would be glad to be exempted (by definition it’s against your will to be drafted). But she convinced me she meant it. I guess her patriotism was very serious, and she had been an army brat so her familly was quite military minded. She didn’t want to be in the military. But she did want to feel like an equal contributer to her country and in her view that meant taking the same chances as all American men do between the ages of 18 and 35.
I think patriotism is also a great evil, but it was an important part of her identity, and in America that is a common thing sadly.
David:
If this were my thread, here’s where I’d intervene as moderator. Firstly, you’ve done nothing wrong. This is precisely the kind of topic drift which “is reasonably responsive to the comment to which it replies.” But at the same time, you’ve raised a lot of brand-new topics which I feel would be better of discussed in one or more dedicated threads. So, if this were my topic, I’d create a new thread, and ask that further discussion take place there. And there’d be no implied rebuke of you or anyone else in doing so.
On the other hand, I’d leave the discussion about women’s involvment in war here, even though it’s just as off-topic, because it gradually drifted, and there’s no clear point where this happened.
But it’s Hugh’s thread, and I’ll leave it to him to decide if he agrees with me.
Here’s the “gay angle” quote Daran missed by Ampersand:
If you want to have a private discussion with Hugh about moderation, ask him for his email, or give him yours.
David you appear focused on relatively minor issues while ignoring the big picture here. The minor fact that feminism is fixiated on a small differtial in payscale that most women don’t give a hoot about while the big picture of them steadily undermining not just the military but other insitutions of public safety as well doesn’t seem to register with you.
Instead you appear to be ready to just fluff it all off as another example of patriotism run amuck…
You’re against war and the draft (major issues here) but worried enough about some payscale that you claim doesn’t exist to bring it up in two comments already.
That was part of my point David, the other part is that gay men are treated differently by others. So you can’t use as an example the treatment of gay men by people and extrapolate it out to the rest of the population. Just like Afr. Amer. people are treated differently in certain situations. Yet we can’t take their experience as universal to men.
Good heavens David, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to provoke me. To what end, I wonder?
the fact that feminists tend to fight gender imbalances that only negatively affect women proves that there is pervasive sexism within feminism.
Racist black civil rights workers tend not to get much respect or attention. The same is not done for sexist feminists.
David to address the issue of patriotism I have worked with a number of Israeli men here for on and off and have heard them discuss this whole patriotism of women in Israel.
The bottom line is that Israel really didn’t need a bunch of women prancing around in uniforms out in the fields pretending to be doing something useful. What Israel really needed was to get their population numbers up which Israeli women failed to do and Israeli men couldn’t (again for obvious reasons). If it weren’t for the Orthodox taking on the burden, Israel would have faded into oblivion a decade or so ago.
Maybe the world would have been better off, Israelis included. As I don’t see much of a long-term future there for them.
Daran: Jenny has very limited access. Please be considerate. I would like to hear what she has to say regardless of topic drift. She seems to have a rare perspective.
I disagree that racism is not rewarded in the civil right community. Actually the whole movement has turned into a separtist movement as opposed to a civil rights one now.
“Jenny has very limited access”
Or so she claims. Has anyone verified yet if her IP address is really from Africa.
Yes I have, and yes it is.
its rewarded within the community but laws aren’t passed in their name. There are anti hate crime laws but their isn’t anti violence against black people laws.
But the only ones really arrested for anti-hate crimes are whites. So in effect they are anti-violence against black people laws only.
Parenthetically, I’m also anti-Zionist/ anti-apartheid.
Arguendo it has been suggested that if it’s ok to draft men to have to go kill and be killed then it ought to be ok to draft women to use their bodies in the service of the state too. Therefore why are women not forced by a draft to have babies in Israel?
Such a thing would be unthinkable even though without a doubt the existence of the state of Israel depends upon it. (Essentially the Iranian president is correct to predict that Israel cannot long endure as an apartheid state with a demographic time bomb under it — Palestinian birth rates easily exceed Jewish).
It’s not about whether women are any good at the job. Women are great at having babies 8) The issue is that sacrifice is demanded from men but not women. Choice is something that even liberals tend to demand only for women, for example in the reproductive rights sphere. Women get “choice” but men have their “duty”.
This is actually a slightly different issue. Whether you support them or not (and I tend not to) laws that have the object of countering an existing and long standing discrimination by using more discrimination, are not the same as laws that discriminate without any basis for their discrimination. They are treated differently in law for example, by the US Suprme Court.
I am not criticising feminists for supporting so-called “reverse discrimination” or whatever you call it. The example law I gave (VAWA) discriminated against male victims in an area where men had always historically been worse off than women. The law wasn’t attempting to address any perceived history of discrimination against female victims.
[...] David: Daran: Jenny has very limited access. Please be considerate. I would like to hear what she has to say regardless of topic drift. She seems to have a rare perspective. [...]
Well what you said is correct David but I guess actual war is so rare in most societies that drafting men into armies is not the never-ending hardship you paint it as. Most armies perform rather routine training exercises most of the time in preparation for a war to happen. Plus pay a salary with a supplement for housing and a good array of benefits. It’s really more of a job then a hardship most of the time. Also an army of a few million men (or less)would suffice for most countries, whereas what you suggest would impact just about every woman (and the man in her life) of childbearing age for a lifetime, not just a few years like military service does. Additionally forcing every women to have a certain number of children would involve the government so deeply in the everyday lives of most people that it would be an unworkable government intrusion…In some sense we see the results in Islamic societies where sex outside marriage along with birth control are forbidden and to achieve what you are suggesting eventually morphs into a massive oppressive program against not just women, but men as well…
It could even involve the government monitoring professional schools admissions policies, such as medical school or law to ensure that women are not delaying having children to be accepted….
After all a 38/40 year old male veteran can come out of the armed forces with his 20 year pension intact and still marrry and have kids. Not so a woman of that age. Another of the obvious biological differences that many gender neutral proponents wish to pretend doesn’t exist. Womens’ biological timeclock is shorter then men’s. We simply don’t have the time.
Anyway most people would be against doing it for all of the reasons I’ve stated above and a few I haven’t thought of yet.
David again I think you’re correct with feminism artificially hyjacking the afric. americ. situation and making it their own so as to justify all these governmental intrusions to ‘equalize’ situations that were never unequal due to discrimination but to natural occurring events which arise from our biological differences.
