Transcript of "All those dangerous woman-haters!"

I've mentioned more than once how I've come across people who are able to get behind some--even many--of the causes championed by the men's rights movement, but who are essentially put off or even scared away by the anger, misogyny, aggression and generalizations of women (or even feminists) commonly found in MRM spaces. I think it's probably every other week that someone posts in r/mensrights on reddit that if only the gang would tone down the language, not be so accusatory toward feminism, and stop generalizing women, that they'd be more comfortable there, because...oh, because feminism did accomplish some good things, or because not all women are like that and it's unfair to generalize, or because anger and hostility will scare support away from the causes. (One thing I think these people don't realize is that men's advocates tried that for almost 30 years in the field of domestic violence advocacy, and I think we can all guess how well the whole "asking politely and calmly" thing worked for them.)

This squeamishness of would-be supporters when they're confronted with the levels of frustration in the MRM is kind of ridiculous, all things considered. When people's rights are trampled, you can expect them to get mad and to express that. And when I look at even mainstream articles, no one seems to be shy about generalizing men or masculinity, or criticizing large subgroups of men for either embodying masculinity or failing to embody it "properly". Hell, Obama's father's day address admonished black fathers--a demographic that faces some serious social and economic challenges--for failing to man-up to their paternal responsibilities. (Of course, there was no Mother's Day admonition toward black mothers to, say, woman up and not have babies until they're in stable relationships, or to facilitate their children's access to their fathers, when both behaviors heavily contribute to the problem of fatherlessness in the black community in the US. And why wouldn't he? Because that would be generalizing and unfairly critical, right?)

Anyway, a week or two ago, I stumbled across a video wherein a prominent and popular online feminist vlogger, Jessica Valenti gave a monologue on misogyny, and her estimation of the MRA community online, trying to portray it as some festering, oozing, pathogenic ulcer of misogynistic sentiment and hateful anti-feminism (who don't really do anything for men, no less). And from the histrionics and accusations of a recent commenter on my channel as to the misogynistic nature of my entire audience, I'm pretty sure Ms. Valenti isn't alone.

Okay, I can't say I was shocked watching Ms. Valenti speak on this topic, or even disappointed. I think it's fair to say I rolled my eyes so hard at her desperation to connect the MRM in any possible way, no matter how absurd, with misogynistic violence and hate, I may have actually sprained my eyeballs.

I can't be sure whether Ms. Valenti feels so threatened by any expression of maleness that does not comply with the drawing room decorum demanded by feminists, that she hied herself to her fainting couch before learning one damn thing about us, or whether she knows what we're about and is deliberately smearing the movement with the flimsiest of accusations, hoping that if she paints us all in a poor enough light no one will bother to go look and see if she knows what the hell she's talking about.

Neither possibility reflects well on her, or on others who agree with her.

First bit of ignorance, she conflates anti-feminism with misogyny, and immediately after, she conflates the men's rights movement with the game community (otherwise known as pick-up artists, or PUA).

A little background on the MRA/PUA thing for those of you who might be new here. Both "movements" are based at least in part on an acceptance of the empirically supported biological reality of gender differences in behavior and psychology. Both movements recognize the system we currently have in place, largely due to rampant and unchecked feminist advocacy acting in concert with traditional white-knighting, is...well, fucked. Annnnnd that's pretty much where they part ways.

MRAs want to fix the system, or create a new one based on real equality. PUAs either think the system is beyond repair, or don't care to fix it. After all, if they fixed it, they wouldn't be able to exploit and capitalize on all the openings provided by its fucked-upness in their endless quest for low-cost fun and poon.

MRAs often characterize PUAs as pussy-worshippers, while PUAs disdain MRAs as pointless and counter-productive beta-grovellers who could be milking the broken system for all it's worth if they'd just get the right attitude, some decent clothes and weren't so busy whining. There is a fair amount of cross-over as far as each being interested in some of the writings and activities on either side, but to conflate the two and lump them into one big bag of male discontent is as foolish as claiming fundamentalist islam is the same as Buddhism, because both are based on spirituality.

So to recap: PUAs are happy with the status quo, and even if they see a collapse coming, they're happy to fuck and drink and carouse all they can while it all falls apart. MRAs are trying to prevent said collapse.

Now these distinctions are important, because of the fact that unless someone like Valenti can connect the MRA and the PUA communities into some kind of organism with a common purpose, you can't say things like this: "George Sodini, the man who shot those women at a gym in Pennsylvania not too long ago this past year, was kind of peripherally involved with some of them online," in the context of a discussion of the MRM.

Because I looked for quite a while and the only connection I could find between Sodini and the men's community online is the fact that he attended a seminar on how to be more successful with women--I'm assuming he was there to learn Game. And you can be sure, if someone like Valenti had something more concrete, she wouldn't have been circumspect enough to say, "peripherally involved"--she'd have named names and told the camera exactly where and with whom online this guy was hanging out. So there it is. A single seminar on how to learn Game Theory.

So here's a guy who's arguably been slowly going crazy for a long time, who hasn't been laid in 20 years, who happens to attend a single PUA seminar in the months before he finally flips his nut and shoots a bunch of women, and this is indicative--according to Valenti--of the misogyny in the Men's Rights Movement, and that's how she can rationalize her way into saying: "So I do think that kind of paying attention to the misogyny and the anti-feminism that's happening online and the way that these men are bolstering each other and supporting each other in really violent views about women, it's something important that we need to pay attention to. Blah blah, hateful toward women, danger, blah blah blah, violent misogyny, violent views, blah blah, hate women, blah blah, no accountability online, blah blah, want to kill women, blah blah, place where people are like 'yeah me too'." And she can say all of that and frame it within the context of a discussion of the men's rights movement.

Because George Sodini attended a PUA seminar sometime before he went off his rocker, he is now ONE OF US.

Now, there was a lot of discussion in men's communities online about Sodini, and the very worst of it was pretty bad, but largely if not entirely confined to the comment sections of various blog posts, most of which occurred in the PUA community--a community of social nihilists, mind you, who look down their noses at the MRM for trying to fix the system that provides them with all that cut rate pussy. A few of those commenters praised him overtly or in a roundabout way, but most of the comments were of the "canary in the coal mine" sort--the kind you might see when a woman does something awful and people believe they know why, and then discuss the systemic problems that might lead to more people doing more horrible things of that nature for the same systemic reasons.

In other words, most of the discussion revolved around how the system marginalizes men, and how we can fix the system so that we DON'T end up with more George Sodinis.

Right or wrong, Sodini felt that our feminist society had cheated him out of any kind of normal or decent life. A lot of people in the MRM feel the same way to one degree or another. So I'm going to repeat this: most of the examination of Sodini in the men's rights community was about how society can change so that we don't get more Sodinis.

But it seems that the very fact that men were discussing it in the larger context of systemic discrimination against men rather than simply condemning Sodini as a monster and then shutting up about it...this is a clear sign to feminists like Valenti and other hand-wringers and pearl-clutchers that MRAs hate women and have violent views about women. Despite the fact that on most MRA blogs, any kind of incitement to violent action, either against isolated women or against the system, is swiftly and sternly rebuffed, and even though MRAs want to fix the system that creates men like Sodini, it must have been MRAs who brainwashed Sodini into hating women enough to kill a bunch of them.

Oh, noble Jessica, and noble noble feminism, a movement that is benign and peaceful and has everyone's best interests at heart.

So I was just thinking we should examine another famous shooter, one who went by the name of Valerie Solanas.

For those of you who don't know, Solanas is the feminist author of the infamous SCUM manifesto, whom many feminists today have tried to characterize as a satirical work (yet more revisionist history right there, but I'll get to that in a minute). Another feminist told me just the other day that it was, at its heart, wholly nihilistic, calling for the end of humanity altogether--which I found interesting, since the manifesto actually calls for the systemic extermination of the male sex through violent rebellion on the part of women, after which said women could live the rest of their lives in peace, at which point why would any of them want to burden themselves with children. To conclude that the main point of the manifesto was some sort of egalitarian vision of nihilism wrt humanity as a whole is basically equating the genocidal killing of males with the free choice on the part of women to not spoil their male-free Utopian existence by having children.

In other words, the brutal murder of a man is exactly the same as a woman choosing not to have a baby, in the mind of at least one feminist I've spoken to.

Solanas' other claim to fame was as the person who shot and nearly killed Andy Warhol. She actually attempted to kill three men that day, shot Warhol and art maven Mario Amaya, an associate of Warhol's, and put the gun against the head of Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, at which point the gun jammed. If the gun hadn't jammed, there's no reason to believe three men wouldn't have ended up dead.

Not as well known to most is the fact that Warhol wasn't even the man Solanas had set out to kill that day. Her intended target was her publisher, Maurice Girodias, whom she felt had wronged her. As a condition of him publishing the SCUM manifesto through Olympia Press, which he owned, he'd required her to give him the right of first refusal to all her future work. This is a common clause in publishing contracts, and simply stipulates that the author will bring all future, or all related, work to that publisher first, at which point the publisher can offer for it or decline, and the author can accept the offer, negotiate better terms, or decline altogether and offer it elsewhere. Ms. Solanas took this agreement to mean that Girodias now owned the copyright to all her future works. So clearly if the redundant and meandering, incoherent drivel of the manifesto itself was not indicative enough of the woman's extreme level of crazy and stupid, the fact that she never bothered to ask anyone what that agreement meant--either before complying with it or after, or indeed before setting out to kill because of it--should be evidence enough of some serious deficiencies.

When Solanas went looking for Girodias, he wasn't at his office. For whatever reason, she decided Warhol would be a suitable stand-in to vent her spleen at men, and claimed to police and at her hearing that Warhol--who had done nothing more than give her a couple of bit parts in two of his movies--had "too much control in her life", had her, "tied up lock stock and barrel" and was "going to do something" to her that would have "ruined" her. At her hearing she insisted she was right in what she did and had nothing to regret. After some very well-needed stints in Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation, she pled guilty to reckless assault with attempt to harm, and was sentenced to three years. She was reported at that time to be dedicating "the remainder of her life to the avowed purpose of eliminating every single male from the face of the earth," and though aware of the feminist movement of the time, she considered them a "civil disobedience luncheon club."

In essence, even the most radical second wavers were not radical enough for Solanas. They might hate men, they might want to liberate themselves completely from men, but they weren't prepared to eliminate all males from the face of the earth--at least not yet--so Solanas had no time or patience for them. They were merely "playing" at being feminists, apparently.

But as much as Solanas couldn't be bothered to associate herself with the radical-but-not-radical-enough feminists of the day, those feminists practically jumped at the chance to associate themselves with her, once she flipped her nut and pulled a Sodini.

Robin Morgan, a prolific feminist author who eventually became editor of Ms Magazine (arguably the most influential feminist rag there is) joined demonstrators demanding Solanas' release from prison. Ti-Grace Atkinson, feminist author and then president of the NY chapter of NOW, praised Solanas as "the first outstanding champion of women's rights." Florynce Kennedy, a lawyer and active member of NOW, who went on to found the feminist party and the women's political caucus, called her "one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement."

Wow. So if a few comments on PUA blogs sympathetic to George Sodini is a sign that the Men's Rights community online is filled with misogyny, what does the fact that prominent feminist writers and thinkers beatified Valerie Solanas say about misandry within feminism?

And it's not like I have to go very far back in history to find feminists glorifying violence against men and pedestalizing the women who commit it.

Lorena Bobbitt, whose initial statement to police--according to the NY Times--was "He always have orgasm and he doesn't wait for me to have orgasm. He's selfish. I don't think it's fair, so I pulled back the sheets and then I did it,"--was hailed as a national folk hero, an obviously terrorized battered woman striking back at her oppressor. Never mind that there was plenty of evidence of reciprocal violence in that relationship. Never mind that he was in the process of leaving her, and they'd been discussing divorce.

The feminist narrative reared its ugly head, and the case was crammed into that model, complete with a rape accusation that could not be proven in a court of law, and a story that repeatedly changed gears, from her initial statement onward, to fit the dogma of domineering, abusive husband and terrified, cowed wife. Before she had even she cried abuse, the feminists of North America picked her up on their shoulders, a display of sisterly solidarity with a violent offender that culminated in carnival-style demonstrations outside the courtroom, including the dispensing of cocktail wieners slathered in ketchup, t-shirts extolling the sweet virtues of revenge, and feminists selling buttons nominating Bobbitt for surgeon general.

Mainstream magazines hailed her as a feminist heroine, and perhaps most disturbing, a major feminist group in Ecuador, Bobbitt's home country, not only bankrolled her defence, but threatened to castrate 100 innocent American men if she went to prison for mutilating her husband.

Nope. No misandry evident in any of that. Or violent sentiment. Or terrorist leanings. At ALL.

I mean, feminists must be super-aware of terrorism, since I've been warned by well-meaning feminists that supporting men who go their own way is an act of terrorism because MRAs sometimes use harsh or colorful language, so I'm sure the vast majority of prominent feminists loudly and firmly condemned that group in Ecuador for the terrorists they are, and admonishing the movement as a whole for associating with such groups....oh wait. Never mind.

Anyway, even as recently as a couple months ago, the very same danger Ms. Valenti claims runs rampant within the men's communities online--the danger that "because there's no accountability online the same way there is in real life, all of a sudden you can say like, "yeah, I hate women, I wanna kill women," you can say that online and not only will you find a place to say it, but you'll find a place to say it where people are like, "yeah, me too.""

Which brings me to a little corner of the online, feminist universe called RadicalHub, and some lovely quotes found there:

A feminist child care worker, speaking about the boys in her care: "I honestly have been reassessing the fact that I am giving care to these little future rapists....I know it is kinda going against my principles to support and care for these little fuckers."

A feminist web developer: I'm one of those bad, shameful feminists who wish we could all just kill the fuckers (whether it's a practical tack to take or not).

A feminist and fellow Canuck: "Females don't have to kill baby boys. Just not nurture them. Females are forced to birth baby boys, but beyond that a female's physical actions are her own. Males will die without the constant infusion of female energy that they get from our wombs and from our lives.... Females need to not be emotionally and intellectually invested in a male future."

A UK feminist lobbyist: It needs to be so unfashionable to have boys, and then they would be aborted before seeing the light of day...violent revolution is the only answer...

And a feminist and bestselling novelist: ...your proposal to exterminated the male entirely a la Solanas is to me more of a last resort.... I assume you object that lowering testosterone levels would not necessarily end the oppression. You may be right.

These aren't random, unemployed internet kooks who live on chee-tos and haven't seen the sun in years, either. They're lobbyists, community development coordinators, they work for Arts Councils and Chambers of Commerce, teach special ed and care for children, lawyers and bestselling authors. These are not basement dwelling losers, they're respectable people with jobs that involve public trust. Other contributors to Radicalhub include noted feminists, Julie Bindle and Sheila Jeffreys.

I'm starting to wonder just how atrocious a feminist would have to behave in order for others in the movement to accept the kind of guilt by association that they're so quick to apply to the MRA and men like George Sodini, whose association with the MRM consisted of attending a seminar on how to pick up women.

I don't understand how Paul Elam saying, "Men going their own way IS fucking feminists' shit up" qualifies as terrorism in the MRM, while a publicized threat called into several media outlets to sever the penises of 100 random American men if a violent woman spent a night in prison wasn't enough to so much as dampen the carnival atmosphere and feminist glee outside the courthouse at Lorena Bobbitt's trial. I really don't understand how feminists can now rewrite history and claim the SCUM manifesto was a work of satire, when not only did its author take it to its logical conclusion on a small scale, but other feminists of the day who have since risen to prominence lauded her violent and murderous actions as those of a feminist champion.

Seriously. What the fuck is going on? You put a monster in some strappy sandals and lipstick and suddenly it's not a monster anymore but a hero, or harmless? I just don't get it.

And at the same time, the moment a man gets angry or speaks passionately, everyone's ducking and covering because some lunatic who shot a bunch of women made some of the same criticisms of the system that influences all our lives, and attended a single seminar on how to pick up women?

What's in a Word?

Words are important to me. Take "cunt", for instance. From my POV as a writer of erotica, "cunt" has to be one of my favorites, and I use it much more often than, say, "pussy". It's succinct. It's not cutesy. It's strong and workaday and when you say it, in whatever context, everyone knows exactly what you mean. It has deep etymological roots, dating back to Chaucer and beyond. A gorgeous, albeit guttural, word. And most women hate it, and are happy to continue to do so. I get away with using it in my fiction because I'm a woman, and therefore I have a "right" to. Most other women seem content to allow its positive definition of vagina vanish into obscurity, while only its negative alternate definitions, as an insult and expletive, remain in common usage.

But "slut"? According to these chicks ^^^, it's a word that requires "reclaiming". On the surface, this may seem like a positive thing and a removal of the negative power from specific words. The idea is to apply a specific word in a positive context enough to have that positive context become the dominant one. But that's rarely what happens, is it? Let's examine what's happened when other groups have "reclaimed" similar derogatory terms. We all know them, so let's not bandy around. "Queer." "Fag." "Dyke." "Nigger."

There's a reason I kind of cringed as I typed that last one. As a bisexual, my use of "queer" isn't going to raise any eyebrows. And despite rifts and infighting (inbickering?) within the LGBTQ community, my membership in that group entitles me to use "fag" and "dyke" with relative impunity. But "nigger"? I'm not black. That's not my word. Many people would question my right to even think it, let alone speak or write it.

The problem is, despite its reclamation, "nigger" remains a negative word in all contexts but one--when a black person speaks it. The same outcome applies to "fag" and "dyke", if not "queer". While they may be spoken within positive contexts by and amid their particular in-groups (and sometimes a few trusted non-members, once they've proved themselves allies), they're now off-limits to outsiders. Woe betide the white guy who speaks the word "nigger", even in a positive context.

The negative connotation of the word remains and is only reinforced by the in-group's appropriation of it. It has become a "forbidden utterance" for everyone else. And once a thing is forbidden, its power to wound is all the greater. And the ironic thing is, the word never really belonged to black people in the first place. The idea...I gather, anyway, was to take a word used by privileged white people to remind black people that they were "less than", and turn it into something different. Something positive. But has its meaning out of the mouths of white people changed at all? Can we claim that any of the negative power been removed from the word when people are forced to resign from public office over their use of "niggardly", a completely different word with a different etymological origin, merely because it sounded like "nigger"?

Moreover, reclamation of these words in this fashion is a form of social censorship. And while words can be easily censored, there is no way to censor people's hearts and minds. If someone hates black people, he'll hate them whether he can socially get away with speaking the word "nigger" or not. The only thing reappropration of the word has done is put the onus on non-blacks to never utter it at all.

So onto "slut". Unlike "cunt", this word's meaning has never been particularly positive in any context, though it wasn't always sexual. Its first traceable usages were basically in reference to "female slobs". But considering how words like "filth" and "dirty" and "smut" are used to describe sexual obscenity, and "unclean" to describe sexual immorality and a state of sin...well, its application in regard to sex is hardly surprising. Its redefinition as a sex-positive term has been going on for some time. Dan Savage--one of the most sex-positive media figures out there, a gay dude who understands more about straight sex than most straight people, and a personal hero of mine--regularly advises married or committed couples that they need to be "sluts for each other".

Mr. Savage is also very pro-sexual objectification, which I think lies at the heart of the problem the "Slutwalk", with its intended goal of "word reappropriation"--is fruitlessly trying to solve. Ridiculous modern attitudes around the sexual objectification of people--especially women--is the diseased taproot of a very invasive weed. In response to the uproar caused by protesters in Seattle in 2003 when a local sushi bar served sashimi and fried tofu off of a naked woman's body, he wrote:

Face facts, ladies: people always have and always will objectify the people they're attracted to. Men who wanna fuck women objectify women (at places like Hooters); women who want to fuck men objectify men (at places like Centerfolds). Gay men objectify other men (at places like Ashton Kutcher's asscrack), lesbians objectify other women (at places where Venus and Serena play tennis). The urge to objectify is universal, and so long as it's fairly and respectfully indulged, it's not offensive, not a problem, and not news.

There's an insidious conflict at work in modern women, largely due to the pervasive and erroneous belief that sexually objectifying women is wrong. I think deep down, women understand that sexual objectification is a natural human tendency and, taken on its own, a morally and ethically neutral proposition. If women did not want to be viewed as sexual objects, they wouldn't invest so much time and expense into turning themselves into beautiful and sexy objects, would they? They wouldn't dress in a manner that attracts male sexual interest. They'd rely on their personalities--it's the basis of their personhood, after all--to do the job for them. Whether you're a man or a woman, to be sexy is to be an object of desire. And for straight women, that means being objectified by men.

Women instinctively realize that their own objectification gives them sexual power. The more you tart yourself up, the more male interest you get, and the more interest you get, the bigger a pool you have to choose from, whether you're looking for a one-off or a relationship.

Where downside to this power is that when you present yourself in a way that encourages sexual objectification, you have no control over who objectifies you, do you? That means being mature enough to accept the fact that sometimes, a guy you regard as beneath your notice may hit on you, or even be masturbating to images of you when he gets home from the bar. That means guys WILL look at your boobs, and no amount of angrily telling them, "My eyes are up here, asshole," is going to get them to stop noticing your boobs. Grow up, ladies. If you want to be sex objects, then be sex objects. And be responsible ones--shooting a guy down in the most humiliating way, or treating him as if he's some kind of insect you wouldn't bother to scrape off your shoe after you'd stepped on him, for daring to look at you with the kind of interest you only really want from the hot guys? Not kosher.

The conflict arises when feminism encourages women to embrace and explore their sexuality, to have agency, to say yes or say no as they see fit...and at the same time, condemns one of the most effective routes to female sexual agency--the acceptance that someone can objectify a woman sexually while still respecting and appreciating her personhood, and that sexual objectification is, indeed, a necessary component of human sexual attraction, whether you're hooking up or happily married. It's no wonder women are so fucked up about sex that they'll falsely accuse men of rape when they can't reconcile their desires and their freedom to act on them with the bizarre marriage of Victorian era morality and female sexual liberation that is the schizophrenic brainchild of modern gender feminism.

And consider someone like me. I've always been sexually adventuresome. Hopefully my mom isn't reading this (she wouldn't understand), but I lost count of the number of men I've had sex with a lonnnng time ago, way back before I was married. And despite 15 years of monogamy, during the period after splitting with my ex and before settling into a new relationship with my current boyfriend, I briefly returned to my sexually free-spirited ways. I've always been open and upfront about my desires--when I want to sleep with a man, he knows it. And yet I've never been called a slut. Why?

Because sluts are shameless. But sexual free spirits? They're not shameless--they are unashamed. Sexual free spirits understand their power, and they use it responsibly, to choose their partners and have sex--or not--on honest terms, rather than to flaunt what they've got so they can shame or scorn members of the opposite sex for daring to look at them with sexual interest. Sexual free spirits don't have some obligation to fuck every guy who wants them--but they don't get offended by being desired by men they don't want, either. Sexual free spirits may even dress like sluts, but at the same time, they're in charge of their sex life, and hold themselves responsible for their decisions--whether wise or foolish--and don't put the entire onus on men to restrain their male sexuality in the face of completely unrestrained female sexuality.

Women who do flex their sexual muscle while relying on the opposite gender to never flex back, women who do not hold themselves accountable for their own sexual decisions, women who use their sexual attractiveness to crush the self-esteem of less than desirable men, women who feel victimized because a guy they don't find attractive dared to look at them with lust when they've got 2/3 of their body on display, and women like the Hofstra rape accuser, who willingly fucked two guys and couldn't deal with the emotional and practical fall-out from it--those women are the ones both men and women call sluts.

So why is the Slutwalk a pointless endeavor? Because it does nothing to reconcile the idea of female sexual freedom with female sexual responsibility. Yet again, the Slutwalk puts the onus on one gender--every goddamn member of it--to be responsible and accountable for the sexual conduct of the other.

Whether you believe a woman who advertises her sexual availability is increasing her risk of rape or not, the Slutwalk will do absolutely nothing to prevent rape. And it will do nothing to keep immature, power-drunk, sexually irresponsible women from being labeled as sluts, either.

Most women don't realize just how restrained male sexuality already is. I compare my experiences in strip clubs depending on whether it's ladies' night or Miss Mugs 'n' Jugs' world tour, and I'm always amazed at how well-leashed the men in the audience generally keep themselves relative to women's behavior in similar situations. This is because men are socialized toward sexual self-restraint and sexual accountability, while women...well, nowadays women get to do whatever and act however they want, and if they don't like the consequences--whether it's an ugly guy ogling them, or having to admit that going upstairs with that frat boy was a poor decision--they can shift all the responsibility onto men.

That's the opposite of sexual agency. And that's the fucking Slutwalk. And no amount of reappropriation of the word "slut" is going to do anything to change the behavior of the women who've earned the name, nor change the attitudes of the men who've learned by experience to be wary and scornful of them.

Shut up and come back when you can ask nicely...

In an online discussion, a feminist recently asked my boyfriend (oops, partner) to tell her of some things he considered to be "female privilege". Believing she was asking in good faith (which she might have been, who knows?), he asked *me*, from my arguably less biased position as a woman, to provide a list of what I felt were privileges women benefit from.

I posted a "checklist" of 17 items similar to the one frequently used to determine male privilege, concentrating on issues where women's privilege most seriously disenfranchises men, and asked her if she could say "yes" to any of them.

Items included:

-if I physically abuse my partner, people are likely to believe my partner did something to deserve it, like hitting me first.

-if my partner physically abuses me, even if I have no physical signs of it, I will be believed by the authorities.

-if I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, it is likely that they will be arrested/charged and I will not.

-if I divorce my spouse, the default assumption is that I will have primary custody of my children, even if my spouse and I shared breadwinning and child care duties during the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, I will be awarded child support, and if my ex-spouse does not pay they will face serious legal consequences. They will face these consequences even if they cannot pay because their financial situation has changed since the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, and they are granted primary custody of my children, I will rarely be ordered to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am ordered to pay, and I don't, it is unlikely I will face serious consequences.

Her response, after giving a couple examples of what she considered female privilege, was to call my list a "trite rehash of the MRA agenda", express her "disappoint[ment]", and actually "feel bad for [me]" that I had "bothered to type it up." Her two examples of female privilege were:

-people will assume I am a warm and empathetic person

-people will be more likely to assist me when I must accomplish a physically arduous task

Um. Okaayyyy. Way to dismiss, shame and distract. And while I agree with her examples, I'm pretty sure she suggested them because they are seemingly innocuous, in order to present female privilege as essentially a non-issue. The extrapolation of these privileges to their inevitable real-world consequences seemed beyond her.

Her first example is almost certainly a major contributing factor in the current gender bias in DV law. And it didn't occur to her that people would be more likely to assist her when she must accomplish arduous tasks that are not physical (such as, say, negotiating a custody agreement).

Weary, but not prepared to give up, I presented more examples I thought would be less apt to provoke a defensive response, some of which include:

-dress codes in the workplace are more likely to allow for me to emphasize my more attractive physical features and de-emphasize the ones I'm unhappy with (if a man looks like a pear in a suit, tough luck)

-if I work in a profession dominated by the opposite gender, I will be seen as "heroic" or an indicator of "social progress", not an indication that I'm somehow deficient (think Meet the Parents--"You're a male nurse? You must have failed the entry tests for med school.")

-if I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny

-if I earn less than my partner, people will not automatically expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses

Her response was this:

Do you notice that anything either of us has come up with is actually a feminist issue? Gender roles, the beauty myth, wage disparity...not a terribly successful experiment.

Sigh. Now I am not only weary, but frustrated. I feel like I am banging my head against the wall. I responded:

I know! All issues, when you really think about them, are feminist issues. Wow! I just realized: there are no men's rights issues. In every instance that a man is disenfranchised by virtue of his gender, it's actually an oppression of women.

But if feminism is, as you imply, THE ANSWER to all gender equality issues, I wonder how long men will have to wait before feminism seriously addresses the issues that concern them? And when feminism does decide to tackle them, which will they tackle first? The man who loses access to his kids because his ex's new boyfriend lives in another state and the courts don't take his rights as a father (or his children's right TO a father) seriously? Or the fact that he's expected to carry the heavier bags when it's time to bring in the groceries?

Her response?

My life has been touched by custody issues more than you can ever know. Your attempt to shame me with your personal story is inappropriate and is starting to piss me off. This isn't a sorrow and woe competition.

Re-read the article. If you want to get feminists to champion your cause, show how it is a feminist issue, don't just rage and blame. Spouting rhetoric isn't the same as engaging in dialogue.

"I'm a victim and you're not being nice to me. Shut up and go away and come back when you can ask nicely."

My reply to her:

When did I ever claim to want feminists to champion any Men's Rights cause? What I want is gender equality, and if I want that I would be ill-advised to rely on a movement that prioritizes social and legal change in areas where women are disenfranchised, no?

And please don't get me wrong. This in itself is not a criticism of feminism. It would be kind of retarded for me to expect women in the movement to feel as strongly about male disenfranchisement as they do their own--especially when I have been told by (some) feminists themselves that it is not a reasonable expectation, that feminism may ally itself with other rights movements, but it is understandably concerned with women first.

And it would be equally retarded to assume that any political movement will be as interested in taking privileges away from those it champions as it is in elevating them to an equal status. This too is only understandable--it is a both a vagary of human nature and a political reality.

What I want is for ANYONE to listen and take these issues seriously. Sometimes that means shouting and even blaming. I would advise any feminist who tells any group that if they want to be listened to they should stop shouting, that I am sure men and conservative women said the same thing to suffragettes--"Sheesh, you gals are strident and shouty. If you're nice, and you ask a certain way, maybe we'll listen." I'm also pretty sure that if suffragettes had stopped shouting (and blaming), women still would not have the vote. Telling people that their issues are not issues until and unless they present them "nicely" and politely and according to this rule or that rule or the other rule is a silencing tactic used on feminists so frequently, even now, that I am constantly amazed by their inability to recognize when they are trivializing and dismissing others' issues in the same damn way.

And oddly enough, the only issues they want people to stop being shouty about are issues that--if addressed--will negatively affect some individual women. "Gay rights are cool--hell, we'll shout with you. Equal rights for people of color or the poor are cool--don't stop shouting until they listen. Hell yeah! Equal rights for men? Shhhhhhh! No one will take you seriously unless you're pleasant." How often have strong, capable, aggressive women in the movement and the business world heard that one used against them, and how insulting is it to them?

It's disingenuous of anyone to believe that any group advocating for radical social change is going to be listened to if only they are calm and reasonable. Since the mid-80s, academics have been quietly, calmly, convincingly and reasonably publishing 159 surveys, studies and papers tabulating data on domestic violence based on community samples (general population, rather than police records or otherwise skewed or self-selecting samples) of 109 000 men and women, that quietly, calmly, reasonably and convincingly disconfirm the "patriarchal [terrorist]" paradigm of intimate partner violence. Yet who's talking about them--or rather, who's talking about the half of the data in them that disproves the notion that men are the only perpetrators and women the only victims? The criminal justice system? Nope. DV awareness and prevention groups? Nope. Feminists? Nope. These academics have been nice, calm, reasonable in their approach to these issues, imploring judicial officials, government agencies and victims' rights advocacy groups to only consider the data and adjust policies to protect all victims. It's been 25 years, and what has this calm, reasoned approach got them?

When justifiably angry early feminists were told to be "nice", to be "pleasant", to "calm down", that their justifiable and righteous anger at women's disenfranchisement was "unbecoming and unfeminine" and they "should be quiet and go home until you can be nice about it", what do YOU think their response should have been? And yet when it comes to issues where men's disenfranchisement has often been life-destroying for individuals--domestic violence and father's rights--people, not only feminists, tell them they should be more "stoic", to "suck it up" to "deal with it", that their anger is just typical "male aggression" and that they should "go away until you learn how to be nice."

What do you think their response should be? What do you think it will be?

I hope--hell, if I believed in god I would pray--that men will not be quiet. That they will not stop shouting. That they will not settle down and focus solely on compromise, calm debate and pleasant discussion prematurely. That they will not shift from a stance of anger to one of begging. The time will come for settling down, but considering the resistance of those in power--in all defiance of a mountain of empirical evidence and sometimes even their own deeply traumatic personal experiences growing up without fathers or with abusive mothers--their acceptance of a reality that doesn't conform to what is currently considered politically correct isn't coming anytime soon. 

All political movements advocating for meaningful social and political change have had to shout to be heard and taken seriously: The environmental movement, the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, the gay rights movement. There were marches, angry chants of "Hell no, we won't go!", strongly worded placards and slogans, yelling and fist-slamming in venues of political debate, and all manner of unruly, angry, righteous protest.

Contrary to what the feminist above claims, when people are accustomed to the comfort of their status quo, they need to be shouted at before they will be motivated to change it. Sometimes getting people to take you seriously is as much about making a nuisance of yourself until the powers that be finally throw up their hands and cry, "All right already! We'll give you what you want if that's what it takes to shut you guys up!" as it is about logic and evidence and reasoned arguments. Sometimes it requires extremist movements like those of Malcolm X to threaten the masses with a real shake-up before the powers that be are willing to opt for the saner option of Martin Luther King.

However this kind of change happens, it always, always requires shouting. So please, guys, don't stop shouting. Please.