>of your professors, how many of them would you say were male-exclusionary feminists?
Not one. Most were totally reasonable people, interested in furthering a gender-egalitarian version of feminism that seemed eminently fair. When I say I critically engaged with the issues, I don't mean I was out to destroy feminist arguments and advocate for the abolition of feminism. I agree with much of what (many) feminisms fight for. But there is always room to introduce nuance, and I found that most faculty really appreciated that kind of critical engagement.
However.
The student politics at my school -- and at many other campuses in my country -- were shockingly totalitarian. To give you an idea, the majority of student associations across the country are unionized, and are all locals of a national student federation. Every single student in each university pays mandatory fees (read: union dues) to these locals as part of tuition.
The national union was infamous for stifling even discussion of men's issues on campuses. See [1] for an example:
"This spring, the Canadian Federation of Students passed a motion encouraging all student unions to reject men’s rights groups, because they promote “hateful views toward women” and justify physical and sexual assault."
One student's union under the CFS umbrella became relatively well-known for cancelling a charity fundraising campaign for cystic fibrosis, Shinerama, because cystic fibrosis "disproportionally affects white males" [1.5].
We've got freedom of speech enshrined in our Charter up here, yet our campuses constantly rate abysmally in free speech indexes largely because of the student unions I'm talking about [2]. Groups that all students, including men, are forced to pay money to under the theory that these groups represent all students.
Feminist groups repeatedly [3][4] tried to block public lectures on men's issues from happening. In one case, even pulling a fire alarm in an attempt to force an end to the discussion. There is an extremely famous video of an anti-men's-rights protestor screaming at her 'debate partners' to "shut the fuck up" while she explains that feminism fights for men's rights, too, so men don't need men's rights groups [5]. This happened at a few other universities other than UoT, too.
So that is the environment in which I came up, and certainly it colored my views. Hence when I hear people saying that extremist lines like "every other group is a men's group" are emblematic of feminism in general, I find it disconcerting, and feel a need to argue against.
Interesting, and legitimate sources. I don't disagree that there's a problem here, but there are far too many nuances to pick apart, so I'll go about this more obliquely.
First: the way you approached this engagement started with a claim that most feminism has a "tenuous grasp on reality". Claiming that the reasonable feminists are a tiny minority is a good way to suggest that every claim the person you're responding to is probably wrong, in your view. In other words, saying "often (not always!)" isn't enough; that doesn't introduce nuance. That introduces antagonism. The best suggestion I can give is to demonstrate a knowledge of feminism that you support while explaining why this particular school of thought is wrong.
Second: there is a systemic marginalization of women. Moreover, this is demonstrable by a lack of one-to-one gender representation. You start to address the issue reasonably in your complaint, but you revert back to dismissal rather than recognizing that people are working on control mechanisms. Yes, affirmative action style programs are a blunt instrument, but that's something to "fight on the merits of the argument". I can make arguments both for and against it, and I rather expect you to be able to as well.
If random chance is determining the results of something, a 50/50 gender split is a reasonable expectation across a large enough sample. If that 50/50 split isn't present, then that suggests there's a significant effect besides random chance. We can claim that's a biological thing, or we can claim it's a cultural thing, but it's systemic either way, and this wouldn't be the first thing we decided culture ought to trump biology on anyways. (lol typing on keyboards at midnight)
I'm pretty sure you knew this, but it's unclear based on what you've said so far.
Third: It's worth pointing out that a lot of the people you're going to come across online are going to be American, which means our views are colored by the fact that feminism is losing as much as it's winning in this country. We have prominent public officials making unquestionably misogynistic statements, and the best we have to show for it is that a few of them were voted out of office.
Maybe feminism has achieved an unassailable victory in Canada. I don't know; I don't live there. But it hasn't achieved it everywhere else, and certainly not in America. I notice that I rarely see such an announcement for a program or conference in Canada. I see them for the US, for the UK, for India. These places are not bastions of feminism.
Fourth: There are some notable bits in your links demonstrating a problem. It's this: some men's rights activists are making the same mistake as the worst of feminists: they're tearing down all women in the name of being supportive. Claims like saying rapes are over-reported or slut-shaming with a public poster are petty and damaging. Creating a safe space for men who are abused or oppressed is fine, but leveraging that in order to push women down? That's not okay. It wasn't okay when women did it, and it's not okay when men do it.
The inevitable consequence? Exactly what you're complaining about: feminists who recognize a threat and respond to it. Which causes another round of men who are angry about being oppressed. Which results in an escalation of feminists yelling them down. And the worst of it is that they are both right. If you want to fight against this kind of feminism, then you need to temper that with the acknowledgement that what some men's rights groups are doing is in fact wrong.