However violence against men by women is not a good example to use as the male of every species (as well as our own) has always been the larger, stronger and more aggressive of the two sexes. Last I heard, evolution has not made any changes in the programming yet so until it does use of their greater strength by men to get their own way is still going to be an issue.
“She seems to have a rare perspective.”
Oh for Pete’s sake can we knock it off with this baloney already. There is absolutely nothing ‘rare’ about her perspective. It’s typical femnist crap ranting on about women in combat with of course the obligatory mention of Joan of Arc to prove obviously that the patriarchy deliberately kept women from being in the army just so we couldn’t lead armies like men.
The whole idea is ridiculous.
There are millions of men buried in unmarked graves all around the world who died defending their cities or state, tribe whatever and one woman Joan of Arc…but of course that’s proof positive since one woman did something once that every woman can. It’s clear that women don’t due to men, it’s just a historic conspiracy obviously that has kept women from actively participating in war…
This is not a rare perspective…go to an feminist site and being up the topic and I guarantee you that a Jenny clone parroting the same line will appear…
The only thing good about setting up a whole thread just for her to post her rare perspective on is that she won’t be clutering up every other post with these long aimless comments of hers…
It’s not true that males are universally larger or more aggressive than females in all species — or even all mamalia. I dare say you can supply your own examples. In geenral peoples’ hostility and violence isn’t there “just because”. It’s there because it serves a societal purpose (perceived). You only have to compare the level of daily violence today with other ages. If violence was natural then it wouldn’t have lapsed when technology and society made it possible to be more peaceful.
And don’t you dis Joan of Arc.
You may be correct about Jenny. I’d like to see.
The argument about drafting women for childbirth is specific to Israel since only Israel needs to boost it’s birth rate or be eliminated as a State. The Israeli army is quite active and so I think your crtiicisms of what I said need to take into account Israel’s special characteristics. I have no doubt if men got pregnant they would be forced to “do their duty” just as they are now.
David: This thread is now a 180KB download, and will get steadily larger. I have created a new thread just for her, which is only 25KB. It’s up to you and her, whether you use it, but please be considerate.
I’m not dissing Joan of Arc. She’s an interesting historic character yet a rarity and she saids nothing about women or men or what society needs to do to construct a successful army. Nothing.
She’s off on the far edge of the bell-shaped curve, far from the vast middle where most of the rest of us reside…Just like the species where female are larger and more aggressive then the males of their kind, so again they too say nothing about all the rest of us. We cannot continue using these odd, off the edge of the curve examples to make any points. I think this goes directly to Daran’s ‘bird in the garden’ theory.
The problem is drafting women for childbirth in order to get your population numbers up requires far more drastic intervention in people’s lives then drafting men for the army does, as I outlined in my previous comments. Many Islamic states already do the equivalent of this and it winds up oppressing men as well as women on an everyday basis. It would probably require the sort so intervention that the Christian right would like to see happen in this country to make premartial sex more difficult to obtain as well as divorce, along with ending access to the use of any reproductive technology for women…
You keep forgetting that we already have a model for how this operates with Israel’s neighbors.
“I have created a news thread just for her”
Why don’t you organize a virtual parade for her while you’re at it Daran? I didn’t notice you making that much of a fuss over Hugh or Toysoldier. She’s made a few typical feminist comments and you’re suddenly all over every post planning how you can make her more comfortable so she can sprout more feminist drivel. I thought this was a feminist critics site?
BTW, David I”m not sure that violence has lapsed as you say since the advance of technology.
I’m actually thinking it’s gettting worse. As technology is enabling far higher body counts to occur in conflicts today. I think the first example of this was our own Civil War. Then WWI and WWII hit a new high with technology bringing up the body count. Not to mention that numerically I believe the most technically advanced societies like the US and Europe appear to have higher crime rates then some other ‘less advanced countries’ like China for instance. (I hate saying less advanced but I didn’t know what other term to use).
So I’m not sure you’re right David. I was born in the 50s and grew up in the mid 50s-early 60s and I distinctly remember a safer world for me to be a kid in. The schools were safer as well I think….
NYMOM (“quoting me”):
Typo: I meant to write “new thread”. I don’t know whether that changes what you think about it.
They can start their own threads.
It is. Let me remind you of what it says in the mission statement: “I want to attract feminists to defend their position.” Well we seem to have attracted one, and I want to keep her.
I don’t know what kind of restrictions she’s under, but if all she has is 56K dialup, or something like that, then she may just get 3KB/s bandwidth – less if it’s a noisy line. At that rate it would take a minute for this page to load, and another minute to post. Now imagine a noisy line that drops every five minutes, and you can conceive of the difficulties she might be under.
Or she might not. I don’t what her set-up is. Anyway she’s got her own thread. You can have one too, if you like.
“I want to attract feminists to defend their position.”
I guess I missed that one.
Then I have to be honest, I think your site is doomed to failure for two reasons: the nature of feminism and the nature of blogging.
Feminisn like many MRAs have stated (and even a stopped clock is right twice a day) can not stand up to open debate. They will not stay on a site that’s going to question them too intensely and on their own sites they will ban people who do it. That was the whole point of the discussion we had about the feminist site where I got told to go f myself with a high-speed mixer and why David and Amp don’t get along.
I thought your site was mainly for men to discuss feminism and the impact it’s had on society. So I assumed someone like David would be the more valuable poster.
Additionally you are going to be limited in how much you can critize anything a feminist says on your blog. Since the nature of blogging is that any criticism is seen as public ridicule of the person, thus they’ll leave before they allow you to score any points. People are very invested in these sorts of world views like feminism, it’s like a form of religion. So basically you’re expecting someone to come here so you all can point out to them that they have been following a false God for most of their adult lives. Lots of luck with that.
Then you have common ground with David. He doesn’t think we can succeed either. Unfortunatly Rule 15 doesn’t apply to this situation, but you can have a hug anyway.
I haven’t been banned from any feminist site. In my experience, feminists use a variety of rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies to avoid exposure. It’s precisely these techniques I intend to target. As for whether they’ll stay? That remains to be seen. Most MRA sites are pretty hostile to feminists on a personal level, but personal attacks will not be permitted here. On the contrary, I intend to love-bomb them. Hate the feminism, love the feminist. That’s my motto. Love NYMOM too.
Actually I get on with Amp fairly well, though as I said relations have chilled a bit since the end of last year.
He is a valuable poster. However as far as I’m aware, he has no restrictions on his internet access.
Thank you. We’ll do our best.
About 95% of feminists wouldn’t be seen dead on an anti-feminism board. Those that do dare to step foot off their feminist ghettos know they are no longer protected. It’s open season! So they tend to be the most argumentative ones, though not necessarily in a bad way. I guess Ampersand, Avedon Carol and RadFem (the latter also under various handles). Others nobody here will have heard of maybe. The same ones tend to be least in favour of bannings. You can get them to turn up only with great effort in my experience. Of the group some do it because they want to fight (eg RadFem) and some do it because they actually think they have game (eg Ampersand).
I assume this board will try to headhunt some of these 5%. That does leave the question as to what extent this self-selection biases your sample. For what it’s worth in my experience it doesn’t bias the political sampling so much as the attitude, but then in feminism the politics is mostly unimportant anyway.
Yeah this is a courtesy issue to you, although I don’t think you were complaining. The issue is that it comes across as pandering to Jenny which might leave someone basically steaming there saying to themself, “Geez, I’m basically the one on their side and I don’t get this sort of consideration.” I may have been guilty of this too, I mean in the past at various times.
I’m not sure how to say this without opening up a lot of people misinterpreting me… but then that never did bother me much….
Personally I liked the feminist women who debated with me for the most part. Why? I dunno. Maybe because they were a lot like me in many respects — the ones, the 5%, who dared to discuss. Mostly the sentiment wasn’t returned although in some cases I made friends with the enemy. They gave the impression that they believed their own words and were willing to defend them. I respect someone that fights for what they beleive in. I remember these women more than any of the others on either side and for longer, for the most part. Mostly my discussions were with them, not people I more closely agreed with.
Also of course for the most part politically on any other issue I was much more closely aligned with the feminists than the conservative women who thought favourably about, or supported men’s rights.
Anyway I don’t know if you understand what I am saying or whether this is even what you meant, but … I recognise that preferential treatment towards Jenny might become an issue of courtesy towards you, even if you would never say so in as many words.
I apologise if you felt in any way diminished by my comments.
I agree. However I meant more the violence directed by individuals. Recreational violence if you like. The hypothesis was that people (or men) are naturally violent, but it seems to me that people calibrate their level of how acceptable violence is from their nurturing.
An example often given is how Norsemen / Vikings when within a couple of generations from being one of the most incredibly vicious and violent set of marauders in history to being peaceful farmers – once they settled down and their society made different demands upon them. Violence is functional for a lifestyle based on raids and not for a lifestyle based on farming. The Vikings were not violent, so much as their occupation and society’s expectations on them.
If that had not been true they would have remained as bloody as farmers and their violent nature would have been passed on, much as their hair colour was, to successive British generations. We’d still be “spread eagle”-ing people for fun. Instead even fox hunting is now being outlawed.
———–
Oh I was just kidding about Joan of Arc.
I knew you were not dissing her 8)
Just a couple of points of information:
Feminist Critics, to judge by its manifesto, is not an anti-feminist site: it’s a site where reasoned criticism of particular feminist positions is encouraged. Given that plenty of feminist blogs engage in such criticism, FC shouldn’t present too hostile an environment for feminists to operate in. Q Grrl was here (actually on Darain Man) for a while and doesn’t seem to have suffered from the experience. I remember that Ampersand referred to this (again, actually Darain Man) as an “anti-feminist site” when he linked to Hugh’s post about bullying, but he was wrong, so far as I can tell.
Fox hunting has actually been outlawed in England. Unfortunately for animal-lovers, the law is virtually impossible to apply, and the police are anyway not interested in enforcing it – on the (in my view) rational grounds that they have better things to do with their time.
Ah, but you see, the Vikings committed racial suicide by carrying off and interbreeding with all those English women. The result was a race of people who wanted to rape and pillage, but were worried about what the neighbours would think.
I noticed that. Amp know that I don’t like to be called ‘antifeminist’. I thought it was deliberately provocative, and also an attempt to poison the well“
They’re unprotected and it’s open season in two different ways. It’s open season on their ideas, and it’s open season on them personally. The reverse is true for contrafeminists on feminist sites, such as Alas. I hardly post there now; I got fed up with the abuse.
Feminists will be protected here. Their ideas will not.
Avedon Carol is an old Usenet friend. She self-identifies as feminist, but she never seemed feminist to me. She was always more concerned with censorship. Even now, her site is a general lefty news blog, with no distinctly feminist feel to it.
And Q grrl, initially, but she calmed down when she found that we weren’t interested in beating her up. Notice the provocative last sentence. Q-Grrl gets her retaliation in first, but when we didn’t attack her, she changes her tune.
It’s a shame she didn’t come back. If you and NYMOM are right, then most feminists won’t stay long because they can’t operate without protection for their ideas. But I think there may be a few who are put off by the personal hostility toward them on other sites but who might be willing to duke it out with us.
Bear in mind that NYMOM is a feminist according to your definition, and I understand that she regards herself as a feminist of the old school: a paleofeminist. Yet she’s far more bothered by high-powered mixer incident than she is in the critical scrutiny of her ideas.
The sample is already biased, it that we’re dealing with blogofeminism. This is why book feminism is pretty irrelevant, since the defence will always be “but nobody really believes that. You need to be able to show them the birds.
It was you who suggested that I show her consideration.
It shouldn’t do, but remember, I have history with a lot of feminists.
Yes, you have history, as do Hugh and Soldier, but it’s not all bad history, is it? Curiousgyrl seemed anxious to engage with you, for instance. And maybe even the bad history could work to the site’s advantage: old enemies might make a point of coming here to throw acid in your face but stay for a quiet heart-to-heart when the expected anti-feminist pile-on fails to materialize. The truth is that there is a gladiatorial aspect to blog feminism – the need its activists have to go beyond preaching to the converted or easily convertible and instead to engage and hopefully defeat the ideological enemy, and defeat him publicly, too – which should make a blog like this an attractive target for aggressive incursions, some of which will (hopefully) settle down into proper debate.
