I’m really hesitant to post this, because it is so ugly and so disturbing. But… here’s a list of some of the worst quotes I’ve seen from (people I think are) MRAs and anti-feminists, commenting on George Sodini, the woman-hating racist who shot 12 women, 3 of whom died, in a health club earlier this week. There’s a bunch of quotes here, but I’m sure I could have found 2 or 3 times as many if I hadn’t gotten sick of reading.
By no means do I suggest that the quotes in this post represent the most common, centrist views in the MRA, anti-feminist and “pick up artist” communities. In most of the forums where I read these quotes, I did see occasional disagreements with the kind of thing I’m quoting — although all too often, not — and of course many condemned Sodini. And, obviously, I’ve cherry-picked the most offensive comments, not the most typical comments.
Nonetheless, most of these views are, in a way, accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted; no one is banned or modded for posting these views; and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all. In other words, the most vilely misogynistic garbage, even to the point of sympathizing with murder, is part of the spectrum of ordinary opinion, within these movements. And that’s both a cause for concern, and illustrates what’s so fucked about about the “men’s rights” movement and community.
MRAs aside, though, I think that George Sodini had a lot in common with attitudes in our society generally. As Amanda says, Sodini’s blog was full of absolutely typical “nice guy ™” bitterness and entitlement. Mass violence is what’s unusual about Sodini, not his sense of entitlement to sex with attractive women, nor his resentful misogyny. That sense of frustrated entitlement, I suspect, motivates most mass shooters like Sodini (which is probably why nearly all of them are white men — no one else in our society feels so entitled).
For more on anti-feminist reactions to Sodini, see Amanda, Elizabitchez, Lisa at PunkAssBlog, and Jezabel.
Quotes under the fold. Trigger warning.
George Sodini is an MRA hero as much a reason to learn game. Finally a mass murderer writes a relatively coherent manifesto. Could be better, but at least it is implied that feminism is to blame and he is taking a last stand. I had been waiting for this (almost thinking I had to do it myself) and I am impressed. Kudos.
Women are treated much better than men in America. This is merely the blowback from feminism.
Women have to accept this incident as a tax on their freeloading. Women get men to buy them drinks, dinners, and bridezilla weddings, all in return for virtually nothing. Once in a while, a few women get shot up. Given the $500 billion a year that women mooch off of men each year, that is a relatively small tax to pay.
Women, particularly the feminazis, have a good deal of introspection to do. Better they do it now before Islam forces them to do it on Islam’s terms.
…he had every reason to lash out at the society that screwed him over and make its denizens feel some of the pain that they had inflicted on him. There are millions, tens of millions of men in this country who have been deceived in a similar fashion, and there are numerous Sodinis amongst their ranks who will react violently and murderously once they uncover the truth.
What amuses me is how the women of this country and the West don’t realize the role they have in creating men like Sodini.
One thing that might help prevent future incidents of this sort is repealing IMBRA, the federal law that essentially put the mail order bride industry out of business.
His last girlfriend was around twenty years ago. After twenty years of rejection by women, he finally had the courage to take his revenge by shooting at members of the sex who rejected him and made him feel like a loser.
I am calling him a hero for being a symbol for the consequences of denying men sex, not for killing those women. Obviously they didn’t personally deserve it. But something like this has to happen, perhaps hundreds of times over again, before feminists get the message. […]
I know the feminist media will try to emphasize his other issues and downplay the sexual frustration. Even so, his other issues mostly seem to result from an absent father (who was just a “sperm donor” in his words), and that is not supposed to be a problem according to the feminists either. So either way this is good press for the MRA movement.
I think every man DOES deserve to get laid.
For every nerdy, smelly, fat, or otherwise socially undesirable man out there, there is an equally unattractive woman walking around. (more than one actually because there are more women than men on the planet)
The problem is, our feminized society has given every woman the power to hold out for higher quality men than they deserve.
This creates an imbalance that leads to tragedies like the one in PA.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton’s 3rd Law)
If empowered women keep applying pressure, they will create an explosion.
Import ten, twenty million nubile, lithe, young women to America and repeal the prohibition on prostitution and it would go a long way towards eliminating these sort of incidents and the anger brewing inside of millions of men like Sodini, not so much because they could get safe, affordable blow jobs, but it would result in the lowering of the bitch shields of millions of women by orders of magnitude if they had to compete with those millions of nubile, lithe, young women.
A decent looking man who earns a good living and does not abuse women DESERVES to get laid. Period.
The fact that so many do not, is a crime.
And in a just society, all crimes are eventually punished.
Because of feminism, sexual harassment, political correctness, and the MSM, men have become neutered and sterile. […]
As an aside:
Have you guys noticed a trend in fat women? Some of the ones I have spoken to actually believe they can get alpha cock. They don’t want to hook up with beta men either. This is a troubling development.
If 99% of women weren’t so damn shallow If 99% of women weren’t so damn shallow, shit like this wouldn’t occur.
[And then, in response to that comment:]
Not one single woman is capable of understanding this. This is why women should not vote.
my advice to men in this country after this incident
stock up on ammo, learn the art of being a reloader, and buy you a revolver, a shotgun, a high powered rifle that fires something equivilant to a .308, and an “assault weapon” that fires 7.62’s
the grabbers are gonna jump on this
you are right, the way this story is covered is proof of institutional misandry
A man deserves to get laid, just a a person who walks into Starbucks with $5 deserves a drink.
Men do everything women ask them to do, in pursuit of sex, and when it comes time for women to give it up, they don’t.
So just like that guy with $5, men have followed the rules to create the value that women have demanded in exchange for sex, and after they pay, many of them walk away empty handed.
In any other place in ‘the world’ a crime like this would not be tolerated. But is is perfectly OK in the sexual market to extract value from a man for years and never fuck him. (Hello, paging Lady Raine!)
Women (like LR and others) enjoy love, affection, and devotion of men and then reneg on the sex.
As long as they can afford it, women will go for the best men, and they won’t give up their equality, largely backed by affirmative action, without massive violence perpetrated by the minority of men who are left sexless under feminism.
Therefore I applaud rape and purposeful violence against women where it is made clear that embittered men are hurting and killing them for not putting out. Only then will women hopefully abandon their equality and be forced to settle monogamously by sheer economic necessity.
[Response to the “applaud rape” comment:]
Ok, that I don’t cosign with… but I do find it hilarious!
[The only other response to the “applaud rape” comment:]
While I don’t approve of this, I fully understand that when a person has been so heavily subjugated, abused, and dehumanized, they will root for something, anything, that strikes back.
Urban women today, are sowing the seeds of violence against themselves. From guys that seem harmless today (like Sodini was until last week).
Women simply have to accept this incident as a tax.
Women get men to buy them drinks, dinners, etc. their whole lives. Women have no moral restraints about being moochers while doing nothing for the man in return.
Every now and then, a few women will get shot up by a man. That is the tax on the freebies women gladly accept with no reciprocity.
It is a very minor tax if just 3 women die in return for the $100 billion or whatever than men pay to women each year (if you count divorce court theft, the number is much higher).
Murder is always wrong, but women are not willing to accept their own hand in creating this backlash.
I saw the news today, Jeb, and I knew that those stuck-up B’s at MSNBC would be going on and on about him hating women, when they don’t know the whole story. I first thought about those frigid harpies at the exercise studio who were too up-tight to give a guy a chance on a date. I bet when the lights went out and they felt those warm bullets entering their bodies they wished that they had been a little nicer to the guys out there who just needed a date.
WOMEN need to realize something, beauty is only skin deep and a very flimsy asset. Men are scared, scarred, angry and push agains the wall. A man can not complete in this media drive word of flash, glitz and the right thing to have to impress the right women. A woman in this culture has vary little sense of loyalty and no sense of reasoning towards what a decent man can be. Even the most timid of dogs, when pushed so far will bear thier teeth and strick back. I think that is what happened here. […]
Women need to wake up and stop being so vindictive, but it is hard to wrest power away from someone, especially when they are granted that power by ill-gotten means.
Again, I understand why this has happened completely.
He is 100% right about the cruelty of women. He should’ve written a book, i guess too many feminazis would’ve protested his book, so he had to use this final method.
A few months ago, a similarly deranged man opened fire – on *cops*. See the Wikipedia article here.
Substitute “cops” for any epithet for “women” in the comments.. I doubt the boys (not “men”) who wrote those comments would say the same about police, even though there is a very good argument for police having a privileged place in society.
(Personal note – I just was in Pittsburgh, and the murder scene was about 5 miles from my house. As far as I know, none of the victims were known to me, but it doesn’t make it any better.)
Sodini is just the violent extreme of a sentiment that is accepted in the mainstream even outside the MRA/PUA types: all women owe it to all men to accept any man’s advances.
Take the song “How Do You Like Me Now?!” which was a huge hit for Toby Keith a few years ago. It’s about a guy’s resentment toward the pretty, popular valedictorian of his high school for not going out with him (though there’s no indication that he even asked), and his feeling of vindication now that he’s a big music star and she’s been abused and abandoned by her husband whom he says she “married for money.”