Fifth: You know why people respond with "yeah, that's cool"? Because they're sexist. Because they unconsciously believe that men are stronger and should be able to tough it out. Because they believe women need to be protected. Because, you know, we still look down on women. Empowered women are still considered an exceptional case, rather than a natural fact. And that's probably not going to change in our lifetime. It's the kind of thing that needs to bleed out over generations.
Sixth: I believe I've met an example of what you're talking about, online, and if she's representative at all, this becomes a component in a larger theory. I am of the belief that people who bully, who oppress, are people who have taken it from others and are effectively passing it on, knowingly or not. This woman yelled at me about how rare decent men were, for instance. It put me into a months-long fugue, but I'm not the kind of person who has the luxury of support groups.
What it sounds to me is that you're seeing the tail-end of a cycle: you noticed a chicken hatch from an egg, so of course chickens come from eggs; you're just not viscerally seeing eggs coming from chickens.
Seventh, and finally last: This, "I find it disconcerting, and feel a need to argue against" is exactly what people feel when they read what you write. As previously noted, I don't really care about feminism. (...and checking back, that was part of the comment I scrapped. Bah.) But I do feel I have a strong enough grasp on the fundamentals that I can explain it usefully in argument.
When you make this kind of "men need advocates too" claim, that sets off warning bells. After I wrote all the above, I hope it's clear why. You caught me on a day I was feeling good. Other times, I'm more interested in handing out a beat-down and would not have stopped to ask for clarification.
1. I'm kind of unclear on why you quoted me the way you did. I didn't actually say that most feminism has a tenuous grasp on reality, I said exactly what you later quoted me as saying ("often (not always!)"). Yeah, it introduces antagonism, but it isn't, in my view, unwarranted. It's hard to have an argument without some antagonism.
2. If you really want to take that path, then yes, there's systemic something at play by virtue of the fact that the male-female distribution isn't always uniform across human activities. Is it marginalization? That isn't a given. You take it as a given.
e.g. 99.9% of women can have babies, 100% of men cannot. Is that marginalization? Or just systemic? 76% of US public school teachers are female. Is that marginalization, or just systemic? About 20% of congress/senate are female, 80% are male. Marginalization? Or just systemic? 92.2% of Federal inmates in the US are male, 7.8% are female. Put another way: one out of every eighteen men in America is locked up in a Federal pen. Is that marginalization? Or just systemic? [1][2][3]
Once again, my gripe is mainly with the type of feminism I originally, way back responded to. The kind that says we can't have men's groups because "every other group is a men's group".
And again again again, I don't have a problem with fighting female marginalization where it occurs. I have a problem with groups who say we should fight female marginalization and ignore men entirely because men aren't marginalized. That's bullshit, and needs to be fought vocally and persistently wherever it is encountered. Men need advocacy too, and groups who say otherwise are, frankly, an enemy to justice as far as I'm concerned.
3. Point taken.
4. Great, but I'm not advocating anyone to take some predefined MRA position and set it in opposition to feminism. I absolutely agree that often (not always!) MRA groups are victims of the exact same ideology-induced blindness that I'm complaining about in some feminisms.
Why I linked those articles is because they lay out events that objectively did occur where feminist groups or institutions actively tried blocking men from discussing men's issues. The men's groups that applied for funding at UoT and Ryerson had nothing to do with these controversial positions you're talking about. The instigators of the men's group at Ryerson included two women.
About the posters. If you're referring to the "just because you regret a one-night stand doesn't mean it wasn't consensual" one, I don't see how that's slut-shaming. It's turning a City of Calgary/Battered Women's Support Services campaign's own logic around. Their posters said stuff like "just because she's drinking doesn't mean she wants sex". If the men's rights poster implies that women are sluts, then the City's poster implies that men are rapists. That's the point. The drinking poster implies that all men are potential rapists; the one-night stand poster implies that all women are potential liars. Heads, meet tails.
Nobody wants to think about that one logically, though. People just want to react.
5. Yeah, and really I'm just pointing that out.
6. Point taken.
7. Well, if people want to react to what I'm saying that's fine. I'm equipped to handle that. I'm obviously not making these posts to have people not engage me in argument. It's having the argument that is important, imo.
I don't really understand what kind of warning bells "men need advocates too" claims would set off, and forgive me if after reading your posts I don't see what in your posts should have illuminated that for me. I still fervently believe that men do need advocates
> Is it marginalization? That isn't a given. You take it as a given.