I have done nothing wrong at all on Alas, and I don’t believe TS has either. What history does Hugh have?
That’s what happened with Q Grrl, I think.
Daran said:
Were you around when I got lynched on Alas? I was leaving around the time that you started posting there. This happened in several massive, 200-500 comment debates/dogpiles, so I’ll link to a few of the highlights.
Here were the main issues I got into trouble for:
1. Asking for evidence for the claim that society as a whole condones rape.
2. Suggesting that sexuality is a source of power for women, not just a disadvantage.
3. Arguing that the male-active, female-passive system in sexuality and relationships is more work for men than for women. See this part of the thread also.
4. Arguing that romantic norms aren’t on a continuum with rape, although they may be problematic.
5. Arguing that chivalry is sexist towards men, not just towards women.
6. Arguing that being actively rejected (which men are more often subject to) may be worse than being passively rejected (which women are more often subject to).
7. Explaining that men often have trouble telling whether women are attracted to them or just see them as friends.
8. Arguing that some women find it unattractive if a man asks to kiss them, and prefer that he just goes for it nonverbally.
9. Suggesting that male confusion about how to initiate sex with women may contribute to rape in some cases, for which I got called a “rape apologist”.
Some great flames (not all of which are devoid of truth):
BritGirlSF:
Pseudo-Adrienne
noodles
Pseudo-Adrienne:
Amanda:
I also got banned by another of Amp’s co-bloggers, Pseudo-Adrienne (from her threads). I got banned when I defended her from the accusations of an MRA-sounding guy, in a thread were she said I shouldn’t post (I thought defending her might be an exception, but I should have known better).
If I was to do it over, I would definitely handle some things differently. My posts were way too long, for instance. Also, I did get some useful responses in between the insults and ad hominems that have helped me improve my ideas. There were some criticisms that were valid, like I was a sexually frustrated 19 year-old, though all the feminists flaming me accomplished was showing that they are unable to empathize with young men or understand the ways in which women reinforce the male gender role in the area of relationships and sex. Overall, I think the treatment I got there was pretty shameful (I got accused of all the thread derailment stuff also), although Amp defended me (sort of) a couple times. After and during my stint there, brought me up in discussions I wasn’t active in to slam me, like what happened with jaketk which you objected to. In the end, I was able to refine my ideas (some of which will appear in updated versions in future posts), and I learned a lot about feminists.
Daran
By the words “bad history” I meant: past exchanges of an acrimonious nature with people who probably remember you well and bear a grudge. I didn’t mean: bad deeds for which you will be justly punished.
Hugh
I remember those threads well, and found them very entertaining. Well done for never really losing your temper.
Tom Nolan said:
Yeah, that was my interpretation also.
Glad to see that they benefitted someone. And it’s not true that I didn’t lose my temper!
I did a bunch of times, but I did my best to hide it. It seriously took a superhuman effort to keep posting like that and stay relatively polite, and eventually I ran out of energy, but I think I had learned what I needed to learn from it.
omg hughristik there arguments would be funny if it didnt end up hurting society in the end. I like the fact that one of the posters can have a civil discussion about genicide but not about rape….
Well can’t you discuss feminist ideas amongst yourselves without having to have actual feminists abroad? As I don’t see them beating a path to your blog if you are going to devaste their arguments, even if it’s done politely.
BTW David, I didn’t consider it an insult to me that the red carpet was being rolled out for this Jenny person. I kind of just thought it was an insult to the idea behind the blog. I wouldn’t expect anyone here to do anything special for me as I only know one of you which is ToySoldier and I don’t particularly like him (I believe the feeling is mutual) so it’s not an insult to me personally who you chose to honor here. It’s just a curiousity considering what I thought the place was about.
Yes I do consider myself an old school feminist as I like to call it. But that’s quite a different animal from the feminist of today.
AND, yes, the mixer incident bugged me because the site where it happened is advertised on other womens sites as a place women should go to and comment if they don’t feel up to establishing their own blogs. Telling them to comment at least, as it keeps womens’ ideas out there in the blogosphere if you comment on other womens’ blogs. Then they pull a stunt like that….and God only knows how many times they did it in the past to other women commenters, who they didn’t like.
I’m an old fossil, a dinosaur if you will so I’ll just move on to my own blog and commenting on other sites. I won’t go back there again but that kind of behavior could have turned off a younger woman from ever commenting again…
[...] of gender. I’ve had this discussion with another feminist guest before, and here is a post where I give some evidence that the dominant view of male oppression in academic feminism is that [...]
Again! Again, again!
Huzzah!
HR – Wow, the way you were grossly mistreated on that amptoons feminist hate site for merely making rational, common-sense observations is truly revolting…albeit typical.
Hugh wrote:
I don’t disagree with this argument; but I do wonder why you think it matters. What’s your point, in other words?
I’m not saying that from a critical or dismissive point of view. I just have been thinking about this question a lot, and don’t want to make assumptions.
Here’s what I think this post shows: Of those feminists who are interested enough in theory to discuss “oppression” in any serious way, most will say that both men and women are badly harmed by sexism and/or patriarchy, but only women are “oppressed” by sexism and/or patriarchy.
I don’t disagree with that. But I do have a few questions. I’m not trying to attack your view with these questions, just to clarify it.
1) Are you saying there’s something anti-male about that view? If so (and I don’t assume that it is so), can you articulate in what specific way it is anti-male?
2) What, precisely, do you mean when you use the term “oppression”?
Sorry if you already answered these questions and I missed it.
Just FYI, Alan Johnson is a radical feminist. I don’t say that to dismiss him; he’s a writer I’ve often recommended. He’s very popular in Women’s Studies classes, I think, primarily because of his ability to explain radical feminist theory in a mild, “academic” tone, and his patience for doing “feminism 101″ writings.
Speaking for myself, Amp, I would respond with an unqualified “YES”!
By reserving the word “oppression” for female gender penalties, women’s-perspectives-only feminists privilege women’s gender suffering over men’s gender suffering, generally to the point of denying that male oppression merits awareness, organized resistance and concern, and oft-times to the point of even denying that it exists at all (i.e. male oppression due to gender as opposed to their being oppressed due to race, class, etc.). This mistaken assumption that men are not oppressed by gender fuels — or maybe is fueled by (chicken/egg) — WPO feminists’ fundamental logical error: “Because all of the powerful people are male, all males are powerful people.”
It feeds into the “othering” of men and reinforces the patriarchal oppression of men by conflating the agency of those men who oppress other men with the (lack of) agency of their victims. It also not coincidentally obscures the subtle ways that women’s behavior reinforces this dynamic.
A summary I’ve used elsewhere sums it up, I think: Powerful, systematic social forces — enforced by both men and women — dehumanize men, thwart their development, compel them to internalize violence and become rigid, insensitive to their own vulnerability, and (oft-times inauthentically) ‘independent’.
Hi, Ballgame. I’ve liked many of your comments in this thread, btw. Thank you for your response.
However, in some ways I’m not satisfied with your response (what a surprise!
). By saying I’m not satisfied with your response, however, I am not saying that I am totally satisfied with anyone else’s discussion of “oppression,” either.
This argument assumes that “suffering” and “oppression” are strongly related, if not interchangable, such that denial of oppression is denial of suffering. But since feminist theorists who talk about this stuff explicitly deny that oppression and suffering are so closely related, your argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what they are saying when they say “oppression.”
(For examples of the explicit denial I’m talking about, see the Marilyn Frye essay Hugh linked to in his post, as well as Alan Johnson in his book “The Gender Knot.”)
Isn’t this argument a tautology? You’re saying that it’s wrong to say men aren’t oppressed due to gender because saying so is saying that male oppression due to gender doesn’t exist.
I’m not exactly sure who the “women’s perspective only” femiinsts are, or how to distinguish them from other feminists. Are all of the feminists quoted in Hugo’s post WPO feminists, in your view? If not, then does this harm (falsly assuming all men are powerful) extend to all feminists, or just to WPO feminists?
Again, reading Johnson’s “Gender Knot” it is quite clear that Johnson does not suffer from the delusion that all individual men are powerful; indeed, I’m not sure that I’ve ever encountered a published feminist theorist who does believe such a thing. And yet Johnson believes that although both men and women suffer due to patriarchy, only women are oppressed by it. So it certainly isn’t the case that believing as Johnson does leads inevitably to the belief that all men are powerful.
To me, your argument here suffers from the “let’s start by assuming that feminists are idiots” fallacy. Only an idiot could assume that all men are individually powerful; the counter-examples of, say, a disabled limbless pennyless homeless man, are extremely obvious. I don’t see how it can be plausible that any feminist theorist is unaware that such individual men can exist, unless you’re implicitly assuming that feminists are idiots.
Finally, your definition of oppression seems to apply only to men. Do you have a more general definition of what “oppression” means? (I’m assuming it’s not your position that only men can be oppressed by gender systems, but if I’m mistaken about that assumption, I trust you’ll correct me.)
Ampersand (quoting ballgame):
ballgame is not claiming that feminists universally deny male suffering. Explicit or implicit denial is one of several marginalisation strategies used by feminists. Others include dismissal, minimisation, ignoring, subordination (example: “Patriarchy hurts men too”), anomalisation (example: your treatment of men dying in war as some random lightning that strikes men, and not part of a privilege system which, under the definition you articulate there, benefits women.), refocussing, and so on.
The problem here is that feminists do not (because they cannot) articulate a coherent, non-self-serving definition of “gender oppression” that includes women but excludes men. If you disagree, please give your definition.
The functional definition that feminists use is self-serving: “bad things that happen (predominantly) to women (or homosexuals, transgender etc)”. Again, if you disagree, feel free to demonstrate the deficiency of this definition, by pointing to a bad thing that happens to women which isn’t construed by feminists as oppression, or a bad thing that happens to men which is.
However feminists don’t articulate the definition “bad things that happen women” because to do so would be to expose its self-serving nature. Instead, they exaggerate the bad things that happen to women, while denying, dismissing, etc., the bad things that happen to men.
Pardon me if I only respond to sources I can find on the net.
The Marilyn Frye essay is a good example of the dynamic I just described. Fry articulates a non-self-serving definition, but then ignores the many examples of male experience which meet that definition, including, most egregiously, one which appears in her etymological analysis of the word: “pressed into military service”. Who, precisely, gets so pressed? Instead the only contrary evidence she considers is men’s “much advertised inability to cry”, which she rejects.
All of the things she cites as female oppression are obviously bad things (in Frye’s opinion, not everyone will agree with every example) which happen to women. Bad things which happen to men are excluded from consideration.
I don’t see a “because” in what ballgame said there. He is describing how feminists treat male oppression. That’s an empirical observation, not a logical argument.
Ballgame self-identifies as a feminist, and uses “WPO feminist” to refer to the mainstream of feminism. I’m not sure that you would consider him to be one.
Perhaps you could explain Johnson’s reasoning for us.
An idiot, or someone willfully blind to it. Feminists are willfully blind to a lot of things which afflict men.
The fact that most people in power are men is often trotted out by feminists as ‘evidence’ of male privilege (another word which cannot be coherently defined by feminists, but which is functionally the antonym of ‘oppression’). However in my experience, they rarely articulate the argument beyond that, so we are left guessing what the reasoning is. “Powerful people are men therefore men are powerful people” is one possible (but fallacious) route to “powerful people are men therefore men are privileged”. Another (equally fallacious) is “powerful people exercise their power for the benefit of their own gender”.
Again, if there is some other argument which I’ve missed, please explain it. Perhaps the problem here is not the feminists are idiots, but that their audience aren’t mind readers.
Your criticism is ironic, given the feminist functional definition which applies only to women. But I think it’s misplaced. I don’t believe that ballgame intended his definition to apply only to men, but to assert that it does apply to men (in the face of feminist denial thereof).
Good questions, Amp. I’m writing final papers and can’t post anything extensive now, but both ballgame and Daran have made great responses. Also, if you haven’t read all of my series on oppression yet, it might answer some of your questions.
Daran, I’m hoping that Ballgame will respond for himself; you seem eager to turn every discussion into scattershot denunciations of feminists and feminism, fueled by constant attacks on strawfeminists (or, as you call them, “functional definitions”). Whereas I’m more interested in having narrowly focused discussions.
As I implied in my previous post (but I guess I wasn’t clear enough), I don’t agree with Frye’s and Johnson’s views of “oppression,” and thus will not be drawn into defending them.
Hmmn, let’s try it, this time using the word “women” where Ballpark used “man”:
“Powerful, systematic social forces — enforced by both men and women — dehumanize women, thwart their development, compel them to internalize violence and become rigid, insensitive to their own vulnerability, and (oft-times inauthentically) ‘independent’.”
Do you think that women are made, by gender oppression, to “internalize violence” and become “insensitive to their own vulnerability” and be “inauthentically independent”? Because it seems to me that all of those things… and therefore what Ballgame said… apply much more to men in general than women. In fact, under the definition Ballgame described here, it’s hard to imagine what group could be described as “oppressed” apart from men.
However, I don’t think that’s what Ballgame intended. Rather, I think Ballgame slipped from defining oppression in general to describing men’s oppression in particular. Perhaps I’m mistaken; Ballgame will hopefully return and clarify.
I think a generic definition would look more like this (from the New essay Hugh linked to):
This definition doesn’t implicitly define oppression in terms of the specific ways one particular group is oppressed. For that reason, I think it’s more useful than Ballgame’s proposed definition.
Amp: You and Daran are both correct; I absolutely believe that men AND women (and gays and transgendered folk) are oppressed by gender, though often in asymmetric ways which don’t lend themselves to ready comparison. My specific ‘definition’, OTOH, was a description of how I see men being oppressed by gender. It wasn’t intended to be a ‘definition’, per se, but a response to the skeptical question of “How are men oppressed by gender (as opposed to merely ‘suffering’ from it)?” which is how I interpreted your original question in context (or misinterpreted, apparently).
Your ‘generic’ definition of oppression seems perfectly serviceable to me. I guess I wonder what function the last part has, though (“and if this mistreatment is justified or excused in terms of some alleged or real characteristic of the group”). I mean, if the X-ers are systematically mistreated compared to non-X-ers, but that mistreatment isn’t “justified” by some X characteristic, it would still be oppression, no? This may be a quibble; I don’t know that I’d be able to produce an example where this happens, but I am curious as to why you think “justification” part might be an important part of the definition.
Amp, I was actually polishing a lengthy response to your #129 comment when Daran’s comment popped up, and I was like, “shit, I just wasted my time,” because on just about every substantive point I agreed with him, and he articulated it as well or better than I was doing. I would have tread much more carefully around the “all feminists are idiots” meme, though, and not just because I’m a (gender egalitarian) feminist. It is my experience that it is extremely unusual for the average feminist to stick around in a discussion if they detect the slightest sneer directed towards “feminism”, regardless of how well-founded the underlying critique may be. (This is despite the fact that ‘sneering at non-feminists’ is almost de rigeur at many popular feminist blogs.)
However, I don’t think it’s a fair characterization to say that Daran was engaging in “scattershot” attacks against “strawfeminists”; in fact I thought his critiques were quite pointed and specific and directed at very real WPO feminists. I’m tempted to expand on his critique of Marilyn Frye’s essay, but that might be moot, Amp, given that you seem to be on the cusp of acknowledging that men are oppressed by gender under your proposed definition.
Ballgame, you did misunderstand my original question, and thank you for acknowledging that. But I feel like you still haven’t addressed my intended question. Let me try asking it again.
Let’s say that side “A” is saying “both men and women are direly harmed by sexism, but only women are oppressed by it.” And side “B” is saying “both men and women are oppressed by sexism, but in asymmetric ways.”
What I’m asking you is: why should I care about the difference between “A” and “B”? Isn’t this just theoretical point-scoring and label-wrangling? Is there some way the distinction matters for public policy issues?
Here’s an example of what I mean: Is someone who thinks that men are direly harmed but not oppressed by sexism less likely to support workplace safety reforms than someone who believes that men are oppressed? (Here’s why workplace safety is an issue of particular concern for men.) If so, that would be a reason this issue matters.
However, I don’t think it’s true that people who think men are oppressed are more likely to support better safety standards at work; on the contrary, although there are exceptions (such as Daran), as a general rule MRAs seem far more right-wing on workplace safety issues than feminists. Also, MRAs seem far more hawkish than feminists when it comes to supporting needless wars (although perhaps that’s only true in the USA). My point is, apparently viewing men as oppressed doesn’t bring about support for policies that would reduce the needless, preventable deaths of men.
So why does it matter whether or not Allan Johnson considers men oppressed or direly harmed? Isn’t it more important to ask what policies Johnson supports?
* * *
Two points.
1) I think you’re utterly wrong. I’ve seen literally thousands of online debates between feminists and anti-feminists and MRAs, and the number of such debates conducted without sneering from both sides I could count on my fingers.
2) So what? Am I somehow obligated to stick around and talk to people who hold me in contempt? (FTR, I’ve never claimed that MRAs and anti-feminists are obliged to stick around on feminist blogs.) (By the way, I think I’ve been attacked in the comments of this blog more often than anyone else, and I’m still here).
To clarify, the definition of oppression I quoted isn’t mine, although I may adopt it; it’s Caroline New’s. She put the sentence you ask about in there because she thinks a definition of oppression should include reference to “the tendency to legitimise oppression by treating the oppressed group as different, less than human or actually malign, and therefore not morally requiring the treatment appropriate to one’s own group.”
Amp
It’s only natural that we feel our own pain far more sharply than we feel anybody else’s, but you honestly have not been attacked more than anybody else on this blog. I can think of feminist and antifeminist commenters who’ve had a far harder time (though, admittedly, they may well have deserved it).
Okay, Tom. If I could, I’d edit that part of my comment #134 out; I don’t want to divert the discussion of theory into a discussion of me.
Perhaps Daran could help with that. He normally strikes words out, but that’s because he prefers censure to censorship. This case is a bit different. Since your actually willing to have that bit of your post deleted, he could just snip it out.
Am I right in thinking that on some blogs posts can be deleted by the commenter?
I’ve seen some blogs with that capacity – I think it’s an option on blogger blogs, for instance.
There is a plug-in to allow people to edit comments for a short time (set by the administrator) after posting. I’ve gone back on forth on whether or not I should install it on “Alas.”
