Sunday, November 21, 2010

Women Are ... Part Two: How to get upvoted on The Spearhead

Today in "Women Are ...": Horrible generalizations about women from The Spearhead. Spearhead readers have the option to upvote comments they like, and downvote those they don't. The comments these quotes are taken from all got a lot of upvotes and only a tiny handful of downvotes, if any.

Women are: Dumb as bricks
For all their degrees, today’s women are dumb as bricks. They have rejected ‘weak’ feminine virtues in favor of masculine vices, imagining themselves to be empowered by them. ... There has never been a more miserable generation of women, yet it seems they would rather have their misery a hundred times over than trade it for their natural, submissive role as wives and mothers under a patriarchal system.
(This comment got 68 upvotes, 2 downvotes)


Woman are: Good for Sex (Some of them.)
Some women are good for sex. That’s it. The rest deliver manipulation, financial devastation, false accusations and every form of betrayal with the government and every other lying bitch backing them up. NO THANKS!
(This comment got 38 upvotes, one downvote.)


Women are: A Parasite
Modern women are a parasite. They have no conception of the fact that to get, they should be willing to give. And woe betide the man who puts any trust in a woman. She will pull the rug out from under him simply for the power trip she gets.
(22 upvotes, one downvote.)


Women are: Spoiled beyond repair
Women are ... purely ME focused animals, and they’re neither capable of logic nor feeling empathy for a man. ... U.S. women are spoiled beyond repair.
(39 upvotes, 0 downvotes.)

Apparently, this is the sort of thing that gets you massive upvotes on The Spearhead. Duly noted.

35 comments:

  1. David: Spearhead readers have the option to upvote comments they like, and downvote those they don't.

    Sceptical readers of feminist blogs usually do not have this option, even not to post their opinion if it does not fit the party-line. Inconvenient postings will be deleted and the user banned.

    http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/11/16/dutch-women-less-work-less-pay-more-happiness/

    This article in Spearhead, what is wrong with it?
    It compares the life of US-women with the life of EU-women in Netherlands and refers to UN-studies.

    As I pointed out already in my previous postings, social life in EU is better than in US, with much less feminist hateful rhetoric.

    This spearhead-thread got near to 200 comments and many of them are friendly and reasonable, but David is nitpicking, and of course he finds 'something'.

    It would be good however, if you could comment about the article itself, feminism/women in USA vs. Netherlands.

    The report says:

    Seeing the stark contrast between American and Dutch attitudes toward work and the steady decline in American women’s satisfaction and happiness, one wonders whether American-style feminism isn’t headed for self-destruction. There is evidence that stressed out American women are developing coronary artery disease at higher rates, their relationships with their children are suffering, and their reputation at home and abroad is markedly unfavorable.


    OK, David, and now back to you, what do you think, any comment?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yohan, studies have shown that American men aren't that much happier than American women. But people have focused on female unahppiness under the belief that it proves feminism makes women unhappy, and they would all be happier if they went back to living in a 1950's sitcom world that never actually existed.

    Do you denounce these comments? Does it bother you that other spearhead readers do not denounce these comments?

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  3. I am not talking about American men vs. American women - I am talking about Americans vs. the rest of this world.

    Please get over the idea, that USA is the center of happiness in this world for 'everybody'.

    This thread, created by David is about the life of US-women vs. EU-women in the Netherlands.

    It seems foreign women are better off than American women in some aspects.

    The reason for that might be missing US-aggressive feminism.

    US feminism does not benefit women worldwide. That's for sure.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Actually, Yohan, the thread is about this: If you post something misogynist on the Spearhead, you're probably going to get a lot of upvotes.

    Two of the 4 comments I quoted from came from that netherlands thread; 2 came from different threads. I've got more of them to come.

    You'll find this sort of thing in pretty much any thread on the Spearhead.

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  5. Also, Yohan, this blog is mostly about the US because, hey, that's where I live and the country I know the most about. That doesn't mean that I or any of the other people who comment about the US here think that the US is the center of the universe.

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  6. That's hilarious Yohan. Yes, feminism is making the US miserable. It is obvious that the common denominator for happiness is not strictly enforced gender roles.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yohan: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/ Scroll down to the post called "Going Dutch." The comments are worth looking at too, since they include some by Dutch women telling their side of the story.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Aishlin, some feminists complaining and a large scale study are two completely different things, and the feminist POV is not representativity of all women.

    As for the happiness gap, women have reported being happier than men until the point that the ruling class maneuvered them into the worker role. There are signs that the mortality gap is closing and that women are starting to catch up with men on traditionally male illnesses such as coronary problems.

    Here are some of the theories about the decline in female happiness

    "Working outside the home is not as glamorous as feminism would have us believe. Many jobs are exhausting without offering a large monetary reward.
    Many women are torn between the feminist expectation to work fulltime throughout life, and their own desire to work part-time when the children are small.
    Young women are taught that they can have it all: a successful career, a loving relationship, beautiful children and interesting vacations. In reality, life is much more messy and you often need to sacrifice what is important to you in order to achieve something that is even more important to you. Impossible standards lead to unhappiness.

    "The Happiness Paradox" researchers themselves also have an interesting theory about the declining happiness of women:

    First, there may be other important socio-economic forces that have made women worse off. A number of important macro trends have been documented—decreased social cohesion (Putnam, 2000), increased anxiety and neuroticism (Twenge, 2000), and increased household risk (Hacker, 2006). While each of these trends have impacted both men and women, it is possible for even apparently gender-neutral trends to have gender-biased impacts if men and women respond differently to these forces. For example, if women are more risk averse than men, then an increase in risk may lower women’s utility relative to that of men."

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. MO Its a natural outcome of equality that female happiness should decline to the level of males and that the mortality gap closes. These things should be measured as markers of success for feminists.

    I agree with you Yohan, the most hate and largest civil and human rights roll backs have come from the american strain of feminism. Its only natural that the backlash is strongest there.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Just out of curiosity, David, do you think there is no truth at all to any of these comments? That it's just 100% sour grapes and 0% legitimate observation?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Aishlin said...
    Yohan: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/ Scroll down to the post called "Going Dutch." The comments are worth looking at too, since they include some by Dutch women telling their side of the story.


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1285477/Unemployed-women-given-1-000-makeovers-help-solvent-husband.html

    I think, life in Netherland is nice for women, it's feminist, and about same ranking as USA.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1285477/Unemployed-women-given-1-000-makeovers-help-solvent-husband.html

    It's the only feminist country worldwide I know, where unemployed women can get money from the government to help them to find a SOLVENT husband...

    Women on the dole are being offered a £1,150 fashion and beauty makeover and membership to a dating agency to help them find a wealthy husband.
    Dutch jobseekers are being given a new hairstyle and outfit and tips from a lifecoach on how to attract a new partner.
    .....
    ... the women will be given instructions on how to present themselves socially and offered a place on an exclusive matchmaking website called Mens & Relatie (People and Relationships).
    They will have professional photographs of their new image to boost their dating profile.


    And no, this is not a joke. And this service is for women-only. Feminism makes it possible...

    ReplyDelete
  13. @David:

    ANSWER COLD'S QUESTION!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  14. For someone who clearly knows nothing about the US and who claims not to care about it, Yohan spends an inordinate amount of time talking about it.

    @Sandy, pfft, it is feminism making American miserable, not our lack of a decent healthcare system, lack of an affordable education, the top one percent income class controlling half of the wealth, no vacation time, working more hours for less pay, or anything like that. What is wrong with you, thinking that such things could ever compete with the misery that is feminism? (<-sarcasm).

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  15. Darksidcat

    This happiness decline in females is evident in Europe too.

    http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf

    And when you complain about money dont forget that american women are the wealthiest most powerful consumer group in the world. American women have been described in a financial paper as the world biggest economy.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Cold (and Scarecrow): No, I don't think there is an element of truth in any of those generalizations.

    Are there individual women who are dumb, spoiled, or parasites? Yes. Individual men, too.

    But that's not what these comments are saying. They're making claims about women in general.

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  17. This is the most educated, most affluent consumer group in the world whos representative political party claim is an oppressed group that needs even more of everything we are talking about.

    Just saying.

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  18. @Eoghan, the vast majority of Americans are not the wealthiest and the standard of living in the US is below that of other developed countries. One of the factors I mentioned was the 50% of the weath in the US is controlled by 1% of the population. The weath gap and the gap in standards of living in the US between the rich and the poor is enourmous. That wealthy one percent lives better than anyone on Earth, but, most of the US population lives in a way that is more in line with developing countries. One factor that is also often ignored is the incredibly high cost of living in the US. An income that would put make one comparably well off in most of the world is not getting you those same items in the US.

    Also, the happiness study you cite has been highly criticized, but, even if I were to take it as true, the data it cites about Europe does not match what you are saying.

    "As with U.S. women, the well‐being of European women has declined relative to men. However, while U.S. women also experienced an absolute decline in wellbeing, the subjective well‐being of European women has risen in an absolute sense."

    See, the ratio between European men and women was noted to be closing, not because European women experience a decline in reported wellbeing, but because men experienced an increase, whereas the US data indicated that men stayed about as unhappy as before and women became less happy. You do understand what the word 'relative' means, right? Though, an important factor to note is that subjective reports of wellbeing vs actual indexes of wellbeing have long been known to have massive gaps. People in developed countries do not claim to be happier than those in the third world on subjective scales. Huge discrepancies in what is expected for a 'happy' life mean that actual day to day living quality is not well tracked by subjective happiness scales.

    ReplyDelete
  19. DarkSideCat said...
    For someone who clearly knows nothing about the US and who claims not to care about it, Yohan spends an inordinate amount of time talking about it.


    Please keep in mind, that there are new moderation rules.

    http://manboobz.blogspot.com/2010/11/comments-policy.html
    http://manboobz.blogspot.com/2010/11/comments-policy-updated.html

    ReplyDelete
  20. Eoghan said...
    I agree with you Yohan, the most hate and largest civil and human rights roll backs have come from the american strain of feminism. Its only natural that the backlash is strongest there.


    I think, many problems American men are facing in USA because of feminism do not exist anywhere else in this world, USA is unique.

    Feminism in USA is creating a strange aggressive form of 'deep mistrust' between men and women everywhere in any aspect of daily life - in a personal relationship, working together in the same company, in schools, even in case how they are dating using the internet. Rapists are everywhere, in the streets, in the schools and even in the bedroom. -

    Every feminist wants to teach you about how you have to adjust/change your life-style as man because of women, but never says anything about women and how they should consider men. It's only about 'me, me and me'.

    US-feminism is 'Take as much as you can and give as little as possible' because of your 'right gender'. US-feminism is highly materialistic orientated, supported by law and greedy lawyers.

    Nobody is spared in US-feminist comments, a single man is a 'baby-boy' who does not know how to treat a woman, a man married to a foreign wife is 'an old loser', a girl-friend a few years younger makes the man a 'pedophile' or even wife-beater, your wife is of different race you were buying a foreign doormat...

    It's truly about shaming language you cannot find anywhere else outside of the USA.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Eoghan: if working is causing people coronary problems, that's probably something that needs to be fixed for men as well as women. I don't know why you would want to say that working women experiencing "traditionally male diseases" is a sign women shouldn't work instead of a sign we need to improve working conditions. Is it okay if it's just men having coronary problems?

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  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  23. What are you talking about ashling?

    I said its a sign of equality and women taking on more work and responsibilities, not a sign that women shouldn't work. I, and you will find most mens rights people, are fully supportive of equal work, equal rights and equal responsibilities for men and women. Thats what makes us offensive to modern feminism.

    We want equal opportunity in education and employment, equal pay for equal work, equal support of abuse victims, equal punishments for abusers and criminals, equal health funding, equal rights in family law and so on, the opposite of what modern feminism wants.

    ReplyDelete
  24. @Yohan, considering that you mention the US eight times in your last comment alone (counting only the words US or American) after saying this "Please get over the idea, that USA is the center of happiness in this world for 'everybody'" earlier as a response to another commenter pointing out that US males were comparable to US females in these studies this is hardly a misrepresentation. On the issue of you knowing nothing about the US, the fact that you cite 'baby-boy' as a shaming term is good enough evidence for this. This term is actually generally used as a term of affection, and is mostly used by black Americans. See, for example, the song "Baby-boy" by Beyonce. The comparable female term is "Baby-girl". There is a film called "Baby-boy" about an immature man becoming more mature, but I think anyone who has ever watched this film will tell you that 'traditional' gender roles are treated as the superior position and the end goal in it. http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1958215961/

    ReplyDelete
  25. Feminism nowadays is not about equality anymore, it is about getting for free for what others have to work, it's about take as much as you can and give as little as possible.

    It's also interesting to see, that feminism is clearly not a good solution for all women, as it benefits only certain groups of women, who are financially anyway good off.

    See this link below

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314747/Cherie-Blairs-Mauritius-trip-gaffe-summit-world-poverty.html

    About upvoted, not in this case...

    Clearly downvoted, despite some feminists in their comments were calling her an 'inspiration' and a 'bright, successful woman'

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  26. So, David, since you agree that at least some women are parasites, you cannot deny that there is at least SOME basis in reality to inspire these kinds of comments. That means that the only area of dispute is percentage. Obviously that's difficult if not impossible to measure accurately for the whole population, but we all have a wealth of personal experience. Maybe you are really damn lucky and rarely experience the traits described in the comments, but for many of us they tend to hold true. Not always, of course, and there is some exaggeration going on, but to flatly call an observation "misogynist" just because it observes a negative pattern among women is really stretching the definition of the word. Furthermore, it makes you sound like you think your experiences are more valid than those of others, which comes off as quite arrogant and elitist.

    The Spearhead lets you vote a comment up or down; it doesn't let you give nine tenths of an upvote and one tenth of a downvote for a comment that with which you mostly agree but think that it is stated too broadly. You are either committing a serious error or being intentionally dishonest if you treat every upvote as a full endorsement of the comment.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Hmm. So if a woman says "all men are pigs," would you have to admit that there was some truth in the statement because SOME men are pigs?

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  28. No, I would admit that there was SOME basis in reality to inspire it, but not enough to justify the "all" part since that would require 100% of men to be pigs.

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  29. The comments I quoted appear to be directed at ALL women as well.

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  30. When no quantifier is specified, convention dictates that "in general" be the interpreted quantifier. Also, "all men are pigs" is a bad example from the other side because "pig" doesn't even specify any particular behavior or trait, whereas "manipulation, financial devastation, false accusations and every form of betrayal" are things that can actually be identified.

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  31. You know, I just realized that David's whole argument -- that the Spearhead's comments section mirrors the MRM as a whole -- falls apart when you consider that any anonymous reader of any political persuasion can up-vote or down-vote anything. This includes feminists, who could be artificially up-voting the most outrageous comments in order to later discredit the legitimate voices (and the legitimate issues) of the MRM.

    How do you know that those up-votes come from people who really agree with the comment that they're up-voting? Same for down-votes? The answer is you don't; they could be artificially inflated by feminists, or by a small band of misogynists with an axe to grind against the Spearhead (such as M101), or by an even smaller group of genuine misogynists whose IP addresses haven't yet been banned.

    It's a criticism of David's that rests on an imprecise measurement.

    Do I believe that there are misogynist supporters of the MRM? They absolutely exist. But those people tend not to be the doers; they are keyboard warriors. They probably also quarterback major NFL football teams from the comfort of their armchairs. Such voices pose no threat to the existing order.

    ReplyDelete
  32. "This includes feminists, who could be artificially up-voting the most outrageous comments in order to later discredit the legitimate voices (and the legitimate issues) of the MRM."

    Yeah, that's right, John. 68 evil feminists and/or Manhood 101ers signed up just to upvote that first comment abut women being dumbas bricks, and somehow magically prevented all but two ethical, non-misogynst MRAs from downvoting it.

    Not only that but you think that dozens of Manhood101ers went on the site to evilly upvote that comment, and they somehow refrained from posting their usual spam?

    Also, how many MRAs are there out there who actually are anything more than "keyboard warriors?" You might actually do activist stuff in the real world, and some father's rights people might as well, but the vast majority of MRAs I've run across do very little but vent online.

    For the most part, I suspect, the MRM is little more than a bunch of armchair quarterbacks, many if not most of them frankly misogynist or otherwise very angry at women.

    ReplyDelete
  33. DAVID: ...about women being dumbas bricks

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_are_stupid,_throw_rocks_at_them!_controversy

    Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them...

    The T-shirt was designed by company founder Todd Goldman, who started David and Goliath in 1999 with

    "Boys are Smelly"

    T-shirts. It now features clothes with a variety of slogans, such as

    "Boys tell lies, poke them in the eyes!"

    or "The stupid factory, where boys are made". "Boys are stupid ..." has evolved into a successful object for merchandise, which includes all types of clothes, mugs, key chains, posters and other items.


    David, you have to see both sides of the story...

    ReplyDelete
  34. @Yohan, again, reading your own sources helps

    "Goldman [the creator of the shirts] himself says that his T-shirts have nothing to do with the girl-power movement, "I'm a guy. I couldn't give a rat's ass about girl empowerment..."

    This person is man who is explicitly not a feminist, so, he is hardly good evidence that feminists think or behave in such a way.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Darksidecat

    you are missing the point, those misandric products sell because there is a market for hatred of boys and men, which has been created by feminism.

    ReplyDelete

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