Fair enough. That's legitimate.
Of course, then you proceed to list exactly one statistic that isn't marginalization and then throw down three that are.
There is a weak bias that teachers should be women. I expected the breakdown to be more pronounced by state, but I couldn't find numbers within a minute. I did find this: http://www.edweek.org/media/pot2011final-blog.pdf : which has an unsubtle chart on page 12 showing that the female percentage of teachers has been going up over the last 30 years. You're going to tell me that that means it's men who are marginalized, but guess what? Teachers are a marginalized group to begin with. (Also, I see 83% on that page, not 76%.)
20% sounds like the effects of marginalization to me, especially when SCOTUS does much better. Fun fact: you basically never hear about misogyny from a SCOTUS decision. Ratio there? About one-to-one.
Crime is multi-faceted, and I'll try to cover it succinctly. There are two major aspects. One: criminals are the ones who actually did something charge-worthy. Why does this tend to be men? Two: profiling happens, and people expect men to be a criminal and women to be victims. Thus arrests predominantly happen to men. So yes, there's a marginalization of women going on here. Of course, this is overshadowed by the fact that far too many people are being arrested in the first place, and far too many people arrested are conveniently of minority races. Part 1 isn't addressed by the police; it's addressed by fixing sexism in society itself, which would result in a more balanced ratio of inmates without touching the justice system at all.
Also, I do hope that science figures out how to get men pregnant. That's a thing being worked on. It's not really the more important thing ever, though.
> Once again, my gripe is mainly with the type of feminism I originally, way back responded to. The kind that says we can't have men's groups because "every other group is a men's group".
Then why are we even discussing anything? I could dig out an explanation of why your semantics are wrong, but I think we've established that the exclusionary policy you're objecting to isn't what was actually being called out. Are you just arguing for the sake of argument?
> If the men's rights poster implies that women are sluts, then the City's poster implies that men are rapists.
No, it doesn't. I've seen lots of women drink who I haven't subsequently fucked. This is because drinking is not a sexual act. Why do I have to explain this?
Yes, there is a problematic fuzziness in the line of women who decide to report a rape because they regretted a one-night stand after the fact. The appropriate response isn't to say, "Just because you call it rape doesn't make it rape." The appropriate response is to get women the emotional education they need to stop doing that, whether it means fewer one-night stands or more recognition of why they're regretting the previous night's decision.
And even if you were right, that women are taking advantage of a compliant legal system in order to abuse men. Does that actually make it okay to advocate rape in return? Sure, it's understandable. I can sympathize with the desire to lash out and be self-defeating. But "she did it first" is not exactly the kind of moral foundation I hope people above the age of 10 are using.
> Nobody wants to think about that one logically, though. People just want to react.
And that's exactly how I feel about the way you treat it. You don't "think about that one logically". You just "react", because men have a plight and you have to advocate for it.
> I don't really understand what kind of warning bells "men need advocates too" claims would set off, and forgive me if after reading your posts I don't see what in your posts should have illuminated that for me. I still fervently believe that men do need advocates
Of course they do. It's just that most of the people who claim this, in my experience, have been people who don't need advocates and are just relishing another opportunity to slam the door in the face of women. Women need advocates too, and groups who say otherwise are, frankly, an enemy to justice as far as I'm concerned.
>One: criminals are the ones who actually did something charge-worthy. Why does this tend to be men?
Are all charge-worthy laws just? No. Are they going to let all the prisoners free en masse who committed MJ-related drug crimes now that it's basically legal? Is the drug war really working, or just creating more casualties than necessary?
Say a kid is born into a gang family. The gang's existence is only possible because drugs are illegal in the US. The kid grows up around violence and drugs, no 'mainstream-style' support from the parents so there's no school or work involved, then ends up in the gang himself. Eventually he goes down on charges. Was his demise systemic? Or is he "just a bad guy" who did something charge-worthy?
>No, it doesn't. I've seen lots of women drink who I haven't subsequently fucked. This is because drinking is not a sexual act. Why do I have to explain this?
That's the point.
The fact that posters exist telling you not to get rapey on a woman just because they're drinking is why we have to explain this. Drinking is not a sexual act, why are the posters making it one? Not all men are rapists, why are these posters presuming all men are?
>The appropriate response isn't to say, "Just because you call it rape doesn't make it rape."