Okay, rather than go two posts in a row without discussing theory at all, I’m going to bring in my one quibble about Caroline New’s definition of “oppression,” which is, is it too broad? Here’s New’s definition, again:
Under this definition, are murderers an oppressed class? Murderers have their freedom taken away, if caught, and in some places are put to death. This could certainly be considered “systematic mistreatment” in comparison to how non-murderers are treated. Furthermore, this mistreatment is justified or excused based on a real characteristic of the group (that they’ve killed other people).
It seems to me the only way around this is to put a lot of weight on the word “mistreatment,” and say that it’s not “mistreatment” to punish a criminal for a crime. But that sort of excuse-making worries me a little, because it changes the idea of “mistreatment” into an entirely subjective idea, and suggests that what’s mistreatment for group X is fair treatment for group Y.
But then again, maybe that’s the way it has to be; otherwise how could the huge control parents exact over small childrens’ lives not be considered oppression?
you are probably better of trying to find words (or make words up)that match the meaning as opposed to trying to fiddle with a words meaning (oppression) until it says what you want it to say.
I generally hate semantic arguments. As in the argument only exists because of some difference of opinion as to the meaning of a word. Lets not be limited by language.
Amp:
Amp, your scenario seems almost purely hypothetical, as few of the WPO feminists in the blogosphere seem to believe that “men are direly harmed by sexism”. Indeed, I’d have to question why someone who genuinely believed that men were “direly harmed by sexism” would be so reluctant to use the phrase “oppressed by sexism,” frankly. It seems to me that all too many WPO feminists take the sneering stance of, “yes, it must be such a burden for you to have to exploit women all the time” or the patronizing and profoundly misguided approach of “can’t you see what your embrace of patriarchy is doing to you, what with all the homicide, suicide, and emotional repression and stuff?”
However, if I were compelled to take your scenario at face value, and I were faced with a potential feminist ally who genuinely believed that “men were direly harmed by sexism,” and were victimized by it (i.e. they weren’t merely ‘victims’ of their own ‘need to oppress others’); and that this dire harm merited analysis, respect, and political activism; and that this analysis would even include those areas where women’s own behavior was culpable in this “dire harm,” * well … I’d probably still have a conversation with her about the O word once, but I would hope that I’d have the wisdom and restraint not to browbeat her with the issue. But I have to tell you, it would not be easy for me to shake the internal “WTF?” and the underlying suspicion that the reluctance to use the O word for men signified a deeper lack of understanding or empathy for men’s lived reality. More importantly, in the real world I believe that the reluctance to use the O word stems from precisely that reason.
This is a an excellent point. First, it’s my understanding that none of the co-bloggers here (Daran, Hugh, or toy soldier) or the two key ‘affiliated commenters’ (Tom and myself) identify as MRA’s, and in fact, I think we all explicitly disavow the label. (Guys, if I’m wrong or out of line saying this, please set me straight!)
Moving on to the meat of your point, though (and now speaking only for myself): Yes, I agree that the MRA movement is often regressive and right wing and can pose more of a risk towards men than progressive feminists who do not embrace the concept of ‘men are oppressed by gender’. I’m profoundly at odds with Amanda Marcotte’s anti-male rhetoric, but if I had to choose her or your typical rightwing MRA for president, I’d vote for Amanda and it wouldn’t be a difficult choice.
But I think it’s also valid to turn this around a bit. How many men are lured over to right wing MRA-ism because at least there they seem to be treated with some kind of fundamental respect, while at WPO feminist sites they keep bumping into the patriarchy-reinforcing meme of ‘men who complain about anti-male sexism are just whiney losers’ (of which the denial of oppression is one symptom)?
* Not to imply that women are the primary enforcers of the patriarchal oppression of men.
Again, I have no idea what a WPO feminist is, or how to tell which feminist is one and which is not. But in Hugh’s post that started this thread, you’ll see that both Kelley Crouse and Allan Johnson express this view. In my anecdotal experience, it’s a perfectly common view within feminism.
I guess it’s also whether or not you interpret “men” to mean “some men” versus “all men”; I interpret it to mean “some,” not “all.” Very few feminists will accept that George Bush has suffered dire harm as a result of being male, for example.
Are you serious? You can’t imagine any legitimate reason that feminists might be reluctant to endorse this perspective?
Try this: Because the vast, vast majority of men I’ve met who consider a need to be labeled as “oppressed” a big deal are either MRAs or anti-feminists, and have a habit of not just attacking feminism but also of denying that sexism harms women in any important way at all, up to and including rape denialism.
And, again, I have to ask why you put so much stock in a label.
So you don’t think it’s possible to be treated with fundamental respect by anyone who doesn’t think that men are oppressed as a class? I disagree.
This sort of complaint is a lot like the white people who claim that anti-racist bloggers of color are too mean. Claims for justice are not valid or invalid depending on how “nice” the people arguing for the claims, or who self-identify as people victimized by the injustice, are.
If you genuinely want justice, and you’re a member of a dominant group — whether it’s being white, or male, or whatever — then the fact that some people are mean to you will not be a significant deterrent. If it is a significant deterrent — if you were really interested in fighting, oh I don’t know, the occupation of Palestine until some Palestinian activists were mean to you — then you were never all that dedicated to justice in the first place.
(The “you” in the above paragraph is meant to be a generic “you,” not Ballgame).
Dammit, you guys are having all the fun while I am stuck writing research papers.
And you know the moment you finish your papers and return to this discussion, we’re gonna be like “sorry Hugh, been there, discussed that. So how about those local sport teams?”
And I have to go to work, but to address one point very quickly, Amp:
WPO feminist = ‘women’s perspectives only’ feminist = someone who believes that feminism is about women’s rights
GE feminist = ‘gender egalitarian’ feminist = someone who believes that feminism is about gender equality and eliminating the harms caused by gender roles
Functionally, I advocate for men’s rights. Advocacy passes for activism these days. However I disavow any association with MRAism.
Ampersand (quoting ballgame):
If “men” means “some” men, and “women” is construed similarly, then it is true that “women” oppress “men”.
On the other hand, if “men” means “all men”, then it isn’t true that men oppress women. (Though some feminists explicitely argue that they do, Brownmiller, for example.)
However, there is a third possibility: that “men” means “men collectively” or “men as a class”. In practice, feminists equivocate between these three interpretations. For example, it’s common for feminists to claim that men oppress women but not vice versa. (example). This only makes sense if “men” is construed collectively, but if you ask a feminist to describe how men do this, they only talk about things that some men do, (assuming that they even attempt to answer the question. Often you’re told to just “check your privilege”, or some other cop-out.)
Gosh. I’ve been holding feminists responsible for what feminists say. And all this time it was the fault of those pesky MRAs.
But hold on a mo. MRAism is an internet phenomenon. Perhaps you can point to feminist writings which predate it which acknowledge the oppression of men – say, twenty year ago and older.
(Since you raise the subject of rape denialism, I would point out that the feminist framing of rape as “violence against women” is also denialism of male rape. But that’s OK. I won’t blame the behaviour of MRAs on feminists, even if it is responsive to them.)
Perhaps you should address that question to those feminists who object to the label being applied to men’s experiences. I think Rachel’s response to your post on Alas is particularly telling. If we acknowledged that, for example, male conscription was oppressive, then that would legitimise concern for its victims, and more to the point, it would render illegitimate the dismissal of such concern. And we can’t have that, can we? Even the suggestion of it is “is bordering on the men’s pity party”, and makes you sound like me.
That isn’t what he said. Again, he is making an empirical observation about how men are treated, not about what is possible.
Nor did ballgame say otherwise. The situation is different, though, for bloggers of color, who have a legitimate complaint, and who don’t need to deny, dismiss, etc., oppression and harm suffered by the other group in order to sustain the otherwise unsupportable claim that “we’re teh oppressed”.
However, just as the obnoxiousness of some POC doesn’t invalidate their complaint, so the validity of their complaint doesn’t justify their obnoxiousness.
(In case it’s not clear, I’m not suggesting that POC are generally obnoxious, or that individual POC are more likely to be obnoxious than whites.)
Earlier you said: “…feminists might be reluctant to endorse [the perspective that men can be gender-oppressed] Because the vast, vast majority of men I’ve met who consider a need to be labeled as “oppressed” a big deal are either MRAs or anti-feminists, and have a habit of not just attacking feminism but also of denying that sexism harms women in any important way at all, up to and including rape denialism.”
Claims for justice are not valid or invalid depending on how “nice” the people arguing for the claims, or who self-identify as people victimized by the injustice, are. If feminists were really interested in fairly characterising the gender-system, until some MRAs were mean to them, then they were never that dedicated to fairness in the first place.
(Edited)
Ampersand (quoting ballgame):
I disagree that males are a dominant group. The situation is rather more complex than that, with males being dominant in some spheres and females being dominant in others. In still others, dominance is mixed, with some men being granted dominance because they are men and other being denied dominance because they are men. For example. One measure of dominance is the ease by which you obtain the services you need. I cannot think of a single service which I have access to, which a similarly placed female would not have access to, would have restricted access to, or a lower level of service. I can think of many services which are preferentially available to women.
This female privilege, which I call “service privilege”, of course, is a consequence of the “(oft-times inauthentic[]) independen[ce]” ascribed to men, which can also be framed as a privilege – the ability of society to recognise the needs of women, which is one aspect of “visibility privilege”. These are two of the six female privileges I have identified, (The others being “non-disposability”, “non-combatancy”, “protection” and “accessibility. A blog post about these is forthcoming.)
On the other hand, if the people claiming the oppression and being mean to you were a largely white-skinned, middle-classed, pity party whose only experience of being oppressed was the societal expectation of having to shave their legs and powder their noses, then you might come to the view that they don’t have any legitimate complaint and that the real injustice is that we continue to indulge them.
Ampersand:
Even if they they’re not, the issue matters. The burden of death and serious injury in the workplace that falls on men, and the comparative lack of societal (and consequently political) concern about it, is a consequence of our male-disposability culture. Not only is harder to get workplace safety reforms onto the table, but those reforms, welcome though they may be, at best address a symptom.
Feminists aren’t satisfied with piecemeal reforms and I don’t see why we should either. Feminists want to change the culture. I don’t disagree with that goal. I do disagree with the analysis, and consequently with the prescription.
I agree that MRAs make lousy advocates for men’s rights, in general. But that makes effective advocacy for men an even more pressing need. It’s all very well saying that you “support policies that would reduce preventable deaths of men”, but how many feminists are prepared to lobby their politicians about this? How many make it a voting issue? If politician A is promising workplace safety reform, and politician B is promising a violence against women initiative, who’s the feminist going to vote for?
And you know, your argument cuts both ways. One aspect of our culture that I agree oppresses women is the fear of violence that it instills in them – a fear which is disproportionate to the risk they actually face. So why don’t we see feminists encouraging women to be less fearful?
Up to a point. It’s also legitimate to ask what his priorities are. I support withdrawl from Iraq and I support the legalisation of Marijuana, but I don’t support them equally. Only one of those is a voting issue.
[...] the comments of Part 2 of my series on oppression, Ampersand wonders if the question of whether men are [...]
[...] which are for adults. It is as children that we learn our society’s cultural values. In a comment I never got round to responding to at the time, Jenny of In the Company of Wolves argued that the [...]
Haven’t read all the posts, just replying to the question.
I consider myself feminist (though sometimes I think of myself more as a Humanist) and I think men are obviously compromised/restricted/constrained/limited/disadvantaged by sexism/patriarchy/the current gender biases in most societies and cultures, and probably by some legislation in some ways (though not being in the USA, and US laws differing state-to-state anyway, I’m not sure I can comment on this in a fully informed way). To use the word “oppressed” – I’m not actually sure I’d use it even for women now, in the West, anyway. (Does this make me a bad feminist? Hmmm…)
Blobby, whether or not that makes you a bad feminst, it puts you in a growing group of aware feminsts who are willing to examine and analyze ferminsm from first principles on up. Check out April and others at ethecofem for a taste of this.
[...] rather than focusing on making the shit stop. For example, academic feminists seem to believe that women are oppressed, but men are not. When MRAs are playing Oppression Olympics, it’s partly because they had excellent teachers [...]
we shoud all agree that man are ”oppressed” thats all i think