Transcript of "Men not marrying? How deep does "the problem" go?"

Okay, so an online friend of mine was spitting mad after reading this recent effort on the part of I can only assume to be a traditionalist woman, in trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with men these days. As so many traditionalists and feminists before her, she missed the mark by a freaking mile, even though she did dance dangerously close (within 100 miles or so) of a few of the core issues that currently discourage men from being good little married drones like they're supposed to be, dammit.

Despite being critical of feminist attitudes that she rightly sees as anti-male, the article was absurdly gynocentric. It was very much about what women want, and there was a lot of expectation that men *should* do what women want when they want it--that is, get married and have babies on HER schedule as decided by her. One has to wonder if she even bothered to ask any actual unmarried males WHY they are refusing or not bothering to "man up" before writing her article.

But as I said, it did at least poke at the surface of the festering boil that is the systemic nature of "the problem", even if it didn't give it the lancing it truly deserved. Her conclusion was "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? And why get a good job when women are so independent they can just give the milk away for nothing?" Both are backhanded criticisms of women's behavior (yay, for someone brave enough to blame women for their own troubles), but they fall far short of any sort of true examination of the issues.

So I'm going to give it the old college try, and give a bit of an overview of what I believe has become a multifaceted problem.

A recent examination from Heartiste said a very great deal, and with some serious literary flair (pearls of wisdom from that pit of social nihilism that is the pick-up artist community). I'm just going to quote some of the relevant bits and leave a link to the article below:

If you want to know why men are running away from marriage, children and beta provisioning, one major reason is that the women available to these working class men are flat out disgusting. Take a look for yourself. What man of normal mental health and active libido wants to romantically woo and date, let alone marry, a beastly, waddling tatted mountain of pustulence with the issue of three other men barking and nipping at her cankles?

And let’s not forget that economically empowered and government-assisted women, slaves to their hypergamous impulse for higher status mates than themselves, can’t help but winnow the pool of men deemed acceptable marriage material. When women say “there are no good men left”, what the astute observer hears is “there are no good men left thanks to a combination of my increased expectations and decreased attractiveness.”

He goes on to say: 

to the factory-farmed ivory tower sociologists studying marriage trends and turning out paper after paper of half-assed hogwash: there’s a whole other world out there. It’s the world of men, and in that world, men’s desires matter. You should think about incorporating that ugly reality into your theories.

Hey, Heartiste--why don't you tell us how you really feel. As blistering as that little snippet was, it raises some very important points, I think the most important of which is that MEN'S DESIRES MATTER. When men cannot find women THEY desire who are willing to partner with them, why would they partner?

And I think it's important to note that the reality of divorce and family law in our culture plays a HUGE part in men's growing contempt for marriage as an institution. It's not that men are commitment-phobes. It's that women seem increasingly commitment-incompatible. The word "commitment" has in fact, in female parlance, come to mean, "up until the moment I'm no longer 100% satisfied with the person I married". And that attitude is only going to lead to more and more divorces as more and more successful women effectively set their sights higher than they reasonably should while their youth and attractiveness wanes, leading to a growing number of them feeling like they settled even if they didn't--even if they scored someone 2 points above them on the overall attractiveness scale.

And oddly enough, no one, least of all women, seem to really give a shit what MEN desire in a partner. Why can't men just be happy with what's available? Well, let's look at what's available to the *average* man in his 30s: a 35 year old woman who hollers yes over the jangling of her biological clock while unable to keep the grimace from her face because he's a bigger loser than the 5 guys she dumped in her 20s and now she has to settle, a divorcee who's already financially annihilated and emotionally crippled at least one man, and a single mother who's collecting reams of child support from one poor schmuck while her other baby daddy manages to duck his obligations because he's a drug dealer and his income's off the books.

And yes, I'm exaggerating, but you see my point.

And no, not all women are like that. But frankly, the consensus among today's women seems to be that this state of affairs is the new normal, and even responsible women will often frame such destructive choices on the part of other women as somehow valid and defensible. The sentiment in the mainstream is that men should just man up and go along with Pairing Up 2.0: Who Cares What Men Want?, that essentially, a given woman's behavior and life choices should have no effect on whether she is able to attract a good, reliable man...this does not speak well of the principles of even those women who are more well-situated. In fact, I think it's safe to say that the fewer female voices of reason there are out there the more men are likely to wash their hands of the entire idea of partnering.

But I honestly think it goes deeper than even the baggage the average unattached woman now carries, or the danger of ending up an emotionally and financially devastated statistic with "generous" every-other-weekend access to one's children that is keeping men from "manning up".

I've been thinking of the White Feather Girls. For those who don't know, it was a group of young women in the UK during WWI who bestowed a white feather of cowardice on any man they saw in civilian clothes, to shame them into enlisting.

And when I consider how vulnerable so many men were to those kinds of shaming tactics, vulnerable enough to enlist in a war that killed 10 million to preserve their manhood in the eyes of women they'd never met, I simply can't believe that it's only the risks of marriage, as onerous as they are, that have rendered men impervious to the kinds of shaming tactics employed by traditionalists and feminists who seem increasingly desperate to strong-arm men into their old roles.

I think at the very core of it, it's about a positive male identity. Male identity almost always revolves around doing, rather than being. Most of that doing has always revolved around being of use in a uniquely male context. Most of men's usefulness through history has derived from learning "male" skills and performing them well, embodying a male role in the service of women or society. In the more turbulent past, those roles needed to perform a valuable service to women or the community that women could not--or should not be expected to--perform for themselves.

This is the most common path to a positive male identity BECAUSE MEN LACK A MECHANISM FOR AUTOMATIC OWN-GROUP PREFERENCE. Simply put, they do not relate to other men automatically, just because they're men.

Women have this bias, which provides them a natural ability to form cooperatives, relate to other women, and seek consensus though their strong mechanism for own-group preference based on gender alone. Given their gender roles through most of human history, this mechanism makes sense. Their individual value as, to put it bluntly, breeders, meant that in a survivalist environment, you didn't throw a woman on the trash pile without a pressing reason. Adjustments were made when possible to keep as many women as you could within the sisterhood. This is where you find a ton of attention in female spaces given to things like "tone" and "being nice" and "getting along" even when there are disagreements. It's all about comfort level and feelings of acceptance.

Men, however, lack the hardwiring to form a preference for maleness based merely on maleness. And that only makes sense when you think about men's roles for the last couple million years or so--roles that involved things like beating the guys down the valley to a pulp when they threatened his women and children, and competing against other males within his community for a shot at the mating game. Given those roles, automatically siding with one's own gender over the other is...well, it just doesn't work.

And it's not that men cannot manifest a form of own-group preference, it's just that when own-group preference manifests in males, it can't be based on maleness alone. There must be a common purpose, a common set of ideals, a common duty or cause, a common doing or a common position in the status hierarchy.

Men can indeed identify with each other and be team players among other men--you see it in churches, military units, fraternities, sports teams and even sports fans, political parties, movements, project teams. While they will often form hierarchies within those contexts, those realms can be sources of a sense of loyalty and brotherhood among men.

The myth among feminists that men will insult each other for displaying feminine traits because they see women as inferior is just that--a myth. Men do this because women have a trump card that bestows intrinsic value on them--their uteruses--and they retain that value even when they gender-bend a little. A woman who acts like a woman is not seen as inferior. A man who acts like a woman has always been seen not as a woman, but as a "woman without a womb". He has no female value, and he has no male value. Therefore, he has NO value at all. And unlike women, men who were not "useful" did--and still do--get thrown on the trash heap of society.

In the currency of reproduction, an ovum goes for a thousand bucks, a uterus is worth a cool mill, and an ejaculation about 10 cents. To be acceptable mating material, and worth keeping around, a man had to do more than generate sperm. And when the only thing keeping you from becoming completely disposable as an individual lies in differentiating yourself from the feminine, well, guys gonna enforce that shit.

This is why men have always tended to define themselves by their roles. Father, husband, working man, soldier, career man, family man, middle class man, politician, activist, etc...in other words, roles to exist in which allow them to relate to other men who also occupy those roles, and to derive a positive and meaningful identity from performing their masculinity through those roles.

And I think this may be why suicide rates for men skyrocket after divorce--you have not just taken away his kids, his wife, his assets and a chunk of his income. You've effectively stripped him of a huge part of the male identity he's built around himself.

So I'm thinking that for most men, forming a positive male identity in relation to other males requires a couple of things--a male role that is differentiated from the female one (or at the very least, a male-oriented environment) and, well, positivity.

Men used to be able to derive a positive male identity from marriage. That is, through the respected and uniquely male role of husband and father. When that identity is increasingly characterized by society as superfluous, obsolete, or in the words of Harriet Harman, unnecessary to social cohesion, it is no longer a way for a man to defer his disposability, is it? Moreover, when that identity can be unilaterally stripped from him on the whim of the increasingly fickle and hard to please female even when he does everything right, marriage ceases to be a positive way for men to define themselves as men. It becomes a way for men to define themselves as chumps and idiots, and who wants to define themselves that way? Moreover, from sitcoms to romcoms to TV commercials, to billboard ads, the role of husband/father is increasingly one of playing the incompetent buffoon to sassy, smart, together wife or even child. In the mass media there is nothing noble or respectable about husbandhood or fatherhood anymore. Further, when the roles within marriage become virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable, a man's role becomes less and less...well, uniquely male. It's just a role. It can be a path to meaning and fulfilment (if he's lucky), and it may be something he desires to do and become, but it's not necessarily a path to defining himself AS A MAN.

So we can scratch that one off the list--even for men who've been living under a rock when it comes to divorce law. Marriage and children no longer offer a reliable path to a positive male identity. It is no longer positive, nor is it significantly differentiated from the feminine.

The workplace is yet another milieu that has largely lost its maleness. And that's not to say that women ruined everything. It is not so much the presence of women but rather the alterations in environment and interaction many women demand when they want to engage the world through the paid workforce. A male space that leads to a positive male identity need not be free of women, but it still needs to be male--men need an environment that suits their psychology, not one in which they must be metaphorically castrated in order to steer clear of trouble with HR. And I'm not even talking about vulgarity or expressions of sexuality, but aggression, ambition, ribbing, competition, passion, authority, and plain speech--all of these are often discouraged when women are present, in order to spare feelings and prevent discomfort. Outspokenness is replaced with drawing room rules of discourse and ingenuity with protocol, all of which render a feminized workplace, though tolerable to men, no longer a path to a positive MALE identity.

Because it is no longer a male space, and no longer appeals to the psychology of men, the workplace has become a ladder fewer men feel driven to climb in order to construct their identities. Combine this with the fact that we handicap men through quotas and affirmative action for women, well... a large number of men are not only becoming disenchanted with the expectation to perform in an environment that does not feed their natures and has set them up to fail--in the absence of those uniquely male-centered psychological rewards and motivators, a growing number are finally opening their eyes and waking up to the negative aspects of wage-slavery. And that is a pill that, once taken, cannot be unswallowed.

In every space males congregate where women have elbowed their way in and demanded changes, you seem to find large numbers of men giving ground and eventually losing their drive to perform there. And again, I don't think it's the presence of women that does this--it's the enforced necessity to change one's behavior in order to maintain a proper decorum around them, and the changes in how those places function that women often demand. It's the expectation that the environment and the men in it adjust to suit women's needs, rather than expecting women to adjust themselves to the environment.

A few bastions of maleness remain, places where women are often welcome right up until they begin to demand the environment change to suit them, at which point the male protests begin. Hell, you can even see this tolerance on the part of men when women sneak into the men's room when the line-up is too long for the women's bathroom. It's all good unless she takes offence at men behaving the way men do in a restroom by farting and pissing in her presence.

So where are men retreating to? The internet, and the few men's spaces that have not tailored their rules of conduct to suit women's easily offended natures and need for comfort. The MRM, where a common set of ideals and values bonds the community and allows them to define their maleness irrespective of society's or women's approval. A place where words and ideas are more important than the tone or the smiles that may or may not lie behind them.

The hierarchy and uniquely male objectives of the pick-up artist community, where competition and scorekeeping are indeed still allowed, where there are men for others to admire or to mentor, and where they thumb their noses at what women say they want. Society wasn't working for them, so they invented their own society and they're running with by their own rules.

Video games and related forums. Online venues where refusals to police speech are deemed misogyny and the men there don't give much of a fuck.

Men going their own way, who've taken a stand based on a realistic assessment of what's in it for them, and maintain their self-respect not by complying with society's expectations but by disregarding them.

Beer and buddies, hook-up culture, and part time jobs men tolerate but don't care about.

Gynocentrism--the manginas and white knights who supplicate and pander to the feminine even when it's ugly or amoral, differentiating themselves from the feminine through their blind worship of it.

And why? Because all of the "approved" paths to a positive male identity, the paths society both endorses and depends on, are gone. And even when men don't consciously realize this, they know it somewhere in the backs of their brains. Men have always worked and sacrificed and sweated and bled if they were rewarded with a means through which to see themselves as worthy of respect. But when every role society wants to cram you into is no longer a way to respect yourself, then it's time to throw those roles away.

And one thing the apexuals at the top, like Bill Bennett and Obama, feminists like Kaye Hymowitz and Katie Roiphe, and traditionalists like Suzanne Venker, will never realize is that using shame to try to coerce men to do what is expected of them isn't going to work this time, because while it's possible to shame a man into giving his life for his country if there's a promise of respect in it, it's impossible to shame someone into working his ass off and risking his future just for the joy of looking in the mirror and seeing Homer Simpson or Ray Barone looking back at him.

When the cost of society's approval is the self-respect you derive from a positive identity, it ceases to be worth it to a lot of men.

Feminism and Gender Enforcement

I know most of you are probably expecting this to be a diatribe about how feminism has vilified and demonized male sexuality, and criticized the aggressive qualities (ambition, achievement, competitiveness, assertiveness) of masculinity that have been so useful to society since the dawn of time.

I mean, it's no secret to those in the know that feminism is all too happy to reinforce, manipulate and even codify the cultural norms surrounding maleness--in domestic violence discourse, policy and law, sexual assault discourse, policy and law, family law, etc.

But what I want to talk about is how feminism has manipulated and enforced other masculine qualities that most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about in any depth with respect to feminism. I mean, if society has been well-served by the men who were ambitious and high-achieving--the scientists, inventors, artists, leaders, etc, who inhabited the upper echelons of social status--well, for every William Shakespeare or Henry V or Sir Isaac Newton, there were a thousand or ten thousand male cogs in the machinery of society, dutifully bending their backs and making the whole thing work, often at the expense of their health, their happiness and their lives.

These men were dutiful, honorable, responsible, self-sacrificing, generous, hard-working, decent, and devoted to those in their care. "Nose to the grindstone", "get 'er done", "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do", "grow up, get a job, do something with your life."

I've often thought that there's not that much difference between a "mangina" and what has always been thought of as a "real man". Both manginas and real men are generous, thoughtful of others (especially women), and put the benefit of others (especially women) before themselves. Manginas have been accused, probably accurately, of behaving this way out of a (mostly vain) hope of being rewarded with pussy. Real men, throughout history, did this because it needed to be done, and because up until very recently, a real man's efforts and sacrifices were worth the rewards he received, even if those rewards only consisted of social acknowledgment and appreciation and the returned devotion of a woman.

A real man will help a woman move her shit, and expect a thank you. A mangina will go way out of his way to ingratiate himself by helping her, and then tolerate being treated like an asshole for it.

And "guys"? When a woman needs to lug her furniture from one apartment to another, "guys" duck her calls and let them go to voice mail. And if she wants a commitment? Forget that shit, he's got his XBox.

The collective feminist gnashing of teeth over this state of affairs has been no less frenzied than that of more traditional arms of society, as they all scratch their heads and wonder whatever happened to real men.

We've gotten so used to men's sense of duty, obligation and responsibility toward women, children and society, that we didn't even know what we had until we realized it was going extinct. And you see the anger and lamentation over men abandoning those roles nowhere more than in what many feminists have to say about "guys".

Guys--or MGTOW--are characterized by feminists and traditionalists alike as irresponsible to the point of repugnance, commitment-phobic, losers, Peter Pans, wasting their lives, and refusing to "grow up". Keep in mind, these men aren't welfare cases. They're self-sufficient, not leeching off their families or society. They don't peel up and down suburban streets at 3 AM waking up babies and kicking over mailboxes, or refuse to pay their taxes. But as Kay Hymowitz once put it, they're free to live in "pig heaven" until women get sick of it and go to a sperm bank.

But think about what this kind of criticism is actually saying about our expectations--even feminists' expectations--of men.

The complaint is not that they're a burden on others or on society, but that they refuse to take on anyone else's burdens. This is a far cry from the very occasional, heavily-qualified criticisms we hear of women--and utter condemnation of men--when they willingly take on a responsibility by, say, having children, and then fail to live up to it. No, this is all about, "You men are not doing what women want, and what women want is to be given what they want."

Women have spent the last 50 to 75 years challenging the roles they used to be stuck in, sort of negotiating and renegotiating with society as to exactly what was acceptable and what was pushing too far too fast. They've cast off their shackles, been free to define themselves as women, and to put personal fulfilment first. Until recently, for men, it's been mostly business as usual--they've worked, achieved, devoted themselves to women and children, and continued to put the good of others before themselves.

And I think women, and society, sort of figured that men would just keep doing it--working, being responsible, being dutiful and honorable, toiling and sacrificing for the betterment of society or the benefit of women, achieving, building, etc... even though a huge number of the benefits men were given in exchange for these efforts and for putting others first have been effectively removed. What used to be a well-compensated bondage is now an entirely onerous form of imprisonment. 

I mean really, how long can you expect a man to continue living up to those expectations when society stops respecting or appreciating them for it, when society only threatens to take away what he's built and what he loves, shoves its hands deeper into his pockets, and constantly tells him he's an idiot, or evil, or unnecessary, or a piece of shit?

A lot of feminist writers have been taking great pains to tell everyone for years about what giant assholes men are and have always been. And even when men do awesome things, like working around the clock digging children out of a collapsed school after a tsunami, it's just another opportunity to remind people how the chaos of the situation puts children at risk from pedophiles (who are always men, of course). When men die saving lives, they're called police officers or firefighters, but when they mow down a bunch of innocent people at a mall, they're gunmen. Hell, even the millions of men whose lives have been callously and brutally thrown away on battlefields through history--even their suffering and tragedy can be appropriated by feminists to prove to everyone who'll listen that women have always had it worse. 

Can anyone blame men for finally starting to say fuck this shit, why try to cram yourself into that mold if you're just going to be called an asshole? Some--PUAs, most notably--are even saying, "Fuck, if I have the name, I might as well have the game."

For the first time in history, men are starting to do what makes them happy, even if it doesn't benefit women or society, hell, even if it pisses women and society off. And EVERYBODY'S freaking out about it.

I'm not gonna lie, it's a tough pill for everyone to swallow, because those characteristics--duty, honor, devotion, self-sacrifice, responsibility--are the very characteristics that societies are largely built on. Without them, it's every human for him/herself, isn't it?

And feminism--which pushed women to live for their own fulfilment, to be true to themselves, to break out of the roles they were stuck in, who insist patriarchal gender norms harm everyone--should be celebrating men's increasing casting-off of their shackles, of men's smashing of patriarchy by eschewing traditional masculinity in favor of smoking pot with their buddies. But they aren't. Because feminism itself has been as dependent on those particular male roles as individual women have been throughout human history.

I mean, the entire feminist movement, and society's reaction to it (swift capitulation), boils down to the interaction of two traditional gender norms, right? Women wanted to be protected, provided for and given the things they want and need. And men have, for the most part, kept doing that, for decades, even as what women say they want and need has changed. Mostly male governments have passed laws and enacted public policy that gave women what they wanted (freedom, protection, provision, support, and opportunity) and individual men have also continued to keep giving women what they say they want and need (freedom, provision, support, understanding, accommodation).

Those are the two patriarchal gender norms that have been at work throughout the entire timeline of the feminist movement--women asking for something, and men doing it or going along with it to make women happy. So I suppose it's been something of a shock to women when men started putting their foot down and saying, "Yeah, I don't think so. Me first now. I got shit of my own to deal with." The men's rights movement has only driven this point home for feminists and women in general, and it's like two gender norms going kablooie all at once--women being indulged in their needs and desires, and men being indulgent of them.

And the most radical feminists? I kind of think of radical feminism itself as a kind of collective shit-test. Sort of a "Are you guys really gonna let us get away with this? Huh, I guess you are... Okay, how about this? We're really talking some shit about you now. You gonna let that stand? Hmmm.... Okay, well, I bet you're not gonna put up with THIS!" 

And the longer people have put up with it and let them get away with it, the higher they've escalated the test. The collective temper tantrum that's begun over men starting to put their foot down--whether it's through activism and advocacy for the equality of men, or through playing XBox and refusing to devote themselves to doing what women want them to--rivals the antics of any three-year-old denied candy in a grocery store check-out line.

And me? Do I want men to cast off those roles they've had throughout history? To be honest, no. Those roles are beneficial to society, and they get shit done that needs to get done. But do I blame men for saying, "Hells, no, I only look out for me now"? Why would they do anything different? There's no individual benefit in men living up to those standards anymore--not even appreciation--only risk, punishment and the reward of being called an asshole no matter what you do. 

Who the fuck needs that?

Sex, Lies and Political Agendas

A very good article over at the False Rape Society, on how women's advocates are harming victims by their spinning of the outcome of the DSK sexual assault case. I started to leave a comment there, but then it got kinda big, so I decided a post was in order.

Prosecution's decision to drop the case has been condemned by women's advocates as a miscarriage of justice. They characterize the system as one that demands a "perfect victim" if they aren't going to abandon her. This is a gross mischaracterization of the facts of this specific case. Nafissatou Diallo was not just an "imperfect victim", she was a "toxic complainant" who has a long history of lying, and has done pretty much nothing but lie from the moment she reported the alleged incident.

Credibility is important in a sexual assault case--more important than in many other criminal prosecutions. In cases of rape and sexual assault, there is often no physical evidence unambiguously indicating a crime was even committed. What evidence there may be is frequently evidence of a legal act, not a criminal one. The factors that differentiate the legal act of sex from the crime of rape are based entirely on two states of mind: those of the victim's non-consent, and the perpetrator's intent--that is, his (or a reasonable or law-abiding person's) awareness of the victim's lack of consent.

There are usually only two witnesses who can testify to either party's state of mind at the time of the incident--and each of those two witnesses have a vested and oppositional interest in the outcome of the trial. This means that in a sexual assault case, credibility is everything. Due to the ambiguity of the evidence and the biases of the only eyewitnesses, it should be more difficult to convict a man of rape than it is to convict a man of murder, or aggravated assault, or any number of other crimes that rely more heavily on physical/forensic evidence.

But here's something I bet you all didn't know (I'll explain why you probably don't know it below). The conviction rate for rape is frequently higher than the conviction rate for homicide. Seriously. The conviction rate for a crime where there is no unambiguous physical evidence, and which therefore hinges almost entirely on a jury believing one party over the other, is often higher than the conviction rate for a crime with a dead body, forensic evidence of cause of death, and physical evidence tying the defendant to the crime.

To suggest that the outcome of the DSK case means the system "doesn't work" is egregiously misleading and harmful. I'm not going to lie. The system works perfectly for neither victims nor defendants, but it's the best possible balance we can manage given the circumstances. And to characterize the dismissal of the DSK case as some sort of evil on the part of the prosecution is...well, I can only say it's batshit insane. Diallo repeatedly lied to those whose job it is to help her and punish the man who allegedly assaulted her. Then recanted her lies, only to present prosecutors with, yup, more lies. She insisted she was not after money, then launched a civil suit against DSK for monetary damages. She lied to the Grand Jury, under oath. She quite plainly proved herself to be someone who can't be counted on to tell the truth about anything.

Even more frightening to prosecutors was her ability to lie with "complete conviction". This meant that, no matter how convincing her story of a given day or week was, there was no way for prosecutors to determine if THIS particular version was the truth. The complaining witness was not an "imperfect victim". She was the justice system's worst nightmare. To go to trial with an alleged victim who can lie so convincingly that even prosecutors could not tell truth from falsehood...this could result in railroading a potentially innocent man based on the word of a woman who'd taken a tire iron to her own credibility.

As the FRS rightly claims, this case does not demonstrate that prosecutors require "perfect victims", and it is the women's advocates who make such absurd statements--not police or prosecutors--who are discouraging women from coming forward to report their rapes.

But I think women's "advocates" have a very different agenda from the one they openly admit to. As people who care about women, and care about rape victims, they should be doing everything in their power to convince women to come forward and report when they are raped. And yet they do the exact opposite.

WHY?

I once suggested on a feminist forum that my advice to any victim of rape was to get a kit done. Even if you don't want to report--in fact, even if you're positive you don't want to--getting a kit done leaves you with options if you ever change your mind. You can stand on the bridge for a long time before deciding to cross it or go back, but not if you've burned the way in front of you--and you do that by washing away all the physical evidence of what was done to you. Not getting a rape kit done erases all your choices, removes all your power.

Oh, the shit I got from feminists! That I should have the gall to "tell victims what to do! Don't you realize how hard it is? How small the chances of justice are? How victims are revictimized if they report? It's up to every victim how she wants to respond to what happened to her! She knows what's best for herself!"

I suppose it's just as well that I didn't suggest that women have a social responsibility to report their rapes, even if they don't want to go through the ordeal of pursuing charges. Go in to police, tell them, "I was raped. His name is John Doe. His DNA is in a test tube at Local Hospital. I don't want to pursue the case. But if another woman comes in saying this guy raped her, believe her and do everything you can to nail him."

Imagine someone implying that women have a responsibility to other people! I would probably have been crucified for even hinting at such a thing.

Sigh.

There's a pervasive and very public sentiment among feminists and women's advocates that it is pointless to report. That women should not trust the police or the legal system because it will, at best, let them down, and at worst, clobber them. At the same time, they inflate rape statistics, always applying the highest possible estimates on non-report figures (even when such numbers couldn't possibly add up), and including women who didn't believe they'd been raped among victims in surveys. At the same time, they deflate false report statistics, clinging to the insistence that false report rates for rape are ~2%, the same as for every other crime, even though a growing body of evidence places the rate somewhere between 8% and a staggering 50%.

They routinely compare the attrition rate for rape (the percentage of reported rapes that end in conviction) alongside the conviction rates (the percentage of trials that end in conviction) for other crimes. How many times have we all read that the "conviction rate" for rape is a "pathetic" 6%, when in reality it is usually 50-60%, and often higher than the conviction rate for homicide.

All while simultaneously implying there is nothing women can do, no way they can (or should) dress or behave that will minimize their risk, and that every woman is at risk because "any woman can be raped". They go out of their way to highlight a "culture of victim-blaming" that, in their view, applies solely to rape, when I would argue that we as a society are more likely to engage in blaming male victims of female violence (he must have done something to deserve it, he was probably a cheater, he probably battered her, she was defending herself), and male victims of female reproductive abuse (he should have thought of that before he had sex, don't stick your dick in crazy, if he didn't want kids he should have kept it in his pants).

Even when these feminists and victim advocates are being nominally truthful, they still spin the truth in the most pessimistic light.

It's like they want women to believe that there's a HUGE chance they'll be raped, that there's nothing they can do to prevent it, and that when it happens, not only will no one help them, but those responsible for helping them will only inflict more harm on them. To what purpose?

We're seeing the thin end of the wedge on campus now, with the attack on due process rights--the new 50.01% burden of proof, the barring of an accused from cross-examining his accuser, etc. Feminist's defence of this atrocious situation tends to consist of, "What, so it's a horrible thing that the accused won't be able to personally ask the accuser, 'Isn't it true you're a big ol' slut?'" when such a question would already be inadmissible in any hearing or court. Again, painting a false picture of the process as it was before this "reform" in the ugliest possible colors.

I can only believe that those who engage in this kind of scare-mongering and doomsaying have a specific goal in mind. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but here's how I see it, looking at the entirety of feminist discourse on rape:

• discourage women from reporting by telling them it is pointless, that they won't be believed, or will be blamed for their own rapes and revictimized by the system, that the police can't be trusted
• manipulate consent law to the point where even women who enthusiastically participated in consensual sex can be numbered among victims (consensual drunk sex, consensual unconscious sex)
• generate fear among women by telling them there is nothing they can, or should have to, do to protect themselves from rape
• generate fear among women by telling them that any woman at any time is at risk of rape
• inflate the numbers for underreporting, leading to a pervasive belief that rape is everywhere
• compare attrition rates for rape with conviction rates for other crimes, so that the public will believe the system doesn't work in rape cases
• constantly reiterate the erroneous 2% false rape "statistic", generating an erroneous assumption that women "don't lie about rape"
• define rape as a crime of "patriarchal domination" rather than one that has a multitude of different factors and causes--in other words, blame rape on "maleness" in such a way that all men are cast as rapists or rapists-in-waiting
• charge the discourse with emotional language that places "feelings" in authority over facts--i.e: "If she feels she was raped, then she was raped."
• characterize the necessary due process protections for accused rapists as an "infringement of female/victim's rights", even though the "rights" of complainants--female or otherwise--are currently greater in cases of sexual assault and rape than in other criminal case (anonymity is a privilege, not a right, as is the inadmissibility of an accuser's sometimes relevant sexual history)

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here? The last thing many women's advocates want is for anyone to believe the system isn't irreparably broken. Because if it isn't hideously broken, then there is no need to "fix" it or rebuild it. And if rape isn't everywhere, and something women must walk around in constant fear of, then the masses will simply never be terrified enough of it to enact the kind of overhaul that would lead to the kinds of "reforms" that are "necessary", ones we've already seen enacted on campuses across the US.

After examining the entirety of the rhetoric of sexual assault and rape from feminist circles, I can only conclude that the end game of women's advocacy groups is to reengineer sexual assault and rape law to the point where a woman need only claim a man raped her for him to be locked away for years. 

Welcome to Hell.

You lying liar

Index case:  the case of the original patient (propositus or proband) that stimulates investigation of other members of the family to discover a possible genetic factor. In epidemiology, the first case of a contagious disease.

Remember the movie "Outbreak"? You know--1995, Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, that adorable Capuchin Monkey of "Friends" fame? Remember how emergency medical dudes painstakingly traced--through geographic/epidemiological examination of the outbreak--the evil Motaba hemorrhagic fever virus all the way back to the "patient zero"--that cute little black and white monkey? Oh Marcel, how could you? Bad monkey!

What does all this have to do with Men's Rights, you ask? Well, in a 2000 article published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Edward Greer did his own epidemiological study on something MRAs are all too familiar with: the 2% false rape accusation statistic feminists use to defend their stance on the increasing erosion of due process in sex crimes cases. 

You hear it all over the place: "Experts claim that false reports of rape and sexual assault make up no more than 2% of all accusations, which is comparable to the false report numbers for other serious crimes." Or, "According to experts, only approximately 2% of women reporting rape are falsely reporting, therefore the investigative standard should be to believe the accuser and pursue all cases to the full extent of the law." Or, "Because experts agree only 2% of rape reports are false, while at the same time the vast majority of rapes are not reported, prosecuting false accusers will only provide a further disincentive to real victims to report their rapes." 

I have even had the odd feminist in an online discussion express to me that falsely imprisoning a few men is a small price to pay if it means victims of rape will be more likely to report. Never mind the fact that a man falsely convicted of rape is almost guaranteed to become a victim of rape once in prison. A small price to pay, indeed. This is how feminism balances the scales of justice--penalizing a women of a real criminal wrongdoing = net bad for society, while penalizing a man for something he didn't do (and for which he will continue to pay once he becomes someone's bitch in prison) = net good for society.

And it's all based on the "fact" that only 2% of rape claims are falsified.

So where did the 2% statistic come from? According to Greer, who picked through dozens of feminist academic papers and articles, and painstakingly followed the pyramidal pattern of citations they contained to their original source, the statistic originated in a 1975 book by Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Ms. Brownmiller, in her book, attributed the 2% figure to a speech by Lawrence H. Cooke, Appellate Division Justice, Before the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Jan. 16, 1974.

According to Greer:  "When I contacted the then-judge’s law clerk, and he made  inquiry of all those directly involved in the preparation of Judge Cooke’s speech, their best recollections are that they did not rely upon any report but cannot remember precisely how they did obtain the two percent figure."

So there's no study. No report. No survey. No peer-reviewed examination of any data-set. Just a speech that is itself uncited, quoted in a book written over 35 years ago, then repeated as fact over and over and over throughout feminist academia until the misinformation infects the entire discourse.

Could the 2% false report figure be accurate? Well, depending on who you ask, the real figure is anywhere between 2% and 50%. An Australian study conducted between 2000 and 2003 found that of 815 cases, 2.1% were demonstrated clearly enough to be false that charges were threatened or laid. 

In his 1994 study of one small, urban community where all rape reports were investigated and polygraph tests were routinely offered to both accusers and accused, Dr. Eugene J. Kanin of Purdue University examined almost a decade of rape reports. Disregarding all other factors (physical or testimonial evidence, police findings, etc) and going only by complainants' responses when subjected to or threatened with polygraph testing, the percentage of false reports between 1978 and 1987 was a staggering 41%. 

One critic of Kanin's study--Dr. David Lisak of the University of Massachusetts, Boston--performed his own study, published in 2010 in Violence Against Women, which found a false report figure of 5.9%. Though significantly lower than Kanin's findings, it's still three times higher than the 2% figure we hear so often.

Much of what is believed about the 2% false report figure derives from a time when procedures for dealing with rape cases were very different than they are now. The figure itself originated in a 1974 speech by a NY judge, and may well have reflected reality at the time. What woman would falsely report a rape back in 1974, when victims were routinely put on trial themselves, details of their lives released by the media, and revictimized by the system? And yet, even in a social and criminal environment that stigmatized victims, in a time when they were pitted against a system biased against believing them, a time when victims really were blamed for their own rapes because they dressed like sluts or weren't "good girls" or were otherwise unsympathetic, and the likelihood of being criminally prosecuted for falsely reporting was much greater...even then, according to that NY judge and Susan Brownmiller, 2% of women made false accusations.

Even back then--when a plaintiff's testimony was almost never enough to put a man away, when physical evidence--bruises, vaginal tearing, semen, etc--that a crime had not only been committed, but that it had been committed by the defendant, was required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and when a victim's identity was not protected--the rate of false accusations was, according to Brownmiller and other feminists, about 2%. 

Fast forward to 2011, when erosion of due process is turning sexual crimes into a liability offense, where victims are assumed to be truthful and the onus is increasingly placed on the accused to prove himself innocent. Where accusers' names are withheld by the media, and accuseds' names are routinely released. Where cross-examination of the plaintiff in regard to her sexual history is forbidden. Where evidence of sex is not technically required, let alone evidence of violent or nonconsensual sex. Where false accusers are not to be punished, even when their accusations have been determined to be motivated by malice. Prevailing wisdom still insists that a large percentage of rapes and sexual assaults are going unreported, but can anyone reasonably argue that a woman choosing not to report now is doing so out of fear of not being believed, reluctance to have her life picked apart on the stand, or fear of public shame? And can we still presume that the number of false rape and sexual assault reports remains at a paltry 2%?

When my older two kids were small and my older stepsons would visit, my ex and I used to have a recurring argument whenever a conflict between the kids arose. His assertion was that "little kids don't lie" and therefore when our younger kids pointed the finger at one of their half-brothers, they were to be believed. My contention was that little kids lie like rugs, that empathy and conscience doesn't fully develop until kids are around school age and a four year old will happily let someone else hang for his own crime if it means he doesn't have to swing himself. 

Considering the fact that a percentage of adults wilfully commit crimes--theft, murder, assault, fraud--knowing it's ethically and legally wrong...well, there are people out there who will do whatever is in their self-interest that they feel they can get away with. The more they feel they can get away with it, the more likely they are to do it. This is not rocket science. This is not 4th year psychology. It's fucking common sense.

Should we go back to the days before Rape Shield Laws existed? No. Should some instances of a plaintiff's sexual history be considered during a rape trial? Hell yes, if she has a history of false or unsubstantiated rape accusations. Otherwise, no. Should we protect the identity of the accused? Oh, fuck, yes, at least until conviction, because of the degree of damage a simple accusation, no matter how unfounded, can be to a man's reputation, livelihood and relationships. 

But presuming that women don't and won't lie about rape because...well, because they're women? This is a logical fallacy and a complete departure from reality that astounds me. And basing the criminal justice system's entire approach to sex crimes on the absurd assumption that only 2% of women lie about rape, and that punishing them for lying is irresponsible...this is insanity. 

The Female Privilege Checklist

In discussions of social and legal issues, I have frequently heard feminists (and gays and lesbians and transgendered people and people of ethnic minorities and, well, pretty much any identifiable group) tell others to "check your privilege", especially in cases where other individuals offer viewpoints that differ from accepted norms. 


This can be valuable advice, when it is given in good faith. We should all examine not only the ways in which we are disadvantaged, but take the time to really look at the areas in which we have advantages others do not--even when those advantages are the result of measures taken by the law and society to alleviate a disadvantage. As I told the teenage busboy at work last night when he was complaining the truck his father had given him was several years old, "You should get down on your knees and thank your dad, you ungrateful brat. You know what my teenagers get? $20 shoes and a goddamn bus pass." He was offended at first, but after he thought about it for a while, he realized just how lucky he is and actually thanked me.


However, in almost every instance I see the phrase, "check your privilege," used by a member of a group that is considered to be disadvantaged, it is used to convey victim status in relation to the dissenter, and to shut down all discussion other than that which confirms the group's beliefs. Moreover, they will often insist that because they are disenfranchised by virtue of their membership in the group, there is no way they could also hold privilege due to their membership in the same group. This is so not the case.


Privilege is largely about the real-world consequences of stereotyping and prejudice. Stereotyping and prejudice may be disfavored as a way of determining the true characteristics of a given individual, and thus be a "bad thing"...but at the same time, they don't always result in negatives for the people stereotyped, and when they result in positive effects, many are entirely prepared to take advantage of their privilege. Consider: Asians are likely to be assumed to be bad drivers = negative effect on individuals. Conversely: Asians are likely to be assumed to be good at tech and math = positive effect for individuals in certain contexts, such as when s/he is applying for jobs in these areas.


And while privilege is a complicated thing--affluent, white, straight, well-educated, able-bodied males being "at the top" in most contexts, middle class black males inhabiting a huge gray zone with upper class, white gay males somewhere down the privilege ladder, and mixed race, overweight, disabled, poor, uneducated, transgendered lesbians stuck right at the very bottom...well, it all gets complicated when you start considering just who has more advantages and disadvantages than whom. 


It's a contest these days, and to hear people talk, everyone's vying for the prized spot at the very, very, very bottom. Discussions of race, class, sexuality, gender and gender identity, disability, economic status, education level, all seem to devolve into a bizarre exercise in "one-downmanship", where everyone clamors that they are a more victimy victim than everyone else.


But some things really are black and white--at least they seem so. When considering things like male/female gender privilege, you need only consider the bilateral--that is, how does one play out in relation to the other? That is, what privileges do men enjoy solely due to their gender that women of similar economic class, education level, race, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, etc etc, do not?


And conversely--and contrary to what many feminists believe--what privileges do women enjoy that men do not, all other things being equal? I was asked by a feminist to provide a list, and I did. She dismissed it as a "failed experiment." But I wonder what all of you might think of my female privilege checklist. Feel free to suggest more in the comments, if you think of any--I'll update the list as necessary.


Women are requested to consider whether they can answer "yes" to these questions:


1) People are likely to assume I am a warm and empathetic person.


2) People are likely to assist me when I must perform a physically arduous task.


3) If my car breaks down or I am otherwise in distress, people will be more likely to stop and help me.


4) If I am being physically assaulted, no matter the gender of my assailant, it is more likely that passersby will intervene.


5) People are likely to assume I am a competent parent, unless and until I prove otherwise.


6) People are more likely to respect my right to be offended by inappropriate or impolite behavior.


7) If I yell, people are not likely to believe I am going to hurt them.


8) Dress codes in the workplace and in leisure contexts are more likely to allow me to choose clothing that emphasize my most attractive features and minimize those I am unhappy with.


9) I am allowed by society to wear make-up to make myself more attractive without anyone questioning my sexual orientation. I am given a large social leeway in the kinds of hairstyles I can choose that will flatter my facial features.


10) If I work in a profession that is dominated by the opposite gender, people are likely to see it as "heroic", or a sign of social progress, rather than that I am deficient in some way.


11) If I show weakness, the first response of most people will be to console or help me, not criticize me, ignore me, or dismiss me as pathetic.


12) I am not expected to make the "first move" when meeting members of the opposite sex for the purposes of dating.


13) Members of the opposite gender are expected to make the first move; therefore, it is less likely I will be sexually rejected by those I come into close contact with in a dating context.


14) I am not expected to spend a significant portion of my yearly income on a token that accompanies a marriage proposal.


15) I am less likely to be expected to spend a significant amount of money on gifts, tokens, and activities during courtship and dating.


16) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are unlikely to assume I am cheap.


17) If I am having dinner with a member of the opposite gender in a non-dating context, and I do not reach for the check, people are still unlikely to assume I am cheap.


18) If I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny.


19) If I earn nothing and my partner supports me, no one will look at me funny.


20) If I am unemployed and my partner is supporting me, people other than my partner are unlikely to pressure me because I am "not trying hard enough" to find employment.


21) If I earn less than my partner, people are unlikely to expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses.


22) If I am skilled in activities/hobbies that are commonly attributed to the opposite gender (kick boxing, operating power tools, shingling a roof, knitting, scrap-booking, floral arranging), people will see me as admirable. No one is likely to think I am a weirdo or wonder if I'm gay.


23) If I am completing a task with a member of the opposite gender, it will be expected that they take the greater physical burden--such as carrying the heavier boxes.


24) If I cry or am hurt, men and women are unlikely to tell me to "suck it up".


25) If I choose to stay at home with my children while my partner works, people are unlikely to think I am a deadbeat, unskilled, or shirking my responsibility to my family.


26) If I choose discontinue, temporarily leave, or reduce my participation in a high-status career in order to spend time at home caring for children, people are likely to consider it a "noble sacrifice" rather than a waste of my talents. 


27) If I work and have a family, my employer will be less likely to require me to work overtime or bring work home with me. This will be the case even if I equally share domestic duties with my partner, or have outside domestic help (housekeeper, nanny).


28) If an employer claims to have "non-sexist" hiring policies, I can assume this to mean that members of my gender will be more likely to be hired, rather than less.


29) If I choose a career in early childhood or elementary level education, or volunteer to work with youth, no one will wonder if it's because I am a pedophile. They will trust me, even if they are aware that members of my own gender can and sometimes do use these positions to facilitate their sexual abuse of children.


30) If I commit a crime against children, even before details come out, people are likely to want to believe I have been falsely accused, was "failed by the system", or was somehow "driven to it" by factors outside my control (such as mental illness, poverty, lack of social services, childhood abuse), because members of my gender "just don't do stuff like that". It is unlikely they will automatically attribute my actions to unprovoked aggression or hold me entirely responsible for them.


31) If I am a victim of domestic violence, there are many services in my community that will help people of my gender. It is unlikely I will be denied services based on my gender.


32) If my partner physically abuses me, I will be believed by the authorities. Their belief will not depend on whether I have physical signs of injury.


33) If I physically abuse my partner, people--including the authorities and victim's services personnel--are likely to assume it was in self defence. Even if I tell them I hit first and my partner is non-violent, they are likely to wonder if my partner did something to instigate the assault, like cheating on me, yelling at me, or otherwise provoking me to lose control.


34) If I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, they are as likely or more likely to be the one arrested as I am, even if my partner's reciprocation was in self-defence.


35) If my partner physically abuses me, and I reciprocate--even if I admit my reciprocation was not in self-defence but out of anger--it is unlikely that I will be arrested.


36) If I am divorced, and my ex-partner earns more than I do, it is more likely I will be awarded spousal support, even if am employed and self-supporting, than if our positions were reversed.


37) If I am divorced, the default assumption in the family court system is that I will have primary custody of my children. This will be the case, even if my ex-partner and I shared breadwinning and childcare duties roughly equally during the marriage.


38) If my ex-partner sues me for custody, they are unlikely to be as successful as I would be were our positions reversed. The burden will be on them to prove I am an unfit parent, rather than that they are more fit, before this likelihood tips in their favor.


39) If I am divorced, I will in almost every case be awarded child support. If my ex-partner does not abide by the terms of the custody/child support order, they will face legal consequences as serious as a prison sentence. They will face these consequences even if their reason for not paying is that their financial situation has changed since the marriage. They will face these consequences even if I do not fulfill my own legal obligations spelled out in the custody order to permit or facilitate their access to my children--my right to distance myself from my ex-partner is likely to take precedence over my children's right to involvement with their non-custodial parent.


40) If I am divorced and my partner is awarded primary custody of my children, I will only rarely be required to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am required to pay child support and I do not, for whatever reason, it is unlikely that I will face any legal consequences.


41) If I abuse the legal process during my divorce by obtaining a fraudulent temporary restraining order, misrepresenting my financial status, hiding assets, or otherwise perjuring myself, it is very unlikely I will be charged with a crime. In fact, my abuse of the legal process--even after it has been discovered by the court--is likely to benefit me in matters such as custody. Moreover, "the good of the children" will be treated as a reason to not penalize me monetarily--such as by reducing my share of joint assets.


42) If my ex-partner abuses the legal process in the above ways, they are more likely to be penalized criminally by being charged, or monetarily through reduction of their share of our joint assets. 


43) If I have consensual sex with my partner and we are both underage, and a charge of statutory rape is filed, I will never be the one charged. This will be the case even if I pressured my partner to have sex and they objected.


44) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, and I am not below the age of consent, no one will tell me such a crime does not exist.


45) If I am raped by a member of the opposite gender, knowledgeable members of the medical and criminal justice communities are unlikely to consider my body's involuntary and automatic responses to sexual stimuli as "proof" that I gave consent.


46) If I am the victim of a statutory rape committed by a member of the opposite gender, and it results in a pregnancy, I will have a choice as to what my parental responsibilities to that child will be. I will not be legally required to be financially responsible for a child that results if I have been raped by an adult.


ETA: 

47) irregardless of my parents' culture or religion or any small beneficial side-effects, I am protected by the law from any genital cutting until I am an adult and request it for myself. If I have been cut, my peers will universally agree that I have been a victim of a heinous crime.

48) I can openly state a sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth, and not immediately be called out as crazy by most of society. I can request a sexual partner who has not been cut to become cut for me, and that partner would most likely not immediately leave me.

49) I can cite my own sexual preference for members of the opposite gender who had significant portions of their genitals removed at birth as the sole reason for requesting the same done to my newborn child, and my child's doctor will comply without arguing with me or reporting me to the police. My health insurance will even pay for it.

50) It would be career suicide for a doctor or politician to recommend cutting off significant portions of my genitals to reduce the chance of catching STDs or having other medical problems with my genitals.

51) There's little debate as to whether or not cutting my gender's genitals is bad.


***Please, if anyone wants to add more items, just let me know in the comments, like Beanie Appa did. This list is a work in progress. :)


When I proffered some of the second half of this list in an online discussion, one feminist scoffed, "Women's privilege is exclusively when we are raped, physically abused, or divorced? Wow, lucky me."


What feminists--and many groups claiming disadvantage in whatever area--don't seem to consider is that privilege is an inherently oppositional and proportional concept. In order for men, for instance, to have male privilege in a specific context, it requires that women's disadvantage in that context be in opposition in relation to that privilege. If everyone had equal status under the law and in the eyes of society in relation to each other, even if our circumstances were terrible, no one would be more privileged or disadvantaged than anyone else, right? Privilege of one group requires the disadvantage of another. And when you have gender privilege, it is the other gender that is, perforce, disadvantaged.


Feminists of today still see the wage gap as a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. Feminists believe that the wage gap is a product of sexism in the workplace and unfair social expectations placed on women. The more libertarian view is that it is largely the result of women's choices in regard to work-life and home-life, and that most choices involve prioritizing one thing over another, even if we may desire and value both equally. But whatever you believe, the wage gap has been narrowing and will continue to narrow, because feminists decades ago believed it was a problem, and other people believed them and did something about it.


Feminists may scoff that it's no great shakes to have gender privilege when they are being victimized, raped, beaten or going through the difficult and emotionally devastating process of negotiating custody agreements. I find it quite alarming that they don't seem to be able to look at the situation from the other side. That female privilege, by the very nature of what privilege is, lies in direct, proportional opposition to male disenfranchisement in these very same areas. The greater the female privilege, the greater the male disenfranchisement. And female privilege in these particular areas--sexual assault, domestic violence, divorce and child custody--is HUGE. And in some areas, it's only going to get huger as due process in rape cases erodes at the behest of feminists.


So in these areas where lives are often shattered, where people suffer enormous physical and emotional pain, where their relationships with their partners are dissolved and their lives turned upside down, and the their relationships with their children under threat, where they are charged with crimes or are the victims of them--where they are going through an already horrible experience--these are the very areas where men suffer the greatest disenfranchisement in our society. 

Way, way, way up at the beginning of the post, I mentioned privilege in regard to an Asian applying for a tech job. It's foolish to think that if he beat out a black or white candidate who was better qualified for the job, even if he knows it's due to stereotyping and the privilege that derives from that, that he will he will take the boss aside and say, "Hey, you know, I think that other guy is actually better than me. Just because I'm Asian doesn't mean I'm great at fixing computers. You should probably hire him instead." The more of a positive effect a privilege has on an individual, the less they are inclined to give it up. 


And in horrible situations, like divorce, DV or rape, how likely is any individual to say, "Hey, I think you're making your judgments of the situation based on gender privilege. I'd like you to be more fair to the man I say raped me and respect his due process rights"? How likely is an individual to say, "Well judge, you know, I realize everyone assumes mothers should get custody, and as a feminist I find that stereotypes based on socially constructed gender norms are harmful. So I'd like you to forget all that, even if it means I may lose custody of my children"? How likely is an individual to say, "Listen officer, I actually hit first. Arrest me too, please"?


Individuals take advantage of their own privilege. They do. And they do it all the more when the stakes are very, very high. Feminists--hell, all women--would be advised to consider what it would be like were the gender privilege reversed in these situations, if they suffered the same level of disenfranchisement men currently suffer in cases of rape, DV, and family law. 


If women were assumed by the authorities to be making it up when they make a claim of rape, and predisposed to believe the accuser if they themselves were charged; if women were assumed to always be the aggressor in domestic violence situations and treated accordingly by the law, and if women were turned away from shelters because those shelters only serve DV victims of the opposite gender; if the family court system tore children from their mothers because the default assumption was that custody should go to the father and your rights as a parent--even a weekend one--didn't matter to anyone... ?


If women suffered this obscene and unconscionable level of disenfranchisement in these terrible and potentially life-destroying situations, and weighed it against the current wage gap, which would feminists consider the bigger problem?

Why I advocate for men's rights

I'm not a traditionalist woman. I'm bisexual. I'm kind of a dirty old man when it comes to my attitudes about sex, and I'm masculine enough in some ways to pull it off without ever having been burdened with the label of slut. Moreover, I write erotic fiction, much of it with bi-male and bi-female themes (and no, I'm not telling any of you all my pen name, so don't bother asking). Though I was a stay-at-home mom for the first five years of my marriage, and though I found that role fulfilling and the work intrinsically valuable, I did not feel myself again until I got back into the paid workforce. I am the last person on earth who would wish to return to the world of a hundred years ago.

I've been sexually assaulted. I was sexually harassed as a 23 year old woman to the point where I left a job I'd held for four years. I would even regard the last six years of my marriage as emotionally and psychologically abusive.

I'm divorced, have three kids, and grievances against my ex that any reasonable man or woman would likely see as entirely justified. I still struggle with my anger over things he did during our marriage, and tried to do after it was over. The fact that after two and a half years, the only money that has ever changed hands between us has been from me to him only adds insult to injury.

During my travels online through the rugged and often inhospitable landscape of the Men's Rights Movement, I have been required to "prove my credentials" as a logical and reasonable human being more times than I care to mention. I have had to "prove my credentials" as a woman who did not screw over her ex during her divorce. I have had to "prove my credentials" as not merely a traditionalist woman who wants to go back to men supporting women while women stay at home. This is an environment that is often hostile to women until they have paid their dues. And even when your dues are paid (and paid and paid, lol) you pay in other ways.

I have had to sit and grind my teeth when men in the movement complain that "That bitch got MY house. It was MY property because I paid for it while SHE stayed home," and resist the urge to remind them that unpaid domestic labor has value too, and that women's denial of that value in the early days of feminism is part of why men and women are in this mess today. That if she was the kind of wife and mother I'd been when I stayed at home, and he'd had to pay her a fair-market wage for her child-care, housekeeping and maybe even home/yard maintenance duties, her income might have been almost as high as his own during the marriage.

As the survivor of a sexual assault that I suffered as a 14-year-old virgin who hadn't had her first period yet, I've had to sit and grind my teeth time and again at the glib attitude many in the movement have toward rape. If the system has a default assumption that all accusers are telling the truth and all accused are lying pieces of shit, many in the MRM have a bias that leans too far in the opposite direction. I am a firm believer in always believing an accuser--when it comes to providing victims' services such as counselling and medical treatment. I am also a firm believer in the due process rights of the accused during police investigations and criminal trials, feel a university's involvement in a sexual assault case should be limited to dialling 911 and letting the criminal justice system take it from there, and that the identity of the accused should be withheld by authorities until he's convicted. I believe feminism's elevation of rape-victim status to a bizarre combination of almost religious idolatry and kid-glove handling harms women in very insidious ways. But at the same time, the way some in the MRM talk about rape...well, it upsets me.

I've had to wade through dozens of news pieces about female perpetrators of spousal assault, stalking, hideously violent assaults on innocent people, sexual and physical abuse of children, infanticide, premeditated murder of husbands and boyfriends, atrocities beyond counting, held vengefully aloft by the MRM as proof that women are as likely to be sociopathic, psychotic, hateful, brutal, selfish assholes as men are. Story after story after story about yet another woman's unsubstantiated claims of abuse leading to yet another man losing his kids and yet more kids losing their father, more lives destroyed by women who weren't even the ones scorned because THEY are more likely to initiate the divorce. A steady diet of misdeeds perpetrated by women on men and innocent kids, enough to turn anyone's stomach.

It gets tiresome. It gets disheartening. It gets burdensome. It even gets a little scary sometimes, when I realize just how angry some of these men are. Given that many of my personal experiences with men have been...ahh...less than wonderful, given how initially hostile the MRM can be to anyone with a vagina, and how insensitive they can seem on issues that have affected me very deeply from the opposite side of the gender divide, why do I do it? Here's why:

I used to live in a tiny, isolated town with a resource-based economy--mostly logging and sand/gravel. When the construction industry in the US went kablooie in 2008, most of the jobs in that town disappeared. I work as a server--tips are a huge portion of my income, but that portion depends on how many people eat out. In late 2008, people where I lived stopped eating out, and my income started to go down. And down. And down. 

My ex has never paid child support, and had always enjoyed unlimited access to our kids, at my expense, because my kids love their dad and have a right to see him. He exercised that access an average of one night every 6-8 weeks. My nearest family--my parents and sister--lived 2000km away in a city with a robust economy, but the few times I'd suggested moving there, my ex wouldn't hear of it. His assertion that "How do you expect me to pay child support? I can't even support myself around here. I don't even have food in my fridge," without extrapolating from that just how impossible it would be for me to support four people on my own in the same local economy, and how no food in my fridge would mean his own kids going hungry...well, the level of his tunnel-vision and selfishness was almost surreal to me. I felt like my ex had not only effectively abandoned my kids, he'd abandoned logic, reason, reality, sanity.

In February of 2010, I finally looked at my mounting debts and decided there was no way I could continue to live where I did, supporting four people on my own, and not go bankrupt. That staying solely so my kids could see their dad one night every couple of months, if and when he could be bothered, wasn't worth the price I and my kids were paying. My debts alone, not including my mortgage, had climbed to almost twice my yearly income at the time. I was paying the mortgage with my Visa card. There were no jobs to be had. And my nearest family lived 2000km away--I really was going it alone. 

I finally had to concede that my choice was either move or starve. My ex's objection to the very suggestion was well-documented in the correspondence between our lawyers, and he had repeatedly threatened to bring legal action if I tried to move, action that would cost me thousands of dollars and might take a year or more to play out. 

I was stuck between survival and my own honor. If I stayed, my family would be destroyed. If I did the honorable thing and informed him of my decision, he'd bring an action that would only force us all to stay where we were until I'd spent thousands I didn't have in legal fees just to get it on a judge's desk, which would only destroy us all the faster. 

So I packed up my house and my kids and I moved. Without asking him. Without even telling him. And then I prepared for a legal Battle Royale to prove to a judge that I was justified in what I had done, that I'd had no choice in moving, and no choice other than to do it when and how I did. That my only reasonable option was to move to the city where my parents and sister live so I and my kids would have help and support nearby--a city where the economy was healthy, but that also happens to be 2000km away from my children's father. I'd documented the ways I'd encouraged my ex to spend time with his kids, and how seldom he'd actually done it, and how his right to see them every 6-8 weeks when he felt like it should not outweigh their right to not be raised in poverty. I had a six-page affidavit prepared, with which to argue my case.

And my ex's objections to what I'd done were dismissed out of hand. I'd moved his kids 2000km away from him, without even informing him I was doing it, and I didn't even need to present my affidavit to the judge--all I had to say was that I'd moved for work. She took it as a given that she should side with me over him, and made her decision with a sanguinity and certainty that I found appalling, even as I almost wept with relief.

Shortly before I had moved, I'd re-entered the sexual marketplace. I had a brief fling with a married man. I was his first affair, and he struggled with his guilt over stepping out on his wife, even though he'd been sleeping on the couch for two years. Conversely, his wife had been cheating on him for years--remember, this is a small town where everyone knows every bit of dirt about everyone else. I don't suppose she struggled very much over her own guilt feelings, since she didn't care to hide her infidelities. He was so unhappy in his marriage I can only describe it as despair because he couldn't see any way to fix it, but he stayed because he was terrified--not worried, not scared, but terrified--of losing his children.

It wasn't until after I moved and the judge made her 8-second ruling that I realized just how justifiable his fear had been. 

I was raised by parents who told me to never only read the headlines or listen to the soundbites, but to read the entire article and think rationally about things before I formed opinions. To not only regurgitate the information I am fed, but to thoroughly digest it, apply logic and my own experiences to what I hear and read, and then decide if it makes sense. To question. To examine. To look at problems from many angles. To seek out differing points of view because, hey, you just might learn something--even if that something is that people can be full of shit. 

They taught me words like "sophistry" and what it means. They taught me that evidence is everything, and statistics can be made to say anything you want, depending on your agenda. They taught me that sometimes people lie so convincingly to themselves, that even when they're lying to you they feel like they're telling the truth. 

As a teenager, I mostly hung out with guys, because guys were more accepting of the ways I'm different. Because I'm more guy-like than girlie, they never guarded their speech around me, nor do any of my male coworkers now. And though I've been deeply wronged by a few men, I know from my other experiences with men that that the vast majority of boys and men are more good than bad. They're flawed, but they're still human. They're not women, but they're still human.

I have three children. Two sons and a daughter. And as much as I may complain about how much trouble they can be, and despite the fact that I've been known to threaten to knock their heads together when they annoy me, I love them and am as proud as fuck of them. I want them to be happy and to succeed in life, however they choose to measure their success. 

But I look at the world they are growing up in, a world where my boys will soon be facing the same problems men face are facing now, only worse. A world where my daughter also will be reaping the consequences of living in a society that values the rights of one gender over another and no one seems to give a shit. A world where everything women naturally are is seen as admirable, and everything men naturally are is seen as a pathology to be cured. A world where even women who commit the most heinous and atrocious acts are instantly assumed to have been failed by the system or somehow justified in their actions, while men who commit similar acts are instantly assumed to have done it out of jealousy, anger, a desire to control, aggression, or just...well, maleness. I don't want my sons to live in a world where no matter how good they are, they will be told they are bad--or my daughter to live in a world where she will always be able to blame someone or something else for her decisions and actions. 

I want my daughter to grow up to be a woman who owns her own shit, and my boys to grow into men who are not forced to own everyone else's shit on top of their own.

The voices that speak for feminism are millions upon millions. They are so legion, they need only whisper to be heard. The voices speaking for equality for men and boys are so few, they're drowned out by the opposition even when they scream. I don't know what I can do other than raise my kids to be able to think on their own, and add my voice to the issues I believe in that I feel are underserved. That more people advocate for, and sympathize with, animal rights than men's rights is a travesty that stymies me. I suppose if men could somehow make themselves look as cute and as helpless as a baby seal, things would be different, but they can't. Men and boys are in jeopardy--really and for true, honest, not just kinda-sorta jeopardy--and they deserve more voices speaking for them.

So that's what I'm doing.