I don't know whether or not it's appropriate, but it logically holds. As does "just because you regret a one-night stand doesn't mean it's not consensual". It's implying a default suspicion of women just as the other posters imply a default suspicion of men. If people don't like the tactic, maybe they shouldn't use it. Using it in the service of feminism rather than some other ideology doesn't magically make it okay.
>And even if you were right, that women are taking advantage of a compliant legal system in order to abuse men. Does that actually make it okay to advocate rape in return?
Huh? Who's advocating rape? Not me, and certainly not those posters...
>And that's exactly how I feel about the way you treat it
Fair enough, I can't tell you how to feel. But I've made my share of logical arguments in this thread, and they'll stand on their own.
>It's just that most of the people who claim this, in my experience, have been people who don't need advocates and are just relishing another opportunity to slam the door in the face of women
There's a contingent of women-haters out there for sure, just as there's a contingent of man-haters too. [1] But it's a mistake to assume that just because one advocates for a group, that person auto-hates The Other Group. In fact, that's kinda the same mistake you accuse me of making, isn't it? Thinking that because my experience with feminism has been way more confrontational and politically-charged than the majority of other people's, that my judgment of feminism as a whole is skewed?
[1] - Robin Morgan, influential writer, editor, general cultural producer. "I feel that "man-hating" is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." -- http://books.google.ca/books?id=PatzOnRJCf4C&pg=PA202#v=onep...
It is unbelievably tempting to just lash out at you because you are such an unpleasant person. Instead of following me around on HN responding to my (lengthy, in-good-faith) posts with irrelevant one-liners, why don't you try actually contributing?
Do you have something to say?
Are you afraid you might be wrong? Is that why you cling to the relative safety of slinging content-free one-liners? Can you not think clearly enough to formulate an argument against?
Why don't you engage in the discussion rather than troll with useless, inane posts that fit better on /b/ than HN?
I'm not even close to an 'MRA', as you're using the term (which, btw, is in an implicitly derogatory fashion, which says a lot about you). I think that MRAs as defined by Internet Feminists like you suffer the exact same flaws I'm outlining in feminism.
I do, however, believe that men have issues and need advocacy. Groups that try to deny men the right to advocate for themselves -- which all of the above linked groups do, objectively -- are wrong, for the reasons I've extensively elaborated on in this thread.
You really think it is legit to physically prevent men from discussing men's issues by pulling a fire alarm (illegal, btw) and forcing them out of a building?
Not one. Most were totally reasonable people, interested in furthering a gender-egalitarian version of feminism that seemed eminently fair. When I say I critically engaged with the issues, I don't mean I was out to destroy feminist arguments and advocate for the abolition of feminism. I agree with much of what (many) feminisms fight for. But there is always room to introduce nuance, and I found that most faculty really appreciated that kind of critical engagement.
However.
The student politics at my school -- and at many other campuses in my country -- were shockingly totalitarian. To give you an idea, the majority of student associations across the country are unionized, and are all locals of a national student federation. Every single student in each university pays mandatory fees (read: union dues) to these locals as part of tuition.
The national union was infamous for stifling even discussion of men's issues on campuses. See [1] for an example:
"This spring, the Canadian Federation of Students passed a motion encouraging all student unions to reject men’s rights groups, because they promote “hateful views toward women” and justify physical and sexual assault."
One student's union under the CFS umbrella became relatively well-known for cancelling a charity fundraising campaign for cystic fibrosis, Shinerama, because cystic fibrosis "disproportionally affects white males" [1.5].
We've got freedom of speech enshrined in our Charter up here, yet our campuses constantly rate abysmally in free speech indexes largely because of the student unions I'm talking about [2]. Groups that all students, including men, are forced to pay money to under the theory that these groups represent all students.
Feminist groups repeatedly [3][4] tried to block public lectures on men's issues from happening. In one case, even pulling a fire alarm in an attempt to force an end to the discussion. There is an extremely famous video of an anti-men's-rights protestor screaming at her 'debate partners' to "shut the fuck up" while she explains that feminism fights for men's rights, too, so men don't need men's rights groups [5]. This happened at a few other universities other than UoT, too.
So that is the environment in which I came up, and certainly it colored my views. Hence when I hear people saying that extremist lines like "every other group is a men's group" are emblematic of feminism in general, I find it disconcerting, and feel a need to argue against.
[1] - http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/08/01/angry-young-men/
[1.5] - http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/carleton-student-group-votes-to-end...
[2] - http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/campus-freedom-inde...
[3] - http://thevarsity.ca/2012/11/17/arrest-assaults-overshadow-m...
[4] - http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-went-to-a-mens-rights-lect...
[5] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvYyGTmcP80