Proof that a men's rights movement is needed
Many years ago, a much younger--and apparently very naive--me purchased and read The Myth of Make Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex, by Warren Farrell. Little did I know that Farrell and anybody like him would be branded a misogynist and that any work like his would be condemned as misogyny. But apparently that is the political and social climate a lot of us are in: any deviation from a certain orthodoxy will be attacked as heresy and misogyny.
Anyway, part of that orthodoxy is the assertion that males have all of the power and receive all of the benefits of the dominant system, females benefit in no way from that system and are brutally oppressed by it, and, therefore, no organized movement fighting for the rights of males is needed.
Well, if it is true that women's liberation covers all oppression and nothing else is needed then there should be nothing found outside of women's liberation that is not also found inside women's liberation.
Well, in the late 1990's I learned from that aforementioned book that apparently in some jurisdictions the way that the law is written a woman can give birth to and raise a child without ever telling the biological father, and then sue him retroactively for child support payments. That is just one example of bad things that hurt men--and more importantly, children--and treat them as less than equal that in twenty years I have never heard again, let alone from anywhere inside women's liberation, and that I probably never would have heard about if nobody decided that there are men's rights issues that need attention.
But I am not so naive now. I am sure that somebody will say here that Warren Farrell is a misogynistic liar, that the laws in question are being misrepresented/distorted, that the laws in question are needed to protect women from patriarchal domination, etc.
I do not know of anything else on the contemporary or historical political and intellectual landscape that is presented as a story with only one side and is used to completely deflect, suppress, or eradicate another point-of-view. It has to be the most totalizing orthodoxy ever. Even the world's major religions--supposedly the most repressive dogma in the world--acknowledge and listen to other belief systems.
Anyway, part of that orthodoxy is the assertion that males have all of the power and receive all of the benefits of the dominant system, females benefit in no way from that system and are brutally oppressed by it, and, therefore, no organized movement fighting for the rights of males is needed.
Well, if it is true that women's liberation covers all oppression and nothing else is needed then there should be nothing found outside of women's liberation that is not also found inside women's liberation.
Well, in the late 1990's I learned from that aforementioned book that apparently in some jurisdictions the way that the law is written a woman can give birth to and raise a child without ever telling the biological father, and then sue him retroactively for child support payments. That is just one example of bad things that hurt men--and more importantly, children--and treat them as less than equal that in twenty years I have never heard again, let alone from anywhere inside women's liberation, and that I probably never would have heard about if nobody decided that there are men's rights issues that need attention.
But I am not so naive now. I am sure that somebody will say here that Warren Farrell is a misogynistic liar, that the laws in question are being misrepresented/distorted, that the laws in question are needed to protect women from patriarchal domination, etc.
I do not know of anything else on the contemporary or historical political and intellectual landscape that is presented as a story with only one side and is used to completely deflect, suppress, or eradicate another point-of-view. It has to be the most totalizing orthodoxy ever. Even the world's major religions--supposedly the most repressive dogma in the world--acknowledge and listen to other belief systems.
Comments (77)
I hope that that does not include Farrell, but it wouldn't surprise me.
You have to be sure to dot every i and cross every t when you are talking about gender politics.
Men and women's income compared
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Difference ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...1st decile ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 9th decile lowest $ highest $
everyone, age over 16, averaged
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Men $423 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $2,300
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Women $397 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $1,827 ... ... ... ... . $26....$473
everyone over 25
high school only, averaged ... ... .... ... .. ... $395 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $1,489
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... ... Men $418 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $1,661
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... .Women $371 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $1,156 ... ... ... ... $47....$505
everyone, MA or PhD, averaged, over 25
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... ... . Men $768 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $3,784
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . ... ... ... ... ... Women $673 ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $2,610 ... ... ... ... $95.....$1,174
Men tend to earn higher wages both at the bottom of the income distribution (the first decile, above) and at the top (the ninth decile, above).
If all men and women had exactly the same work experience, it would be clearer that an injustice existed. However, men and women don't have the same experience. The jobs are frequently not the same, the hours worked may not be the same, the duration of work (years) may not be the same, and so on.
If all men and women all performed diligently, pursued advancement with the same eagerness, and so forth, it would be clearer that an injustice existed. However, note the range in both men and women with advanced degrees: $673 to $3784 -- a range of $3,111. Apparently some men, and some women, are more capable of obtaining higher wages than other workers.
I have an advanced degree (MA) and yet my weekly income tended, on average, to be in the 1st decile. Why was that? It was because I did not seek the highest wage job possible, did not seek advancement eagerly, and did not always perform as diligently as I could have. I took off time between jobs, and did not stay at any job longer than 7 years.
From what I have seen in 40 years of work is that men and women who very much want to advance as far as they can, and earn as much as they can, generally do much better than people who don't have the same focused drive. And they tend to both do quite well economically.
Because it is very difficult to capture qualitative differences in work experiences in a labor report, it is also difficult to say that any class of people is discriminated against, only on the basis of income.
If that is true, it basically reduces men to nothing more than sperm donors.
Warren Farrell shows in The Myth of Male Power that men, among other differences, have longer commutes to work on average than women do.
I guess that puts him in the same class as the Ku Klux Klan in some people's minds.
SPLC lists every hate group it can find, almost a thousand (that's their raison d'être) but they don't tell us much about these groups -- like how large they are, what bad things they actually do, what their specific beliefs are, and so on. We can't tell how much of a threat some skinhead group (with maybe 5 members) in western Washington is to the American Way of Life. Or, for that matter, whether skinheads ARE part of the American Way of Life.
I don't like to see men bashing women, or women bashing men. I like my men to defend women, and my women to defend men. Seems far more heroic, and less self invested.
After reading this response I will have to side with the MRAs.
I can't comment on the 99% of "manosphere" elements that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists that I know nothing about, but I know that I have received a lot of valuable information and thinking by reading the A Voice for Men website, reading the work of Warren Farrell--who A Voice for Men founder Paul Elam apparently sees as a mentor--, etc.
In The Myth of Male Power Farrell calls high school football "Government-sanctioned child abuse", or something like that. That was long before what we now know about football and concussions, CTE, etc. was revealed. It was long before former NFL players started committing suicide one after another and donating their brains for research--and CTE being found in those brains.
Alas, apparently we are supposed to think that a scholar and activist who was well ahead of almost everybody else in publicly sounding the alarm about football and the well-being of boys and men is a misogynist and an extremist spreading hate and bigotry.
Maybe if men's rights had been taken more seriously a lot of destroyed lives could have been prevented and a lot of lost lives could have been avoided.
It is not about civility, or the lack thereof, in the war between the sexes. I have already covered how uncivil and irrational gender politics inevitably always seems to be (look at some of the fallacious responses in this thread for even more evidence).
It is about whether or not we as a society and as a civilization really believe in the things we supposedly believe in, such as protecting the individual.
If one man is treated unfairly and unjustly by the system, if the women's liberation movement is oblivious to that injustice or does not care, and if the men's rights movement is the only thing that does bring attention to and concern about that injustice, then the assertion that a men's rights movement is not needed is false.
I believe the rationale is that it's in the child's best interests, and the child's best interests are more important than the interests of the parents. It has nothing to do with gender.
A cursory search offers this:
Similar laws are in place in the UK:
It's the parent who isn't raising the child that has to pay child support, irrespective of the parent's sex. It's just obviously impossible for a father to have a child without the mother's knowledge.
This is no different to a racist complaining about how underrepresented minorities are getting all the benefits through positive discrimination.
And then you say:
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Let me welcome you to the desert of the REAL
1. Global estimates published by WHO indicate that about 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
2. Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Worldwide, almost one third (30%) of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner in their lifetime.
3. Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner.
Violence can negatively affect women’s physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health, and may increase vulnerability to HIV.
4. Factors associated with increased risk of perpetration of violence include low education, child maltreatment or exposure to violence in the family, harmful use of alcohol, attitudes accepting of violence and gender inequality.
5. Factors associated with increased risk of experiencing intimate partner and sexual violence include low education, exposure to violence between parents, abuse during childhood, attitudes accepting violence and gender inequality.
6. At least 20.9 million adults and children are bought and sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor and bonded labor. About 2 million children are exploited every year in the global commercial sex trade.
7. 54% of trafficking victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Women and girls make up 96% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
8. It is estimated that of all women who were the victims of homicide globally in 2012, almost half were killed by intimate partners or family members, compared to less than six per cent of men killed in the same year.
9. Worldwide, almost 750 million women and girls alive today were married before their 18th birthday. Child marriage is more common in West and Central Africa, where over 4 in 10 girls were married before age 18, and about 1 in 7 were married or in union before age 15. Child marriage often results in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupts schooling, limits the girl’s opportunities and increases her risk of experiencing domestic violence.
10. Around 120 million girls worldwide (slightly more than 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives. By far the most common perpetrators of sexual violence against girls are current or former husbands, partners or boyfriends
11. At least 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation in the 30 countries with representative data on prevalence. In most of these countries, the majority of girls were cut before age 5.
12. One in 10 women in the European Union report having experienced cyber-harassment since the age of 15 (including having received unwanted, offensive sexually explicit emails or SMS messages, or offensive, inappropriate advances on social networking sites). The risk is highest among young women between 18 and 29 years of age.
13. Twenty-three per cent of female undergraduate university students reported having experienced sexual assault or sexual misconduct in a survey across 27 universities in the United States in 2015. Rates of reporting to campus officials, law enforcement or others ranged from 5 to 28 per cent, depending on the specific type of behaviour.
But, we wouldn't want you to be late for work, now would we.
It seems clear to me that no amount of reasoning will enable you to see how absurd you are. And that is what you are.
We know that females are evolutionarily programmed to attract males in order to reproduce (females choose one male). Males are programmed to reproduce with as many females as possible to diversify their gene pool. Humans and a lot of other species have this tendency.
In today's society women use their arsenal to attract men. This arsenal consists of dressing or specific acts. The same can be told about men but while men are programmed to 'accept' every women; women usually will only accept a small % of the male population. This can lead to a lot of sexual frustration in society because a lot of males will be ignored meanwhile their senses excited by women. So as a member of the group of the ignored males I really need somebody to defend my rights as I get offended every time I see a beautiful seductive woman ignoring and despising me.
As I am free to express my opinion and I did not inted to offend anybody I ask you not to delete my post again.
Do you have a study to back this up?
According to this, regarding the International Sexuality Description Project, led by David P. Schmitt, PhD, which appeared in the July 2003 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
Quoting Meta
This isn't very clear. In concrete terms, what exactly do you expect? If I were tasked with defending your rights, what do I have to do?
For the other question. One thing you could do is to stop propagating the imaginary overmasculin male ubermensch stereotype in the media and start propagating other values people have.
I'm not exactly sure what the content of advertising has to do with your rights.
Then I must be dense, because I don't see it. Not only do I fail to see how current advertising affects your rights, I also fail to see how a change in advertising would address the fact that you "get offended every time [you] see a beautiful seductive woman ignoring and despising [you]".
You're subject to the guidelines like anyone else and your previous post was reprehensible the way you phrased it. The present one is mostly just very odd. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you just badly worded what you were trying to say. (Please PM in future by the way or start a feedback discussion.)
I went on the SPLC's web page. They have a list of hate groups. I sorted by "men's rights." There were 24 hits. None of them were mainstream organizations. Most were explicitly racist. Can you find me a men's rights group that you would be willing to be associated with that is on the list?
Speaking just for the US, yes, it is very different. I have my troubles with feminism, and even more with men's rights, so I don't want to get any further into the back and forth.
You are free insofar as you obey.
I didn't see your original post, so I can't judge whether or not it should have been deleted. My typical response to deletions is - "My God, it's Moose Turd Pie! - It's good though."
As for this one, I'm nominating it for the @Baden/@Sapentia award for the creepiest post that didn't actually get removed.
The creepy thing is the so called culture of the US.
The evolutionary game is designed for you to lose. Trying to play the game is like going to the casino and trying to beat the house. It's stupid, you never will. And that includes both men and women.
There already are some "man's rights" groups, like MGTOW, but there's a lot of hatred of women and the like involved in those groups, much like in feminism there's often a lot of hatred of men. So I don't think such groups are good at all, except to point out that much like women have women-specific problems in the evolutionary game, so do men. These groups are stupid because they are inherently polarizing - they attempt to end violence by committing violence through the a priori expulsion of the other sex. They are just a continuation of the evolutionary game and it is precisely the evolutionary game that must be stopped.
And you shouldn't feel on the short end of the stick, even the "successful" men in the evolutionary game are losers. They too lose the females they sometimes get, so what's the point? Only a loser plays a game where loss is certain, even for the so called "winners". You think you'll be any better if you have sex with that beautiful girl and tomorrow she rejects you? Probably you'll be even more miserable.
So go look for people who aren't playing the evolutionary game anymore. You know, people who have higher values and a deeper understanding of reality. And before that, stop playing the evolutionary game yourself. This talk of males have evolved to, etc. is stupid. Human sexuality is 99% social and cultural. There are no set rules, you create the rules by the people and cultures you associate yourself with. The findings of those studies merely reflect the cultural and social attitudes of the societies in which they are undertaken, and these results are mistaken to be biological as opposed to cultural and social.
I am a Christian. In the group of serious Christians sexuality isn't such a big deal. Things are quite simple, no sex before marriage, and once you get married there is mutual care and fidelity between the partners, including sex and physical intimacy until death. We're more concerned with other things such as spreading the Gospel message, making the world a better place and so on so forth. Sex plays a relatively minor role in the good life.
I'm not sure what it is you find offensive here. Do you feel a father should not be responsible for child support unless he knows he has a child? Do you think that if a mother doesn't tell a father there is a child, the child isn't entitled to support from his/her father?
A very humane and well-expressed post.
Perhaps you are not aware of how insulting and degrading your words are.
I saw what you did there, with posting that video. Yeah, things are turning Orwellian fast. Fuck your rights, and your voice, they're infringing on, and disagreeing with mine, and I'm righteous as fuck.
Seriously? Of course the father has no reason at all to be obliged to support a person he does not know and whose existence he has no responsibility over. The woman is the one deciding to 1) not abort and 2) not give the child up for adoption, so she is responsible due to having made a moral decision. How is the biological connection any basis for responsibility?
I assume this refers to the laws of USA and you're from USA?
I was seeking clarification, but was unclear. I was wondering when, if ever, the OP felt a father has an obligation to support his child.
Presumably, in order to become liable under the law, the father is made aware of his child's existence in the course of the paternity proceedings. So, the child of which he was unaware enters his awareness. Paternity would be established, you see, before the law imposes liability.
So, is what gives offense the fact that the father is unaware of the child before he became aware of the child? Would he be responsible if he was aware, all the time?
It seems he would not be, at least as far as you're concerned. The woman, evidently, has sole responsibility because she didn't abort the child or give it up for adoption. It seems you think these are her decisions alone. Or are they her decisions alone only if the father is unaware, and because the father is unaware? Should the father have a say in decisions whether to abort or give up for adoption when he is aware of the child? But if the answer to that is "yes" why is that the case if the "biological connection" is no basis for liability?
No. In the case neither of the parents made the decision to have the child, neither parent should have a say in whether the other parent will have any part in taking care of the child. Of course the child has human rights so both parents are responsible to at least put the baby up for adoption to make sure someone else is taking care of them.
How does your lack of knowledge of something diminish your responsibility? Is it that you shouldn't have to pay if you aren't getting anything out of it, if you aren't allowed to participate in the child's life? Is it an exchange? Is your obligation to your children strictly a function of what you get out of your children?
If you don't want to potentially end up supporting a child, keep your sperm far away from any eggs. If you put your sperm near an egg, you have accepted the risk and should be made to bear the responsibility that truly belongs to you.
Suppose you start shooting large rocks with a powerful slingshot over buildings in random directions, not knowing where the rocks land. Now suppose that someone gets hit with one of those rocks and loses an eye and you know nothing about it. If some evidence surfaces later that connects you to this injury, should your previous ignorance of the damage you caused get you off the hook? I think not. You should be punished and made at the very least to pay as much as possible for any damages you caused.
Why is sex any different in this respect?
Too many men refuse to take responsibility for what results from their sexual activities. It reflects badly on all of us men.
If I were to be told to pay child support for a child proven to be mine, one that I had been previously unaware of, I would embrace that responsibility and more. And while I would be frustrated with the woman for not telling me sooner, I would think it right that I be made to pay.
Sex is no different. What is different is that in your example the injured party sued the culprit as soon as they found out who it was, whereas in the child support case they did not. I'm pretty sure that in most jurisdictions if somebody incurred an injury from somebody, chose not to sue, then decided to sue twenty-one years later, the case would not even be admissible to court.
Also, the suing is not consistent with the purpose of child support, which is to be used to provide for the child. If the suing occurs when there is no longer a child, it cannot be used for that purpose.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Quoting oysteroid
If a woman lies to a man about using birth control; conceives, gives birth to, and raises a child and does not tell him; 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc. years later retroactively demands child support payments from him; and the law supports her the whole way, it should not have to be explained how anybody could find all of that morally and legally unacceptable.
The "best interest of the child" argument is poorly thought out. If a man knows that he is a father he will act like a father. That means doing things to increase his income, giving up a lifestyle that is not a good example for his child, etc. Giving women financial incentive to have their maternal cake and eat it too, and in the process keeping a man from being the father he could be, is not in the best interests of children and encourages behavior that hurts them.
If I recall correctly, I believe that Farrell shows that men who have a lot of money are the favorite targets of such fraud.
It may not be a widespread phenomenon like sexual assault, but it is sexist and dehumanizing nonetheless. If just one man and one child is treated that way it needs to be corrected. It reduces fathers to nothing more than sources of sperm and financial support.
As far as I know, only the men's rights movement--a movement that is supposedly not needed and is supposedly misogynistic--is the only place where the problem has been noticed.
It is just one example of why the "no men's rights movement is needed" assertion is false.
The way that I remember the book, that is correct.
Quoting BlueBanana
Yes.
There's no point getting all upset over an injustice that either never happened, or only happens in a few niche legal jurisdictions.
The most common "batterer intervention program" in the US is known as the Duluth model which basically was born out of the same hum-drum feminist pseudo-science that runs the contemporary SJW racket.
It begins with the assumption that men desire power and reinforce that power by oppressing women and children (in the home, in this case) because they have been culturally/ideologically inducted into a patriarchy where they are entitled to do so. It demonizes men as oppressive homunculi and categorizes women as innocent by default.
Determining custody and visitation rights following a divorce falls heavily in favor of women, and while there may be some biological basis for this there do appear to be numerous horror stories where children are left with mothers who are far less fit parents than the father.
Circumcision is actually not a moral thing to do to a child if you think about it, for both males and females. Dozens, perhaps over one hundred, male children die each year because of circumcision in the US. Blood loss, anesthetic complications, infections, painkillers, and other fatal complications can and do arise each year as direct or indirect results of circumcision. The reasoning typically given (other than the standard: "god told us to mutilate our genitals") is that it reduces the risk of contracting STDs (there was a circumcision fad in the 80's that promoted that idea). What it also does is drastically reduces sensitivity of the penile glans, which I can only imagine makes sex less pleasurable (maybe they just have less sex in general...). Is that not a decision we should let them make when they're an adult? If your child asked you if they could have a circumcision, would you allow it?
The idea that a man cannot be raped, and also the idea that we're living in a rape culture perpetuated by men, are the result of the victim-oppressor mentality run amok. Why should a man be insulted, laughed at, and shamed if he should allege that they have been "raped" by a woman? "A boner is consent" is the same argument as "physical pleasure on the part of the woman is consent". It takes some thinking about, but without even getting into the ethics of inebriants and positions of authority, it's pretty clear there is a cultural double standard: man can be raped, it's just that nobody cares.
Men die at work and in wars (yes, more than women), and (supposedly) we don't get a reserved spot on any lifeboats. Men are culturally expected to be providers, which can be a boon or a burden depending on your lot in life. When Boko Haram kidnaps bus loads of schoolgirls, there are no kidnapped boys around because they've either been sent into the jungle to huff glue and become a child soldier, or were long since executed. In the first world, the floundering middle class is perhaps marginally impacted by most of these issues; I don't know if a full blown movement to address them need be called for.
But what does need to be called for is a movement against general stupidity and ignorance concerning the political, statistical, and ethical realities of the ideologies, issues, and proposed policies which we are facing. If you think explicitly paying individual women more than men for the same work (in order to even out the un-examined raw statistics) is praiseworthy, then you need to learn about statistics and economics. If you think that street violence is the best way to oppose fascist, supremacist, (but not authoritarian?) ideologies and rallies then you need to learn how to have a discussion or a debate. If you think that cash payments to minorities ("reparations") will change anything then you don't understand poverty and why it's growing.
We've been fighting so hard for equality for women and minorities since the 60's that we've created an industry out of it. But once that industry achieves the goals it was designed for, what happens to it? It looks for forms of oppression where there atren't any, invents new forms of oppression to decry, and eventually begins cannibalizing itself. Occupy Wallstreet was much closer to having a useful premise with "equitable minimum standards for all" as opposed to "more for individuals with specific and arbitrary demographic identities"...
The great disaster of modernity is that the destruction of legal/moral prohibitions and the unleashing of desire has led to desire becoming its own obstacle. Non-legal prohibition that arises out of rivalrous desire has the greatest potential to block access to the object of desire and traumatize the subject.
I can't help but wonder why someone would shoulder the burden of supporting a child for so many years simply because they believe that 15-20 years in the future, they may recover some of the money they spent doing so. It seems a particularly foolish kind of fraud, doesn't it?
It would have been a fad if there wasn't actual evidence. As it happens, there is. I'll explain, but just to make it clear, I'm not arguing in favor of religious or routine infant circumcision.
For circumcised penises, the exposed glans and skin below the glans is dry, and slightly thicker. An intact foreskin helps populate the surface of the glans (and itself) with white blood cells which fight infection. As it happens, those white blood cells are the target of HIV. Removing the foreskin largely eliminates the white blood cells, and a slightly tougher surface is less likely to provide openings for the virus.
Mass adult circumcisions can be done using double-ring devices which fit around the penis on the inside of the foreskin, with a tight ring on the outside of the foreskin placed over the inner ring. The effect is to strangulate the foreskin, which tissue dies and falls off in about 7-10 days. It's not very painful and fairly safe. Yes, complications can occur. The advisability of using this technique depends on cost-benefit analysis. There is little risk and little suffering in the procedure, but great suffering and cost from developing AIDS. In many parts of the world, the chance of HIV infection and then developing AIDS is quite high.
This procedure would not be used primarily to prevent STDs, other than HIV.
Ordinary surgical circumcision is quite safe but requires much more skill and tends to be painful.
In places where HIV is very high - particularly sub-Saharan Africa - the lessened risk of HIV transmission would be a significant factor, which it is not in other countries. However it would need to be weighed against the likelihood of more grave complications from the procedure in an environment where lower medical support is available and maintaining asepsis post-procedure is more difficult.
I dont think, however that becoming a Christian solves any of these problems. Christians can get just as (if not more) frustrated sexually, emotionally or mentally as anyone else.
So these "isms" like feminism or masculinism are just like getting pills for the side effects caused by other pills etc. This "freedom" of modernity just polarizes society and is the biggest problem
Yeah, too much freedom... not nearly enough bondage...
Why the scare quotes then? I don't grasp the nuance.
You are free to do what the government or the corporations or the mass media wants you to do. The system is basically a slavery system with our eyes wide shut because we think we are free or that we are fighting for our freedom when being feminists or sjws. While the truth is our fight just increases the hate generated by people in power hence making their job easier.
But this is getting off topic.
(Edit: even animals have their tiny bit of freedom in the slaughterhouses, it's a matter of view.)
I don't think that things are so bleak, and I have faith in truth and reason, and people to recognize them. The greatest danger is simply silence, out of fear of not fitting in, basically. I think though, compared to most points in history, and most places currently on the planet, we're doing pretty damn good.
It's always out of superiority complexes or cowardice that we want to restrict freedom, because we think others are stupid and dangerous, and that's a stupid and dangerous thing to think.
Fair enough. I can imagine the popularity of circumcision rising along with the prevalence of HIV if it can or is it thought to reduce the risk...
Still though, we do have some strange as hell cultural norms surrounding the penis. In some ways to have (to be) a penis is to be resistant to physical or emotional harm (and thereby be expected to endure it). Female genital circumcision is almost universally accepted as abhorrent and immoral (mutilation), but male genital circumcision isn't even seen as mutilation by the average person.
Somehow the vagina is a sacred part of the female body, but the penis viewed as corrupting and dangerous; to be rebuked and reviled... This might be a tad anecdotal or over used, but this clip from a talk show really does demonstrate the double standard that men are treated with compared to women:
(they are talking about a case where a woman cut off her partners penis and ground it in a garbage disposal (IIRC he cheated on her))
Could you imagine the outrage (and rightfully so) that would be raised if a man cut off his wife's clitoris for cheating? Since it happened to a man though, emotionally people don't seem to have much empathy...
Some people have brought up that since feminism is meant to be about gender equity, feminism itself can be used by men to confront issues disproportionately facing men (such as suicide). The issue with this is that most feminist schools of thought begin with the presumption that women are currently oppressed by men who hold all the power in society, therefore any analysis of cause and prescribed solutions will come in the form of simply blaming males for male (and all other) problems, and will inevitably suggest female/non-white empowerment (paradoxically in this case as a means to reduce male suicide) as a panacea.
In America, right now, if I tried to organize an event on a random university campus to raise awareness about male suicide, it would be protested and perhaps shut down by angry feminists who believe that any issue afflicting a particular gender must be approached through the looking glass of "intersectional feminism", or else it's misogynistic hate mongering and rape apology. The rhetoric is so charged and spurious that it leads to the formation of social media mobs (and a few real life mobs too) who are only interested in harming and shutting down the rapists, misogynists, fascists, supremacists, etc... This kind of punch first, ask questions never mentality drives most people far away from the feminist brand, and more than a few into various politically alternative corners. And thus the cycle continues...
We need a movement of conversation and less victim-hood outrage so that the handful of issues which do afflict men can be looked at and addressed without violent opposition from confused college students and their terribly naive ideas.
Whether we should blame third wave feminism, post modernism, identity politics, exhibitionists on talk shows, or something else, we seem to have lost important and useful terms. Yes, the personal is political -- but so much discussion seems to be nothing but personal. We need some larger categories.
Class is a larger category that doesn't get much mention, lately. Ordinary men have no more inherent power than ordinary women. Pair sex and wealth, and the power that wealth provides, and men and/or women have real power as part of a self-conscious class of people. More wealth, more power -- whether one is male or female.
Another trend that produces a lot of rubbishy discourse is the heavy focus on individual uniqueness. It isn't narcissism, it's the assumption that everyone is different and unique, except one's opponents who are all alike and are all stupid, to boot. We need the corrective of recognizing the ways in which we are all alike -- men like women, women like men, blacks like whites like asians, young like old, and so on.
It seems to me that female genital circumcision and related practices like disinfibulation of the vaginal opening, are worse than male circumcision. That said, I don't see any justification for circumcision--a practice which arose as a religious cult practice.
The popular image of men is been subjected to fairly intense pejoration -- sometimes for laughs (the stupid, clumsy male in sitcoms), sometimes as leverage (the portrayal of men as violent threats to women), or as targets -- the elite male at the top of the heap who oppresses women.
This is all aided and abetted by the assumption that men and women are radically different needs, and have radically different needs.
Totally. But I think there are more than a handful of issues which men need to talk about -- for their own good, the good of women, and society as a whole.
Occupy Wallstreet, as misguided as it all seemed, was at least asking the right questions. They had no coherent demands but they understood the shrinking middle class and the growing wealth gap as main issues. In my opinion, all of the effort BLM has spent could have been better used in trying to address poverty directly, but like men's vs women's rights issues, the presumptive frame work of oppressors and the oppressed causes emotion and resentment to grind any and all useful discussion to a halt.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But Mr. Crank! Shouldn't we place inherent value someone's ideas especially if they (the person or the ideas) are unique!?
Surely the world is obligated to contort itself into whatever twisted mental shape is required to placate and digest my own individual lunacy, lest, heaven forbid, I be offended.
Humans do tend to think in these cognitively relative terms though: we ourselves are individual and complex; an excuse for everything. Our detractors are monolithic and uniform; to be inherently blamed for everything.
Radically different, in some ways and in some cases, sure, but in a lot of ways our differences amount to nothing important.
Just how different men and women really are though seems to be an uncomfortable truth to someone seeking to bestow all the boons of manhood onto the female population...
I'm not trying to downplay the importance of any individual issue, and maybe in some ways, a movement of a certain size ought to take place to address them, but I'd prefer conversations and smaller movements take place for each individual issue rather than ham-fisting them all into one sloppy emotional package like the usual movements of late.
I just want to get the public and myself closer to actually comprehending the issues so that we have even a chance of solving them.
[b]"DeCrow raised eyebrows in 1981 when she served as defense counsel to Frank Serpico, the former New York detective and whistleblower, in a paternity suit. Serpico claimed the plaintiff had used him as a “sperm bank” and lied about being on the Pill while knowingly trying to conceive, and asserted that he had a constitutional right not to become a parent against his will. (The family-court judge, a woman, ruled in Serpico’s favor, but he lost on appeal.)
DeCrow, by then a lawyer in private practice in Syracuse, New York, endorsed Serpico’s argument on feminist grounds. “Just as the Supreme Court has said that women have the right to choose whether or not to be parents, men should also have that right,” she told The New York Times, calling this “the only logical feminist position to take...”[/b] Source: The Feminist Leader Who Became a Men's-Rights Activist.
If you have 10 mins and are willing to help a Good Cause then please do this anonymous online survey.
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Such blatant straw men are unnecessary. There are outliers to almost every group, and feminist philosophy is no exception. So I have no interest in defending the views of anyone who makes the sweeping generalizations you claim all feminists make--that all power and all benefits go to the men, and there are no benefits for women. I therefore won't accept your hypothetical in the first place because I, as a member of this "orthodoxy," don't think women's liberation covers all oppression ever in the entire world. To say otherwise is a straw man that deviates greatly from the mainstream view.
Now let's breakdown the content of your main argument that men also need activism to gain equality:
1. If there is oppression against men, then feminism is wrong.
2. If a woman has a child without the father's knowledge, he did not have an opinion regarding the existence of that child.
3. If he did not have an opinion regarding the existence of his child, then he cannot be fiscally responsible for the child.
4. If the woman then demands the father is fiscally responsible, he is oppressed.
5. At least once, a woman has had a child without the father's knowledge, and she has demanded that the father is fiscally responsible.
6. Therefore this is oppression against men.
7. Therefore, feminism is wrong.
I want to deny the third premise of your argument. Why does the man need to have an opinion regarding the existence of the child in order to be fiscally responsible for the child? The creation of a child is not 50/50 man/woman, and therefore their opinions over the child's existence does not carry equal weight. For a man to do his part to create a child takes, let's say, 15 minutes. For a women to do her part to create a child takes 9 months. The ratio of 15 minutes to 9 months is 1/25000. So the man's opinion regarding the child's existence carries 1/25000th the weight that the woman's opinion carries--this is just a fact of biology.
So far, all I've established is that sex has consequences. For men, the consequence is 15 minutes = 18 years of fiscal responsibility. For women, the consequence is 15 minutes = 9 months of physical responsibility, then 18 years of fiscal, emotional, mental, and physical responsibility. Still seems like the woman is getting the short end of the stick out of these two options.
I think the goal of your example, while unsuccessful, might have been to establish that women can coerce men into reproducing a child, which is true. Reproduction coercion is a feminist issue, and the mainstream "orthodoxy" is that all reproduction coercion is wrong--whether the man coerces the woman or the woman coerces the man. Any manipulation or deception taken to cause the existence of a child is clearly wrong because of the fact that both adults are responsible for the creation of the child. Deceiving someone into responsibility that they did not freely choose is wrong--and so feminism fights against this oppression (that both men and women are subjected to) in order to create equality between the sexes.
Hahaha. That's not a fact of biology. It's fine to say that the relative time involvement from each, purely re the biological processes required, is a fact, but that implies nothing whatsoever about how much weight anyone's opinion has.
What is your basis then for determining the weight of each parent's opinion?
People simply go by whatever intuitively feels right to them. It's not a factual matter.
Yes. It's not a value assessment.
Yes, there is that minority, who people openly and unashamedly attack with the most stereotypical prejudices and basically people are OK about it. Nobody gives a damn about the open hate speech against this minority.
Above all, this minority is taught just to take it. All the bad mouthing. And many members of this minority try to hide the fact that they belong to this minority. That is actually something that people see as a good thing, that persons don't openly show that they belong to this minority, but hide it. To everything I have said I can give easily examples from history and from the present.
Now you likely have already guessed what minority I'm talking about. Yes, the minority I'm talking about are the rich.
No really. You could make the book that shows that rich people have been persecuted. Just think about all of the Communist revolutions that have literally gone after this class of people.
When they give up at least some of their hegemonic political power.
There you go. Gotcha!
And that's why WISDOMfromPO-MO so apologetically added to his (or her???) OP that " I should probably add that somebody who is reading this thread is probably saying that just by bringing the topic up I am being complicit to misogyny and complicit in the systematic oppression and domination of women. "