I have expressed my puzzlement to a few guys, who do not identify with the MRA/PUA folks, about how that song can be seen as anything other than grossly misogynistic. (Which a song can be without destroying its appeal; one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs is “Under My Thumb.”) They’ve defended “How Do You Like Me Now?!” by saying that it’s really common for guys in high school to feel resentful about being stuck in the role of pursuing and being rejected by women, and that Keith’s music often expresses a sentiment that may not be noble but that resonates with many people (see also “The Angry American”).
ME: And when the resentment is directed at women instead of at whoever “forces” them to be in that role, that’s not misogynistic because… ?
Many women feel socially compelled to starve themselves, get painfully de-haired and devote hours a day to beautification that they’d rather spend on other activities, yet women’s resentment about this is rarely directed at men specifically. (Feminists are usually decrying the influence of advertising, women’s magazines and other media that quite often is put forward by women.) Women who don’t want to carry those burdens date guys who are cool with women who don’t conform to the social expectation for women’s appearances. Sodini, on the other hand, clearly had a concept of what was a “desirable single woman” worthy of his attention, and I doubt that a woman who didn’t conform to the Cosmo standard would have fit into that category.
So in worldview where he is owed access to a “desirable” single woman and yet such women keep saying no to him, his resentment toward women is deemed justified. Some people will say he took it too far by killing a bunch of people, but that’s like saying George Tiller went too far with the idea that abortionists are Hitler-esque murderers wreaking a holocaust. If you really believe it, then the actions are logically consistent with the belief. The widespread acceptance of the belief is the root of the killings.
Amp, as one of the denizens of those blogs, and based on various life experiences, I can tell you that sexual exclusion and ghettoization do exist in America, which any disabled-rights advocate can tell you. I don’t know what to do about the sense of entitlement, which stems from a few fixed ideas about WHAT KIND of partner one has or “deserves”, but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female. For whatever reason, these (possibly depressed?) able-bodied men lack the socialization to execute society’s courting rituals effectively, and they feel it is because they–as men–have been treated largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end. As male sexuality is performative, like masculinity itself, they are right. So much has to change in our society, starting with the fact that a man can quietly go mad in isolation, as long as he is economically productive.
Eurosabra, it’s not women that are making those demands, it’s the system of patriarchy that says a man is only a man if he looks, acts, and produces a certain way.
Blame the patriarchy that set up this killer’s expectations such that he rejected the women he did date (in his diary he mentions dating women repeatedly, but only for one date, because it “wouldn’t work out”), and demanded only a particular kind of woman as “good enough” for him.
There is no “unfuckable” caste of men or women – I’ve seen people whom the PUAs and the MRAs would mock for their supposed “unfuckability” get married and have long fulfilling relationships with partners that did not rate themselves or their significant other by patriarchal ideals. The one thing that makes women run a mile is the seething hatred for women that this kind of man shows in every word and action.
But demanding looks alone (perhaps the least important of any attribute in a long-term partner, since even the most beautiful members of society will change with age) instead of the host of other attributes that lead to meaningful and fulfilling relationships means that this killer and all the men who think like him have already dimissed 80% of the women they meet as not worthy of them. When a man regards a woman as a trophy, or a prize, or as anything other than a fully actualized human being, he forfeits the right to complain about how women treat him.
but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female
Again, if there are male and female “unf*ckables,” why aren’t they, well, f*cking each other? I don’t mean that someone who is not conventionally attractive, or who is disabled, or who otherwise doesn’t fit the magazine cover ideal, therefore should feel like s/he has no shot with those who more closely approximate it. But if you look down on the “unf*ckables” and consider them unworthy of your awesome self … well, no sympathy from me if you can’t find anyone. Anyone who wants to be evaluated for more than his appearance owes the same to others. (People who want to live on a mutually superficial plane are welcome to do so, far away from me.)
So much has to change in our society, starting with the fact that a man can quietly go mad in isolation, as long as he is economically productive.
The non-economically productive can “go mad” in isolation too. Ever met people who lost their jobs, became homeless and became isolated from society? Plenty of them suffer from mental illness, and unlike many of the “economically productive” they don’t have insurance that allows them to get treatment. Society doesn’t seem to be doing much about this — hey, if they’re broke, at least we don’t have to worry about their having access to firearms, right?
Sorry, but I call BS on the idea that men have fewer formal resources for their mental health needs than women do. We all get the same insurance, go to the same hospitals and physicians, and have the same job- and income-dependent access to therapy and medication. If certain men regard their problems as something that’s due entirely to external factors and thus nothing that would be helped by their seeking professional assistance, that’s kind of just a Blame Others First mindset that “society” can’t fix for them. If certain men lack informal resources (close family relationships, close friendships), that seems something particular to individuals, not something that can be fixed externally.
they feel it is because they–as men–have been treated largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end. As male sexuality is performative, like masculinity itself, they are right.
Lots of men without jobs or whose jobs pay poorly somehow manage to have girlfriends (or boyfriends, depending on preference). There are plenty of women who don’t regard men “largely as tools, as economic producers, as means to an end.” However, these tend to be women who (a) also don’t regard themselves largely as decorative objects (performative femininity, you might call it) and thus might not live up to some men’s standards of “desirability”; and (b) expect those men to value women as equals rather than as self-esteem boosters to make the men look and feel good.
It’s amazing how many of the comments can be summed up as “Women should be sex-dispensers and not people with thoughts and feelings and goals.” Objectification at it’s finest, and yet they wonder why they are rejected?
I couldn’t be more angry at the entitlement that this represents, and the acceptance it has in our society.
Eurosabra, no.
As a disabled woman who has/is partnered with both disabled and nondisabled men, I can agree that yes, there is a prejudice against and a stereotype that defines disabled people into a class of “unfuckable” or simply asexual. Although this is wrong, it is largely a subset of disablism or even the wider held myths of what constitutes beauty and sexual attractiveness. (i.e., the same thing that happens to fat women, elderly women, etc. Men, too, but arguably not to the same extent.)
Sodini and these MRA guys are a large part of the cause of this problem, not so-much the victims of it. They are looking at women as commodities with which to keep score of their masculinity with, rather than as human beings. The total disconnect between their hatred of women and yet they desire women, but only as sexual objects to inflate their egos, and then don’t understand why they can’t score with women who they claim to hate. They feel women owe them something, not that they are themselves unfuckable.
I am blind, so I do not know what Sodini looked like, but I have read that he was average looking, not ugly. I would guess a lot of these men so frustrated for not getting laid are not ugly. Many, like Sodini, also seem to have decent jobs. So they are not being sexually ghettoized for being ugly, poor and therefore unfuckable. They are likely not getting laid because they are misogynists that treat women like meatpuppets that they are entitled to “have” and not treating women like humans.
Click on my name and go to my website. On the first post is some pictures of me (the pregnant one with dog) and my ex (in wheelchair). We are not gorgeous but we’ll do. There is another family in the picture who are also not beautiful, the woman is “fat”. Somewhere else on the site is probably a picture of my current guy, not a Calvin Klein model either. I suppose by TV standards we are all unfuckable disabled and/or fat people who are “ghettoized.” Fine. But guess what? We are all in happy relationships, all getting our sex on to some extent (see: pregnancy and kids), and are doing fine. Why? Because we look past this patriarchal privilege shit and treat each other as human beings worthy of love, affection and sex. No one is treating anyone else like they are owed sex or are a ‘score.’
Is there an element out there who considers some classes of people “unfuckable?” Sure. Do you (or anyone) have to participate in that? No.
I think there’s definitely a connection between the “lack of socialization to execute society’s courting rituals effectively” and the understanding of sex as a bartering system. All of the above comments, especially the one about the cup of coffee and the shipping prostitutes over, portray a sentiment which, if asked about point blank, most of these men would probably deny, but which most pick up artists must, on some level, accept. And what it comes down to is, on some level, not considering women to be people.
I know, big surprise there. But it jives pretty well. In Sotini’s early blog posts, I really kind of identified with him, almost felt sorry for him, and wondered how such a person could justify killing three people. And it seems to me that one facet of his mental process in coming to this decision was that he had honestly convinced himself that they weren’t people.
Which is really pretty scary when I think about how many people I know with similar frustrations and similar views.
Edit: In the time it took me to write my comment, SimpleTruth summed up my thoughts much more succinctly.
I get the impression we agree on most major issues but are talking past each other on finer points. I am sorry about the broad-brush approach, but I am not doing nuance today. We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation. (He plotted mass murder on a publicly-accessible non-anonymous blog for months and no one ever knew. That means, among other things, that no one from one of the largest law firms in Pennsylvania ever Googled his name.) So much to unpack, beginning with PHMT, and the fact that so many people who are already “off the grid” don’t get housing, physical and mental health care, as has already been pointed out. (Which is a broader social issue.) So most of my answer is, “Yes, of course, of course.”
As for the specific issue of male entitlement, I plead guilty from my own corner of the world, as a chronically-ill man who can occasionally pass as non-disabled, having partnered with all sorts of women at various times. And the natural human desire to be with those who resemble ourselves will, naturally, often prevail. I do not think these men are wrong in their reading of their situation, and yet very few of them are (even potential) killers and rapists. I DO think that somehow I empathize and agree with them in a way others do not, especially here. Of course, that is because I flip-flop back and forth between entitlement and something approaching sanity. The Yes Means Yes blog has far greater resources on deconstructing sexuality-as-commodity anyway.
You really see the comments quoted by Amp as “merely criticizing feminists?” That’s something. Something horrible but, nevertheless, something.
Most of the commenters above have hit on the problem with MRAs & PUAs. To them women are not people. They’re things to acquire. And when women act like people and don’t want to interact with men who view them as things, well, that’s unspeakably horrible and simply cruelty and selfishness on the part of women.
The concept is simple. Women are people. You don’t like everybody who likes you, so why should women (who are people) be required to like you. Why should they be required to submit to your desires? Rejection may be painful but it isn’t cruelty. Just like you have no obligation to have sex with somebody you’re not interested in, nobody has an obligation to have sex with you.
I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.
This appalling tragedy should not be used as an excuse for male-bashing.
Male-bashing is bashing people simply for being male. That’s not the nature of the criticism here. Rather, people are criticizing the specific kind of men who regard Sodini as a “hero,” as a person of “courage,” as merely extracting a “tax” on women, etc., and their more polite brethren who accept the idea that men are entitled to sex with whatever “desirable single woman” they want. Ampersand is a man, as are Aaron, Nathan and Jake. They are calling out the bad behavior they’re seeing from some other men, not saying that all men think this way.
Uuuuuh, so this?
…is merely criticizing feminism?
Damned feminists! Thinking they should have a right to decide who is allowed to put his penis in their body and when.
Gah!
“but I can tell you A LOT about the experience of society’s “unf*ckables”, male and female”
I should be considered part of the undate-able, rather than the unf*ckables. I’m like a disabled person who can pass for able-bodied because it isn’t visible. When it’s known, 90% of people want nothing that approaches a long term relationship with me on the basis of being trans alone. Heck, over 50% fear a simple friendship.
I did find a boyfriend who likes me for who I am though, and who doesn’t care one bit about what people would say because he dates me, or heck, even talks to me (since at work, my trans status is known).
I perform feminity to a large extent, though I’m far from stereotypical. I’ll admit this was one of the things that attracted him.
Selecting your mate by how their personality suits yours makes a lot more sense in the long term. That’s what I always thought. Nothing against aesthetics. I love long hair, just looking at it. But I’m not going to marry hair, I’m going to possibly marry a person, who has a personality.
I can understand some of the frustration expressed, but not how it is expressed. Life is unfair, I should know. There are more constructive ways of dealing with it than blaming all women, feminism or what have you. I’ll keep blaming society overall for being stupid and celebrating stupidity though. We have a creationism museum on this planet (worth tens of millions), that speaks volumes to me.
The most striking thing to me, is that, like the Virginia tech shooter, is the guy’s complete lack of friends. The focus on his romantic woes, or even his terrifying mysogyny, is misguided. People might now view a life devoid of romantic or sexual satisfaction as highly depressing, and rightfully so. A like without friends though? No one lives like that for multiple years without one’s mental health severely deteriorating. That mras and their ilk latch onto his relationships with women and not his relationships with humanity at large speaks to something being awfully wrong.
Thanks for the linky love, but I think it brought me the kind of douchebag rape apologist commenter who once read a philosophy book and now thinks his brand of patriarchy is biologically sanctioned.
“Paolo” isn’t one of our resident right-wingers, as far as I know. But if he did find your blog through my post, then I apologize!
I agree with what Rootless said. The focus on the lack of sex completely misses out on what this man’s true problem was. I think it was “Handmaid’s Tale” that says “Nobody dies from a lack of sex,” but they can from a lack of love.
To be clear, it isn’t that Sordini’s misogyny or even the vile commenter’s you excerpted aren’t horrible. They clearly are. What is most distressing is that when faced with a person going through something that few people deal with very well (a complete lack of a social network), their response is to hand him a PUA book or mail-0rder-bride brochure. The guy needed a friend more than anything. He may not have been capable of having that, but it is what he needed.
It’s cool. But dear god rape apologists just make me mad and bored at the same time. It’s amazing that combination is even possible.
I know this will shock everyone, but Sordini was evidently active in the PUA community, and was jealous of his next-door neighbor because a hot girl kept coming out of his house.
The hot girl was the neighbor’s daughter.
I’m shocked! You mean that whole alpha/beta, trick hawt chicks into fucking you, dehumanizing women set was unable to help him? Say it ain’t so, Jeff.
This song also doesn’t really work on alot of levels, I feel. Like, how many people fiddled around with guitars in high school and said they were in a band and were going to make it big? How many of them were kind of not people you’d ever want to be around? What, exactly, about the fact that Toby Keith actually _did_ make it big makes him retroactively such a better catch back then? In fact, you could argue that he’s not particularly desirable to a large subset of people even now.
Setting aside everything that is seriously fucked up about you blowing a dude applauding rape and murder of women as “criticizing feminists”…
Why would someone criticize women who believe that their lives do not revolve around what men want them to do?
The only logical answer I can see is that that person thinks womens’ lives SHOULD revolve around what men want them to do.
And that person is often criticizing that woman for acting in a way that indicates that she does not believe her life revolves around what any given man might want her to do.
That’s misogyny. You’re welcome.
Ya know, the gap between the ostensible tenets of the MRA movement and the opinions expressed by members of that movement is really shocking. My only experience with the movement being a quick overview of its wikipedia page, it sounds like a lot of their points are perfectly in line with the feminist goal of eliminating benevolent sexism: Male-only military conscription, assumed guilt in domestic abuse, higher suicide rates… none of them ring particularly of demanding the right to have sex whenever they want. Even the assholes in that forum complain that men are expected to pay for all the dinners and financially support women, a belief that any feminist would be quick to dispell. And yet a huge portion of the proponents of such reasonable arguments seem to absolutely detest women. I feel like if they really understood what feminism was about, they wouldn’t be such dicks about it.
I feel like if they really understood what feminism was about, they wouldn’t be such dicks about it.
Except they do. And they hate it, because for the MRAs, feminism is a bad thing.
MRAs don’t want equality. They want inequality, in men’s favor. They want the world that existed in the 1890s, when women were handed from father to husband, never free to be themselves. They want a world where women are beholden to their spouses, where divorce is unthinkable because it means penury, where children are a man’s property and a woman’s responsibility. They want a world where marital rape is not a crime, and where acquiescing to sex any time her husband wants it is considered part of a wife’s duties. They want a world where they call the tune, and women dance.
What MRAs object to, in the end, is that women can leave them. That women can reject them. That women can live lives apart from them. It’s too bad, because there are parts of society that would be improved by a true men’s movement, one that focuses on the idea that masculinity is not a single thing, that men have emotions that aren’t rage or lust, that men are capable of changing a diaper, or mopping the floor, or cooking dinner. But that’s not what the MRAs are about — not at all.
I just don’t even have words for how awful this is.
Every time … every single time … I start to think that MRAs are just hurt and bitter, more to be pitied than censured, I’ll just go back and reread this post and thread.
“Merely criticizing feminists.”
Fuuuuck.
—Myca
Ampersand:
Thanks for acknowledging that these comments are not representative of the sentiment of anti-feminists in general. As an anti-feminist myself*, I find these comments contemptible, not only in degree, but also in quality. Women have the right to pursue their own desires. Full stop. If a man can’t find any woman to sleep with him for 20 years, that sucks in a way that few of us can even begin to imagine, but it’s not something that can be legitimately blamed on women. Not every sad story has a villain.
And, of course, there’s no excuse ever to haul off and start shooting innocent people. Except maybe in some highly contrived hypothetical cooked up by a professor of philosophy with too much time on his hands.
Robin:
Think of it this way: In this world, there are certain people of both sexes who are bitter and resentful of members of the oppposite sex for any of a number of reasons. Naturally, these people are going to be attracted to movements based on the tenet that their sex is oppressed by the other sex. Hence the presence of misogynists in the men’s rights movement and misandrists** in the feminist movement. And just as the presence of misandrists does not automatically invalidate feminism, neither does the presence of misogynists automatically invalidate the men’s rights movement.
*I don’t self-identify as an MRA, even though I agree with them on some issues, mostly because I find MRAs in general to be off-puttingly whiny and would prefer not to associate myself with them, but also because of philosophical differences. Also, I’m not much of an activist of any kind.
**Note that I said “presence” and not “dominance.” I’m not asserting, nor do I believe, that all or even most feminists are misandrists.
Robin, it always appeared to me that when MRAs talk about those issues you describe–men paying for dinner, males in combat, assumed guilt in abuse–it was used to prove incorrectly that feminists were hypocrites. For example, “They want equal pay, sure…but just wait till they find out that this will also mean they have to do combat duty in the military, or they won’t be saved (women and children first) from a sinking ship at the peril of men. Then we’ll see how much equal pay means to them.”
They seem to assume incorrectly, that feminist want both female equality when it is advantageous to us and benevolent sexism when it is advantageous to us and that this hypocrisy illigitimizes our cause.
What they don’t understand is that we are also opposed to benevolent sexism as well, and we understand the fact that the patriarchy harms men, too and in some instances men DO suffer injustices because of their gender, but not because of the ideals of feminism, but because of the patriarchy.
They use these issues as a tool to discredit feminists in inaccurate ways, they never seem to be truly advocating for equality for women. I think most of them would prefer if women stayed out of combat roles in the military, for example.
Pingback: My views are “ugly” and “disturbing” « In Mala Fide
I want to echo Brandon to an extent.
I think it’s important to separate the way an ideology (philosophy?) is executed from the it itself.
Feminism, according to general consensus, is a movement for gender equality; however, one does not need to look terribly far to find some generally misandrist sentiment on so called feminist blogs, or even literature. Take the S.C.U.M manifesto (or even the name itself). One can’t be for egalitarianism and gendercide at the same time. You can’t be respectful of all genders and still be cutting one of them up.
I think a small, vocal minority has earned the reputation for what we all like to call ‘MRA’s.
I see a gulf between the blatant misogyny here, and the not-entirely-absurd view that men get the short end of the gender stick.
These people soil the name of a gender-egalitarian movement in the same way that people like Andrea Dworkin and Valerie Solanas have given the radical feminist movement the popular image of being a bunch of hairy legged man haters.
I have this up at my own blog but decided to post it here also in response to all those teeth grinding comments Amp posted.
Dear Het Men,
You are not entitled to my body.
You do not deserve access into my pants.
I am not an object for you to receive or use as status.
If you find me attractive, I do not owe you a date.
If you find me unattractive, I do not owe you my invisibility.
I do not owe you anything, regardless of your feelings about me.
I am not a bitch for not being interested in you.
I am not a slut for dating someone other than you.
I am not your servant, trohpy, or mother if I do date you.
I am not to blame for your issues with women.
Women are not to blame for your issues with women.
We are not responsible for your inability to cope with rejection.
Stop blaming us.
It is not our fault.
We do not force you to do anything, just like you cannot force us.
Hopefully you’ve heard this all before.
But maybe no one’s ever told you. Or you just never listened.
Whichever, hear what I am saying now.
Listen to these words.
Remember them. Memorize them.
Tattoo them on your goddamn forehead.
YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO MY BODY.
Sincerly,
A person of the female variety
I think a small, vocal minority has earned the reputation for what we all like to call ‘MRA’s.
I see a gulf between the blatant misogyny here, and the not-entirely-absurd view that men get the short end of the gender stick.
I find feminist excesses more excusable than MRA ones because if you look at the world, there is a lot of oppression targeted at women by men. One thing that 9/11 seems to have made respectable is people suddenly discovering this — so long as it is in a Muslim/non-Western culture. There is just nothing comparable, in ANY culture of which I am aware, to what happens to millions of women: honor killings, legal marital rape, the deliberate mutilation of women to make sex uncomfortable for them, burning down women’s schools to prevent their education, prioritizing women’s “modesty” over their lives, trading women as sexual commodities to avenge feuds — sorry, where is it that any of this happens to men?
Of course, the immediate response is: but Andrea Dworkin didn’t have to fear an honor killing; Dworkin didn’t undergo FGM; so what’s SHE so mad about? And the answer, so far as I know, is that she saw the underlying connection among the various manifestations of sexism and oppression of women. Westerners pat themselves on the back for how much better they are than those unenlightened black and brown people, but how recent are these improvements? The Commonwealth of Virginia still had legal marital rape in 2000. A couple months ago, the Alaska Supreme Court held that whether a woman had had consensual sexual behavior in a prior workplace was relevant to the factual question of her having consented to sexual behavior by a supervisor in her current workplace.
In contrast, the written law isn’t set up against men. There may be individual family court judges who are biased against men with regard to divorce and custody proceedings, but the law is not written to say, “Let’s screw over men.”
And the things like gender inequality in the draft? Feminist organizations have tried to end that inequality. Look at the one case regarding the male-only draft that has gone to the Supreme Court, Rostker v. Goldberg. Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance [i.e. for upholding the lower court’s determination that the draft should include women] were filed by Daniel Marcus for Congressman Robert W. Kastenmeier et al.; by Paul Kenney for Men’s Rights, Inc.; by Barbara A. Brown, Thomas J. Hart, Phyllis N. Segal, and Judith I. Avner for the National Organization for Women; and by Judith L. Lichtman for the Women’s Equity Action League Educational and Legal Defense Fund et al.
Where a Men’s Rights group could point to an actual inequality in the written law, two feminist organizations said, “You’re right, we’re with you.”
Most of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s cases before the Supreme Court, when she was chief litigator of the ACLU’s women’s rights project, were actually about either granting more rights and benefits to men, or imposing more duties on women:
Duren v. Missouri (1979): making jury duty mandatory rather than voluntary for women, just as it is for men;
Califano v. Goldfarb (1977): giving widowers the same survivor’s benefit under Social Security that widows get;
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975): giving widowers the same child-in-care benefits under Social Security that widows gets;
Kahn v. Shevin (1974): trying to give widowers the same property tax exemptions that widows get (Ginsburg lost this case);
Frontiero v. Richardson (1973): giving husbands of military members the same dependent status that wives of military members automatically got.
Where do you see men’s rights groups working to ensure that women get more rights and benefits, and men more responsibilities?
The attempts to equate feminists and MRAs are hollow because the two groups are neither similarly situated, nor do they have a history of taking similar actions. Feminist organizations like NOW, the Women’s Equity Action League and the ACLU women’s rights project have recognized that so long as women are given preferences over men in some areas, there can be no true equality — and equality, not preference, is the goal. Where do you see MRA organizations recognizing the same for men?
So I guess the big idea here is that women should be treated as men’s equals…
except:
In time of conscription,
When applying for a small business loan,
When being considered for university or graduate school admissions,
When a ship’s going down,
When a door needs to be opened,
When a bill needs to be payed at a bar/restaurant,
When custody is being decided,
etc. etc.
I have no problem with women’s equality, just like I have no inherent problem with the idea that men and women are inherently different. But seriously, no one will take feminists seriously as long as women continue to get this “best of both worlds” treatment.
I think my view is perfectly valid, and if it isn’t, I encourage you to let me know where I’ve made an error. Please think about it first, though.
Wow, only an MRA would be such a self-involved whiner that, upon reading a thread talking about reactions to the mass shooting and murder of multiple people, he responds “but men have to open dooooooors!”
Well, gosh, Wine and Cakes, I agree, it is sexist and wrong that men are expected to open doors for women and not vice-versa. I think every feminist I’ve ever spoken to about the subject agrees with me on that. But it’s incredible that you think that’s a relevant issue to bring up here.
It speaks of a level of narcissism that borderlines on the ludicrous. (At best.)
Wine and Cakes, if you want to keep discussing anything other than George Sodini and the MRA reactions to Sodini, then take it to an open thread. Any further off-topic posts by you on this thread will lead to you being banned.
(That includes responding to this comment of mine. If you want to respond to me, do it on the open thread, not here.)
Pingback: The misogynist murders in Pennsylvania « Sylvia Has A Problem
PG,
I think you’re reading me wrong. I’m not going to play the “suffering Olympics”, and I’m certainly not about to defend the people making these comments in this post.
What I’m trying to say is that people voicing legitimate grievances are being drowned out by a very vocal minority, and labeled.
This is not to say that these people are members of such a group; in fact quite the opposite.
The (very small) men’s movement, in a lot of senses is feminism. It’s just not very popular in some circles not to be gynocetric.
I disagree; I’m not about to give a free pass to hate speech directed at an entire gender. Not only is it invalidating of legitimate grievances, but also directly contradicts the very idea set (feminism) that it’s supposedly coming from. I’m also not going to give a free pass to Solanas for attempted murder; either she was a human with agency, in which case prison was right, or she was schizophrenic, in which case she needed help.
Wine and Cake-
Is it possible that you missed the comment IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING yours that said that stuff wasn’t okay and that feminists don’t support it? I mean, you posted about 2 minutes apart, it is possible.
MER,
I’m not going to play the “suffering Olympics”, and I’m certainly not about to defend the people making these comments in this post.
It is not playing the “suffering Olympics” to point out that throughout history and throughout the world today, women qua women have less power than men qua men (that is, a particular woman like Sonia Gandhi might have more power than most of the men around her, but it’s because of her last name and in spite of her being a woman). Indeed, dismissing such things as “suffering Olympics” is a nice convenient way for you to dismiss the magnitude of the suffering so you can pretend that losing a custody battle is on par with, say, losing your life in an honor killing.
What I’m trying to say is that people voicing legitimate grievances are being drowned out by a very vocal minority, and labeled.
Which are the men’s rights organizations that you consider to be made up of a majority of people voicing legitimate grievances that are getting drowned out by a very vocal minority? In my comment @32, I was able to name names of feminist organizations and leaders who did positive work for gender equality by putting men and women on an equal legal footing. Can you do the same for MRA organizations and leaders?
The (very small) men’s movement, in a lot of senses is feminism. It’s just not very popular in some circles not to be gynocetric.
Again, specifics?
I’m not about to give a free pass to hate speech directed at an entire gender. Not only is it invalidating of legitimate grievances, but also directly contradicts the very idea set (feminism) that it’s supposedly coming from. I’m also not going to give a free pass to Solanas for attempted murder;
PG @ 32: “I find feminist excesses more excusable than MRA ones”
more excusable =/= free pass. If you understand the distinction, you’ll find what I’m saying much more reasonable than your current interpretation.
We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation.
Please do not throw out this kind of speculation. It is harmful to actual autistic people and their loved ones, 99+% of whom are not going into public places shooting people.
There’s something (well, okay, more than a few somethings) I don’t get about their logic. There are about the same number of men and women in the country, right? Slightly more women? Do women not suffer from loneliness like these guys do? Because they must be asserting that either A: there are many rich, handsome pushovers who are capable of satisfying multiple women at once, leaving none for these guys, or B: women are capable of going without affection for their entire lives to a degree that men are not. One of those has to be true to explain the huge excess number of miserable unmatched men. (I guess there’s also C: there is somewhere a huge city of lonely perfect women, being hidden from the unpartnered straight men of America by a vast government program.)
Of course the answer is some combination of their blindness to women as human beings who can suffer just like men, their hilarious standards of appearance and behavior in women, and a heaping helping of conspiracy theory.
This is what I wasn’t going to do. I’m not going to make an argument that women arn’t oppressed or anything like that. Don’t put me in that group.
Even the idea that society has historically been worse to men is far removed from the the Sodini comments.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I said nothing to that effect.
As for examples, you already did, see 32.
Thinking about it more, the anti-feminist backlash is much larger than the men’s movement. This is a failing.
I haven’t posted here very much, so I can understand your not getting where I stand, I should have been more clear. Still, I don’t understand your hostility; it’s not mutual. I don’t really think we’re disagreeing.
I do. Bad word choice is all.
In my comment @32, I gave examples of women and organizations who very clearly identify as feminists, and who have worked for the equality of men and women, in many cases by ensuring that women bear the same responsibilities as men and that men get the same benefits and privileges as women. I think if you ask Justice Ginsburg whether she is a feminist or a MRA, you’ll find she’s not a MRA. I’m not sure how you are managing to be confused on this point. Are you under the impression that groups labeled “National Organization for Women,” “Women’s Equity Action League Educational and Legal Defense Fund,” or “ACLU Women’s Rights Project” are MRA organizations?
You certainly haven’t offered an example of “men’s rights organizations that you consider to be made up of a majority of people voicing legitimate grievances that are getting drowned out by a very vocal minority.” And I haven’t offered such an example; I don’t know of any.
I feel no hostility toward you personally; I don’t know you and you may well be a totally fabulous person. I am hostile toward the argument you’re putting forward, which is that MRAs are just as much of a gender-egalitarian movement as feminism has been. You’ve provided absolutely no specifics to back that assertion, whereas I’ve provided multiple examples of how feminists have indeed worked for gender-egalitarianism even where that would increase women’s legal duties (so long as those duties will be the same as men’s) or increase men’s benefits (so long as those benefits will be the same as women’s).
ETA: As the folks who have commented here for a while can tell you, I don’t have a lot of patience for vague generalizations when someone is making an argument I find dubious, *especially* about the law. I cite statutes and case law, occasionally quoting directly, and expect others to do the same. If you’re basing your claims on a “general sense” of How The World Is, and can’t offer specific examples, feel free to say so and I won’t pursue the point further.
Pingback: Sexist Ideas hold strong in Publishing | Girlamatic
I’ve re-read my comments and I can see where they are unclear, and certainly not the magnum opus of my my portfolio.
This is not the argument I’m trying to make. I want to apologize for the misunderstanding.
Here’s (I think) what I’m trying to say, after this I’ll shut up, I promise.
No matter weather an approach towards egalitarianism proceeds from:
a: men are oppressed and it needs fixing.
or
b. women are oppressed and it needs fixing.
(both legitimate platforms, though not necessarily comparable as more or less oppressed)
There are violent and non violent radicals on both sides, who will spout misogyny and misandry. Solanas advocated gendercide. George Sodini murdered.
Radicals which will cling to words associated with the quest for egalitarianism, yet be anything but.
I was really just trying to add to 27.
Totally agree, and I don’t think anyone here has said anything to the contrary. The question is the extent to which the sentiments that motivated Sodini are widespread in the MRA movement, and the extent to which these MRAs and PUAs vindicated Sodini’s view of women and made him feel that it was not in fact so radical.
Solanas, incidentally, did not go around shooting random men; she shot Andy Warhol over a specific grudge against him. She did not seem to consider all men responsible for her particular gripe against Warhol. I am not sure why you are relating her attempted murder of Warhol to Sodini’s mass murder of women he’d never met. She was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and stalked Warhol. Insofar as actions and not just words are concerned, her animus was directed at Andy Warhol, not at Men As A Class. She was also very self-consciously and deliberately (one might say pretentiously) a radical.
I think that there are probably more outspoken misogynists than there are well meaning MRAs.
She shot Warhol because (her words) “he had too much control over her” relating to the specific grudge during her period of mental illness.
The SCUM manifesto however is directed at Men As A Class, and if it can be taken as any indication of how she really felt, then she was pretty damn hateful. (given her experiences, I’d probably be hateful too)
The only comparison is that they were both violent(for different reasons), and that they both have expressed hateful sentiments towards each gender, which is decidedly not egalitarian. I’m not trying to make some bizarre eye-for-an-eye justification or say that they’re mirrors of each other. It would just be inaccurate.
And of course there’s actually a recent study that strongly suggests feminists are less hostile to men than non-feminists.
I’m confused about the implication that the SCUM Manifesto and V. Solanas were ever considered part of any mainstream branch of feminism, past or present.
Neither my Secret Feminist World Domination Handbook nor my weekly update from Feminist World Headquarters mentioned this. I had no idea.
We have a case of an entitled, reasonably-economically-successful SWM who may have been a high-functioning autistic, with a history of emotional abuse by family members, in total social isolation.
AAAARRRRGH!!!! Could people please get off this? Being autistic does not make you violent. Being autistic does not make you violent. Being autistic does not make you violent. How many times does it have to be said? Being treated like shit all your life for being autistic can certainly make someone a bit stabby, of course, but to anyone’s knowledge he was never even diagnosed with anything, even by himself, so it’s just speculation anyway.
Sorry, but I’m just getting tired of this “he must have been mentally ill or autistic” thing. Charles Manson was/is perfectly neurotypical — he’s just a sick fuck who thinks the world owes him, that’s all, just like Sodini was. Mentally ill and autistic people are a lot more likely to have violence done TO them than actually commit it, and prejudices like this just make us all the more likely to be victimized.
Maybe this discussion should be taken to the open thread?
Yeah, I agree with that, Meowser. I don’t think there’s been a mod hand on this yet, so I guess I’ll go ahead and provide it — I’m not going to totally ban discussion of mental illness (because I think people have been working some things out in regard to their beliefs about the world and what causes mass-murder), but everyone making further comments about Sodini’s mental health should *really stop and think before posting* to consider whether their statements are really defensible.
Amp, did you want the MRA apologetics on an open thread? I seem to recall you suggesting it move away from derailing the topic about a hate-crime committed against women.
EVERYONE:
PLEASE TAKE ANY FURTHER OFF-TOPIC DISCUSSION TO THE DESIGNATED THREAD.
ANY MORE OFF-TOPIC POSTS ON THIS THREAD WILL BE DELETED.
UPDATE:
Okay, I’ve moved about 42 off-topic comments to this new thread. Further MRA vs feminist discussion, that’s not directly about the subject of the original post here, should be taken to that thread, please.
*sigh* Reading those horrible, horrible comments almost makes me frightened to own a vagina and boobs. So, I’m wronging someone and creating more anger and hatred every time I decline an invitation for dinner or coffee? I’ve given men more ammo to destroy me if I go on a date, but decide I don’t want a second? God, this is scary stuff…and there are people like that walking around!
Thank God I’ve found a good, good man, otherwise that list of ugliness might convince me that there aren’t any- or its too dangerous to keep looking for one.
I’m right there with you Mandamoo. It’s a good thing I’m fine with being single… although that might just give some men even more ammo since I’m not “owned” by another man and therefore should be open to any advances.
I went to that Roissy site where a lot of the comments originated…I wish I hadn’t. Its so depressing. It also reminded me of a recent experience.
Last summer I was totally victimized by a man who was into the “Mystery Method”- I had no idea what I was getting into. (I know it was the Mystery Method because the snide SOB sent me the book) I have never been so confused, so hurt…cried so much in my life. Why would anyone want to hurt someone like that? I believed the things he said to me and I only wanted to be happy with him- to make him happy.
Sadly, I guess that’s almost an endorsement- I gave him two months when he didn’t deserve five minutes. But what a waste! Since then I’ve met another, pretter even younger lady he manipulated too.
She’s a lovely, sweet girl- any man would be proud to have her on his arm- and what did he do but crush her feelings? Such an idiot!
What is wrong with these men? Is it only obvious to outsiders that they have no business dealing with women until they get over their anger issues? If they didn’t hate/fear women, they would never resort to these sorts of deceptions and cruelties.
As I’ve said before- I’ve since found a GOOD man, a real one (yes, they do exist) and we share politics and philosophy and have adventures together. Night and Day! Those men who resort to trickery and deception can never hope to have a genuine relationship, they’ll never enjoy the love of equals. I almost feel sorry for them, but I feel sorrier for the women they victimize. UGH.
…I wish I hadn’t gone to that blog. Its like when I was a kid, and you lift up a log- expecting to see beetles, spiders and all sorts of creepy crawlies, but then- even worse, you uncover some festering critter corpse. It was worse than I imagined, and even now I feel vaguely soiled.
What these people wrote horrifies and sickens me to the point of being physically ill. It’s a “tax”? A TAX?! Three women lost their lives! Daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, wives! They DIED! They’re not coming back!
I’m totally in shock. I’m terrified and sad that anyone could think this way!
And don’t think it’s just because I’m a woman… Because if a woman walked into a gym and killed 3 men and other women said “They deserved it. It’s tax for all the ____ we give them!” I’d be just as sickened. And I’m sure there are some sick, twisted women that would say something like that. But it’s wrong!
I need to get breathe and take a moment. I’m in shock.
I wish everyone all the love and kindness in the world. No one deserves to be treated like an object. We must learn to care for each other and not blame others for our troubles. Peace.
Big Smiles,
Lexie
Pingback: Connecting the misogynistic dots
I’d seen a lot of these comments before, having read the posts Ampersand linked to. But they’re no less sick the second time around.
Pingback: Misogyny Lives « Uprooting Sexism
Took me all this time to finally read this thread.
Not sure I shoulda, but I did.
:(
As a person of the MRA sector, I’d like to set the matter straight:
George Sodini does not particularly interest me, or sway my political passions one way or the other. As far as I am concerned, he was a just pathological personality who came unglued and committed mass murder. Full stop.
And you know the drill, folks: Shit happens.
Yes, the universe occasionally spawns such people and such occurrences.
‘Nuff said.
If Sodini were still among the living, I would hope to see him correctly processed by the criminal justice system, just like any other person charged with crime. And there I’d make an end of it, and wash my hands of the matter.
I would not waste any time “analyzing” the fault of society, or feminism specifically, in making people like Sodini happen. (i DO believe there is a connection of sorts, but I would not go public with speculations of that nature, since I feel there is politically nothing to be gained by so doing.)
As for the purported “MRAs” who said such wildly inappropriate, impolitic things: I’d really, really, really like to slap some sense into them!
So, to reiterate: it is part of my political stance to not assume any political stance regarding people like George Sodini (or Marc Lepine, or the guy in the Amish schoolhouse, etc, etc. . .). If they are charged with murder, put them on trial. And if they are found guilty, gavel down! Need I say more?
As an MRA, this is the very first public statement I’ve made about George Sodini. And since my particular voice carries considerable weight in MRA land, I reckon it’s time I got off my duff and BLOGGED about this. Which I plan to do in the near future, if for no other reason that to put a counter-spin upon the feminist spin.
Yup. I feel a post comin’ on!
Concerning the title of the present ‘Alas’ post:
“Men’s Rights Activists, Anti-Feminists, And Other Misogynists Comment On George Sodini”
Note the bold-faced emphasis, which is my own.
Amp, that was really sneaky dude! ;)
But at least you are licensing our side to use similar tactics, so it’s all good I reckon. :)
All’s fair, and all o’ that!
Fidelbogen: Your side has been using those tactics, and much worse, for as long as I can remember. While I suppose you expect women to feel grateful you don’t approve of guys like Sodini, the fact that the MRA circle attracts such an immense number of misogynists, as demonstrated by Amp’s post, suggests there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. And using the tactics to which you are referring certainly won’t help your cause being taken over by people who view it as a holy war against women as a gender.
Thanks for reviving (and thereby reminding me of) this thread, fidelbogen, because it just so happens that I was recently reading this one. Concerning the evidence he would consider sufficient to attribute man-hatred to contemporary feminism, Ampersand said:
Compare that with where he set the bar for attributing misogyny to MRAism. Looks to me like a double-standard.
From my post:
I’m sure that the typical MRA, when quoting something some alleged feminist said in a college paper somewhere, includes disclaimers exactly like that one. Right?
And I’m sure that Christina Hoff Sommers, the person I was criticizing in the passage of mine you quoted, said in the piece I was criticizing that she wasn’t talking about the most common, centrist views in feminism, and made sure that readers knew that she was cherry-picking quotes. Since otherwise the comparison you just made is point-scoring nonsense.
Do me a favor and quote where she said that in her piece, Daran?
No, he doesn’t. Neither does the typical blog feminist, when quoting something some alleged MRA said in a blog comment. You of course, are not typical.
Do you not think that I couldn’t “cherry-pick[] the most offensive comments” from feminist blogland, and show that they too are “accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted … and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all”?
And while I agree that feminist blogs are different from MRA ones in that latter do tend to not “mod and ban” as feminist blogs do, I would suggest that 90% of feminist modding and banning is directed at MRAs, not offensive feminists.
Edited to add: You edited your comment to ask additional questions concerning Hoff Sommers which I hadn’t seen when I posted the above. I don’t have time to respond as I’m going out just now, but I don’t want it to be assumed that I silently ignored them.
Daran, you didn’t just accuse “the typical feminist” of having a double-standard. You said I had displayed a double standard, and to do so, you quoted a passage in which I complained about Right-Wing feminists cherry-picking atypical quotes to falsely represent the entire feminist movement.
So the fact that in my post I bent over backwards to avoid doing that is extremely relevant, and shows how wrong your original argument was.
Of course, you now realize that your original argument was dead wrong, so you’re scrambling to move your goalposts.
Now, suddenly, the issue isn’t cherry-picking quotes and saying they represent an entire movement — even though that clearly was the issue you were getting at with the long quote from me in comment #66.
It’s about now something else entirely — is it fair of me to criticize MRA (et al) forums for failing to firmly reject those who seem to think that mass-murdering women is in some way justified?
I think it is fair.
And I assure you, if a feminist did what Sodini did — committed mass-murder against random men (or random women, for that matter) — I would not suggest that her (or his) act was in some way justifiable. Nor would I find it acceptable if justifying that sort of mass-murder were generally accepted as a part of ordinary feminist discourse, on “Alas” or on other significant feminist blogs.
It’s true that I think that mass-murder is more repulsive than other acts, and so hold it to as different — or “double” — standard. But I think that’s a defensible position.
[Edited to desnark.]
Redisca: If by “Denmark” you mean the entire social ecology in which we ALL embedded—feminist and non-feminist alike—then yes, I would agree that there is something rotten in “Denmark”. And naturally, feminism contributes to the “rot” as much as anything else. . .
I hope that clarifies. :)
Redisca: You suppose incorrectly.
Ampersand, could you please answer three questions:
1. Do you think that, applying the cherry-picking standard above, I could find multiple examples of comments from a limited selection of feminist blogs which are every bit as misandrist as those are misogynist, and which “are accepted within those communities. No one is shocked to see these views posted; no one is banned or modded for posting these views; and the disagreements are, in many cases, rare and mild, if they come at all”?
2. Assuming your answer to 1 is “yes”, do you agree with the following proposition: “the most vilely misandrist garbage, even to the point of sympathizing with attempted murder*, is part of the spectrum of ordinary opinion, within the movements. And that’s both a cause for concern, and illustrates what’s so fucked about about the feminist movement and community”.
*”Valerie, you will always be my personal hero” — Nancy Hulse. The quote is undated, so I don’t know if that was written this century, but Hulse herself has been active within the speaker/seminar/performer circuit within the past five years, which I thing gives her a little more status that random blog commenters. I can’t tell if she’s currently active, because I’m getting mySQL errors on the page that would tell me.
3. Assuming your answer to 2 is “yes”, have you ever expressed that view in a blog post?
If your answer to the third question, or even just the second, is “yes”, then I will happily withdraw the accusation of a double standard.
Here are a few more questions. Do you not think that “typical feminists” should adhere to the standard you set out in the other post, if they are to claim that MRAs are “women-haters” and “misogynists” without acknowledging that their examples are cherry picked and unrepresentative. Do you think that they actually do acknowledge this. Have you ever criticised a feminist for not so doing?
In other words, do you hold feminist generally to the same standard as you do CHS?
I didn’t realise that my argument was wrong at the time of my previous post. I was under the impression that the point of your CHS post was to defend feminism generally from charges of endemic misandry, of which CHS’s critique was but an example. I simply didn’t realise that your concern was about how CHS framed her claim. My bad.
Not at all. It is about double standards, as the questions set out above indicate.
By the way, I think you misrepresent the majority of even your cherry-picked quotes. Most were not saying that murder was justified, but that it was inevitable. “Told you so” rather than “Hell yeah!”
Feminism is a close, but not exact mirror image of MRAism. Feminists express their misandry in subtly different ways. It’s true that justifying a mass murder by a feminist isn’t generally accepted as a part of ordinary feminist discourse, perhaps because there’s never been one**. On the other hand, it is generally accepted as a legitimate feminist view that concern for the male victims of mass gendercidal murder is somehow invalid because you know, women are being victimised too, and some of those men are cads. (See, for example the first comment to this post.
*Let’s not forget that Solanas shot and wounded two men, and only failed to murder a third because her gun pointed at his head jammed.
The so-called MRA “movement” has been vulnerable to smear attacks in the past largely because it lacks a clearly understood, generally acknowledged manifesto or platform.
You know the drill: if you don’t define yourself, others will define you.
Well, all of this has changed. An MRA group in Italy has composed the needful instrument: it is called the U3000 Platform.
This Platform has now been “nailed to the mast”, so to speak, at Men’s News Daily, no less! So it is gonna become known to thousands and thousands of people very quickly – and far beyond its native land!
http://tinyurl.com/yag4zcj
Go, read, ponder and digest. I defy ANYBODY to find one single crumb of misogyny anywhere in U3000.
U3000 now represents the official editorial position of MND, as you will observe. Mike Lasalle and Paul Elam are both down with it!
I, myself, will personally cosign with U3000, and I know for a fact that a huge number of other MRAs will do likewise.
So, in the future, if anybody wants to know what MRAs are all about, all you must do is shove a copy of U3000 in their face. ;)
Makes life simple, really. . .
Personally, I think the U3000 Platform is a stroke of genius!
Ampersand:
It’s not fair, in the sense that its not fair for pots in glass houses to throw stones at black kettles, even when the particular pot happens to be one of the shinier ones in the house.
It is fair, in that I agree with your description of MRAim – that there is a spectrum of misogyny, that the most horrendous expressions of woman-hatred are accepted as normal, and that this is “fucked up”. It’s precisely the fucked-upness of it that leads to me eschew the label. I do not accept these things, I publicly disavow these things.
fidelbogen:
See above. You are not going to solve the movement’s problems with a mission statement.
I defy anybody to find one single crumb of substance within the bromide.
Put very simply, just because you say you reject the denigration of women, doesn’t mean that you* actually do reject it. The same criticism applies to the various purported statements of what feminism is, propounded by feminists.
Feminism is what feminists say and do, not what they say they say and do. Exactly the same applies to MRAism.
*I’m not suggesting that you as an individual don’t reject it. I don’t know you well enough to judge.
True, but that is not the point here. The point here is politics, and politics is played in a certain way.
And publishing a clearly stated manifesto is part of that game.
A move in that game.
It’s a gesture, and gestures ARE important. . . .
And so, my original “challenge”, once again, was for anybody to find a crumb of misogyny in it. Or maybe I should say, in the meaning which it purports.
“Substance” can come later.
fidelbogen:
I read the manifesto. It is rooted in an essentialist notion of gender–points 1-3–that, at least in the west, though in other cultures as well, has been deployed to justify and to render misogyny as the natural order of things.
@RJN: Then, it would appear that the nub of contention, if there is any, is rooted in points 1-3. The question then arises, whether essentialism is “true” in some sense—the old ‘nature v. nurture’ quandary. I realize, of course, that anti-essentialism is virtually dogma in certain quarters, the linchpin of a system without which the system would fail. And yet, the question is very much disputed at present, often to the chagrin of the dogmatists.
That said, the more ‘essential’ question remains, whether U3000 is, in any part, misogynistic palpably and on its face.
That an notion has been deployed to justify and render both misogynist and misandist ideas as “natural”, by different and in some cases the same people respectively, does not mean that the idea itself is either 1. necessarily misogynistic and/or misandrist, or 2. false.
I also note that many feminist antiessentialists posit that men are inescapably different from women, (empowered, privileged, etc.), because no man can have had a woman’s experiences in life. The distinction between an inherent difference and an inescapable one doesn’t amount to a great deal of difference.
Having said that, the affirmation at the level of principle of gender-essentialism is one of the rather odd things about this manifesto. I happen to believe that there are essential differences between the sexes which operate as trends or tendencies, which are not inescapable at the individual level, and whose expression at the group level are strongly influenced by cultural forces. I believe this because it is the most parsimonious explanation for the observed data, and I’m willing to revise it in the light of new data. It’s a theory, not a principle.
I also believe that many of the assumed differences between men and women are pure social norms reflecting no biological reality whatsoever.
I am, therefore, an anti-antiessentialist more than I am an essentialist. I reject the dogma of antiessentialism. I certainly wouldn’t want to sign up to a positively essentialist manifesto as this one appears to be. I say appears, because its so badly written, its difficult to be sure exactly what it is intended to mean.
No it isn’t. Neither is the dictionary definition of “feminism”, or any of dozens of definitions posited by feminist.
These facts do not amount to so much as a hill of beans.
It’s a huge difference.
I think that men and women raised in the 1500s were pretty much inescapably different from each other, in that they were raised to reproduce the gender norms of the time. However, those gender norms were not inherent, which is why we don’t still live under 1500s gender norms today.
Also, I would say that sexism is “inescapable” in that it is culture-wide; people can change as individuals, but what no person can individually change[*] is that they live as part of a larger culture. In contrast, a strong claim that gender norms are inherent would say that no one can change as an individual.
[*] Putting aside extreme scenarios, like living as a survivalist hundreds of miles from any other human being.
They are inescapable in the short and medium term. I certainly hope that one day that misogyny and misandry – and the acceptence of these things – currently endemic within the feminist and MRA movements will be reversed. Indeed the whole point of criticism is to work to that end.
But this isn’t going to happen over night. I’m not holding my breath.
Individuals are not inescapably sexist. It is impossible (ultrasurvivalism excepted) for individuals o escape from sexism expressed by others.
fidelbogen, you’re right, it would be difficult to find even a crumb of overt misogyny in your MRA principles. That’s because much of your manifesto seems to be rather dog whistle-y. The fact that you appear to view your manifesto as a ‘move in a game’ instead of an attempt to clarify and persuade casts a rather unflattering light on your project.
FTR, while I think there’s a lot of validity to some MRA critiques of gynocentric feminism, I personally eschew the label because — in addition to the reasons Daran listed — the overt leadership of the MRA movement appears to have been hijacked by right wingers whose policies are often far more detrimental to the average man than your typical feminist’s.
I also couldn’t help but notice the irony of this clause in your list of things you struggle against, fidelbogen:
… being immediately followed by this other clause of things you struggle against:
Are there no libertarians in the MRA movement, fidelbogen? Is it not a tad autocratic to dictate to others (including men) what is and is not an appropriate motivation for having sex?
Don’t expect me to post on this thread again today — I’ve got to draw.
It’s telling that you had to go back to a crime that occurred before many of the people on this forum had even been born, to find a feminist doing something even remotely similar to what Sodini did. (And what other women-hating men have done over the years.)
This is an obviously ridiculous standard. That there was one attempted multiple murder by a mentally disturbed feminist decades ago doesn’t mean there’s no difference between feminism and MRA/antifeminism.
So I utterly reject your false equivalence between feminism and MRA/anti-feminism. Yes, both movements have flaws. No, they are not mirror images of each other.
90% of the MRA movement is about bitter resentment and hatred of women/feminists/ex-wives. It is the main thing that drives them, which is why it’s almost impossible to find an MRA who doesn’t read, comment on, and/or troll feminists, or who isn’t misogynistic. The reverse is not at all true.
The movements are also different because feminism has actually done a hell of a lot of good in the world; not just for women, but for men like me. Tell me, Daran, where the hell was your “feminist critics” movement when I was having the crap beaten out of me by people wanting to enforce sexist ideas of masculinity on me? Where was your feminist critics movement when I needed to be told that my way of being was legitimate, and that it was the people who told me otherwise who were screwed up?
And of course, that’s nothing compared to how much help feminism has done for women.
I think having done a huge amount of real good in the world counts for a lot, and merits feminism being judged more kindly than genuinely worthless or even actively harmful movements, such as “feminist critics,” anti-feminism, and MRA.
Do I think you can find the equivalent of the original post on this thread, in recent comments sympathizing with Valerie Solonas? No, I don’t. I think you’d have to travel a lot further, search a lot harder, and use much less recent comments to come up with even a close equivalent in terms of viciousness and numbers. And I think you’d get almost all comments from blogs that aren’t representative of mainstream feminism. That difference reflects real differences in the tone and focus of the two movements.
Do I think that misandry is all-too-commonplace within feminism, and is too commonly accepted? Yes, I do. This tendency is, in my observation, more common and more extreme in radical feminist spaces, but it exists in mainstream feminist spaces too. That sucks, although in some ways it’s also necessary and desirable. (In a better world, it would just suck.)
Do I think that this is equivalent to the all-too-common acceptance of misogyny in the MRA movement? Only if a slap is the same thing as a murder. They’re both wrong and regrettable, and they belong to a similar genre (violent attacks), but the extremity is entirely different. To claim they’re the same is to exhibit moral blindness.
This response strikes me as rather disingenuous, Amp. The exact date of the occurrence of the crime isn’t relevant, the existence of sympathy for the criminal in current discourse is the key point Daran was making very clearly. Or, to put it another way, if there were some MRA thread on the interwebs where a few commenters were appearing to express sympathy for the Boston Strangler, would you give them a pass? I suspect not. This completely knocks the legs out from under your assertion that Daran is somehow embracing an “obviously ridiculous double standard.”
In addition to what ballgame just pointed out, I would add that Hulse is no mere random blog commenter, but someone with a lengthy record of real-world activism. Although my claim is analogous to that set out by Ampersand in this post – that extreme feminist views are on a spectrum – the level of proof I’m aiming at is the one he set out in the response to Cathy Young. He asked for multiple twenty-first century citations from a “representative variety” of feminists. Hulse is one. Another would be Amanda Marcotte’s libelous remarks about a group of men at a time when anyone but a bigot could have seen that they were most likely actually innocent. She’ll do as a “politically connected” feminist; she was a spokesperson for a Presidential Candidate, A third would be the comment by Rene to my blog I already cited. She’s a blogger, yes, but not just a blogger. She’s a blogger Ampersand has heard of. And she’s not a white feminist.
