Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Factchecking a list of "Hateful Quotes From Feminists"


Making a list, checking it twice.
Periodically, in the comments here, someone will post a dubious list of "evil feminist quotes" they have found on some Men's Rights or antifeminist website. These lists are always faintly ridiculous, filled with decades-old quotes from a handful of radical feminists (most notably, Andrea Dworkin), most of whom have been soundly criticized by other feminists and whose ideas have been rejected by the majority of feminists today. The lists also tend to be very sloppily put together. When I've gone to check the accuracy of these lists, I've invariably run into problems -- one quote may have come from a character in a novel, another may be a quote that doesn't reflect the author's own point of view, and so on.

Recently, one of the antifeminists who regularly comments here (Cold) posted a link to one such list, helpfully titled "Hateful Quotes From Feminists." It's fairly typical of these sorts of lists: many of the quotes are decades old, there are ten quotes from a single radical feminist -- yes, Andrea Dworkin -- and the list is sloppily put together.

I decided to give this list a fairly thorough fact-checking. And the results were, well, more or less what I expected, which is to say that the list was a sloppy mixture of truth, half-truth and outright falsehood.

The story, in brief: Some of the quotes I checked were indeed accurate -- or mostly accurate. But several quotes were simply imaginary, or uttered by fictional characters; one was a complete misrepresentation of what the author was saying; two were paraphrased, which is to say, words put in the mouths of feminist authors by feminist critics; some were from obscure or anonymous sources, and in a few cases it wasn't clear if those quoted were feminists at all; several were improperly sourced. There were a number of quotes that didn't specify where they were from, and which turned out to be impossible to check. And then there were a couple of quotes which were not actually hateful at all.

I didn't check everything in the list, but --if you have the patience for it -- let's go through what I did check, as a sort of case study in the shoddiness of much antifeminist propaganda.

Let's start off with the very first quote:

"In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent." Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies, p. 129.

We're off to a bad start here. This is not a quote from MacKinnon. The words were in fact written by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, the actual authors of "Professing Feminism," a polemical book critical of feminism. They purport to summarize the views of MacKinnon and Dworkin, though, as Snopes points out in its debunking of the false quote, both M and D have specifically stated that they don't believe intercourse is rape. Apparently the quote was attributed to MacKinnon in a column by right-wing columnist Cal Thomas, which is evidently how it entered the land of antifeminist mythology. Somewhere along the line, Catharine had her name changed to Catherine.

Then there's this alleged quote from Andrea Dworkin:

"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies."

According to Wikiquote, this quote is quite literally fictional:

The first appearance of this quote is from P: A Novel (2003) by Andrew Lewis Conn as a quote from the fictional feminist "Corinne Dwarfkin". The original reads "In capsule form, my thesis is that heterosexual intercourse is the pure, distilled expression of men's contempt for women." In the slightly altered form given above, the quote is attributed in several books to Andrea Dworkin. Neil Boyd, in Big Sister (2004) attributes the quote to Letters from a War Zone, however, this quote, nor any one with similar phrasing, appears in that work.

Indeed, our listmaker seem to have a lot of trouble quoting Dworkin correctly. A bunch of the quotes are taken from her book Letters From a War Zone, which I happen to own. The first quote I checked was this one:

"The newest variations on this distressingly ancient theme center on hormones and DNA: men are biologically aggressive; their fetal brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself, hurls them into murder and rape." Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 114.

It's a weird quote, which sounds a lot like it's coming from the the middle of a complicated argument. That's because it is. And when you read what precedes it, it becomes clear that  it's NOT a statement of Dworkin's own beliefs. She was in fact summarizing (in her own words) the beliefs of "male supremacist" sociobiologists like Edward O. Wilson. It may or may not be a fair summary of their views, but that's not the point: it's NOT what she thought. Later in the paragraph, in fact, she compared these views to Hitler's.

The other quotes from the book are more or less accurate. Words are missing, moved from one sentence to another, verb tenses are changed; they're very sloppy transcriptions, but at least they aren't complete and utter misrepresentations of what Dworkin wrote.

There's also quote from Andrea Dworkin that's listed as being from "Liberty, p. 58." Dworkin never wrote a book called Liberty. But I found the quote in what seems to be a scholarly work; it's evidently from Dworkin's book Our Blood.

Finally, there are a few other alleged quotes from Dworkin; they don't have sources listed for them. I found the quotes elsewhere online -- but only on dubious "quote pages" and other iterations of "evil feminist" lists. They sound Dworkin-ish, but given the listmaker's track record I have no faith that they are actually real, correctly transcribed Dworkin.

It's bizarre. How hard is it to find hair-raising quotes from Andrea Dworkin? Dworkin was so radical that most feminists disagree with her, sometimes violently. You could practically pick a sentence at random from almost any of her books and chances are good it would offend somebody -- including me. A number of her writings are available online. How lazy and sloppy do you have to be to fuck up your Dworkin quotes like this?

Let's now turn to Marilyn French's famously fictional quote:

"All men are rapists and that's all they are." Marilyn French in People, February 20, 1983

Oh, the quote is real -- she wrote it -- but it is not a statement of French's beliefs. Nor did it originate in People magazine. It is a line of dialogue from her book The Woman's Room. Wikipedia, take it away:

Following the rape of Val's daughter Chris, Val states (over Mira's protests), "Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relationships with men, in their relationships with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes" (p. 433). Critics have sometimes quoted Val's dialogue as evidence of French's misandry without noting that the passage is only spoken by one of many characters in the novel.

Now, it's true that this sentence was quoted in People magazine -- in the issue of Feb 20 1979, not Feb 20, 1983 as claimed. It's not clear from the rather sloppy People article that this is a line from the book, but it is.

In the article, French notes that the book is partly based on her experience -- drawing on the emotions she herself felt after her own daughter was raped.

"Sometimes I felt so violent about it and how the courts treated her," French admits, "that there seemed no recourse but to go out, buy a gun and shoot the kid who did it, and the lawyers too. I couldn't help my own child." Plenty of that rage made its way into The Women's Room. "I'm less angry now. Being too deep in anger corrodes your interior."

So, again, it is very clear that the "all men are rapists" quote is meant to reflect a character awash in rage and pain; it is not an ideological statement of misandry.

The "Hateful Quotes" list also contains a bunch of quotes from people I've never heard of; they're obviously not major feminist figures, and may not even be feminists. Gordon Fitch? Never heard of the guy, and can't find anything about him online.

Hodee Edwards? Never heard of her either, and I can only find a handful of mentions of her online, but she's mentioned in the footnotes of a Catharine MacKinnon book, and it looks as though she is, or at least was, a feminist with Marxist leanings. But there is no way to even find out what the source of the quote is -- a book, an essay, a quotation in a news story? -- much less actually find the source and confirm that the quote is real.

Then there's Pat Poole:

Melbourne City Councilwoman Pat Poole announced her opposition to renaming a street for Martin Luther King: "I wonder if he really accomplished things, or if he just stirred people up and caused a lot of riots."

Who the hell is Pat Poole? I looked her up, and yes, she was a city councilwoman in Melbourne, Florida, but I was unable to find out much beyond that. Is the quote accurate? I don't know. There's no source given, and I can't find the original quote online. Is she actually a feminist, or is the author of the list simply assuming she is one because she's a woman?

And then of course there is the anonymous "Liberated Woman" whose quote ends the list. She definitely sounds like a feminist. We just don't know for sure if she or the quote are real.

Moving on, I can't help but notice that a number of the allegedly hateful quotes are in fact not hateful at all. Take, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich's quote about the family, which is in fact part of a sharply written essay on "family values." You can find it here.

Here's another distinctly non-hateful quote:

"Women take their roles of caretakers very seriously and when they hear of someone who's taken advantage of a child, they react more strongly than men do." - Kathleen C. Faller, professor of social work at the University of Michigan

Faller, if she did indeed say this, may or may not be correct, but it's hard to see how this is "hateful." Women on average spend much more time caring for children than men do and it may well be that, on average, they react more strongly than men. I couldn't find the quote in question -- again, this is because the listmaker didn't actually provide the source -- but her faculty web page is here.

Then there's this "hateful" quote on religion:

"God is going to change. We women... will change the world so much that He won't fit anymore." Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions.

The quote is real; Goldenberg is indeed a feminist theologian. But here's a little newsflash: There are lots of people in the world, feminist and non-feminist, who do not believe in traditional notions of God. Or in God at all. Nietzsche famously said "God is Dead," Richard Dawkins says God is "a delusion," and about 80 zillion internet athiests (many of them not feminists in the slightest) regularly compare belief in God to belief in unicorns, fairies, and Santa Claus.

I checked out a few other quotes on the list. The Hillary Clinton quote is accurate; the source is here.  The Barbara Jordan quote appears in a Texas Monthly article here.

The quote from Catherine Comins -- a favorite "evil feminist quote" amongst MRAs -- has its origins in a Time magazine article, but it is not actually a quote from her; it is someone else's summary of what she told Time in the article in question. Nor do we know the full context in which she spoke.

I don't have the time or patience to fact-check the rest of the list. If anyone out there happens to have time and/or patience, or happens to own any of the books that are cited as sources, feel free to fact check it yourself and post your findings. (EDITED TO ADD: triplanetary has risen to the challenge, and has factchecked the rest of the list, as well as offering some excellent commentary on the alleged "hatefulness" of many of the quotes. You can find the post here.)

The numerous errors in this list -- some minor, some huge -- say something not only about the creator of this list but about all those who've distributed this list without, clearly, bothering to check anything in it .  (Or, in the case of Cold, to contine to distribute a list he's pretty sure is less than reliable.) Is this the result of laziness, or dishonesty? A bit of both, I imagine.

But I think this list is also a symptom of the tendency of many in the Men's Rights movement to inflate the evils of their opponents. So many MRAs are so determined to prove that their supposed oppression is worse than that of women, and so determined to blame it all on feminism, that they need to make their opponents larger than life and twice as nasty. Given that the feminism they fight is largely a paranoid fantasy, bearing very little resemblance to feminism as it actually exists in the world today, it's hardly shocking that a number of the quotes on this little list are fictional -- and that none of the MRAs posting this list here and there on the internet seem to have even noticed (or, if they have noticed, to care, or at least to care enough to stop distributing the list). When you're fighting phantoms in your own mind, the truth doesn't really matter, does it?

Given how poorly this list held up to my fack-checking attempts, from now on I will consider this list and others like it spam, and delete any comments that  link to them.

If any of you antifeminists still feel the desire to post "evil feminist quotes" in the comments here, you may do so, but only if you (or the list that you link to) provides clickable links to the original sources of the quotes in question.  If you can't provide a link to the source, I'll delete it.

When I quote from MRAs and MGTOW-ites and other misogynists on this blog, I provide links to the sources. What's so hard about that?

EDIT: Fixed links, and a few verb tenses.
--

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212 comments:

  1. The feminism we fight is quite real and the accurate quotes help illustrate this. The new list under construction will be thoroughly vetted and will contain a whole bunch of new quoted nastiness, will all sources hyperlinked to either the original sites or to cached pages since the real gems have a tendency to conveniently disappear when they start attracting attention. Before you even go there, yes I know that Amanda Morcotte claims that one was lost due to technical issues. A likely story but I can't prove it to be false at this time, not that I bear the burden of proof on that claim.

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  2. Oops, above should have said all ONLINE sources hyperlinked, since accurate quotes from copyrighted printed works will still be in there, even when the work isn't available online.

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  3. I would like to point out that the people that posts links to these lists know they are complete bullshit and post them anyway. So therefore, Cold, you have NO credibility. Instead of saying, look at this, I posted a bullshit link and David completely handed me my ass... you deflect to this new nonsense "coming soon" to a fantasy-feminism hate site near you.

    Feminism has been around for a long time and you should be able to have entire web sites dedicated to quotes just like manboobz does. But no, it's the anti fems who have the most hateful horrible murderous quotes in the movements. You people need to give it up, seriously.

    I love the end of the post here, it's exactly what these people need to hear. All the fake spammers, basically liars, can say here is...oh there are new ones somewhere. Well what about the fact that YOU posted OLD ones that are crap and YOU KNEW IT?

    Nobody should take these people seriously. Also, people are always trying to dance around Andrea. You know what? Show me ANY example of a manifestation of something she has said. ONE MANIFESTATION. ONE. I dare you.

    But yet, this entire blog is a manifestation of your MRA bullshit. Some posts document some manifestations that are down right murderous and dangerous. You guys need to come off it.

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  4. Oh, and of course it's not so hard to link to an ONLINE source. I don't see you posting about the contents of copyrighted books that are not available for free online, at least not legally.

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  5. Cold...

    you mean..."oops I should have apologized for posting complete fucking garabage."

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  6. Well, I hope you do a better job transcribing these quotes from printed works than the person who made the list here, and that you make sure to quote material that actually represents the author's opinion, instead of being a summary of what someone else believes.

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  7. Cold Oh, and of course it's not so hard to link to an ONLINE source. I don't see you posting about the contents of copyrighted books that are not available for free online, at least not legally.

    I honestly have no idea what you're trying to get at here. Could you clarify?

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  8. Hey David, in case you weren't aware this booboonation character has co-opted the name of your blog for use in her "Manboobz TV" video series. If you gave her permission for that then fine, but she is also using my friend Patrick as the mascot without his permission.

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  9. Oh, the segment in question begins at 2:10 in that video.

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  10. To clarify, you said:

    When I quote from MRAs and MGTOW-ites and other misogynists on this blog, I provide links to the sources. What's so hard about that?

    Well, obviously nothing when it's an ONLINE source. That list, made about a decade ago at a time when the Internet wasn't so prolific, had to rely on references to printed works and was much more prone to being mislead.

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  11. You know, you could always take screencaps of the "hateful quotes" just in case they get taken offline. It's not ideal, of course, since people can claim you just doctored them, but it's still better than a link that leads to a 404 or nothing at all.

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  12. Cold, again, if you knew the list to be unreliable, WHY DID YOU POST IT?

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  13. In this thread Cold forgets we had internet in 2001 and claims list posted to the internet was made before the internet was a thing.

    Also admits it might be hard to find crazy quotes from the last decade.

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  14. Well, I don't have a TV series, but If I cover something from this blog I link to it.

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  15. BTW cold... does your friend Patrick use other people without their permission? Because... if people on you tube freely use each other's material and such, then it's fair game. And it's interesting you would bring that up. I am sure David is already aware that some MRAs have the tactic of publishing private information on people that they want to intimidate, and these are the people you are in with. We don't need to bring that here to the blog. I think that you're deflecting because I aggressively pointed out your dishonesty. Yes, there is much more I could say. But I have learned something about MRAs you and Patrick DO NOT REPRESENT them. In fact some have been so kind as to suggest to P to help the movement more instead of focusing on harassing women...their words , not mine. David's blog has helped me meet more MRAs I am happy to report they are not out to ruin women's lives that they don't like.

    Some day Patrick will likely be arrested for what he uses without permission, if you get my drift. And that's all we should say here.

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  16. Yes, NO POSTING OF ANYONES PERSONAL INFO here.

    Any comment containing personal info of anyone will be deleted. If someone does it more than once they will be banned.

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  17. I found some quotes in support on this very blog! I had to do some editing, but I think the general sentiment is still succintly conveyed.

    "In my opinion. [Men] should never be allowed to hold degrees in soft sciences. And there should be no degrees in regards to soft sciences.

    Just because a [man] holds a degree to some cheap laden science or bad science. It doesn’t make [him] smart, but in fact it has an opposite effect. it makes [him] downright stupid.

    There’s different between knowledge and wisdom. And today’s lacks both of them. Only thing [he’s] good at is being worthless."

    That was published in October, you can read the whole entry here.

    Or how about:

    "I have come to the conclusion that it's not enough to avoid romantic relations with [men]. A [woman] should take extra precautions to avoid even the most casual contact. Regard them as nuclear waste or a highly contagious disease,"

    and

    "[Women] are lovable humans, unlike [men]. [Women] are the greatest ever treasure of gold, whom [men] worthless could never compare to or ever hold a candle to. ... the [female] sex is ever superior to the weaker [male] one. [Women] in India are mistreated vis-à-vis [males], to get the bitches feel dignified. This is against nature. ... [Women] are taken advantage of by bitches (the [man] race). ... Woe betide [men]. I hate them too much, [boys] too,"

    both of which you can easily find here

    And then the crowning quote:

    "In my opinion [men] are malleable,gullible and lack vision.The statements they make are ludicrous,they are therefore stupid, driven on by one thing and one thing only-their sexual power. The day someone creates a pill that desexualizes them in our eyes, then that is it. It is over. I don’t for a single second believe that the nature of [men] has transformed over the ages. Go back in time and the same nonsense will be as visible then as it is now. ... women are this way by nature. The good thing is,they have demonstrated, to their everlasting detriment, just how bad, irrational, and ridiculous they really are. Time to stop pandering."

    You can find the unedited version of that one here.

    I'd continue, but I think my point has been made.

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  18. @ David

    David states: "Let's now turn to Marilyn French's famously fictional quote:


    "All men are rapists and that's all they are." Marilyn French in People, February 20, 1983

    Oh, the quote is real -- she wrote it -- but it is not a statement of French's beliefs. Nor did it originate in People magazine. It is a line of dialogue from her book The Woman's Room. Wikipedia, take it away:


    Following the rape of Val's daughter Chris, Val states (over Mira's protests), "Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relationships with men, in their relationships with women, all men are rapists, and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes" (p. 433). Critics have sometimes quoted Val's dialogue as evidence of French's misandry without noting that the passage is only spoken by one of many characters in the novel. . .

    In the article, French notes that the book is partly based on her experience -- drawing on the emotions she herself felt after her own daughter was raped.


    "Sometimes I felt so violent about it and how the courts treated her," French admits, "that there seemed no recourse but to go out, buy a gun and shoot the kid who did it, and the lawyers too. I couldn't help my own child." Plenty of that rage made its way into The Women's Room. "I'm less angry now. Being too deep in anger corrodes your interior."

    So, again, it is very clear that the "all men are rapists" quote is meant to reflect a character awash in rage and pain; it is not an ideological statement of misandry."
    *************

    Interesting. So a woman in pain lashes out at men in her wrting and it is not an ideological statment of misandry, somehow she's not a misandrist. Yet, the men who are in pain and lash out online against feminists and the policies that harmed them are misogynists regardless of their treatment at the hands of hairy legged feminism.

    Nice.

    You gals do talk out of both sides of your mouth so well.

    Random Brother

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  19. @Richard: Marilyn French worked on her her pain and got over it. You guys stew in it and spend your entire lives vilifying women who, for the most part, have never hurt you.
    Also, that quote was by a character in a fictional work. Or do you also think that J.K. Rowling would casually kill an infant because she wrote Lord Voldemort? That Shakespeare would rape, torture and mutilate because he wrote Coriolanus? That George Orwell was a writer by day and an oppressive dictator at night because he wrote Big Brother? That Stephen King has done unspeakable things to people because of all the horror stories he's written? Writers write all kinds of characters, a lot of whom are not pure as snow. These characters are complex and sometimes downright evil, not because the writer is evil, but because they used their imagination. They've thought about times when they were in pain, and imagined a character who would lash out because of it. In summary, just because Marilyn French's character is a misandrist doesn't mean she is.
    By the way, I can't believe that I just had to explain all that. I know that you're trying to argue your case and that you're not above overblowing one detail and to twist it to make a woman look bad, but would it kill you not to use an argument that doesn't make you look like an utter moron? This kind of strategy didn't work for GWB in the long run, and it won't work for you either.

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  20. > So a woman in pain lashes out at men in her wrting and it is not an ideological statment of misandry, somehow she's not a misandrist. Yet, the men who are in pain and lash out online against feminists and the policies that harmed them are misogynists regardless of their treatment at the hands of hairy legged feminism.

    Whoosh ...

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  21. >> So a woman in pain lashes out at men in her wrting and it is not an ideological statment of misandry, somehow she's not a misandrist. Yet, the men who are in pain and lash out online against feminists and the policies that harmed them are misogynists regardless of their treatment at the hands of hairy legged feminist

    Yes, it is not an ideological statement because she does not actually believe it. A character in her book said it because at one point she felt it. If a man said "at one point I felt as if all women X because of trauma and pain, but now I realize that is wrong" it would not be an ideological statement of hatred.

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  22. She wrote a novel that said this. Had she written 50 novels saying the same thing, your idea would have some merit Richard. However she did not. She is apparently a writer and this is how she dealt with her anger.

    Same goes for a guy who has a blog-he writes a few posts here and there about how mad he is at a woman or women for something? Not a misogynist. A guy who writes a blog for years about how horrible women are? Yeah. He is.

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  23. Yet, the men who are in pain and lash out online against feminists and the policies that harmed them are misogynists regardless of their treatment at the hands of hairy legged feminism.

    Sometimes when people are extremely angry they lash out at an entire group. In the heat of the moment it's forgivable, as long as that anger doesn't solidify into a lifelong bitterness at that whole group. It's common for people, after a bad breakup, to feel anger at the entire gender of their ex. I generally don't sympathize, I just expect them to snap out of it eventually, so I go easy on them.

    Two key points here. One, French's anger wasn't based on the actions of one man. It wasn't just the rape - it was the treatment her daughter received from police and courts, the whole system that's supposed to protect people and provide justice. French didn't feel that her daughter was receiving justice. Given the rape culture that we live in, that's likely. She saw her daughter suffering at the hands of the entire, patriarchal, rape-excusing institution, so her anger is far more justified.

    Second, the anger and bitterness of MRAs varies with regard to motivation, but it's always aimed at an imaginary version of feminism. Feminists don't believe the things MRAs say they believe, and they don't oppress men the way MRAs say they do. And our society is not pro-feminist or pro-woman in the slightest, not legally or by custom. So the anger and bitterness of MRAs is irrational, unlike the anger of French, who tried through legitimate means to find justice for her daughter and couldn't.

    Demonizing feminists, and making up all sorts of scary stories about how they want to systematically castrate the male population, is sexist. MRA claims about feminist misandry are factually bullshit, so we can only assume that you're lashing out in anger at feminists for daring to stand up for women's equality in a society that has a long, long history of patriarchy. We see this in every arena - racists make up stories about rape-hungry blacks and gold-hoarding Jews, patriots thrive on propaganda about enemy nations. When your criticisms of a group are vacant of truth or facts, it's because those criticisms spring from hatred.

    'Kay?

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  24. Joe: To be fair, I *am* a hairy-legged feminist.

    Richard: People who are victims of violent crime or who are close to someone who was victimized are often really, really angry about it. That's perfectly understandable. French took her experience and used it to enrich her fiction. And she clearly made efforts to GET BEYOND this anger, as she explained to People.

    Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from.

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  25. Before you even go there, yes I know that Amanda Morcotte claims that one was lost due to technical issues. A likely story but I can't prove it to be false at this time, not that I bear the burden of proof on that claim.

    Irrespective of the cause of that post going AWOL, and irrespective of what Marcotte may have said about it, it is definitely not the case that the quoted passage disappeared in a server crash. The passage had already been deleted from the post and replaced with a disclaimer.

    I blogged about this here. A cached copy of the post (before sanitisation) can be found here.

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  26. Daran, it is possible for people to honestly come to different conclusions about the guilt or innocence of people charged with crimes. How a case fares in our legal system is not the final say on the subject. There are people who have been convicted and jailed who are innocent (see the innocence project), and innocent people who have been found not guilty (OJ). The fact that someone disagrees with you does not necessarily mean that they are "libeling" someone.

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  27. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from.

    It's easy for us feminist men to forget just how much our society compels many men to feel entitled to possess women. It's encoded in our cultural expressions and idioms, so to people immersed in patriarchy it seems like the natural state of affairs that men should be able to control women's bodies and constantly police their purity. Why do you think MRAs are so often opposed to abortion? Given how many of them want to GO THEIR OWN WAY anyway, why should they care if women are aborting babies left and right?

    Because the idea of a woman owning her own body and exerting control over it without male permission burns them up, that's why.

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  28. I should have added something along the lines of "in my opinion and the opinion of many who have examined the evidence in detail" to my sentence mentioning OJ.

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  29. @ Richard:

    Please, show me any website on the Boob Roll where any moderator or maintainer, past or present, has said something along the lines of, "I'm less angry now. Being too deep in anger corrodes your interior."

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  30. Lady V:

    Actually, our pal Yohan once said:

    "About hate, it should be said, hate is really bad for your health"

    http://www.manboobz.com/2011/02/i-dont-hate-women-i-just-want-them-all.html

    But then again, also in that post, he doesn't seem to regard the following as "hate,"

    "I want them to live to see how lonely and suicidal they,ll become when they find out all the men have dumped them forever in the feminized world. I want them to live and suffer without men or the attention they receive from us. ...

    "I have turned out just a little vengeful towards women for the treatment I have received from them throughout my life. Just seeing an AW maybe lying on the sidewalk after a drunken suicidal depressive drinking binge after being dumped and cheated on would brighten up my day."

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  31. It's encoded in our cultural expressions and idioms, so to people immersed in patriarchy it seems like the natural state of affairs that men should be able to control women's bodies and constantly police their purity.

    And it's no surprise that these cultural expressions and idioms, and the rise of patriarchy, started occurring when men began to realize that they played a role in procreation...and when they DID, they believed that the male seed contained all the genetic components needed to create the new life, females provided ONLY the fertile "soil" in which the seed "germinated" and grew. Women were, quite literally, walking incubators only, providing no genetic material to the new life, just the nutrient-rich soil for the new life to grow in. Men owning women's bodies was thus no different than men owning a tract of land for planting and harvesting crops.

    Funny how the notion of male ownership of female bodies hangs on long after science has proven wrong the original theories of procreation.

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  32. Men owning women's bodies was thus no different than men owning a tract of land for planting and harvesting crops.

    Definitely. Particularly amongst the aristocracy, for whom a wife was basically an heir-producing machine.

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  33. Definitely. Particularly amongst the aristocracy, for whom a wife was basically an heir-producing machine.

    An MRA might ask, though, what's wrong with that? What does a man need from a woman aside from heirs? Literally the only two things women can do that men can't are give birth and lactate. Why should men have any regard for women outside of those two purposes?

    This isn't (necessarily) to say I believe that, but it's the response many of the more earnest MRAs would give. Pretend I'm Cold or Wytch or somebody if you choose to answer that question. :)

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  34. "Second, the anger and bitterness of MRAs varies with regard to motivation, but it's always aimed at an imaginary version of feminism."--Triplanetary

    Nope. It's what I've experienced from feminists themselves---the reality of it. I used to believe feminism was actually about equality for both men and women. Then I woke up.

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  35. I am a feminist under the age of twenty-five. I have never read Dworkin, I've read a little MacKinnon, and I've read some Steinem. I don't think myself any less of a feminist for it. These authors, like Dworkin and MacKinnon, are/were terribly important in the ideological sense, but if you ask me about the leading lights of feminism now, I will not give you their names. They are not terribly relevant to my feminism.

    I'm never asked to respond to misandrist things Susan B. Anthony, Mary Wollstonecraft, or Emmeline Pankhurst may or may not have said. So what is the amount of time necessary to pass before people realize that ideological movements, well, move on? We don't generally go around asking Republicans to repudiate racist things their predecessors said during the civil rights fights.

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  36. "Why do you think MRAs are so often opposed to abortion?"

    And are you supportive of men's choices in reproduction as well? I await your answer; hope you are honest.

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  37. "And are you supportive of men's choices in reproduction as well? I await your answer; hope you are honest."

    What choices? He cums in a woman and, if he says he wants the baby, she has to go through pregnancy and labor because his (tiny) sperm fertilized her (gigantic) ovary?

    Sorry, but men should never be able to force woman to birth their babies. The amount of effort he went through compared to hers is nothing.

    After the baby is born, then yes, the father has rights.

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  38. And are you supportive of men's choices in reproduction as well? I await your answer; hope you are honest.

    Absolutely. If a fetus is growing inside a man, he has every right to abort it.

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  39. An MRA might ask, though, what's wrong with that? What does a man need from a woman aside from heirs? Literally the only two things women can do that men can't are give birth and lactate. Why should men have any regard for women outside of those two purposes?

    Why should a man have any regard for other men? After all, men can't even perform those two useful services. They're total loads.

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  40. "And are you supportive of men's choices in reproduction as well? I await your answer; hope you are honest."

    Of course! Men have a variety of options to ensure they don't have children they're not ready or able to care for. I support every man's right to inexpensive condoms and cheap vasectomies.

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  41. "Fighting phantoms", that's an excellent way to put it.

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  42. But the MRA would respond that men can do literally everything necessary for survival and the maintenance of civilization, whereas women either are unable or less competent. In almost every respect outside of an ability to lactate and give birth a man's body is (generally) far superior to a woman's. The stronger, faster sex can hunt, carry heavy loads, endure hard labor, etc. etc. etc. while women would have far more difficulty with all of these tasks (even if we grant they are mentally the same as men) due to their lack of muscular development, comparatively underdeveloped cardiovascular systems, etc. etc. etc., with few exceptions.

    In short, men can do literally everything reasonably well except for birthing and lactation. Women, on the other hand are superior to men *only* in these two respects and inferior to them in almost every other respect. Again, the question remains, from the MRA's perspective, why shouldn't we accept this 'division of labor,' so to speak? Men are better at pretty much everything, therefore men should be valued simply for being men. Women are only capable/remotely competent at birthing and lactation; therefore, these are the only two things they should be valued for.

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  43. I support every man's right to inexpensive condoms and cheap vasectomies.

    Condoms break and vasectomies are (often) a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Many MRAs, from what I've seen, would much prefer the abolition of all child support requirements if abortion is legal for women (for instance, this is Paul Elam's position, IIRC).

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  44. Vagrant, which is, of course, inaccurate.

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  45. Well, to differ a little bit, as I'm a childfree person myself, and I realize that it is possible for both genders to be 'oopsed' ... Manipulative boyfriends sabotage BC, Manipulative girlfriends stop taking it.... and I'm very against forced parenthood of any kind...

    I do think, if it is at all possible to do so fairly, we should set up a way in which a man could opt out of parenthood rights, say, if he filed for it early enough in the pregnancy (after all, women's opt-out, abortion, also has a limited window of time)

    I mean, it's obvious he should have no say in whether or not she can/should get an abortion, but I don't think it's unreasonable to give him a say in whether or not he wants to have parent-responsibility. No getting out after the fact, but a window early on where he could 'terminate' his fatherhood.

    All this, 'he had the choice to have sex' just smacks of the same judgmental bullshit people us on women who have abortions.

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  46. And to be clear, since it was suggested while I was typing that, I don't support eliminating child support. Just giving the man a window early in the pregnancy to 'terminate' his fatherhood.

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  47. Vagrant, which is, of course, inaccurate.

    Er, what is? The condom/vasectomy thing or the female inferiority thing?

    And to be clear, since it was suggested while I was typing that, I don't support eliminating child support. Just giving the man a window early in the pregnancy to 'terminate' his fatherhood.

    Wow. This is more or less exactly what a lot of MRAs want to hear. I doubt it'll convince the ones 'round here that feminists aren't pure evil, but I suppose it's a start, lol.

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  48. I believe men should be able to opt out of a child's life unless he has made the choice to opt in. It's not the same as an abortion window because there are a small minority of "dads" who do not have knowledge of the preganacy.


    Also amoungst the poor in the U.S I believe that women cannot receive welfare unless they name a father. This cannot be put on feminists, this is the government trying to cut down on welfare payments.

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  49. Re: oopsing... this is why it's on every person's own shoulders to take responsibility for preventing a pregnancy. Don't want a pregnancy, and you're a woman? Get on the Pill and be insistent about condoms. For men? Same thing. Be proactive about condoms. Don't put the responsibility for your own fertility on the shoulders of someone else.

    And when it comes to abortion/opting out of fatherhood, there's one glaring hole which MRAs conveniently choose to ignore. If a woman gets an abortion, yeah, technically she's opting out of parenthood... because there is nothing to parent. There is no resulting human being. In the opt out of fatherhood scenario, there is still a tiny human in the picture, with needs and wants and rights.

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  50. Be proactive about condoms. Don't put the responsibility for your own fertility on the shoulders of someone else.

    What about the MRA horror stories where women lie about being on the pill and then fish out their lovers' used condoms from the trash and inseminate themselves that way? Yes, yes, I'm sure you'll say women don't do that IRL and it's just another MRA horror story, but hypothetically, in that situation, why should a man NOT have the right to "opt out of fatherhood" if he did everything correctly and was only suckered into fathering a child due to his lover's deceit? Again, for the purposes of argument let's pretend there's at least a kernel of truth in this MRA sob story.

    If a woman gets an abortion, yeah, technically she's opting out of parenthood... because there is nothing to parent. There is no resulting human being. In the opt out of fatherhood scenario, there is still a tiny human in the picture, with needs and wants and rights.

    Well, not necessarily. It's only a "tiny human" the moment it pops out of the birth canal, right? In the above example, we're talking about abandoning fatherhood responsibilities while the woman is still pregnant--i.e while there's no "tiny human" in the picture yet (only a bundle of cells). Why shouldn't he be able to opt out of parenthood in that case? if he does and the mother can't take care of the child, there's still plenty of time for her to get an abortion in that case.

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  51. Women being inferior to men meme that some men have thinking for centuries. It is not accurate.

    Women are better at some things then men are. Men are better at some things then women are. Simple fact of life.

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  52. I'm not so rigid on this, it just seems in some ways unfair to me.

    You're right, that was poor phrasing on the 'opt' out thing. The woman is opting out of pregnancy, not parenthood. I should have differentiated.

    We don't say that birth control failure means that people have to go through with the pregnancy, or that they have to keep the child if they do decide to go through with it. I'm just thinking of a small expansion to that. Birth control is not 100%, for anyone.

    And not to get too picky, but your answer really didn't address the issue of BC sabotage, which circumvents one's personal responsibility through the malicious actions of another.

    The existence of the child means someone ought to take care of it, of course. But we do let people drop off infants at safe havens, for example. I'm not saying it would be easy, I'm just saying that, ideally, it would be nice to live in a system where everyone would have that kind of option to terminate parental rights/responsibilities within a reasonable window.

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  53. Women are better at some things then men are.

    Well, yes, even MRAs would admit this--women are better than men at birthing and lactating. Whether they're better than men at anything else--or at least, better than men at anything constructive--is the question that MRAs might ask. To paraphrase Roissy (granted, not an MRA, but close enough), "'male characteristics' are better at creating and maintaining civilization. 'Female characteristics' are better at popping out children. No more, no less."

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  54. "I mean, it's obvious he should have no say in whether or not she can/should get an abortion, but I don't think it's unreasonable to give him a say in whether or not he wants to have parent-responsibility. No getting out after the fact, but a window early on where he could 'terminate' his fatherhood."---ct

    That's something I think would bring more equity to this issue.

    "Don't put the responsibility for your own fertility on the shoulders of someone else."---LVvS

    This is one thing I have discussed with women online. It's interesting that quite a few have not been very happy about telling them that.

    A male contraceptive equivalent to the pill, widely available, fairly cheap, and with no major or long term side effects would give men more latitude.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3543478/ns/health-sexual_health/

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  55. Vagrant-it is a bit more than just those two things. I know it is hard for MRA/PUA to admit that though.

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  56. I really can't help but laugh when anybody treats reproductive biology of men and women as interchangable.

    Men can get vascectomies, wear condoms, refrain from vaginal intercourse, sleep with partners unable to to get pregnant, or abstain from sex - plenty of options, less overall responsibility, but a small window of opportunity due to biology. Women are stuck with responsibility no matter what because, unlike the male, she can be impregnated. If BC pills or condoms fail, she's pregnant. If she's pregnant, she must either carry it to term or get her uterus scrapped. If carried to term and birthed, she's on the hook financially just like the man.

    But I guess it isn't fair until we bend over backwards to make sure women must shoulder everything for men.

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  57. I'm all for letting men "opt out" of fatherhood and paying child support, as soon as we all pay a reasonable portion of our incomes in tax to fund a robust social safety net which ensures the children do not suffer (financially) from his absence. They may still suffer emotionally, but that falls into the "life ain't fair" category.

    That would also fix the terrible precedent we're setting by throwing men in prison for not paying their court-ordered child support payments. Because the return of debtor's prisons should scare anyone with debt.

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  58. -it is a bit more than just those two things.

    Such as?

    Genuinely not trolling or trying to be confrontation, but I am interested in what your answer may be.

    it isn't fair until we bend over backwards to make sure women must shoulder everything for men.

    I don't think women should "shoulder everything" for men, but as long as abortion--the final, last-ditch fallback for women whose birth control has failed (or the good will of the person she slept with, if the man sabotaged her BC)--is available, MRAs--and I, quite frankly--would argue that "aborting" paternal responsibilities should be available to men. If a man does that and it turns out the woman won't be able to support a child, she should have an abortion. That simple.

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  59. We're forgetting about the choice of adoption here.

    No one should force anyone into being a parent against their will.

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  60. An enthusiastic second for the robust social safety net. It would really help the situation.

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  61. "To paraphrase Roissy (granted, not an MRA, but close enough), "'male characteristics' are better at creating and maintaining civilization."

    By his own logic, they're also better at destroying it then, too.

    Not that I buy into the concept of "male/female characteristics" as an absolute anyway.

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  62. "I, quite frankly--would argue that "aborting" paternal responsibilities should be available to men."

    I fully support a man's right to be impregnated.

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  63. We're forgetting about the choice of adoption here.

    No we're not, it's just not particularly relevant. The choice of abortion isn't centered solely around the issue of postnatal parental responsibility, but on the decision the pregnant woman has to make as to whether or not she wants a fetus hijacking her body for nine months.

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  64. I fully support a man's right to be impregnated.


    What you *should* support is a man's right to be free of any obligation to a child he not only didn't want but also, in the case of sabotage, didn't have a hand in intentionally or even accidentally conceiving.

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  65. @Kave:

    The history of adoption in this country if nothing short of horrendous. For generations girls who became pregnant were shipped off to homes for unwed mothers and had their children literally stolen and sold to families society felt were better suited to raise them. They were then told to forget about their pregnancy and child birth experience, to forget that their child was somewhere out in the world, and sent back to their communities where they often were not even allowed to talk about their experience. There is an amazing book about this: Beggars and Choosers by Rickie Solinger, if you're interested.

    People who decide (and who are not coerced) into giving their children up for adoptions are nothing less than saints, and that's not something we should expect from everyone.

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  66. Here is a nice little breakdown of 10 differences that have women doing somethings better and men do other things better.

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  67. Not that I buy into the concept of "male/female characteristics" as an absolute anyway.

    This is important because it doesn't come up on this blog often enough. But that's because the feminist readers of this blog have mostly internalized the understanding that gender differences are a social construct. We tend to take it as a given.

    It's important to remember that MRAs are pretty far behind the curve on the issue of gender essentialism. After all, all their bitching about women wouldn't make much sense otherwise. Most of them grasp hard at straws like evo-psych in order to make a bunch of pseudoscientific arguments about how women are genetically predisposed to be cowards, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent, genetically predisposed to take a man's money and run and never let him see his kids. Or something.

    It's funny because they like to think of feminism as a mirror image of their own movement - ie, a push for female supremacy. But feminism is, in part, about deconstructing gender, not putting one gender on top of another.

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  68. Well, yes, even MRAs would admit this--women are better than men at birthing and lactating. Whether they're better than men at anything else--or at least, better than men at anything constructive--is the question that MRAs might ask. To paraphrase Roissy (granted, not an MRA, but close enough), "'male characteristics' are better at creating and maintaining civilization. 'Female characteristics' are better at popping out children. No more, no less."

    And, again, that would be wrong. Notwithstanding all the things that women are capable of doing as well as or better than men, anyone who seriously argues that birthing, raising, teaching, and caring for children in no way creates or maintains "civilization" is so naive and/or blinded by ideology as to be almost an imbecile. Such willful pig-ignorance deserves, in this day and age, no more serious engagement than "Dude? Seriously? WTF?"

    Hypothetically speaking, of course.

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  69. "If a man does that and it turns out the woman won't be able to support a child, she should have an abortion."

    So basically ... accidents aside, in cases where a man impregnates a woman and he decides he doesn't want to be a father, she's legally and financially coerced into getting her uterus scrapped whereas he didn't even have to take preventative measures to begin with. Again, women shouldering everything.

    Good to know.

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  70. Hide and Seek-I thought "The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler's breakdown of it was good.

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  71. Elizabeth: Thanks. I'll get that now.

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  72. What about the MRA horror stories where women lie about being on the pill and then fish out their lovers' used condoms from the trash and inseminate themselves that way? Yes, yes, I'm sure you'll say women don't do that IRL and it's just another MRA horror story, but hypothetically, in that situation, why should a man NOT have the right to "opt out of fatherhood" if he did everything correctly and was only suckered into fathering a child due to his lover's deceit? Again, for the purposes of argument let's pretend there's at least a kernel of truth in this MRA sob story.

    If there's one thing that abstinence only education has taught me, it's that no birth control is 100% foolproof. Even if the woman wasn't engaged in active deceit, there's still a nonzero chance that the Pill would fail and the condom would break. It's admittedly very tiny, but on a planet with six billion people, a one in a billion thing happens six times a day.

    So, with that in mind, I'd say he's still responsible. Further reasons described below.

    Well, not necessarily. It's only a "tiny human" the moment it pops out of the birth canal, right? In the above example, we're talking about abandoning fatherhood responsibilities while the woman is still pregnant--i.e while there's no "tiny human" in the picture yet (only a bundle of cells). Why shouldn't he be able to opt out of parenthood in that case? if he does and the mother can't take care of the child, there's still plenty of time for her to get an abortion in that case.

    Uhhh... sure. A man has the right to opt out of fatherhood for as long as she is pregnant. I'm fairly certain that men whose partners get unexpectedly pregnant already have the "I don't want to be a father" conversation, and that she makes her decision based on that.

    However, if she's choosing to carry to term, there will eventually be a baby. That tiny human being that this man has had a part in creating.

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  73. Elizabeth, literally every positive characteristic listed for women there would be taken by MRAs are evidence for their inferiority and civilization-destroying characteristics. As they would say, any civilization that has reached a stage more advanced than mud huts is based on mathematics and logic--emotions, for the most part, are primitive, instinctual leftovers from our barbaric past, which means their "tend and befriend," more emotional natures, and "better facility at communicating" (i.e: utilizing the destructive, primitive emotions) are actually a hindrance to the furtherance of civilization.

    I was hoping more for physical superiority, or even parity with men. Women seem to be inferior in regards to pain (more sensitive, i.e less resilient), though roughly on par with men in terms of susceptibility to disorders. The only physical characteristics I can think of in which women are either equal to or better than men are a heightened sense of smell and a higher resistance to disease, according to Wikipedia. Are there any others? Again, genuinely not trolling, I figured you'd know better than I would.

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  74. "Demonizing feminists, and making up all sorts of scary stories about how they want to systematically castrate the male population, is sexist"

    How is it sexist when it is often acknowledged that some of the worst of the feminists are men. White knights (which David himself has criticized) and others like David himself, that would rather spend his time instigating and attacking MRA's and their methods (methods that are very reminiscent of the early feminist methods (Sans bra burning), but that fact usually escapes him, and the rest of you. only difference is that the open nature of the internet allows these quotes to be more easily found, while early feminists had to acquire acclaim and approval from other feminists in order for their quotes to be easily found. Dworkin may only be one woman, but she is a woman who is highly revered by many feminists (still), and was well approved of, so much so as to warrant 10 books worth of hatred), then actually addressing the issues that even he agrees with (not that I'm sure there are many, he is usually unwilling to actually state an opinion clearly). He is a distraction away from the issues, and an instigator to promote further anger and hostility (just look at the general opinion of MRA’s by the commenters… how many spend time looking into MRA sites other then the articles David links? Despite his disclaimer that his blogs aren’t representative of all MRA’s)) and I find it highly amusing, given the nature of this very website, that he would take offence to a collection of hateful feminist quotes, of which many more could be taken from this website, such as amused's claim that "rape is a natural response to seeing an attractive woman"

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  75. However, if she's choosing to carry to term, there will eventually be a baby

    Oh boy, I thought you'd make this argument. In this case, I would say a man should be forbidden to "abort" his paternal responsibilities so long as women are forbidden to abort their babies. But if she *makes the choice* to carry the pregnancy to term when she *could have* gotten an abortion, why should he be responsible for that choice in any capacity? Her body, her choice--his responsibility? That's hardly fair. Oh, but you'd say "life's not fair?" Well then, all the oppression you folks would say women have endured throughout history can be chalked up to that "unfairness," then. If we're going to excuse the abridgement of someone's rights under the basis of "tough cookies," why shouldn't we go the whole way through? "My body! My choice! Your responsibility!" Frankly, your argument sounds just like the selfish, amoral nature voiced through the squeaking wheel of the rationalization hamster the MRAs are almost always talking about. I suppose they might be right about one thing, regardless of how wrong they are on much else.

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  76. *"selfish, amoral nature of women that MRAs are always carrying on about," that should read. Excuse me.

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  77. MRA's and their methods (methods that are very reminiscent of the early feminist methods

    So what? Using the same methods doesn't make your cause equally valid. Your cause is an attempt to maintain the privilege of the privileged class and keep the oppressed class down in the mud where you think it belongs. Your attempts to reframe that as a noble struggle for male equality (an idea that's laughable to anyone with an ounce of perspective on reality) don't change the facts. Your "methods" are in fact far more reminiscent of every garden variety racist group in history - claiming that the privileged majority is under attack, that the oppressed minority is heinously conspiring against it just by asking for some rights. That kind of stuff.

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  78. I thought you would prefer to have something based on more than my memory of stuff I have read that is at home (I am at work like usual. :D)

    Anyway-women's brains are more developed then men in communication which means that despite their lack of physical strength they can still accomplish similar tasks as men can.

    My mom had a co-worker at a steel plant and a woman was hired to do the welding. She was not as physically able as the men were in terms of her strength so she figured out several different methods of doing the same tasks as the men but in a different way. After a while the management ordered everyone to do the same because she was able to do her tasks faster then the men using these methods.

    This is an anecdotal piece of evidence but it shows that a lack of physical strength does not mean a woman is inferior.

    Also-we withstand famine better then men do, we have higher fat deposits and lose fat slower then men do.

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  79. Her body, her choice--his responsibility? That's hardly fair.

    I like how you're pretending that child support payments are equivalent to shoving all the responsibility of childrearing on the father, even though child support payments don't tend to come anywhere close to half the cost of supporting a child.

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  80. This is an anecdotal piece of evidence but it shows that a lack of physical strength does not mean a woman is inferior.

    The problem is, there's no reason a man wouldn't have been able to come up with that method--one could argue your co-worker's legitimate and praiseworthy accmplishment was made *in spite* of her being female, not because of it. How would "better communication skills" (and MRAs would say this is arguable--the fact that a woman's "communication" sectors of the brain are more developed and they use more words while men are more laconic would indicate that women are simply less efficient; men communicate equally well with less wasted verbiage) have helped in the alternate steel plant method? Again, genuinely not trolling or trying to be confrontational, I don't really know what exactly her job in the plant entailed.

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  81. I like how you're pretending that child support payments are equivalent to shoving all the responsibility of childrearing on the father,

    For the purposes of argument, let's assume they're really as low as you make them out to be (and they could be--I'm not an expert regarding them, though you'll have to forgive me if I don't just take your word for it; I have about as much regard for your honesty as I do for Cold's). Even if they're low enough as to not be a burden on the man, he's still being saddled with *someone else's* choice. How is that fair or just?

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  82. @thevagrantsvoice-

    I think that the answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. In a population as big as the human population the amount of overlap between a trait in any two groups is going to be much greater than the amount of difference.

    For example, some studies show that men are slightly better at math than women, but the difference was caused by outliers. A few men were geniuses, while the rest of the population (men and women) were more or less equal. That doesn't mean "men" are better at math, but that math geniuses are more likely to be men.
    http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/07/are-boys-better-than-girls-at-maths.php

    The same thing is true for most sexual differences that become cultural ideas, for example, men are bigger than women. It's generally true because some very large men and some very small women skew the overall results which masks the fact that most men and women are approximately the same size.

    In my opinion, because of the difference between the statistical model of reality and, you know, real reality, it's important to relate to people as individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses which, very likely, have nothing to do with their sex or gender.

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  83. Heck if I know, this is just something my mom told me.

    Also, remember that guy from 127 hours? Why would women's communication skills be better-they are more likely to have told someone where they were going.

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  84. @ Vagrantvoice:

    Let me try this again.

    Woman finds out that she is eight weeks pregnant. Woman has two choices: abort the baby or keep the baby.

    Option A: Woman chooses to abort the baby at 12 weeks. There is no baby and will never be a baby. She is not a parent. Man is not parent. They are responsible for only themselves, because no one else exists for them to be responsible for.

    Option B: Woman chooses to keep the baby. In 7-8 more months, assuming nothing else happens, there is a new human being brought into the world. Woman is responsible for being a parent to baby. Because there is a baby. She is responsible for providing that baby with food, clothes, shelter and an education - and those are only her legal & most basic financial obligations, not her moral ones.

    I think I have gained a bit of insight into the MRA mindset by reading your comment. The law cannot compel emotional support, only financial. And it seems as though many MRAs see financial support as the sum total of being a parent. It's not, and it never will be - it's the bare minimum. If she's the primary custodial parent and all he's doing is providing child support, then she is by far the more responsible parent. While he may be making a financial sacrifice, she is also paying her own money, and giving up her own time, energy and resources to be a parent.

    If a woman carried a baby to term and then insisted that the father assume 100% of the parental duties (forcing him to do things like change diapers, cook meals, put the kid to sleep at night, protect child from injury, give child a good moral foundation, etc.), then you might have a point. But, in fact, the law makes it possible for genetic parents to willingly forego any and all parental rights. That doesn't absolve them of the responsibility of creating another human being. Who is there, in part, because he chose to fuck a woman. He made his choice, but it was before she got pregnant - he could have chosen not to have sex with her, and then none of it would have happened.

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  85. The same thing is true for most sexual differences that become cultural ideas,

    Is it? In terms of the salient physical differences I described--superior male musculature, cardiovascular systems, etc.--I was under the impression that the differences really were "averages" in the truest sense; the average for men wasn't just bring bumped up by "greater variance" (which would also have meant that there was a higher number of super-scrawny guys as well) but the bell curve for men was *entirely* further to the right than it was for women. Was I wrong? Again, not trolling, just curious. If you have a study that proves otherwise it might be interesting to see it.

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  86. In my opinion, because of the difference between the statistical model of reality and, you know, real reality, it's important to relate to people as individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses which, very likely, have nothing to do with their sex or gender.

    Nail, head, etc.

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  87. That last post was trolling Vagrant.

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  88. he could have chosen not to have sex with her, and then none of it would have happened.

    First off, this is pretty much the reason you have the MGTOW people swearing off women entirely. If I'm going to get (monetarily) saddled with some kid I don't want because some other woman didn't want to have an abortion, to hell with it--I'm sticking with my right hand, or love dolls, or celibacy, or whatever. I used to have some sympathy for the view that the MGTOWers were just losers, but now I wonder if they're actually not a bit smarter than I originally gave them credit for. Sure, child support payments may not be "that" onerous (though, again, I'm not going to take your word for it), but I'd still rather not pay them. So fine, you'll tell me, Go Your Own Way and swear off sex with women entirely. But then why do you people keep making fun of the MGTOW/celibacy guys for doing what is BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION the "best" thing for a man to do in these circumstances?

    The only other alternative I can think of is for either the father of the child or the state itself to have the right to coerce any woman to have an abortion if they so desire--but I get the feeling that suggestion isn't quite what you were thinking of.

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  89. I don't have a study which speaks to strength differences between men and women, but I do have an opinion.

    I would argue that humans don't like to work hard if we can avoid it, so we have decided we want to live in a world where we (both men and women) don't have to lift heavy shit all the time just to get by.

    I'm sure neither one of us can physically move a car, but we can both probably make one move pretty easily. And if a time came when a bunch of heavy shit needed to be moved, we could probably both find a way to get it moved even if I, as a lady, had to make more trips, or use a cart, or enlist the aid of some friends. Because the important thing is the outcome not our inherent ratio of fast twitch or slow twitch muscle fibers.

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  90. I just realized I can totally move a car if it's in neutral and not pointed up a hill, but otherwise my point stands.

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  91. I'm sure neither one of us can physically move a car, but we can both probably make one move pretty easily.

    Both of us? Unless you're a relative outlier on the right side of the female bell curve for strength, probably not. On the other hand, me and another guy who lies on even the middle of the male bell curve for strength might be able to. This is what I'm wondering about--the averages.

    I'm sorry to say that our inherent ratio of muscle fibers or whatever is indeed, pretty important. Because, as the MRAs might say--and I confess, it is a position I am increasingly coming to agree with--it's as accurate to say that women are physically inferior to men as it is to say that folks with hearing loss have worse hearing than those with undamaged ears, or that people with glaucoma have worse sight than those with functioning eyes. From what I've read of male-female differences, the fact that, according to Wikipedia, women are only, at most, 60% as strong as men in almost all respects (again, that's what the article "sex differences in humans" states, maybe Wikipedia is trolling me this time) tells me that it's indeed legitimate to claim women are physically inferior to men, in the same way a slow, weak, vulnerable earthworm could be called "physically inferior" to either the larger, stronger (and flighted) early bird that eats it for breakfast or the (much) larger, stronger human who steps on it. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but it is because I'm genuinely interested in hearing how you'd respond to these arguments from someone who (hopefully) has proven himself to be not quite as fanatical as say, Cold or Wytch, at least.

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  92. Why do you call it physically inferior? It is not actually inferior-it is different.

    Men have greater strength in muscles-so what? Does not help if the issue is communicating a way of moving a boulder.

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  93. Vagrant, not to be antagonistic, but you are starting to sound a little disingenuous about not being disingenuous. Do you have some sort of point?

    I'm willing to make a pretty good bet that I'm less susceptible to sun-induced skin cancer than most Caucasian-type people out there, but so what? The fact that I have that 'physical advantage' means...what, exactly when it comes to how we should run our society or interact as human beings? What is the relevance of all this physical superiority talk of yours?

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  94. “Elizabeth, literally every positive characteristic listed for women there would be taken by MRAs are evidence for their inferiority and civilization-destroying characteristics.”

    Of course they would! Fortunately, it’s all a load of crap. Any characteristic can be argued as beneficial or detrimental depending on the conclusion you’ve already decided to draw.

    Plus, all that brain stuff is BS.

    “emotions, for the most part, are primitive, instinctual leftovers from our barbaric past”

    Men don’t have emotions? Men don’t express arousal-based emotions more than women? These emotions don’t contribute to these relatively few and far-between inventions by certain men you somehow attribute to men as a whole?

    “If we're going to excuse the abridgement of someone's rights under the basis of "tough cookies," why shouldn't we go the whole way through?”

    You mean the way you already are with women and pregnancy, yet continually ignore my noting of such? But the faux-outrage is a nice touch.

    “The problem is, there's no reason a man wouldn't have been able to come up with that method--one could argue your co-worker's legitimate and praiseworthy accmplishment was made *in spite* of her being female, not because of it.”

    Ooh, ad hoc rescue! Plus it is your burdan to prove another man would be able to come with said alternative method and not her's to prove he couldn't. But using your same illogic, what's to say another woman wouldn't be able to perform the task conventionally (and primitively counter-advancement, might I add)? Whereas at most women are "60% as strong in most respects" there have been numerous men that have performed the task. Plus your whole argument is based not on the individual, but the inherent capabilities based on beind born a man or woman! So make up your mind.

    “But then why do you people keep making fun of the MGTOW/celibacy guys for doing what is BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION the "best" thing for a man to do in these circumstances?”

    Because they could be like the majority of other men in those situations who realized to begin with that A) women are the ones the bear the burden of pregnancy and all it entails if carried to term, and abortion if that is the decision, whereas he does not and will never, B) it’s his responsibility to mind his reproductive capabilities and wear a condom or get a vasectomy if he doesn’t want to worry about children because c) without the sperm, there is no possibility of a baby and men – not women – have semen.

    Instead, they accuse women of being baby-hungry sperm stealers, and they want to have their cake and eat it too and frame the issue in terms of a battle or “fairness,” like a spoiled child. So it’s FUN to mock them.

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  95. First, both of us can easily move the car by pressing the gas pedal.

    But to your broader point, how do you square living in a world where it is "better" to be strong with the fact that there will always be people, most likely other men, who are stronger than you? Do you want them to decide what you get to do by virtue of their physical prowess? Are you scared, when you're walking down the street minding your own business, that some stronger gentleman might decide your time would be better spend working in his garden or whatever comes into his mind at the moment?

    You probably don't think about it very much because we have collectively decided we don't want to live in a society where stronger people get to do whatever they want. There are, of course, some people who don't agree, rapists, wife beaters, people with "anger control" problems, but those people are stigmatized for a reason; they are not abiding by the essential compact of civil society.

    Or, I think the answer to your question is that it doesn't matter. I'm about to get off work, but if you reply I will be interested in reading your response tomorrow.

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  96. Why do you call it physically inferior? It is not actually inferior-it is different.

    A man born without eyes is not "inferior" in terms of his ability to see things to someone with eyes--he's merely 'different?' A deaf man is not 'inferior' to someone with working ears when it comes to hearing things--he's merely 'different?' No, it seems to me inferiority and superiority are perfectly legitimate when it comes to describing men and women as well.

    Men have greater strength in muscles-so what? Does not help if the issue is communicating a way of moving a boulder.

    The problem is, as I said above, the female "superiority" in communication is arguable--it's possible men are just as good communicators as women, they're simply more efficient at it. Men can communicate AND move heavy objects. Women can "only" communicate, if they can even do that. If there's nothing or only a very few things in which women are even on par with men (aside from childbirth and lactation), this seems to indicate, to me, that the MRA position is correct. Women *are* the inferior sex, and society should be organized around that--the "oppression" of women becomes nothing more than an acknowledgement of that biological fact. If you're going to claim women are "oppressed" for being treated as inferior when they actually are, you might as well claim blind people are "oppressed" when we forbid them from flying planes, or quadripalegics are "oppressed" when we forbid them from serving on the battlefield.

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  97. Yep-you have crossed over into trolling.

    Basically you think women are inferior and nothing we say will change your mind. Unless of course we beat you up.

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  98. You mean the way you already are with women and pregnancy, yet continually ignore my noting of such? But the faux-outrage is a nice touch.

    Perhaps I should reframe a point in another way: if abortion is available to a woman while she's pregnant and she makes the choice not to take it, the man should either have the right to abdicate any paternal support or coerce her to have an abortion. How's that for taking into account the unique misfortune of women being the ones who have to bear the weight of pregnancy? The man should pay for it if he requests she have it, of course. It'll still be cheaper than even small child support payments in the long run, I'd wager.

    Instead, they accuse women of being baby-hungry sperm stealers, and they want to have their cake and eat it too and frame the issue in terms of a battle or “fairness,” like a spoiled child.

    Perhaps so, but if they manage to convince other men to follow them--to not only get vasectomies, but avoid women entirely--it seems they're doing legitimate work. I agree that they're a whiny bunch, but if their whininess is enough to get a few guys to stop and think whether or not it's actually a good idea to have sexual relations with women (and perhaps any other relationship as well), I'd say they deserve praise rather than mockery,

    So it’s FUN to mock them.

    You're really a wonderful advertisement for the MRAs and MGTOWs, Cinnamon. God damn, you've done more for their cause with that one comment than Cold ever did with all of his. Congrats.

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  99. Except, women aren't /incapable/ of doing any of those things in the same way blind people are /incapable/ of driving safely. It's very a bad argument.

    Even that argument in itself doesn't advocate for a society in which /women/ are restricted, but one in which people who are under a certain threshold of ability are restricted. And you'd still have to justify the restrictions.

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  100. Basically you think women are inferior and nothing we say will change your mind. Unless of course we beat you up.

    A pity. I would have very much liked to have been proven wrong. Perhaps someone else will make the attempt. Accuse me of trolling if you will, ironically enough. It proves what MRAs have told me time and again--when a feminist can't defeat your arguments with logic, she (or he) will resort to shaming, accusations (whether of "trolling" or "misogyny"), and anything but an actual refutation (masked behind an empty call of "but there's nothing to refute! :'( )

    Again, congratulations. I've argued against Cold and other MRAs on here many, many times, as our host can attest. I now regret doing so. When he made this blog, I wonder if he actually intended to win more converts for their side. If he did, I wouldn't say he's succeeded just yet, but boy is he coming close.

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  101. Cactuar-tamer, thanks very much for your response. I suppose I may have spoken hastily in my earlier comments about MRAs. If you're able to provide a reasoned argument, my praise of them in condemnation of Cinnamon and Elizabeth was undeserved.

    Except, women aren't /incapable/ of doing any of those things in the same way blind people are /incapable/ of driving safely. It's very a bad argument.

    Fair enough. However--and I say this respectfully, again, genuinely not trolling, though I suppose I've been getting more heated here than I should be--one could argue that "a society in which people who are under a certain threshold of ability are restricted." would still be a "patriarchal/misogynist" society because women are simply lower in ability, in general. There'll always be a minority of women politicians because women simply (in general) aren't good at it, same with mathematicians, engineers, and so on. That's how the argument would go, anyways.

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  102. So basically since I have shown some evidence that men and women have different abilities -but I could not prove to you that women are physically stronger, this means that MRA/MGTOW are right?

    You now believe that women are worthless for anything except babies and lactating. All because women cannot "lift a heavy object" like a man can.

    Really? See, I would be much more willing to discuss this with you if you were willing to keep it from "women are inferior, men are superior" in physical terms only.

    Or if you were being serious about being open minded...but you are not. So when you are ready to discuss this open mindedly-then I will bother.

    Until then, you are merely trolling.

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  103. As an actual female politician Vagrant, I know why women tend to not run for office and instead prefer to remain behind the scenes.

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  104. See, I would be much more willing to discuss this with you if you were willing to keep it from "women are inferior, men are superior" in physical terms only.

    Fine, then. I can understand the reasoning behind this, so I again apologize--perhaps my condemnation of you was indeed hasty and harsh. The problem is, however, that physical terms are both the most easily measured *and,* in all likelihood, the most legitimate. CinnamonCW herself mentioned it above--the "brain differences" and all that are extremely difficult to pin down, while physical strength and even muscle fiber composition are things much easier to quantify and thus discuss. If this is still trolling, I apologize, but at least it has some basis.

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  105. Forgive the double comment (field too large), but since I've mentioned her, in reference to a couple of her points I forgot to address:

    Of course they would! Fortunately, it’s all a load of crap. Any characteristic can be argued as beneficial or detrimental depending on the conclusion you’ve already decided to draw.

    Well, okay, in that case, why not do the same for other groups? The characteristics of MRAs and MGTOWs--their whininess, anger issues, etc.--are only 'detrimental' or 'worthy of mockery' because of the conclusions you've already drawn. One could argue they're actually beneficial characteristics! If we wish to comnpletely deny any characteristic is beneficial or detrimental, what's the point of condemning anything, as you folks do for MRAs?

    Men don’t have emotions? Men don’t express arousal-based emotions more than women? These emotions don’t contribute to these relatively few and far-between inventions by certain men you somehow attribute to men as a whole?

    Fair enough--this is, I admit, a critique I have of MRAs, who claim simultaneously that men are superior because they have fewer emotions but men are also superior because they have stronger emotions than women. You were right to point that out.

    Ooh, ad hoc rescue! Plus it is your burdan to prove another man would be able to come with said alternative method and not her's to prove he couldn't. But using your same illogic, what's to say another woman wouldn't be able to perform the task conventionally (and primitively counter-advancement, might I add)? Whereas at most women are "60% as strong in most respects" there have been numerous men that have performed the task. Plus your whole argument is based not on the individual, but the inherent capabilities based on beind born a man or woman! So make up your mind.

    I honestly don't understand much of what this paragraph intended to say, and things like "burdan" make me suspect it's not entirely my fault. I don't say this to be snarky; rather I think you may have typed faster than you thought, in this case. We're all a little agitated here, and I suppose I should apologize for that. before I address this, thouygh, could I ask you what, specifically, you meant by "primitively counter-advancement?" After that I'll give you my reply.

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  106. "I can't prevent my child from existing through abortion so I want the right to abandon my child."

    This will be a huge step forward for fathers being involved in child rearing. Also poverty of children.

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  107. Women have better manual dexterity than men.

    Women have better lower body strength than men.

    Women have better balance than men.

    Women make better snipers than men.

    Women see in the dark better than men.

    You want to talk about physical characteristics/things that require certain physical traits? There you go.

    I, for one, can always tell that the producers want a woman to win a challenge on Survivor when they make it all about balance. And the woman wins most of the time, too.

    Also, a smaller size is sometimes an asset. See again, Survivor: Challenges that favor a person who weighs less or has smaller feet

    The funny thing about using Survivor as an example is that people will tend to see the women--who may win challenges such as this, start fires, catch food, and do everything else--as lesser opponents because they didn't win strength challenges. They, like our quasi-troll here, view women as lesser because they're not as beefy when they may have lots of desirable traits game-wise.

    (Yes, I watch Survivor. I was a soc major, so I find shows like that interesting. Should I point out in this conversation that when they made it a men vs. women game one season, the women pretty much just won every single challenge until the merge? Didn't matter that the men were big, strong, manly men. The women still were able to come out on top. It was ... beautiful.)

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  108. You want to talk about physical characteristics/things that require certain physical traits? There you go.

    That's actually exactly what I was looking for, thank you. The aforementioned wikipedia article doesn't mention them, but as I implied above, lol wikipedia. If you have a link to any studies or even news articles about those characteristics, I would be greatly indebted to you, but it's not really necessary, I'll look them up myself. Quite sincerely, I thank you again.

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  109. @Vagrants

    I'd like to think that I would be considered a moderate who has a small bit of common sense.

    I do not buy into this woman or men are better at X theory. It goes against individualism (in a non-creepy not Ayn Rand sort of way). The reality is and countless studies have proved that on the bell curve men have more highs and lows regarding IQ while women tend to the middle.

    This doesn’t mean that there are no female genius or idiots anymore then there are only men who are idiots or genius. The individual is his or her own merit. If you were to say that men were superior you would also have to conclude that men are also inferior.

    Also, I really hate the feminist line that men should just keep it in their pants if they don’t want 25 years of child support. This is a dogma that really needs to end and is simply akin to just crossing your legs. I understand that single mothers do have much more responsibility then fathers who pay child support, but single mothers do choose to be single mothers.

    As for the offhanded remark about adoption, I know only too well what happened to girls way back when, but when on the same thread we can realize that what radical feminist’s said 40 years ago is not relevant today I hope that we can discuss adoption in today’s terms instead of histories.

    Yes it is hard emotionally to bear a child for nine months, give birth, and then hand them into the arms of another family… but women do have that choice and this choice has been made much easier with open adoption etc.

    I found the remark about adoption offensive. My wife was adopted in the mid 60’s, and I signed away parental rights for adoption when I was 17. It’s not easy to give your child up to another couple when you’re the father either. My wife has met her birth mother and although she was certainly shamed for being pregnant she’s also happy that wife has a wonderful life.

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  110. Hey Kave, thank you very much for your response. Forgive me for saying this, but you definitely seem like a decent, stand-up guy--my kinda guy, essentially. Again, I suppose my praise for the MRAs was distinctly premature, unless you're in their camp (I can't remember, forgive me...is it Kratch I'm thinking of?), lol.

    Anyways, I've heard about the IQ bell curve, and I agree with that, but what I was wondering about is if the variance was as great for other characteristics as well, specifically physical ones. I was under the impression it wasn't, but if I'm wrong I would be happy to be proven so. According to chocolip there *are* several areas in which women are physically superior to men (variance or no variance; when i looked up "sex differences" and "manual dexterity" the studies I found seem to confirm so), so I do think it's a legitimate question.

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  111. Sorry for the delay in replying, My prior post was eaten and then I had to leave the office. I don't think I can write the whole post again, but my main point was, that from both a practical and ethical standpoint, it is necessary to demonstrate sufficient justification if one is proposing a society in which a large portion of it's members (sentient human beings, I hope no one is disputing that) have had their freedom restricted significantly.

    Restricting the driving rights of blind people is an example of a restriction that has sufficient justification.

    It is my position that differences (strength is what you are primarily speaking of, it seems) between men and women, such as they exist, are not significant enough to warrant such restrictions on freedom.

    To take our hypothetical meritocracy (Let's call it Meritopia) as an example. Even if I were to agree with you and grand that Meritopia would be in effect a patriarchy (which is to say, there would be a minority of women in the unrestricted class) ... I think you would find that, whatever ability levels were used to ensure that result, would necessarily result in most of Meritopia's men being confined to the restricted class as well. Most certainly it would be so if the measure were academic, but even for even a physical bar as low as 'lift your own body weight.' the result might be similar: We would find that only a minority of the population as a whole had full freedom.

    And Meritopia would have hard time explaining the justification for having confined that much of the populace to the restricted class of people. After all, being of merely average strength or intelligence is not something, that, on it's own would result in an individual being unable to participate in or contribute to society.

    And the Meritopia model here doesn't even take into account the extra motivation that the system would create. Very few women would be /incapable/ of getting to the point of lifting their own body weight, if given proper motivation to put in the effort.

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  112. @ girlscientist:

    You state: "@Richard: Marilyn French worked on her her pain and got over it. You guys stew in it and spend your entire lives vilifying women who, for the most part, have never hurt you."

    1. Feminist women do hurt men. They hurt them by passing unfair and biased laws, pro female quotas, and polluting the environment with their bullshit theories like "a rape culture" and "patriarchy."

    2. Who are you to tell men when to get over their pain? Why do you, feminut nation, the people who cause most of the pain get to smirk and say, okay that's enough!

    3. I haven't and I'm not going to look through her collection of bullshit works, but I've seen no true apology to men about her statements, so screw her.

    Girlscientist follows: "Also, that quote was by a character in a fictional work. Or do you also think that J.K. Rowling would casually kill an infant because she wrote Lord Voldemort? . . .By the way, I can't believe that I just had to explain all that. I know that you're trying to argue your case and that you're not above overblowing one detail and to twist it to make a woman look bad, but would it kill you not to use an argument that doesn't make you look like an utter moron?"

    By your rational the author of the Turner Diaries is not a racist, just someone making characters. You want to try and wrap your little mind around that one?
    If Harry Potter ended with Lord Voldermort blowing Harry's head of and yelling in triumph, "And that's what happens to worthless muggles and those who would mix with them!" And then the next scenes are of a beautiful, peaceful, muggle free world, then I think some would question the authors message, no? If a writer writes 20 fictional books all about Jews and all have negative stereotypes of jews can one not argue, that maybe, just maybe the author might hate jews? Or can he just spew out, like an empty headed feminist, it's just fiction!?

    It's amazing how much feminist fiction lionizes women who hate men. But I'm sure that doesn't reflect on the author at all, right?

    Random Brother

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  113. @ Joe

    Getting your snacks from your mistresses, Joe?

    Random Brother

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  114. @choco

    Wife is at a base level in sales and watches Survivor (she's a real estate investor in a way). I'm not a big fan but I can easily say that the vast majority of her colleges also watch the show.

    It's the only thing she gambles on. Every season her peers (who are probably 85% men) who are hitting each other rather hard to cut deals enter into a fairly high stakes pool. To an outsider it might seem like pure camaraderie within a rather cutthroat industry, but I swear they get more passionate about whose pick got voted off then who got the best deal regarding work/money.

    I’m in manufacturing so I just don’t get it, but I do get how someone whose job it is to study how humans think would find it fascinating. I have often thought mra’s should have to watch survivor in order to understand to understand life is not in anyway as black and white as they see it.

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  115. @ Sandy

    It seems to me she did believe it, at that time. Hell, she may still believe it as she has never apologized for it, to my knowledge. Stating you are less angry does not equal an aplogy for what she said.

    Also, I don't think that feminist who relentlessly cause men pain should be the ones to put some time table on how quickly men should get over said pain.

    Random Brother.

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  116. @ Elizabeth

    Another feminist arrogantly deciding how long we mere men are allowed to be angry for. While her sisters spew forth whole books of misandry. Hilarious

    Random Brother

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  117. Once upon a time, I got a summer job in the bakery of a local grocery. They hired me basically because I was a big dude and they needed me to stock the freezer with heavy boxes of frozen dough. It turned out that my boss, a woman about half my size, could do the job in about half the time it took me to do it.

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  118. So fine, you'll tell me, Go Your Own Way and swear off sex with women entirely. But then why do you people keep making fun of the MGTOW/celibacy guys for doing what is BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION the "best" thing for a man to do in these circumstances?

    In college, I had a Christian friend whose particular brand of Christianity taught that premarital sex was not a sin (since it harmed no one), but abortion was (since it harmed a fetus). As a result, since he was a poor college student, he chose to not have sex with his girlfriend. For him, the risk of a pregnancy occurring, though miniscule, was still real enough for him. He didn't want to be party to an abortion, and he wanted to be able to support any children he had. Though I didn't agree with his decisions (in the sense that I wasn't making the same choices as he), I still respected the strength of his convictions.

    So if any man thinks that the risks of potential fatherhood outweigh the pleasures of sex, and chooses to abstain or otherwise alter their sex life, I certainly won't judge and mock them. Frankly, I think the "best thing" is to recognize that, hey, if abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures in America and something like 95% of women will have used birth control at some point in their lives, then there are probably a healthy number of American women who *aren't* just out to trick men into parenthood, and who aren't ready to be mothers. Those women? Date those women.

    But when MGTOWs try to thinly veil their rampant misogyny behind that declaration - yeah, I'll make fun of them for being misogynist asshats (or, more accurately, David will make fun of them and I will enjoy his writing). It's not the actual choice that's getting mocked, it's the whining and the juvenile hatred up for laughs.

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  119. Richard, why on earth should Marilyn French apologize for a comment by a fictional character?

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  120. Oh, and also, if your decision making process involves the thought, "But then strangers on the Internet will laugh at me!" you probably want to give some serious thought to picking new priorities.

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  121. Thanks for your response, Ms. Syrus. The problem is, though, what, exactly, constitutes "rampant misogyny?" If some MGTOWer, as many do, went around singing the praises of George Sodini and Marc Lepine, then yes, that would undoubtedly be "rampant misogyny." But what about an MGTOWer who advises men to avoid women as much as possible because of fears they'll sabotage his condom and/or BC/falsely accuse him of rape/give him an STD/whatever? Now, you might say that false rape accusations are statistically rare/men are statistically more likely to sabotage BC than the other way around/women are at greater risks for STDs, not men. Fair enough. But statistics are just statistics--that something is less "statistically" likely to happen doesn't mean it won't happen at all. So what about the MGTOWs who advise avoiding women because it's a very dangerous proposition (as many of them do)? They're paranoid? So what? "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you," as the old saying goes. Misogyny may deserve "mockery," but does the same go for caution, even caution so strong it dives into paranoia?

    There's also the question of whether or not the MGTOWs and MRAs are actually fulfilling a positive--VERY positive--function; i.e keeping the crazies cooped up on the internet rather than going outside and killing people. So far as I know, George Sodini never had any relationship with the 'manosphere' besides attending a PUA seminar, and Lepine, despite writing a manifesto that reads pretty much like a typical comment you'd find on The Spearhead, wasn't actually a member of any misogyny community. If these guys had the niceguy or mgtow forums available to them, it's entirely possible they would have spent the rest of their lives venting their hatred of women online rather than actually going out and expressing it murderously. No matter how misogynistic the online MRM may be, isn't it worth it if it keeps the crazies satisfied in front of their computers rather than outside shooting people? Why mock them (and possibly inflame them), in this case?

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  122. Vagrant, and Lady V, I don't make fun of MGTOWs for wanting to be celibate. There's nothing wrong with choosing a celibate life. You don't see me making fun of monks, do you?

    I find them fascinating because of the strange mix of lust and loathing they feel towards women, and their inability to shut up about the women they are allegedly going their own way past.

    If they spent time on their forums talking about things they like doing by themselves or with other dudes, like, I dunno, reading books, or playing with model trains, or fly fishing, or Buddhist philosophy, or, hell, flower arranging, I'd say more power to them.

    But they spend hours and hours a day just talking about how evil women and feminists, and "manginas" are. The only time they talk about Buddhist philosophy is talking about it as a way to try to control their boners. Hating women IS their hobby.

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  123. @vagrant

    The main physical benefit women have as a norm seems to be balance and the storage of fat, but outside of a secluded island I doubt this is beneficial in the modern or first world

    . But the same can be said for strength. It would be interesting to understand why it seems that evolution gave women better balance (fat storage is easy regarding childbirth).

    I believe the greatest modern “up” women have (as a group) is the ability to learn languages. I remember a poster on a mra board mocking a beauty contestant because she said she was fluent in four languages, this is not unheard of at all in cultures outside of North America.

    My own personal experience is: 95% of my workforce are immigrants with a vast majority being men. My interpreters are 95% women, most of them the wives of my workers. I can conclude that women learn a new language much faster then men.

    However there is the individual. When we travel my wife is less then useless regarding communication. She’s great at making money, but not even passable at communicating in a different language. Most people have a mix of what we consider to be male and female traits.

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  124. @ triplanetary

    triplanetary said: ". . .Two key points here. One, French's anger wasn't based on the actions of one man. It wasn't just the rape - it was the treatment her daughter received from police and courts, the whole system that's supposed to protect people and provide justice. French didn't feel that her daughter was receiving justice."

    How is this different from a MRA screwed in court?

    triplanetary continues: "Given the rape culture that we live in, that's likely."

    Not this fiction again. There is no rape culture!

    triplanetary: "She saw her daughter suffering at the hands of the entire, patriarchal, rape-excusing institution, so her anger is far more justified."

    Why? Why is her anger justified, when others who have been destroyed by feminst rulings and feminist judges, when their anger is somehow not justified?

    triplanetary: "Second, the anger and bitterness of MRAs varies with regard to motivation, but it's always aimed at an imaginary version of feminism."

    No. It's not imaginary. Patriarchy is imaginary. The rape culture is imaginary.

    triplanetary: "Feminists don't believe the things MRAs say they believe, and they don't oppress men the way MRAs say they do. And our society is not pro-feminist or pro-woman in the slightest, not legally or by custom."

    Feminists don't promote anti male laws, pro female quotas, and dubious studies, like the SuperBowl Sunday violence link? Really? Then how else do they oppress men? Also, this country is pro woman like there is no tomorrow.

    triplanetary: "So the anger and bitterness of MRAs is irrational, unlike the anger of French, who tried through legitimate means to find justice for her daughter and couldn't."

    As I said before another feminst telling men what is acceptable for them to think and feel, typical.

    triplanetary: "Demonizing feminists, and making up all sorts of scary stories about how they want to systematically castrate the male population, is sexist. MRA claims about feminist misandry are factually bullshit, so we can only assume that you're lashing out in anger at feminists for daring to stand up for women's equality in a society that has a long, long history of patriarchy. We see this in every arena - racists make up stories about rape-hungry blacks and gold-hoarding Jews, patriots thrive on propaganda about enemy nations. When your criticisms of a group are vacant of truth or facts, it's because those criticisms spring from hatred."

    So when a feminist, say Jessica Valenti, calls for the presumption of innocence to be overturned in rape cases and MRA'S complain and call her for being the irresponsible feminist bitch she is, it's actually because we are lashing out at feminsts for daring to try and be equal? Really? You really believe that swill? Jesus

    Random Brother

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  125. Vagrant, Sodini was actually connected to the PUA community, or at least to a pickup guru (who sort of came along before the PUA community as we now know it evolved). He took seminars from Don Steele, who specializes in older dudes who want to hook up with much younger women.

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  126. In my original post, "a PUA seminar" should be "a couple of PUA seminars," but otherwise my point still stands. Pardon me if it seems like disrespect, especially now that I've cooled down a bit, but attending a couple of seminars from a PUA doesn't really make one a a devoted member of the manosphere, or even an actual PUA, in fact. Now, if the mgtow forums had been available to Mr. Sodini, and he spent all his time on there...maybe he would have found he just didn't have enough time to go shooting up women. That's all I'm sayin'.

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  127. Man, this takes me back...

    Way, way back in the ancient days of the Internet, a guy who saw me on a Usenet group or something emailed me out of the blue, very politely, to recruit me as a sounding board for his theories about female inferiority. I don't know why me. He thought of himself as perfectly rational and beyond mere emotion, so of course there was no way his ideas could be influenced by his own prejudices or desires or fears.

    He was, of course, full of shit, as are all people who think they're perfectly rational. I dunno... I answered his questions as best I could, and one day he stopped emailing me, as suddenly as he'd started. I sometimes wonder what happened to him. Did he find some way to twist my answers into proof of my inferiority? Did he eventually get out of high school (he had that teenage passion for ten-dollar words) and get over himself? I hope he's doing okay.

    I remember one of his arguments was that women should be enslaved because that's what the ancient Greeks did, so it must be a practice that creates great empires. I should have asked him whether he was willing to be enslaved, himself, for the greater good of his society. I'm sure he never even considered the idea. It must be very nice, not to have to consider certain ideas.

    You're not getting the answers you want, Vagrant, because your questions are coming from the wrong place. They're not questions about reality. In the real world, you've never lifted a car or hunted a tiger. In the real world, men and women are not separate species competing with each other for survival. In the real world, there is no contest running in which we have to pile up our assets, and there is no magic bullet, no Brown Bull of Cooley women can add to the top of the pile to prove their worth to you once and for all. Nor do we need to.

    I do find it funny that you say women can't endure pain after going on and on about how the one thing we're good for is childbirth. You see? The assumptions here are all skewed.

    Also, if you're really interested, there are plenty of places to learn about the capabilities of the female body. (I personally like Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, but, you know, hairy-legged feminist and all. There's a book called The Frailty Myth that's also pretty good.) Do your own damn research.

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  128. Vagrant

    I somewhat agree with keeping them crazy in front of their computers. My personal problem with it is they start off with a small thoughts then 10, the 20, then 100 thoughts later that small thought turns into something really wrong. Like my brother deciding his kids could be killed instead of living with their mom after a couple of years on mra boards combined with schizophrenia and a paranoid disorder. Not once has one poster on a mra board ever questioned my brothers mental health, though for the record he’s not come out and stated he’s taken them out now he’s made numerous posts about how they are just like their mother, should never have been born, etc.

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  129. You're not getting the answers you want, Vagrant, because your questions are coming from the wrong place.

    Er...not to be nitpicky, but I actually did get the answers I wanted; chocomintlipwax provided them to me earlier. The female advantages in manual dexterity, balance, and body fat storage were exactly what I was looking for. As for your suggestions, I'll look into them. Thank you for those.

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  130. If they spent time on their forums talking about things they like doing by themselves or with other dudes, like, I dunno, reading books, or playing with model trains, or fly fishing, or Buddhist philosophy, or, hell, flower arranging, I'd say more power to them.

    And if you go to blogs and forums dedicated to singlehood or celibacy as a lifestyle, this is usually what you'll see. The MGTOW thing is something else.

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  131. @ David:

    David: "Richard, why on earth should Marilyn French apologize for a comment by a fictional character?"

    If she put the words inside that characters mouth and then lionized the character, she'd be responsible for what was said, right?

    Random Brother

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  132. No Richard... no more then Stephen King would be.

    Understand?

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  133. @ Kave

    What about the author of the Turner Diaries?

    Random Brother

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  134. No Richard, in Davids perspective, a woman and/or feminist shouldn't apologise because they hold a superior status over non feminist men. Non feminist men are not worthy enough to earn such an apology. But if it was an MRA doing the same, David and the rest of the lunatic bigoted feminist crowd would be singing a whole different tune

    Male and female feminists try their very best to pull misandry under the rug or pretend it's not misandry at all even that it's obvious and right in your face.
    This form of bigotry is the most disgusting and most socially acceptable in western societies at this day.

    There is not one small doubt in my mind that PC these days is heavily gynocentric and yet its so damn laughable how these feminists keep crying that women are second class citizens and a so called patriarchy still exists.

    WTF is wrong with these people

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  135. ‘A man born without eyes is not "inferior" in terms of his ability to see things to someone with eyes--he's merely 'different?'’

    Now you’re moving around the goal-posts. Eyes completely embody the ability to see. The ability to lift something heavy is but one thread to be pulled from “physical superiority” blanket.

    “The problem is, as I said above, the female "superiority" in communication is arguable--it's possible men are just as good communicators as women, they're simply more efficient at it.”

    Or maybe men are unskilled and oblivious to details. *shrugs* And how is being able to lift heavier things “physical superiority” if it often leads to an early or foolish death for men? Why didn’t they come up with methods alternative to detrimental physical tasks thus saving on health costs, physical pain, time, and energy? Maybe women are just more physically efficient!

    But to add to the communication topic, women are also generally better at decoding body language and non-verbal emotional cues.

    Again, not that I believe these are inherent brain differences. One’s brain molds to what one learns. My brain looked a lot different before my anxiety diagnosis than after because I became aware and implemented coping mechanisms.

    “How's that for taking into account the unique misfortune of women being the ones who have to bear the weight of pregnancy?”

    Just making sure I'm correct about you doing all you can to bitterly ensure men may have their cake and eat it, too.

    “If WOMEN have abortion rights, men should have abortion rights! Even if they don’t get pregnant AND didn’t use a condom to begin with! *harrumph*”

    Womb envy, I guess.

    Let's bend over backwards so that men can do whatever they want reproductive-wise and women shall shoulder it all.

    “Perhaps so, but if they manage to convince other men to follow them--to not only get vasectomies, but avoid women entirely--it seems they're doing legitimate work.(…)”

    I don’t care about any of that because they’re weak of character; I just liked showing how you insist on men retaining privilege and power in reproduction.

    “You're really a wonderful advertisement for the MRAs and MGTOWs, Cinnamon.”

    Again, I don’t care about any of that because I do not seek their approval. But thank you and tell your friends I guess.

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  136. “Well, okay, in that case, why not do the same for other groups? The characteristics of MRAs and MGTOWs--their whininess, anger issues, etc.--are only 'detrimental' or 'worthy of mockery' because of the conclusions you've already drawn. One could argue they're actually beneficial characteristics! If we wish to comnpletely deny any characteristic is beneficial or detrimental, what's the point of condemning anything, as you folks do for MRAs?”

    You’re conflating the context and function of characteristics in the two cases then assuming identical arguments are being made for each case.

    Allow an example:
    Conclusion of Mr. X – Women are inherently built and programmed to be mothers

    Study presented to Mr. X – “Report B indicates women are generally better multitaskers than men and have less muscle strength”

    Mr. X – “Hrm, of course women are generally better multitaskers than men! You need those characteristics in order to raise children! As opposed to men, with their excessive muscle mass and single task focus, characteristics for working OUTSIDE the home! If anything bad happened, women couldn’t survive physically!”

    Other study presented to Mr. X – “Report B2 indicates that women are actually single task focused and are physically built to survive famine”

    Mr. X – “Hrm, of course women are actually single task focused! You NEED to be single-task focused to take care of children! You NEED to be able to survive famine also if you have children!”

    His conclusion is safe.



    “I honestly don't understand much of what this paragraph intended to say, and things like "burdan" make me suspect it's not entirely my fault. I don't say this to be snarky; rather I think you may have typed faster than you thought, in this case.”

    I didn’t want to lose momentum and retyped for brevity and it wasn't well-done. Nonetheless, the ad hoc rescue covered most of it. Otherwise I was noting that not one male worker at any point thought outside the box, yet the one woman did, and you conclude it doesn’t mean a man couldn’t. That much whereas one woman unable to use the (inferior) method means it is her femaleness preventing her. There is no consistency.

    My point about the primitive, counter-advancement was a joke; it referred to how you framed emotions. In this case, the woman’s alternative methods were clearly progressive and advanced.

    Kave -
    “Also, I really hate the feminist line that men should just keep it in their pants if they don’t want 25 years of child support. This is a dogma that really needs to end and is simply akin to just crossing your legs.”

    “Keep your legs crossed” is a moral-value context where she is somehow “tainted” by intercourse outside of marriage/reproduction, not because she refuses to use contraception and then wants off the hook. Rather than absolving men of responsibility for what neglecting to do his part in prevention has wrought, thus leaving women to shoulder his foolishness, opting to not drop-trou if you don’t want to impregnate a woman is quite wise.

    If a woman doesn't want to be impregnated, yet engages in vaginal intercourse without protecting herself, I'd say she should stop as well.

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  137. The ability to lift something heavy is but one thread to be pulled from “physical superiority” blanket.

    Fair enough, I can concede that point thanks to the references chocomintlipwax provided earlier.

    they come up with methods alternative to detrimental physical tasks thus saving on health costs, physical pain, time, and energy?

    Haven't they? As many MRAs might tell you, men have invented many (though contrary to what the MRAs might say, perhaps not all) of the labor-saving devices which have freed men from the risks of dangerous, labor-intensive work and have even allowed women to participate and contribute to such work. Therefore, they would say, men

    (now, in this case I really am not sure I agree with the MRAs, because I'm not certain how much of the machinery we take for granted today actually was invented by men. However, I'd have to look it up before I said much more).

    womb envy, privilege and power, etc. etc. etc.

    Considering how several of your fellow feminists/non-MRAs have pointed out that allowing men to abandon paternal responsibilities isn't necessarily such a bad idea, it's hardly just me (or even other MRAs) you're arguing with here. As for the more extreme scenario I postulated, coercing women to have abortions at the behest of the man who impregnated them, under that thought experiment womnen wouldn't "shoulder it all;" the man would be required to pay the cost of the abortion. However, even under that condition I assume it would offend your sensibilities. Therefore, the alternative of allowing men to abdicate their financial duties to any child they may have fathered, while perhaps not entirely fair, while perhaps "privileging" men, still seems preferable.

    I don’t care about any of that because they’re weak of character;

    But their "character weaknesses" are actually strengths! It's all in how you look at it. Saying MGTOWs are "weak of character" is like saying women are "physically weak." It's all in whether or not you look at their characteristics, be they mental or physical, as benefits or drawbacks. It's a matter of perspective!

    Again, I don’t care about any of that because I do not seek their approval. But thank you and tell your friends I guess.

    Perhaps not, but if they ever gain any significant political power or influence--horror of horrors, I know--you and people like you may have more of a hand in that than you'd care to admit.

    Still, so long as there are folks like Kave, Chocomintlipwax, and the others who've actually managed to provide cogent responses to my queries, I guess you won't be able to do too much damage.

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  138. @ nicko81m

    You're right. Women, er, pardon, WOMYN, have no need to apologize to us mere men, besides it was just fiction. However, if some man were to right a fictional account of "Brutus Bitchkiller" the man who offed feminists. And his adventures consisted of him doling out punishments to feminsts, somehow I don't think the femnuts would just say, "Eh, can't blame the author, it's just fiction."

    Random Brother

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  139. I have to disagree, Cinnamon. I don't think that 'cross your legs' and 'don't drop trou' in this context are all that different from each other. It's judgmentally anti-sex and it ignores the fact that birth control isn't 100%.

    How do either one of those differ from the anti-choicer argument that because Person X engaged in an activity which had a risk of pregnancy, that Person X should now be able to do nothing to ameliorate the consequences, full stop?

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  140. His conclusion is safe.

    So you're essentially saying he's interpreting the data (no matter what it is) to fit his conclusion. Well, okay, fair enough. Then again, while your intent may have been different in regards to our MGTOW friends, it's still not much more defensible. It may not be an example of confirmation bias, but that doesn't mean it's valid, either. MGTOWs aren't "whiny," they're "keenly attuned to injustices!" They're not "angry," . There's no real objective basis for your judgement of them. The only objective thing you can say about them is that they seem to have a lot of animosity towards women. Whether that's good or bad is another debate.

    My point about the primitive, counter-advancement was a joke; it referred to how you framed emotions. In this case, the woman’s alternative methods were clearly progressive and advanced.

    Ah, I see what you're saying. The problem is, one could argue--as many MRAs do--that the inventive woman was one of those rare ones who thinks more like a male than a female (a commenter at Roissy's would claim she had a high T-level). They would also claim that a man would've figured it out eventually, and the fact she beat them to the punch was merely a fluke. Me, I wouldn't be so sure of this, though--it's in contradiction with how many MRAs (I know John Dias has explicitly said this before) claim some traits are "exclusively" male and others "exclusively" female. It is the argument they'd make, though.

    If a woman doesn't want to be impregnated, yet engages in vaginal intercourse without protecting herself, I'd say she should stop as well.

    Well, you actually hold women to the same standards? Perhaps my assessment of you was indeed overly harsh. However, this leads us into murkier territory on the subject of abortion and financial responsibilities. Say, for the purposes of argument, that we have a man who thinks he's done everything to prevent a pregnancy outside of a vasectomy--he thinks his woman is on the pill, he's wearing a condom, etc. However, his lover sabotages the BC, lies about being on the pill, etc. (again, you'd say this is statistically unlikely, I'm just using this example for the purposes of argument). She does not choose to have an abortion. Despite the fact that she lied to him and intentionally sabotaged the BC, would you still say he's obligated to pay her support for the child?

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  141. Okay, on the 'physical superiority' line. First, by this conclusion apes are far superior to humans, who are by far inferior. Not a one of us can out benchpress those chimps. Compared to the most similar species to us (apes) we totally and utterly suck in this skill set. Even if we assumed better physical levels for men (this is not true, while men on average have higher body strengths, women do far better on average in endurance activities, such as supermarathons), physical strength really isn't a great evolutionary advantage of humans. We lose to apes in this area solidly. Our skills that set us apart are tool design and use and social unit cohesion. These all fall under the mental set. Still, even if you assumed that men should dominate "strength" jobs, it does not follow that men would dominate political or legal spheres, as these rarely involve physical strength components. If anything, women being 'free' from pysical labour should make them ideal choices for such low physical labour positions as politics, academics, and arts in cultures where physical labour is common. We would also expect that big slave economy states would have equality between men and women of the free class (as this class does no physical labour), but this has not historically been the case at all. Even granting your premise does not lead to your conclusions.

    On the issue of abortion, women do not have rights to abort by virtue of being the biological parent or egg provider. This may sound silly, thinking of an average case where the women who is pregnant also provides the eggs, but consider the case of the gestational surrogate. It is the surrogate who has the legal right to elect to abort, not either of the bio parents, even in states where the bio parents are the ones with legal rights and responsibilities after birth. It is the state of being pregnant that grants this right, not the state of being the bio mother. Bio mothers and fathers have equal rights over fertilized eggs and fetuses that are in neither party's body (frozen embryos have consitently been ruled to be equal property of both, in some states). Both parties also have the same legal rights and responsibilities over the child after birth. The only period during contention is that of pregnancy. In the pregnacy period, the pregnant person, regardless of the genetic parenthood of the fetus, is placed in a unique situation. Pregnancy carries health risks and bodily changes bore by the pregnant person alone. It is the pregnant person's body that is being used by the fetus, so the pregnant person alone has the right to decide useage of their own body. There is no way to give the non-pregnant parties rights at this stage but to coerce pregnancy or coerce medical procedures. To clarify: Conception-male and female partner have equal rights to prevent. Pregnancy-only pregnant person has right to terminate. After birth-male and female partner have equal right.

    On to the stupid line: If I can't abort, I should be able to have no legal responsibilities. Well, then if you can't abort, you should have no option of legal rights either. This is the natural corrallary to your position. If choosing to abort or not abort makes the person solely responsible for the conception and the birth, then they should also be the sole holder of rights. If the person who gets pregnant carries all of the responsibilities for the children born, they should carry all of the rights for them as well.

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  142. David, you missed the holy grail of feminist stories: http://vimeo.com/19843219

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  143. "Hating women IS their hobby."---David

    Just like being self-righteous and pro-feminist in your bias is yours?

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  144. Vagrant, make sure that you find ones that give an accurate accounting. Despite Richard's (and Nick's) belief that men have never ever ignored women's contributions because of patriarchy, there have been numerous examples of female inventors not getting credit for things they created.

    One story in the hilarious (no, not because it is anti-men Richard and Nick) Uppity Women series by Vicki Leon showed that even when it was obvious and the males around said "hey, SHE was the one who came up with it" historians still accredited the man with inventing something.

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  145. In this thread Cold forgets we had internet in 2001 and claims list posted to the internet was made before the internet was a thing.

    Also admits it might be hard to find crazy quotes from the last decade.


    Is there some kind of causal relationship between being a feminist and having piss-poor reading comprehension? I never said there was no Internet a decade ago; I said that it wasn't as prolific as it is today. Oh, and where did I say it would be hard to find crazy quotes from the last decade? I acknowledged that they have a funny tendency to disappear when they start attracting attention, but thanks to the miracle of page caching this isn't much of a problem. The worst that happens is that feminists claim that the cached pages were doctored, as they did with Biting Beaver back in 2007. (link is slightly NSFW)

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  146. BTW cold... does your friend Patrick use other people without their permission? Because... if people on you tube freely use each other's material and such, then it's fair game.

    Well some people on YouTube, including you, freely false-flag other people's channels. Is everything fair game as long as some people do it? You got my channel suspended from YouTube for bullshit reasons, so will you not complain if I do the same to you? Oh, and if I have "no credibility" then why bother false-flagging me in the first place? You wouldn't do that unless you had some reason to fear what I have to say.

    Cold...

    you mean..."oops I should have apologized for posting complete fucking garabage."


    Did you even read the post all the way through before you started spewing tribe? David called the list "a sloppy mixture of truth, half-truth and outright falsehood." Got that? It contains truth, in fact most of the quotes are completely true, so it's not "complete fucking garbage."

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  147. Cold, again, if you knew the list to be unreliable, WHY DID YOU POST IT?

    You really want an answer to this, don't you? Ok, I'll give you one after you give me satisfactory answers to the following questions:

    1. Why have you given Shaenon a free pass on her direct, physical threat against rich people? You declared the following quote from Avenger, which is actually just an argument for why men are not as violent as Josh claims, to be a threat:


    If men really were as violent as he claims they would have shut him up long ago. One good beating and this mangina would never open his mouth again.

    Yet when Shaenon says "I will punch you if I find you" you express no concern at all. I would like you to explain this gross inconsistency.

    2. Why did you harp on me for not accepting a jury verdict as absolute proof that Goodyear engaged in sex discrimination, and then defend Amanda Marcotte, a so-called skeptic, when she declared that the Duke Lacrosse players were absolutely guilty of rape? She didn't just express an opinion, she flatly asserted that they committed the crime while presenting zero evidence to back her claim. How do you explain such an inconsistency?

    3. Why didn't you demand that Josh Jasper provides sources for the threatening emails and comments he claims to have received? Is it because it's a personal claim? If so, I could easily claim that I met Marilyn French in person and that she said to me "All men are rapists and that's all they are." Who would you be to doubt my story?

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  148. Cold I don't flag anyone, and you are talking out your ass. There is NEVER proof of anyone's flagging, so even though we're sure that your friend Patrick is a flagging NUT who even had a channel called "I flag stupid people" and a rap song saying "Flag my shit and now I'll flag yours", we still can never prove he flags anything. But I'm honest and you are full of slime ball tactics as you show again here. Again and again you show this, you also show no decency for not bringing outside drama to David's blog. You need to drop this, and stop accusing people of things you can not prove isn't that LIBEL? You "sanctimonious dweeb" as you were called by someone else here?

    Got anymore libel? Or anymore lies in the form of false quotes that you will not take responsibility for? Any MRA knows that those quotes have been debunked it's all over the web.

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  149. @Richard, no, it is not clear she believed it at the time because she never said it. A character in a book, who did not represent her but her daughter, said it. She made it clear the quote was meant to represent irrational anger, no the truth.

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  150. No, most of the quotes are false for one reason or another Cold. Go back to work-your temper is showing.

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  151. "What you *should* support is a man's right to be free of any obligation to a child he not only didn't want but also, in the case of sabotage, didn't have a hand in intentionally or even accidentally conceiving."

    Have him go to court to prove it. I'd love to see men put in the same position women are when it comes to proving rape.

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  152. "I was hoping more for physical superiority, or even parity with men. Women seem to be inferior in regards to pain (more sensitive, i.e less resilient), though roughly on par with men in terms of susceptibility to disorders. The only physical characteristics I can think of in which women are either equal to or better than men are a heightened sense of smell and a higher resistance to disease, according to Wikipedia. Are there any others? Again, genuinely not trolling, I figured you'd know better than I would. "

    Women on average have much better fine motor skills, which means they can do things that, in an advanced society, are becoming more common. E.g., they may not be good at digging ditches, may be better at operating remote controls to dig ditches.

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  153. "MRAs would say this is arguable--the fact that a woman's "communication" sectors of the brain are more developed and they use more words while men are more laconic would indicate that women are simply less efficient; men communicate equally well with less wasted verbiage"

    That's some outstandingly poor reasoning -- you assume each communicates the same amount of information. Why?

    Comparing their brains, finding women have a larger communication area, and deciding this must mean women have too much communication area is laughable. It's like saying that the visual cortex in apes is bigger than that in iguanas, so it must mean that apes are wasting a lot of time in looking when iguanas are more efficient.

    Using less energy isn't more efficient if you get less done.

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  154. @ Jupiter9:

    Jupiter9 said: "Have him go to court to prove it. I'd love to see men put in the same position women are when it comes to proving rape. "

    Where's David to lecture us MRA'S and tell us that feminists aren't our enemies now?

    Jupiter9 lashing out at deceived men to get some sort of vague feminist like revenge against men is typical of the way feminut nation thinks and operates. Feminists are definitely evil, selfish, illogical, hairy legged beasts, and they are definitely the enemy of men.

    It's simple, skirts, if women should not be forced into the emotional and financial responsibility of being a parent before they are ready the same should apply for men. But that would be TRUE EQUALITY and true equality is the last thing the carpet cleaning nation wants.

    Random Brother

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  155. @Elizabeth

    Elizabeth said: "Vagrant, make sure that you find ones that give an accurate accounting. Despite Richard's (and Nick's) belief that men have never ever ignored women's contributions because of patriarchy, there have been numerous examples of female inventors not getting credit for things they created."

    Feminist examples, or you know, real ones?

    Elizabeth said: "One story in the hilarious (no, not because it is anti-men Richard and Nick) Uppity Women series by Vicki Leon showed that even when it was obvious and the males around said "hey, SHE was the one who came up with it" historians still accredited the man with inventing something."

    Here's a wild idea! Why don't women invent something today, instead of relying on feminist falsehoods about the past, or is it that you're still to oppressed?

    Random Brother

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  156. Recycled disposable cell phone
    Windshield wipers
    More effective cataract surgery
    Kevlar

    A list of inventions by women and an explanation why women were not always given credit.

    Essay on women's contributions over time

    A list of materials about women's inventions

    An even longer list of women and their patents before the 20th Century.

    Plenty more evidence out there. You were saying Richard?

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  157. David::: ...Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from. :::

    Well, from what I've been reading around here (and by following the links and reading even more) a lot of it appears to stem from a couple of sources. One being that the man in question wasn't provided with a sexual experience he felt he was entitled to, and two - because he paid for someone's dinner and didn't get a sexual experience he felt he was entitled to.

    Rage is something of an out of proportion response to the above - at least in my book - but certainly not uncommon on the MRA and MGTOW sites.

    Frankly, their stated grievances are just lame excuses for their pervasive and all too blatant misogyny.

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  158. Cold,

    1)Shaenon's comment was a joke. The comments on the Spearhead were genuinely threatening.

    2)Amanda Marcotte based her judgement on the Duke case on looking at the evidence, and wrote about it extensively elsewhere. You based your, er, judgment on the Ledbetter case on, as best I can figure it out, your notion that juries are filled with stupid people. If you honestly had looked at the evidence and concluded what you did, I might disagree with you (as I do with Marcotte on the Duke case), but at least your conclusion would be based on SOMETHING.

    3) If you actually read what I wrote about Jasper, I used words like "alleged" when describing the death threats he says he's gotten. I have no problem believing that he did get some, as there are plenty of threatening remarks addressed to him online, but I don't know for certain that he did because I have not seen the evidence.

    Also, cool it with the accusations against booboo. Stick to the issues at hand. If either you or booboo makes more accusatory comments about whatever battle you've got going on youtube, I will delete them.

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  159. "Go back to work-your temper is showing."---Elizabeth

    It's pretty easy to see your temper in action.


    The CAPS LOCK goes on.

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  160. "Women on average have much better fine motor skills, which means they can do things that, in an advanced society, are becoming more common."---jupiter9

    Links to the scientific studies and proof for this, please?

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  161. 1)Shaenon's comment was a joke. The comments on the Spearhead were genuinely threatening.

    Can you provide any actual proof that her comment was a joke and that the ones on The Spearhead were not? Your opinion isn't satisfactory here.

    Amanda Marcotte based her judgement on the Duke case on looking at the evidence, and wrote about it extensively elsewhere.

    Where is "elsewhere"? You have to provide a link to the original source or else it's spam, remember? I don't recall seeing any evidence that they actually committed the crime, so I am VERY interested to know about this "evidence" at which you claim she looked and which I missed.

    If you actually read what I wrote about Jasper, I used words like "alleged" when describing the death threats he says he's gotten.

    Fair enough; I'm satisfied with that answer but the other two contain assertions that need to be proven.

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  162. Go back to work-your temper is showing.

    It always amuses me when people think they can accurately judge someone's emotional state from their prose.

    Unlike some people, I spend all of my employer's time working and only post on breaks. It's called a "work ethic".

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  163. It's like saying that the visual cortex in apes is bigger than that in iguanas, so it must mean that apes are wasting a lot of time in looking when iguanas are more efficient.

    The problem is, do apes actually have better eyesight than iguanas? Again, not trolling, I really don't know if this is the case or not; not a biologist and Wikipedia doesn't really say. You're right in saying the fact that an area of the brain is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's "inferior" or "less efficient," but at the same time, there's no neurological reason why bigger automatically = better either. A portion of the brain larger in size might be less densely packed with neurons, or a portion of the brain more densely packed with neurons may have weaker connections between those neurons, and so on and so forth. Again, as I said, you may be right, but we can't really be certain.

    Have him go to court to prove it. I'd love to see men put in the same position women are when it comes to proving rape.

    Fair enough--as a lot of men nowadays record their bangs (as Roissy has called it) to avoid getting hit with rape charges or whatever, I imagine a few of them might keep mini-cameras or recorders handy to catch their girls in the act of condom sabotage or whatever. It's difficult, but doable.

    Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists.

    I'm not sure this is correct--several of them have either been abused by female parents or raped by females. Theodore Labadie has written about what he experienced at the hands of his stepmother, Keith on avoiceformen has done the same, and according to one commenter there (i forgot if it was AntZ or someone else with an A), he was literally raped--as in, his mother sexually abused him--as a child.

    Now, you could say these men are lying, but then again, people say women are lying about being raped and abused all the time. Two wrongs don't really make a right.

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  164. Now, you could say these men are lying

    No need. I believe them. Problem is, it doesn't justify misogyny. Women who are raped by men don't all end up hating men. Men who are raped by women have no excuse for hating all women.

    Blaming the patriarchy is another matter, and it doesn't equate to hating men. But as there's no matriarchy that creates opportunities for systematic abuse of men, men being raped by women is pretty rare compared to its opposite. Which isn't to diminish the gravity of it - when it happens, it's just as deplorable as any other case of rape. But it doesn't justify misogyny.

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  165. It is also going to become illegal or already is Vagrant-secretly recording your sexual encounters with a woman, even in the interests of preventing a false rape accusation could lead to other charges.

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  166. Wytch-actually that was me trying to break through that blockhead of yours.

    As I saw though, I failed. Maybe next time I should use Cold's head. (Yes Cold, that was me stating I would use your head as a battering ram. And no, I was not serious so you can calm down.)

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  167. Cold:

    No, I can't "prove" that her statement was a joke. Heck, I can't even "prove" that when I say "I'm going to eat you!" and chase my cat around the apartment I'm joking. But even my cat can figure out that I don's actually mean her harm.

    You could always ask Shaenon what she meant.

    As for Marcotte, her archives are a bit messed up, but if you go here:

    http://pandagon.blogsome.com/

    And do a search for "lacrosse" you will find many posts on the topic, with links to specific evidence. You may not agree with her on this -- I don't -- but she;s not basing her opinions on "I'm smarter than dumb ordinary people" as you seem to be in the Goodyear case.

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  168. It is also going to become illegal or already is Vagrant-secretly recording your sexual encounters with a woman, even in the interests of preventing a false rape accusation could lead to other charges.

    Perhaps, though I'm not sure of it--I've heard a few anecdotal stories about men getting off scot-free after being accused of rape thanks to videos they accidentally (or "accidentally") took. And even if one would inadvertently open oneself up to other charges, they'd be pretty hard to prosecute--if you're secretly filming someone, how would they ever know unless it ended up on Youtube or some other public place?

    No need. I believe them. Problem is, it doesn't justify misogyny. Women who are raped by men don't all end up hating men. Men who are raped by women have no excuse for hating all women.

    Well, thank you for that. The problem is, though, while I'm no expert on the subject, from what I've heard many women who've been abused by men actually *do* end up hating men because of the experience. Hell, just look at the first post on here:

    http://www.ihatemen.org/

    IMO, "I hate men" is as blunt a statement of misandry as "I hate women" is a statement of misogyny from an MRA. If you read her comment, her reasons for doing so are more or less the same as the reasons MRAs give for hating women--abuse, cruelty, etc.

    men being raped by women is pretty rare compared to its opposite.

    I'm sorry--and if this comes off as trolling, I don't care, it's something I feel strongly about--this is not necessarily true. I've heard it said that rape is among the most under-reported of all crimes; female on male rape, in my view, is likely THE most underreported crime. Aside from the shame many rape victims feel, men are even less likely to be taken seriously (the common reaction of many police officers is "hey, you enjoyed it, didn't you?), and also there is much less physical evidence, in many cases, that a man can give to convince anyone that sex was not consensual--there's semen, evidence of vaginal trauma, etc. for women, but often not for men. The statistically lower rate of female on male rape, regardless of whether or not "the patriarchy" exists, seems to be an artifact of these causes rather than anything else.

    Anyways, Wytch: I looked up last night, they're telling the truth. Take this, for instance:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7661655

    Tl; dr: it found that men were superior in gross motor skills while women outperformed men in the fine motor Pegboard test.

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  169. I've heard it said that rape is among the most under-reported of all crimes; female on male rape, in my view, is likely THE most underreported crime. Aside from the shame many rape victims feel, men are even less likely to be taken seriously (the common reaction of many police officers is "hey, you enjoyed it, didn't you?), and also there is much less physical evidence, in many cases, that a man can give to convince anyone that sex was not consensual--there's semen, evidence of vaginal trauma, etc. for women, but often not for men. The statistically lower rate of female on male rape, regardless of whether or not "the patriarchy" exists, seems to be an artifact of these causes rather than anything else.

    Bullshit. Yes, rape is severely underreported, and this is true for both male and female victims. (Incidentally, most male rape victims are raped by other men, not by women.) But our culture fosters male rapists, not female ones. Female rapists are a result of severe psychological issues that vary on a case-by-case basis. Male rapists sometimes have psychological issues, but more often than not they're actually a pretty predictable byproduct of their upbringing and environment. Remember, most rapists don't hang out in an alley and force themselves on strange women. Most of them seem and act very normal 99% of the time - and by all accounts, other than their predilection for rape, they are pretty normal. That's what patriarchy breeds.

    No matter how much MRAs want to deny it, men oppress women. Obviously there are individual aberrations from that rule, but on the macro scale that rule applies.

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  170. David said:

    "No, I can't "prove" that her statement was a joke"

    But just because she's a feminist, you automatically assume it's a joke because women are perfect princesses and all in your world.

    Yet if it's an MRA saying the same types of things, would David automatically assume it's a joke or would he start crying out "misogyny"?

    You see the difference here? Only a feminist bigot would have this mentality

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  171. But our culture fosters male rapists, not female ones. Female rapists are a result of severe psychological issues that vary on a case-by-case basis.

    Not necessarily. As I said above, it's just as possible that the reason male on female rapes seem more prevalent in society, regardless of "culture" or "patriarchy" or whatever, is that it's even harder to prove a woman raped a man than it is to prove a man raped a woman or a man raped a man (the rapist's semen would be present, physical trauma, etc).

    This is not to say it's worse than male on female or male on male rape, but you're disparaging and dismissing an issue that, while perhaps exaggerated by MRAs, is nowhere near as unworthy of attention as it seems to me you are implying.

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  172. Ok, everyone! I have to admit, I am a fucking perfect princess! And it pisses me off when you say *all* women are perfect princesses, or that someone else *believes* that all women are perfect princesses because it's fucking hard work to become a perfect princess. It's not some kind of cake walk; think earning a Phd only with more sparkles and tea parties! And calling all of these normal ladies, who I am sure are perfectly nice, perfect princesses really cheapens the monumental investment of time and energy by real, true, honest-to-God perfect princesses!

    That's all. Proceed.

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  173. This is not to say it's worse than male on female or male on male rape, but you're disparaging and dismissing an issue that, while perhaps exaggerated by MRAs, is nowhere near as unworthy of attention as it seems to me you are implying.

    And you're deliberately denying a social reality, so it stands to reason that you're not going to see eye-to-eye with the reality-based denizens of this blog.

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  174. Vagrant, I think the http://www.ihatemen.org/ site is a terrible, wrong, unhelpful, obviously misandrist site. It's bad for men and for the women who post there; it encourages women to basically steep in their rage, much like MGTOW sites tend to do. I would say the same if the site were called ihateamericanmen.com.

    It would be interesting to see if some of the MRA/MGTOW folks who post here would be willing to similarly denounce sites that demonize women like, oh, NiceGuy's American Women Suck page.

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  175. And you're deliberately denying a social reality, so it stands to reason that you're not going to see eye-to-eye with the reality-based denizens of this blog.

    I don't deny that male on female rape is a serious problem, I don't even deny that we live in a "male on female rape culture," though to convince me 100% that we do live in one is something that will have to wait for another thread. The point I am making is that due to a variety of factors, which I have already mentioned above, female on male rape is likely *vastly* under-reported, even more so than male on female or male on male rape, and thus represents a more significant problem than you admit. It would be nice if you addressed this, rather than going on about "social reality" or whatever. Until then, I think I'm more inclined to consider you the ideological mirror image of Cold and Wytch rather than a member of the "reality-based community" of this blog.

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  176. Vagrant, even if female-on-male rape is much more vastly underreported than male-on-female rape is, and that certainly could be the case, it's still a tiny fraction of the total number of rapes. Men who are raped are far more likely to be raped by other men.

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  177. Gah, my comment got eaten.

    Purdue Pegboard test of manual dexterity consistently shows better results for women than men:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7661655
    "Analysis of the Pegboard scores found no interaction or main effect of sexual orientation, but the effect of sex was significant, F(1,63) = 7.01, p < or = 0.02. Regardless of sexual orientation, women outperformed men and this difference remained significant even when a measure of finger size was partialed out."

    You might also be interested to know that women tend to be much better multitaskers:

    http://www.herts.ac.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/Women-are-better-multitaskers-than-men.cfm

    Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire have conducted research providing definitive evidence that women can multitask more effectively than men.

    Professor Keith Laws at the University’s School of Psychology looked at multitasking in 50 male and 50 female undergraduates and found that although the sexes performed equally when they multitasked on simple maths and map reading tasks, women far excelled men when it came to planning how to search for a lost key, with 70 per cent of women performing better than their average male counterparts.

    “The search for the lost key task, which involved giving the men and women a blank sheet of paper representing a field and asking them to draw how they would search for the key, revealed that women planned more strategically than men,” said Professor Laws. “I was surprised by this result given the arguments that men have better spatial skills than women.”

    Professor Laws was also surprised that despite the universal notion that women are better than men at multitasking, their review of the literature unearthed no previous scientific evidence to support this claim.

    The participants in Professor Laws study, who were undergraduates at the University, had eight minutes to do several tasks at the same time, such as simple maths problems, map reading, answering a telephone caller asking general knowledge questions and showing the strategy they would use to search for an imaginary lost key in a field.

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  178. it's still a tiny fraction of the total number of rapes.

    Thank you for your response, but again, can we really be sure Female on male rape, is a "tiny" fraction of the total number of rapes? Like I said above, not merely underreporting but also the sheer physical difficulty of proving a woman raped a man as opposed to the ease of proving a man raped a man (again, semen, physical trauma, etc.), along with cultural biases (the whole "men never have sex with women unless they want it" thing) is why I say that when female on male rape is "vastly" underreported, I don't mean "less than half of f-on-m rapes are reported and/or recognized," I mean to say that perhaps less than one in ten--or even one in twenty--are reported and recognized. You might say I'm being an MRA-style paranoid kook, but given the unique pressures a male victim of rape by a female faces, both due to biology and culture, I'm not sure it's that far out.

    I'm not going to claim that rape is a "male" problem or even that f-on-m rapes outnumber m-on-f rapes or even m-on-m rapes--that would be patently absurd. I simply question yours and triplanetary's assertion that they're a "tiny" fraction of the total numbers.

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  179. Vagrant, as I said before, all forms of rape are underreported. Given that the percentage of total rapes reported that are by women against men tend to be about 2%, even if women-on-male rape is, say, *five times* less likely to be reported than male-on-female and male-on-male rape, the total percentage is still small (10%). Of course, any or all of these numbers could be off, and maybe "tiny" was overstating it, but it's a much smaller percentage.

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  180. More for you, with references:

    http://othes.univie.ac.at/4130/1/2009-02-18_0609045.pdf

    "Meanwhile, a great amount of psychological tests that reveal performance differences
    between the sexes are in use. Women are, for instance, superior in two tasks that require the
    rapid retrieval of verbal information from long-term memory (Loring-Meier & Halpern,
    1999): the “Letter Fluency Task”, requiring subjects to generate words that start with a certain
    letter, and the “Synonym Generation Task”, requiring the retrieval of synonyms. Hines (1990)
    found effect sizes ranging between d=0.5 (medium effect) and d=1.2 (large effect) for these
    two psychological test procedures. Another task in which women generally perform better
    than men is “Finding A’s”, which measures rapid access to information about words or
    subject’s speed of perception. In this test, subjects must rapidly scan rows of words and cross
    out the A’s. Women furthermore are superior in “Identical Pictures”, in which they must
    compare a target figure with a test figure and decide whether they are identical or not
    (Halpern & Tan, 2001)."

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  181. *five times* less likely to be reported than male-on-female and male-on-male rape, the total percentage is still small (10%)

    Even going under that number, though (and I implied that it was possible f-on-m rapes were 10 or more times less likely to be reported or counted, due to both cultural conditioning and difficulties in acquiring physical evidence), even if prison rapes are taken into account m-on-m rapes, IIRC, don't represent a much higher number of total rapes either--somewhere around 9-10% of those reported, and probably a higher if non-reported or prison rapes are taken into account, so let's say maybe around ~15-20% of rapes are m-on-m. That's not *much* bigger than an estimated 10% of f-on-m rapes. So if m-on-m rapes are to be taken seriously as a genuine and significant problem--and I believe, to your credit, you've made this point before--it's not really easy to argue f-on-m rapes aren't either.

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  182. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  183. Rape stats are usually based on reported rapes and not convicted rapes. So the actual number of the stat is seriously misleading.

    The claim of 'rape' is often the result of a regretted sexual liaison after a night on the turps. Woman imbibes too much in a club and gives in to the beseechments of some 'handsome' stud, ending up beside him with a sore bum in the morning.

    Then there are women who simply hate certain men and they find that accusing that certain man of rape is a good way to ruin his reputation.

    Then there are women who do it to gain compensation. It's amazing what lengths people will go into to get compensated.

    Then there is no indication that female on female rape and female on male rape are included in these stats (not to mention, DV is more common in lesbian couples than in hetero couples) So it wouldn’t be a surprise that rape amongst lesbian couples is not something rare as rape and DV are supposedly about power and come hand in hand

    Anyway, feminists like to wave around stats in a misleading way (even that they are acknowledgeable to the points I stated) but they hope that these types of points don't get raised so it helps their cause of demonising men and raising the female victim status.

    Feminists will mislead or manipulate nearly anything just to further the demonization of men and female victim status. It’s a totally sexist notion coming from a movement that’s supposed to be against sexism.

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  184. They would also claim that a man would've figured it out eventually, and the fact she beat them to the punch was merely a fluke.

    But the same, "would've figured it out eventually" is never afforded to women in regards to men having invented something first; no, it's reasoned that most women are/were inherently INCAPABLE of doing such things as being inventive, rather than acknowledging that women were RESTRICTED from doing such things or for being credited with such (eg., patent laws, laws regarding ownership of property, etc.). I wouldn't be so bold as to say that all or even most or a great many inventions were actually created by women and yet men took credit because they COULD, but that it's not outside the realm of possibility that some women may have had a hand in men's creation of some inventions that are completely credited to men. We will never know because in men's physical superiority trumps all, might makes right creation of reality as has been recorded in written history, women barely even existed at all.... you would wonder where we women all suddenly came from.

    The problem is, one could argue--as many MRAs do--that the inventive woman was one of those rare ones who thinks more like a male than a female (a commenter at Roissy's would claim she had a high T-level).

    OR the inventive woman was one of those rare ones who was able to obtain an education outside of "charm school" or learning domestic occupations, in spite of the many roadblocks aimed to prevent this for females (yes, many men were not able to pursue an education, either, but mostly due to lack of finances, NOT due to their sex). Additionally, to be inventive requires the luxury of being afforded time to focus and concentrate on this singular pursuit to the exclusion of other responsibilities, and that's not something that very many women were allowed in any large measure. As John Stuart Mill wrote in his 1869 essay The Subjection of Women:
    "Independently of the regular offices of life which devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made on him. Are a woman's occupations, especially her chosen and voluntary ones, ever regarded as excusing her from any of what are termed the calls of society? Scarcely are her most necessary and recognised duties allowed as an exemption. It requires an illness in the family, or something else out of the common way, to entitle her to give her own business the precedence over other people's amusement. She must always be at the beck and call of somebody, generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in it."

    And for working class women? What "idle" time would they have to spare between work outside the home and the daily domestic chores and childcare which were not expected of a man to have to perform.

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  185. Approx. 90% of reported sexual assault victims are women. Of reported sexual assaults with a male victim, roughly 90% have male perpetrators. Which means that only about 1% of reported sexual assaults have a male victim and a female perpetrator. The amount of female on male rape would have to be about ninety times as underreported (not a ninety percent less likely, ninety times less likely) as male on female rape to result in roughly equivalent numbers.

    @vagrant "...I say that when female on male rape is "vastly" underreported, I don't mean "less than half of f-on-m rapes are reported and/or recognized," I mean to say that perhaps less than one in ten--or even one in twenty--are reported and recognized." Your numbers would actually, by most statistics, mean that men underreported less than women. The report rate, in the US, for sexual assault is about 10-40% for female victims. Which means that, even by the DOJ's conservative methodology, less than half of sexual assaults with a female victim are reported. I would assume that less than half of sexual assaults of male victims by females are reported, due to the fact that there is no evidence suggesting men underreport less than women. I do believe that sexual assaults of men are vastly underreported. I do not think there is a serious reason to doubt that. It is also true, however, that sexual assaults of women are vastly underreported. However, the sheer level of discrepancy that would have to be involved in reporting rates of male on female sexual assault and female on male rape in order for the rates of sexual assault to be anywhere equivalent makes claims of equivalent rates absurd on their face. While there is evidence that men underreport at slighly higher rates, there is no evidence that even vaguely suggests it is anywhere near what it would have to be for equivalent rates.

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  186. All right, I had nothing better to do today, so I went through every single quote and attempted to verify them.

    My findings:
    Out of 42 quotes:
    -4 were either fabricated or deliberately twisted to convey something the author does not actually believe
    -10 could not be verified
    -28 were (relatively) accurate quotes and citations
    -Of those 28, 10 are quotes of Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who does not represent mainstream feminist opinion
    -Of the remaining 18, only two or three struck me as genuinely hateful, though I suppose that’s a matter of perspective

    I respond to each individual quote on my blog, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to read it all. In retrospect I'm not really sure why I did it.

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  187. But even my cat can figure out that I don's actually mean her harm.

    Sounds like your cat is a better judge of who means harm than you are, so why don't you ask her if Avenger meant any harm to Josh Jasper?

    And do a search for "lacrosse" you will find many posts on the topic, with links to specific evidence.

    Um, no. I found a lot of posts salivating about privilege and calling anyone who was skeptical of the rape charge a "rape apologist" but I didn't find a single link to any kind of evidence that the accused men committed the crime.

    she;s not basing her opinions on "I'm smarter than dumb ordinary people" as you seem to be in the Goodyear case.

    First of all, my opinion on the Goodyear case is that I don't believe they engaged in sex discrimination. I never asserted that they definitely did not engage in it, the way that Marcotte asserted that these men were definitely guilty of rape.

    Second, the basis for my opinion is that not a shred of evidence has been shown to me that Goodyear engaged in sex discrimination. The ONLY reason I have been offered to believe this is that a jury thought they did, as if juries are never wrong. NEWSFLASH: juries are often wrong, and it doesn't help that intelligent people either find ways to get out of jury duty, or get screened out when they try to serve because lawyers prefer easily gullible jurors.

    Amanda Marcotte, on the other hand, has apparently based her assertion(not just opinion) on the fact that a woman claimed to have been raped by some men and her belief that there is no possible way that woman could be a liar. She totally stuck her foot in her mouth by doing that and her reputation will never recover from that blow.

    Now you have stuck your own foot in your mouth by defending her and by claiming that she wrote extensively about evidence in a post that you have yet to produce. If you don't produce it soon, you are going to suffer a massive blow to your credibility that I won't hesitate to spread far and wide across the Internet, so I suggest that you get cracking on that.

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  188. Cold, why don't you read the post immediately preceding your latest one. That's the result of the detailed factchecking of a list you posted here, and which you claim to have at least partially factchecked yourself. Then get back to me about the whole credibility thing.

    Given that you have yet to acknowledge what a thoroughly sloppy piece of work that list was, or to offer even a mild "my bad" for it, I'd say you have very little credibility left on this blog.

    I have no real stake in the Duke case debate. Based on what I know of the case, I disagree with Amanda Marcotte's take on it. Unfortunately, her blog archives got fucked up and many old posts were deleted, so I can't point to everything she wrote on the subject, and so I can't make any definitive statements about what all she said. Perhaps I should not have spoken so definitively about it earlier.

    But on the basis of what I've seen on Pandagon, and on my assessment of her seriousness as a writer (high) versus yours (low), I believe she knows a lot more about the case than you know about the Goodyear case. Given that you seem to know precisely nothing about the Goodyear case, I think that's a reasonable enough conclusion.

    You also seem to have missed at least one piece of specific evidence she mentions in what remains of her posts on Pandagon that says a good deal about the frame of mind of at least one of the players on the night in question.

    Given that I spent many hours checking a list you posted, I will leave it up to you to find that bit of evidence yourself.

    If you have any additional issues with her views on the subject, you can take it up with her or of any of the countless bloggers who piled on her about her airport post.

    I'm not having any more discussion of it here.

    I suggest you return to the actual topic of this post: that shitty, sloppy list you posted.

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  189. triplanetary, thanks for an excellent post! I will put a link to it in my piece.

    One minor correction: the Dworkin quotes from Letters From a War Zone that you couldn't find are indeed in in the edition of the book that I've got (paperback, 1993, from Lawrence Hill Books). I assume you have a different and shorter version of the book. (My edition includes the essay that you correctly cite as the source for one of the quotes, “Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality," for example.)

    Again, thanks for the post. Very very valuable.

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  190. Vagrant: “Again, I suppose my praise for the MRAs was distinctly premature, unless you're in their camp (I can't remember, forgive me...is it Kratch I'm thinking of?), lol.”

    I’m not sure why my name was brought up here. Care to elaborate?

    As for some characteristic differences in men vs women… I make use of a rather unexpected source for some of my belief’s… the story of the physical and mental changes experienced by a female to male transgender after completing hormone therapy. After the infusion and integration of testosterone to male levels, the following transgender experienced greater physical strength and toughness/durability/pain threshold, more assertive (but in control), a tendency to channel emotional pain into constructive pursuits, increased concentration, and an increase in risk taking. On the flipside, he has acknowledged an increased difficulty in verbalizing his thoughts (but not overall communication skills), and the typical male stereotype of not wanting to ask directions (I personally attribute this to a willingness and desire to explore, as I myself enjoy finding my own way, but will ask when I’m on a time constraint, but this is projecting myself into this comment). Lastly, he notes a change in his thought process. Not better or worse, just different.

    It is actually a fascinating insight into biological gender differences, as well as societal perceptions. I believe this because it is an example of the changes that occur to the very same person when male biology is injected into a female. I’d be curious to read the observations of a M>F TG.

    http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/sir-can-you-help-me-with-this/

    Vargrant: “I don't deny that male on female rape is a serious problem, I don't even deny that we live in a "male on female rape culture,”

    Yes, acknowledging any male victimization is seen as the same as denying female victims. At least, in this feminist world. It applies to domestic violence and family court too.

    As to F>M rape, I tend to point to 40 days and 40 nights as a perfect example. The man was tied to his bed for his own reason’s, His ex girlfriend whom he openly rejected, entered his home and had sex with him while he slept (this could then lead into the male parental rights issue, longer term). By any definition of the word, this is rape. How did the movie play out from that point? The rapist won … what, $10,000 for her criminal act, the male victim was deemed to have lost, inferring he was incapable of controlling his own male impulses, IE his need to have sex… And his new girlfriend deemed him a cheater, and he required her to forgive him. He was raped and he was made the villain, not just by his co-workers and society (deeming him sexed addict), but by his girlfriend, who never gave him the benefit of the doubt, and not once allowed him to explain himself (he simply had to plead for forgiveness.

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  191. Lady V: In college, I had a Christian friend whose particular brand of Christianity taught that premarital sex was not a sin (since it harmed no one), but abortion was (since it harmed a fetus). As a result, since he was a poor college student, he chose to not have sex with his girlfriend. For him, the risk of a pregnancy occurring, though miniscule, was still real enough for him. He didn't want to be party to an abortion, and he wanted to be able to support any children he had.”

    Have you considered the fact that not wanting to become a father may have had less to do with it then the fact that he would have had absolutely no say in the final decision to abort/not? If abortion is a sin, and one goes to hell for committing sin’s (but not for being a father), why would you put yourself into a position where you could go to hell for someone else’s choice? I suppose if he thought this way, he was a misogynist too?

    TriP: “But as there's no matriarchy that creates opportunities for systematic abuse of men, men being raped by women is pretty rare compared to its opposite.”

    Feminism has filled that role, with advocacy for things like battered wife syndrome justifying homicide, even in mutually abusive relationships, and relationships where the man is too dead to counter unfounded accusations of abuse that have no proof.

    Elizabeth: “It is also going to become illegal or already is Vagrant-secretly recording your sexual encounters with a woman, even in the interests of preventing a false rape accusation could lead to other charges.”

    I’m pretty sure it already is illegal if both parties do not consent, to record sexual acts. Combine that with Jessica Valenti’s attempts to have the presumption of innocence replaced with a presumption of guilt, in rape cases. If this was to happen, and simply the word of a woman, with no proof whatsoever, could put a man behind bars… how would a man prove his innocence? Especially if he actually had consensual sex with her (and thus, doesn’t have an alibi of being someplace else)? Honest question, as this is something a prominent feminist is actually trying to make happen, and the answer to this question may be required by men in the future.

    David: “Actually, I don’t spend a lot of time on any MRA sites other then two. A voice for men (which I see as full of anger, but not hatred), and http://news.mensactivism.org/ , which is simply a collection of news stories, to which I often reply to the comments section of the news stories themselves, and see many hateful misandric responses far more often then hateful misogynistic ones. Largely this is because I don’t find the anger helpful (AVFM has a lot of intelligent commentary worth reading, despite the anger, IMHO. As you don’t like MRA’s in general, and have personal vendetta against Paul specifically, I don’t expect you to agree.).

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  192. "I suggest you return to the actual topic of this post: that shitty, sloppy list you posted."

    I thought the topic was about ensuring any claims of what others say should include a source that can be followed. But when cold asked for that very thing from you, you deflected and turned back to the list. A list that is, by TriP's own assertion is 2/3rds correct, and 1/4 unverifiable by her (which is not the same as being wrong).

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  193. Funny, you normally have no problem with comments going off on long tangents. When you suddenly declare that you won't have any more of one, I think that's a pretty solid indication that you were just pwn3d. It's not the first time you've reacted this way to such pwnage either. Now back to that topic...

    28 out of 42 is two thirds of the list that is confirmed to be accurate, and of course I never claimed that it was 100% accurate. It's the most well-known publicly viewable complilation of such quotes at this time and was intended as a brief illustration of how feminists demonize men, in lieu of a massive link spam. My credibility is about as intimately tied to it as yours is to the sites you link in your "Good Stuff" section.

    My seriousness as a writer is determined by the writing situation and this blog doesn't even pretend to be high-brow.

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  194. @ Kratch: Yeah, the rape scene in 40 Days and 40 Nights was not treated as an actual rape. I was appalled when I saw that scene - I had been really liking the story up until that point. However, neither was the rape scene in Observe and Report treated as an actual rape.

    When it comes to Hollywood, mainstream movies (especially comedies) have a pretty bad track record when it comes to dealing with the topic of rape.

    So why don't you, your allies, me and my allies all join forces for this issue? Surely this is something we can agree on - rape is a serious topic, and deserves more than to be punchline, or, even worse, the setup to the punchline. Let's devise some way to let Hollywood know that we're sick of rape not being treated seriously, no matter who it happens to.

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  195. Observe and protect at least got some (a lot here in Toronto) press coverage objecting to that scene. I don't remember hearing a peep regarding 40/40. And by all means, champion male victims of rape, please (though i think that time would be better served on male DV victims), but you will see just how hostile feminists can get when you try to help and acknowledge men (such as the above comments that equate acknowledging male victims to denying female victims... as if acknowledgement of victimization is a binary equation)

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  196. You said: "Very few of the MRAs/MGTOWs I've run across have experienced anything as brutal as a rape at the hands of women and/or feminists. I confess I don't completely understand where all their rage comes from." Women are the MAJORITY of child abusers. Their targets are often their sons. Do you "understand" that, David? Only women have a need for "rage"? There are other things women do to oppress men, but I can address those, later.

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  197. "Women are the MAJORITY of child abusers." This is not true, if you define abuse in terms of rape, assault, or murder. If you define abuse in terms of neglect, where only the primary caretakers are liable (by defintion under most laws), then yes. However, this is not because male primary caretakers neglect at lower rates (they do not), it is because women are primary caretakers at vastly higher numbers. It is also worth noting that the US does not distinguish between poverty and neglect, and that neglect statistics do not often distinguish between 'chronic' and 'acute' neglect. By this standard, a child who has no coat for the winter because their parent does not give a crap and one that does not because the parent is homeless are treated as equivalent cases. A three year old who drowns when their parent leaves them alone in the bath for a few minutes to answer the phone is counted the same as a child who is starved to death. Also, leaving a young teen at home alone may or may not count. Allowing your eight and twelve year olds go to the store at the corner alone together can count. Trying to commit suicide while your child sleeps can and has been charged as neglect. A caretaker can even be charged with neglect due to "failure to protect" from the other parent or family member's abuse. This means the abuse victim is charged with neglect as the result of their abuser's assault of a child. Being beaten in front of your child can even count as neglect. Neglect is a pretty amorphous category. ("Their targets are often their sons"-there is no evidence that female neglect perps target males more, most of the discrepancy in death rates comes from intentional abuse and homicide which have males as the majority perps).

    @Kratch, I actually agree that rapes of males are not treated seriously. However, rapes of females are not treated seriously either. The differences in regard to rape culture, however, are not just numeric distinctions. They are narratives about the the notion of people deserving to be raped, policing of behavior on the notion that you deserve to be raped if you are in public (or in a bar, or are drunk), the level of control of these media formats (both films mentioned, Observe and Report and 40 days, have male writers and directors, news and film is a heavily male dominated industry, particularly at the top levels), and a number of other social factors.

    P.S. don't scapegoat trans people. The pop psychology of cis people about trans experience pisses me off.

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  198. @thevagrantsvoice

    Thanks for the link.

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  199. If you have any additional issues with her views on the subject, you can take it up with her or of any of the countless bloggers who piled on her about her airport post.

    I'm not having any more discussion of it here.


    I'm going to boldly interpret this to mean that I can still comment on that piece of "evidence" you mentioned since that's not an "additional issue" to what has already been discussed. So without further ado:

    You also seem to have missed at least one piece of specific evidence she mentions in what remains of her posts on Pandagon that says a good deal about the frame of mind of at least one of the players on the night in question.

    If you are referring to this post then no I did not miss it, but apparently you didn't read it carefully. See, the email in question is timestamped AFTER the party in question, and therefore reveals nothing about the frame of mind of that player DURING the party. More fail on your part, David.

    Furthermore, it was almost certainly a joke, and unlike you I can actually supply a compelling argument. See, if you're going to murder someone, it would be REALLY FUCKING STUPID to advertise that fact to a bunch of your teammates. So, this was nothing more than a very, very tasteless joke, much like Shaenon's "I'll punch you if I find you" comment at which you have expressed no objection. It is NOT evidence that he actually raped anyone, not by a long shot. So, you fail yet again.

    You claimed that Marcotte wrote about EVIDENCE and did so EXTENSIVELY but you can't supply one iota of proof, thus making a complete hypocrite of yourself. Of course you can delete this comment, but it won't help you much because I just downloaded this entire page and will be circulating it as I see fit for your embarrassment. If you're not accustomed to dealing with that kind of embarrassment, I'm sure Amanda can provide you with some moral support.

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  200. Cold, I un-spam blocked this comment, but like I said I'm not discussing this topic with you any more.

    You can "circulate" whatever you like. I'm really not sure why anyone else would be interested in our debate here. Just quote me accurately and don't misrepresent what I've said.

    At this point, however, you are deliberately being disruptive, and if you continue on this path I will ban you.

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