Thursday, October 21, 2010

QuoteOTD: Teh Menz at work

Another day, another muddled mess of misogynist generalizations completely unsupported by any actual evidence. Today, at A Voice For Men, Theodore Labadie reflects on the Roman Pantheon, and how teh menz made all the cool shit in the world lol, ladies are teh suckkssss! I'm paraphrasing, of course. In his words:
Men do not see the world like women do. The gaze of men projects outward into it; they see it, they take what they need from it, and they remake it anew. The gaze of women falls inward. The world becomes them, it exists for them. And thus, women do not build; they consume. It is not the vicissitudes of society or the education system that makes women like this. It is their nature. And, I hazard a guess ... that because of the consumptive nature of women and of men's desire to give them every comfort and convenience that we are eating ourselves alive.
I wonder, if the genius of men were fully recognized where would we be now? 
Gosh, I don't know. We'd probably all be flying around with jet packs while having sex with sexy sex robots. That's just a guess, though. But I have a question for Mr. Labadie, and for every MRA who gets vicarious man thrills from stuff other dudes have made: how many Roman Pantheons have you personally built?

Also: it sort of undermines your case for inherent man genius when you use the word "bare" to mean "bear." Real men proofread.

Program Note: I will be man-debating Paul Elam, the man behind A Voice For Men, on the topic of Domestic Violence, starting tonight on his man-site. I will post links when the posts start going up.

17 comments:

  1. Such an expert on the woman's point of view, you'd think he was one.

    Women masturbate to images of Sean Connery on a white horse galloping across a meadow. I know this to be true because I heard it from an man.

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  2. I am a man, and I have built several Roman Pantheons...

    ...

    In my pants.

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  3. I did not see anyone claiming to have built a Roman pantheon, just admiring the ingenuity of the men who did. So what is your point ?
    A few childish snarky remarks and the fact that he made a spelling mistake seems to be about all you can manage.

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  4. I know you will win this debate but you do realize that even when he loses, he is going to claim he won, don't you? Because that's just the kind of guy he is.

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  5. nivek,
    Women were kept out of schools and treated as property, among other degrading horrors. It's the equivalent of claiming you won a fight when you tied the others arm behind their backs and tied them to a chair. Not to mention but Davids points, aside from noting the obvious misogyny inherent in the post, is that not ALL men did this. Most were peasants and most certaintly werent grand intellectausl, ect.

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  6. Well, if men are collectively to be held responsible for every bad thing one of us has done, it only makes sense to collectively claim responsibility for every good thing too.

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  7. Also, Marla, there have been several cases of men taking or being given credit for women's inventions. The washing machine, for example. Being legally disallowed to own property includes being legally disallowed to own patents.

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  8. "Real men proofread?" Fuk U they do. First of all, Y wood any reel man take advice from U? Secund, ownly grammarians, librarians and spelling Nazi's proofread - in otherwords, girlios. Reel people communicate, inspite of error. 4 instanss, ebonics is not proper English. Why don't you wok into West Oakland and tell the men folk there that they ain't real men. 'Cause they'd bust a cap into your soft body.

    Cordially,
    Magz

    PS: Hope that do halp U.

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  9. Marla.

    The posts states an opinion on the different way that men and women view the world, nowhere does it say that he “hates women”, just that he thinks they have a different outlook to that of men in general. So where's the misogyny ?

    As i pointed out previously, no where is the claim made that all men built pantheons, in fact, as you point out your self, most men were peasants who were also excluded from schools and forced into slave labour and generally treated like shit.

    Anonymous.

    There have been more than several instances where men have claimed the work of other men, its not a man woman thing, its just that some people are shitty like that.

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  10. What's "more than several" exactly. Who's the male Rosalind Franklin?

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  11. nivek,
    His statement is unequivocally misogynistic and incredibly underhanded. It's obvious his statement is meant to proclaim women as some sort of inherently bad gender and that somehow he believes (in spite of history being so obviously blatant about this not being how it is) that women were started on the same race track with the same opportunities and no discriminatory hindrances to them as people and men just happened to 'win.' It is well known that women were kept out of public life and not allowed to have rights which included many opportuntities such as education and legal recognition. A roman man reserved the right to kill her if he so inclined. Your low blow dismissal and explanation of his raging misogyny as simply discussing gender differences is an incredibly disingenuous defense of misogyny. It would be the equivalent if I said, "just look around you, all white people created it and this is because white people have the vision, the drive and the positive character attributes to develope useful things, while black people dont." That would be racist just like this is misogynistic. Turn it around and put men wherever he wrote 'women.'

    anonymous said:
    No, thats because a majority of bad things were done by men-again because women were not allowed power. It is not disingenuous to note that. It's also very obvious if you simply look at a history book.


    and anonymous 2:06am yes it very much was a man on woman thing, just like at times it was a white on black thing because those that have less power are going to have less defenses both economically and via social leverage.

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  12. "Women were kept out of schools and treated as property, among other degrading horrors. "

    well men get treated like property in the courts now a days. at least men had responsibilities in lieu of their "property".

    Some history for you:

    http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/rome/a/divorceroman.htm

    During the Song Dynasty (960 to 1276) the position of women in society dropped to a new low. Until this time women had been schooled in the arts and versed in the classics; they held independent rights to property and wealth, and could marry or remarry at will. New ideology, however, redefined their status, laying the groundwork to keep nearly half of China's population obedient and limited in skill and ability. Women's roles were defined only in the context of complete dependence upon men: a female was to remain in the home, where she was required to obey her father and older brother in childhood, her husband in marriage, and her son if widowed. It was considered unwise to educate women, supporting the belief that "in a woman stupidity is a virtue". Her attention, instead, was to be focused on cultivating fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech, and efficient needlework. No longer were women given property rights, but were themselves treated as property, bought and sold or even killed by husbands and fathers with impunity.

    http://www.josephrupp.com/history.html

    pg 17 right hand side

    http://www.arlev.co.uk/glubb/index.htm


    why is that women have been given these rights and the "education" that you so speak of, and then are taken away or lost?
    our present day reality answers it, doesn't it?
    and then what would men have accomplished if they didn't had to provide for a wife and children?

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  13. "But I have a question for Mr. Labadie, and for every MRA who gets vicarious man thrills from stuff other dudes have made: how many Roman Pantheons have you personally built?"

    the question is, how many pantheons women would have built? is it therefore sensible to educate men at the cost of women if you have more chances of finding geniuses among men? and of course, has there ever been a female genius?

    also, it's funny that you are going from collective to personal, while hitting a woman is taken as oppression against all women.


    PS - and I am amazed that nobody posted this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEgCkOfl4jE

    PPS - sounds like a very misogynistic song btw

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  14. Namae, I'm not sure the Song Dynasty would be the best example to use as proof of women's inferiority. Remember, China had been stagnating for a long time while the West had begun its rise and domination, with the Renaissance and everything. One could argue that the oppression of women which started with the Song was what started China off on its decline. In reference to the Arabs and Romans, again, correlation is not necessarily causation--for instance, some historians wrote that the Germanic societies regarded women highly.

    So in answer to your question,

    "why is that women have been given these rights and the "education" that you so speak of, and then are taken away or lost?
    our present day reality answers it, doesn't it?"

    Not really. In some places, the rise of women has resulted in societal decline, this true, in others, it hasn't.

    the question is, how many pantheons women would have built? is it therefore sensible to educate men at the cost of women if you have more chances of finding geniuses among men? and of course, has there ever been a female genius?

    Again, not necessarily. For the purposes of argument let's assume that there have never been any female geniuses at all ever in all of the history of mankind, but then who gave birth to those geniuses? Women, of course. If, as you say, men create civilization, a second generation of men is needed to maintain it. Who gives birth to that second generation? Women. And since stupid, ill-educated women are less likely to breed smart, well-educated men, it's not really a good idea to deny them an education, since it makes it less likely one of them will give birth to a male genius.

    As I think Chuck Ross of glpiggy may have mentioned to you a long time ago, you can't have men without the valuable input of women. By the same token, as I believe you replied, you can't have women without the valuable input of men, but that is precisely the point--both sexes need each other. Your brand of masculinism is, in the long run, not much more tenable than feminism. In fact, it is more or less feminism's mirror image.

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  15. "In reference to the Arabs and Romans, again, correlation is not necessarily causation--for instance, some historians wrote that the Germanic societies regarded women highly."

    Causation is inherently difficult to prove in social settings. But at least we can agree that women have had rights for education.

    "And since stupid, ill-educated women are less likely to breed smart, well-educated men, it's not really a good idea to deny them an education, since it makes it less likely one of them will give birth to a male genius."

    you still believe that IQ is from nurture?
    well educated women might propel their sons along the lines of education but then again we have the problem of whether it was that which made their sons into a genius?

    "As I think Chuck Ross of glpiggy may have mentioned to you a long time ago, you can't have men without the valuable input of women. By the same token, as I believe you replied, you can't have women without the valuable input of men, but that is precisely the point--both sexes need each other."

    I said that it was the biological reality that without womb or semen both men and women cannot exist. That complementarity doesn't has to presume equality and that in many ways male and female desires are antagonistic. Unfortunately I left for a few days and forgot about it. I only replied to it much much later:
    http://glpiggy.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/bob-knows-nothing-and-lost-keys/#comment-4254

    And the inputs of women are thus the inputs of men copied by them as every original thought seems to have been from a man.
    Even feminism itself, the liberal branch of it following the equality, liberty, fraternity and adding sorority to it, while the patriarchy as a ruling class, copied from marxist class struggle.

    "Your brand of masculinism is, in the long run, not much more tenable than feminism. In fact, it is more or less feminism's mirror image.""

    It isn't my brand or anything, it's at least empirically true, unlike feminism's disingenuity and dishonesty and has succeeded in creating what we see today.

    Feminism of today depends on, the first thing, that difference between men and women are that of degree and not of kind(leaving aside the apparent bodily differences), and secondly if they are of degree then men and women are equal in degree as well.
    I don't think even the first one holds.

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  16. "Your brand of masculinism is, in the long run, not much more tenable than feminism. In fact, it is more or less feminism's mirror image."

    No, the MRM is not feminism's mirror. There is a big difference about how both movements are financed.

    MRAs do not need money from others, they pay for their expenses out of their own wallet. They are not supported.

    The feminist movement however is non-productive and expensive and costs all of us a lot of money. Either from man to woman, or from companies to women, or out of public funds from tax-payers...

    No money and feminism is finished.

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  17. Causation is inherently difficult to prove in social settings. But at least we can agree that women have had rights for education.

    True enough, but *some* women have had rights for education. In the late Roman and early Chinese contexts, they did, later on, they didn't. Feminists might not be complaining so much of the status of women everywhere had been historically similar to how women were regarded in, say, pre-Song china. Of course, where feminists go wrong is saying that all women have generally been treated as badly as Chinese girls in Song china, and you're right to call them out on that.

    you still believe that IQ is from nurture?

    Nope, but that's the thing--IQ is derived from both parents; while a high IQ man and high IQ woman will have high IQ children, a high IQ man with a lower IQ woman (or a high IQ woman with a lower IQ man) won't produce offspring which are as intelligent. Since education is a good way of separating the intelligent from the dim (the dim get worse grades and don't go to colleges which are as good), allowing women to be educated seems to me an effective way of keeping the high-IQ women with the high-IQ men, leading to a net increase in smarter kids.

    That complementarity doesn't has to presume equality and that in many ways male and female desires are antagonistic.

    Perhaps, but it does imply it's not as easy to argue that one sex is "superior" to the other. In your comment you say "men can do anything that woman can do," but this is empirically incorrect. Men can't give birth, to take one example. You say that the inputs of women are simply copied from 'genius' men, but as Chuck might respond, where did the inputs of genius men come from? Would the great male philosophers have been as great if their mothers had been stupid and passed on their stupid genes to them, or raised them in different ways, or chosen different fathers for them? Chuck nailed it: Even if you want to say the sexes aren't the same or equal, your determination to portray women as absolutely inferior to men or the inputs of women as entirely nonexistent or valueless are actually not empirically tenable.

    it's at least empirically true, unlike feminism's disingenuity and dishonesty and has succeeded in creating what we see today.

    Is it? That's debatable--as you yourself admitted, despite what historical evidence of female inferiority you pulled from history, it's hard to nail down causation in social contexts, and as I've mentioned above, there are other empirical issues with your analysis as well. Indeed, again, Chuck's analysis is the best, IMO:

    A masculist argument seems to do exactly what anti-feminists rail against feminists for; they're trying to mute or usurp the contribution and value of females.

    Now, in response to Yohan, keep in mind that I'm just talking with Namae Nanka here. I obviously disagree with his brand of men's advocacy, but that's obviously not the same as the MRM as a whole, which probably does have brighter prospects, in my view. :)

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