And how about this view, attributed here to Carolyn McAskie:
This is a libel. The truth is, that on the whole men do not make war. Most men want nothing to do with war. Only a handful of men play any part in the decision to wage war.
We’ll file that one under “award-winning feminists who have been UN special Raporteurs to warzones”.
There you have it: Multiple 21st century citations to very differently situated feminists, not all of them bloggers, none of them mere blog commenters, all expressing extremely bigoted views in respect of men which do amount to the view that men are brutes. And I haven’t even mentioned Mary Daly (still active in 2006) or Julie Bindel.
@ballgame: There was too much in the comment to cut-n-paste as much as I’d like, but anyhow. . .Short version: I am not seeing the ‘irony’ in question. . . but maybe I’m based on a different understanding.
About the ‘overt leadership’ of the ‘MRA movement’: I find that statement curious given that the so-called “movement” really isn’t .
“Movement” here is alas only a term of convenience, as is, come to think of it. . . MRA.
I know of several distinct “cells” or cliques which move independently of each other (though loosely networked). Also, plenty of “loose sand”. But the idea that there is any ‘leadership’ to the whole shebang, is hard to fathom. . .
I am agnostic per the “2 essentialisms”. I “have no dog in that fight”- meaning, no emotional baggage riding on ANY eventual outcome to the controversy. Whatever the truth turns out to be, I’ll roll with it. Science rocks! But in either case, the scenario will have both upsides and downsides, and I would of course expect my fellow humanoids to take the bitter with the sweet, and live consistently within the strictures. (And not to ‘vacillate’ at my expense, naturally!)
Since I mentioned dogs, I’ll continue in a zoological vein: The choice here is like putting your money on the horses. I’ll back the horse called Essentialism—which to me seems a more likely “winner”.
here’s another one, advocating a systematic program of lynching men:
We’ll file this one under the “pro-feminist” category.
Then there are the comments to this story, which applaud a purported act of mass male infanticide. I say “purported” because I don’t believe the news item. But none of the commenters question its authenticity. What we see are people excusing, justifying, and applauding it. Are they feminists? They’re certainly invoking feminist tropes.
The category for this one is “bottom of the blog-comment barrel”.
If you mean that you back the horse which says “gendered behaviour is a result of the complex interaction between essential differences and cultural forces” over the one that says “gendered behaviour is a result of cultural forces. There are no essential differences”, then I agree with you.
If you mean that you back the horse which says “gendered behaviour is a result of essential differences only” then I strongly disagree.
Probably the same place you were at the time: getting beaten up by schoolyard bullies. Daran has written extensively on his site about his own childhood victimization.
Ampersand:
I don’t have a movement. I wish I did. All I have is a blog.
But where was your feminist movement in the immediate aftermath…
I’ve just spent ten minutes staring at the screen unable to finish the sentence. I can still barely talk about that time nearly twenty years ago. I was twenty-eight years old. I had been committed to a mental institution (where I was horribly, horribly treated). I lost my job, my home, and my girlfriend, and had been forced by my parents to move from the South of England to the North East of Scotland, in order to be near them, all in the space of three months. It was nothing less than the complete uprooting of what till then had passed as my life.
Where was your movement? It was plastering posters all over town demanding “Zero Tolerence of male violence against women and children”. So according to your movement, when she was punching me as hard as she could, I was not the victim of intolerable violence, rather I was to blame for it.
This poster campaign damaged my mental health. It pushed me toward suicide.
The implication of which statement is that feminism is not actively harmful. Thank you for so authoritatively denying my experience of my own life.
No, Feminist Critics is not worthless. Feminist Critics is powerless and almost voiceless. Big difference. It is feminism which shouts “WE ARE POWERLESS AND SILENCED” so loudly that it echoes around the world. It is feminism which has governments and international organisations dancing to its tune.
I have no power. All I can do is try to speak truth to it.
As for feminism having “done a huge amount of real good in the world”, I don’t deny that. What I don’t agree with, is that the harm it does is in any way necessary for it to do good. To the contrary, it would be even more effective at doing the good it does if it wasn’t so unremittingly hostile to natural allies like me.
I already refuted that, I think, with the comments to the Daily Mail story.
Who appointed you arbiter of what is mainstream in the MRA movement, or for that matter, in the feminist movement? Why isn’t Sacks an example of the mainstream? He won’t have any truck with this kind of women-hating nonsense.
But even if you’re right, “We’re not as bad as the MRA’s” is a really weak defence.
I agree, and thank you for acknowledging it.
I think it just sucks in this world. Why do you think it necessary and desirable in some ways? I understand that you’ve defended the space for it, which is defensible on free-speech grounds – the world is better with speech permitted than with speech suppressed. But here you seem to be seeing value in the speech itself.
I’m not claiming that any act since Solanas’ is comparable to Sodini’s. I’m saying that the two movements are broadly similar in that they both exhibit similar spectra of prejudice toward the other sex. You say that the extremes are more prevalent and more mainstream in MRAism. I’m not convinced. In particular, I think there are “schools” within MRAism similar to those in feminism, including a “radical” form, analogous to radical feminism, where most of the extreme misogyny is concentrated. That you can’t see this is a product of out-group homogeneity bias exacerbated by the lack of generally accepted labels for the various subgroups.
Oh and another thing:
Ampersand:
According to feminists, the word for the experience you have just described is “privilege”. This is a view ubiquitous in feminism, i.e., not limited to just those evil radfems.
Doug S:
Beaten up, yes but that was by no means the worst of it. Worse was the unrelenting taunting and social ostracisation from both girls and boys.
Supporting quotes and links, please, for your claim that feminists ubiquitously claim that being beaten up for being not masculine enough is a privilege?
Fidelbogen: But you yourself don’t abide by all the principles set forth in U3000, right? Specifically no. 4?
Also, the complaint against “an autocratic imposition of behavioral rules upon the male gender” contradicts virtually everything else in that document.
Is U3000 mysoginistic “palpably and on its face”? On its face, no. But then, the Nuremberg Laws aren’t anti-semitic “palpably and on their face”, either. Nowhere do those laws disparage Jews and Section 4 actually specifically provides that the Nazi state will protect Jews’ right to display their religious symbols. I’m certainly not trying to make an argument “ad nazium” here, only to show that where a set of “principles” is designed to reinforce “essential categories” which have traditionally served as a justification for bigotry and discrimination, it does not matter whether the document embraces that bigotry “on its face”. The statement alone that there are “essential differences” is a traditional justification for denying women the right to vote, access to courts, education and economic opportunity. U3000 is sufficiently vague that one can claim to respect “the value of femininity” within its meaning yet still demand that women stay in the home, take no part in public life, and remain economically and legally dependent on their menfolk.
And vagueness, of course, is yet another problem. I mean, any of those provisions can be fairly interpreted every which way. For instance, what exactly is “legal commercialization of sexual relations and relations based upon affection”? Does that only target prostitution, or are you going against lingerie catalogs too? Chocolate-covered strawberries?
The truth is, that on the whole men do not make war. Most men want nothing to do with war. Only a handful of men play any part in the decision to wage war.
Possibly moving off topic, but do you have any evidence to support the statement that most men want nothing to do with war? It’s my impression that most men AND women rather like the excitement of a war as long as the actual fighting is somewhere else and it’s going well for their side (or at least a loss by their side won’t materially effect their lives.) Why else did people watch the Gulf War on CNN? Or watch war movies? People are excitement loving primates, they get off on the concept. As long as it’s not too real. True, only a few people make the decision to go to war, but in a democracy if the population didn’t want it…I mean REALLY didn’t want it, in the way that they don’t want to run out of food, for example, would it continue? I doubt it.
I’m not going to make any claims about women being more peaceful at this time. Not with Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin presenting obvious counterexamples. Though I do wonder if the average woman in power (whoever she is) is less likely to start a war than the average man in power (whoever he is)? Not sure how you’d even determine it given the number of confounders…
And then, the talk about schoolyard bullies. MALE bullies, right?
There is the contradiction, Daran. Men don’t make war?
Who made war on you?
There is no contradiction, DaisyDeadhead. The majority of males are not bullies; only a small minority are.
And Amp @ 94, Daran is not suggesting that feminists claim the act of being beaten up by bullies is a male privilege. He is, I believe, saying that feminists will claim that the male victim of bullying is still “privileged,” even though he is getting hammered with no effective intervention from adult authorities, who would (generally) act to protect girls who might be similarly victimized.
I am unaware of any data supporting your assertion about adult authorities protecting bullied girls. Do you have any?
I thought I’d pointed out @ 45 that Valerie Solanas did not go around murdering random men; she targeted Andy Warhol because of a specific grudge against him. This was of course morally wrong and a crime, but if Warhol hadn’t been famous, the incident wouldn’t have gone down in history.
If Sodini had shot an ex-girlfriend, or some other particular woman of his acquaintance, he would not have made the news because people who know each other kill each other quite often. His crime is characterized as a hate crime or a kind of domestic terrorism because it was committed against strangers for ideological reasons based on their (perceived) membership in a particular despised group.
18 U.S.C. 2331: