What if I called myself a conservative – but virtually all of my writings on the subject were devoted to passionately denouncing conservatives, and I didn’t actually favor any conservative policies to address any of today’s problems? What if I had virtually never published a positive word about conservatism (apart from “however…” type passages in essays denouncing conservatism?) What if my self-styled conservatism had the practical effect of giving myself a better platform from which to denounce conservatism?
My guess is that, if all that were the case, most conservatives would find my claim to conservatism suspect. Modern conservatism encompasses many different views, but it doesn’t encompass the view that modern conservatism is a terrible idea that ought be done away with.
On a feminist mailing list, I recently called Cathy Young an “anti-feminist journalist.” Cathy has taken issue with this:
I think that labeling me (or, say, Wendy McElroy) “anti-feminist” (1) is inaccurate and (2) establishes a rigid ideological definition of what “feminism” is. I also think that, whether or not Barry intends it that way, “anti-feminist” is a pejorative. Indeed, I would say that Barry himself uses it as a pejorative: the section on his blog dedicated to critics of feminism is called “Anti-Feminist Zaniness,” and in this 2004 thread, he says, in a partial defense of yours truly, “I’m not saying that … she doesn’t say stupid, anti-feminist things…”
Okay, let’s take this a bit at a time.
Is “Anti-Feminist” Always A Pejorative?
Do I use “anti-feminist” as a pejorative – that is, as the OED puts it, as “a word or expression which by its form or context expresses or implies contempt for the thing named”? I don’t think I do. I use it just as I use words like “libertarian” “republican” and “conservative” – terms which describe political philosophies.
It’s true that in the loose talk of a comments section that was (at that moment) pretty much all-feminist, I wrote that Cathy said “stupid anti-feminist things.” In hindsight, I should’ve put that more diplomatically (i.e, “endorses terrible anti-feminist ideas”), but I’m sure I’ve also referred casually to “stupid republican things” at some point in my life – and I bet many conservatives have done the same with words like “feminist” and “liberal,” when they’ve been talking casually among the like-minded. That doesn’t make any of these words pejoratives which can’t be used in a good-faith debate.
What Does “Feminist” Mean?
Before we can define “anti-feminist,” we have to discuss what “feminist” means. And here, we immediately run into trouble: feminism has dozens of meanings, depending on who you speak to. And, clearly, I have no authority (or desire) to define feminism for anyone apart from myself; people who want to think of themselves as “feminists” are free to do so regardless of if I agree.
So I’ll just talk about what “feminist” means to me. Here’s how I’ve put it in the past:
1) Believes that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.
2) Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Cathy would presumably find that a “rigid ideological definition of what ‘feminism’ is.” One of Cathy’s anonymous readers is harsher, writing that “Anyone with whom [Ampersand] disagrees on gender issues is ‘anti-feminist’ and is therefore a complete reactionary bigot.”
I don’t think either of these claims hold up to scrutiny. Far from being “rigid,” my definition of “feminist” is a vast sprawling tent, easily encompassing countless contrary feminist opinions (radical feminist, eco-feminist, liberal feminist, socialist feminist, womanist, cultural feminist, trans feminist, third wave feminist, etc etc). And although I disagree with aspects of most of those views, I’ve never called them “anti-feminist” views – because they’re not.
What is Anti-Feminism?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines an anti-feminist as “One opposed to women or to feminism.” Cathy doesn’t oppose women, but you’d have to impossibly distort her work to argue that she doesn’t oppose feminism; virtually all her writings on feminism are attacks on feminists and feminism. The OED offers a second definition: “a person (usu. a man) who is hostile to sexual equality or to the advocacy of women’s rights.” Cathy isn’t hostile to equality (and she’s not a man!), but her writing clearly is “hostile to… the advocacy of women’s rights.” She thinks women already have virtually all the rights they need, and therefore further advocacy is unnecessary.
In the introduction to her book Ceasefire!, Cathy concedes that in one area – the family/work balance – women might still have a legitimate complaint. But virtually all other concerns that justify a “case for continued feminist activism,” she dismisses as illegitimate. There’s a big difference between criticizing some feminist views, and denying that there’s a legitimate need for a women’s movement at all. How can anyone who doesn’t see a need for a movement for women’s equality, be a feminist?
As I wrote two years ago:
My main problem with “ifeminism” and other conservative brands of feminism is that they seem to be premised on the idea that (at least in this country) feminism has already won. The essential message I see in McElroy’s iFeminist columns and books like Who Stole Feminism? is that women are already equal; there is no need to agitate for change in order to bring women’s equality about.
So, for example, conservative “feminists” argue that we shouldn’t worry about the wage gap, because it’s merely a matter of worker’s individual choices, and has nothing to do with discrimination. They argue that the rape crisis is fiction, a result of feminist exaggerations and morning-after regrets. They argue that domestic violence has nothing to do with sexism because (as Christina Hoff Sommers argued) men are equal victims of spouse abuse.
Note the common theme – in each case, the conclusion of the argument is that sexism against women is no longer a problem, and political, activist solutions – that is, feminism – is no longer necessary.
Well, that’s nice – but it’s not feminism. Feminism is and has always been about activism; feminists are trying to change society. In particular, feminism is about changing society so that women, who are unfairly kept down in our society, can at last experience full equality.
If you don’t believe that sexism is an important problem keeping women down today, then you may be a nice person, and you may believe in equality – but you’re just not a feminist.
Why This Matters: Does Feminism Have Any Meaning At All?
The danger I see in Cathy’s views is that, if they were generally accepted, the result would be that the word “feminist” would be drained of meaning. If Cathy is a feminist, then feminism is no longer “an organized movement for the attainment of… rights for women” (to quote the definition of “feminism” Cathy cites). Feminism no longer means fighting sexism against women. Judging by Cathy’s writings, her brand of feminism involves attacking feminism at every turn while generally supporting men’s rights activists.
In Cathy’s view, being a feminist doesn’t require endorsing any feminist policy positions, or ever taking a pro-feminist stand in public, or being part of a movement for attaining women’s equality, or thinking such a movement can do any good at all. In the end, Cathy seems to think “feminist” is a term that can reasonably be applied to anyone who doesn’t explicitly oppose equality. But nowadays, virtually everyone says they favor equality, so that means nothing.
I agree with Cathy that a “rigid ideological definition” of feminism would be a mistake. But the opposite mistake – being so all-inclusive that “feminism” ceases to mean much of anything – is just as bad.
Uppdatering: There seems to be a related discussion going on here. Unfortunately, I can’t understand a word of it Swedish. If any “Alas” readers can read that language Swedish, please let the rest of us know the gist of their discussion. :-)
Uppdatering Uppdatering: There’s a translation, by the author, posted in the comments now. Yay!
That is just not true.
I’m not sure feminist are to blame though. Adoption law was framed with the idea that unmarried girls would be put under a great deal of presure to give up their baby. The rights of either the mother or the father weren’t really of interest. It’s a shame that, despite things being much easier for women, the framework still works against the interest of men.
That is just not true.
In most places in the US, it is true. There are exceptions–for example, Oregon law apparently removes the biological father’s objections if the parents are unmarried, and he was not around or attempting to support the mother during pregnancy. But as the “Baby Jessica” cases showed us, the default is that biological parents have to give up their rights before somebody else can assume them.
Jesurgislac ,
You forget that you are writing from a “majority” position, as women are the majority of DV victims. If, at any given time, there are 30 battered women in an area looking for a shelter, and 3 battered men, it doesn’t make sense to cut off a small minority, and say “Go do it yourself.”
Or maybe this is a fine thing to say:
If Muslims want support for Muslim domestic violence victims, rather than demanding it from Christians – demanding Christian’s time, money, work, and effort – Muslims should put their own time, money, work, and effort into building support for Muslim domestic violence victims. In general, Muslims seem unwilling to do this, but very willing to complain that Christians aren’t doing it either.
I imagine that if a Muslim group was interested in setting up support for Muslim victims of domestic violence, and politely asked an existing support group for Christian victims how they did it, they’d get advice: that’s free. But until Muslims are willing to act, demanding that Christians “help out” is in fact demanding that Christians do the work that Muslims are not willing to do.
Nik,
I’m not sure what country’s laws you are referring to, but in the US, for a child to be given up for adoption, both biological parents can block the adoption. The only exception to this is when a parent, either male or female, is found to be unfit. This requires a hearing, and unfitness has to be shown by clear and convincing evidence. A man, even a non-custodial parent, can block an adoption.
Block an adoption is the operative phrase here–he has to affirmatively assert his rights. (So does a non-custodial female biological parent, i.e., in a situation where the custodial father wants to let his new wife adopt his children. Granted, these situations are rare, since there are fewer custodial fathers in teh first place.) So it is true that this is somewhat different from consent, because the father is not sought out. However, any father may withold his consent, and if the mother gives up custody, he gets custody (absent a finding of unfitness) and can get child support from her.
Actually, there is a second, even narrower exception, which says that the biological father of a child whose mother is in an intact marriage TO ANOTHER MAN at the time of the child’s birth has no parental rights. I think that is wrong, because it favors the rights of the biological mother over those of the biological father. Also, in the case where that rule was handed down, although the biological mother was married to someone else, for most of the child’s life, she and the biological father had jointly raised the child in the same home.
Wookie Writes:
What this sounds like is now that “women” have done all the hard work, spent time and money and effort to convince mostly male politicians that DV victims needed funds and access to DV centers, help leaving violent relationships, counseling and help starting new lives, now that all the hard part is done, that “men” should be able to take advantage of everything that women accomplished. That women, having set up methods to attempt to help women should now take care of men. That men shouldn’t have to do any of the hard work. You don’t want advice and support, you want the work already done and handed to you. If you think there needs to be more DV centers for men? Do the leg work, take the time, spend the money, make the effort. Women did.
When the vast majority of people assaulted by their partners is women, and the vast majority of the abusers are men, it’s a gender problem, not just a violence problem.
I didn’t suggest it wasn’t a gender problem. My use of “-centric” meant that it’s not primarily a gender problem but rather primarily a violence problem. (It’s also a mental health problem, a drug problem…) It’s a matter of how you slice things, frame them, what prism you are using. Anyone who sees the issues of the world primarily in terms of gender–who thinks that there are two kinds of issues–gender issues and other issues, is a zealot. I don’t think that feminist zealotry is in the best interests of women. Zealotry has fatal flaws that compromise the mission.
In summary, let me just state that I think that it is in the best interests of women that the tent be big enough to include equity feminists. (And libertarians, too–the more that feminism is viewed as lefty, the less support it has. But that’s something for another forum, another day. )
jaketk Writes: I agree with the idea of allowing everyone to vote because I agree with the premise that we are all equal. That is to say you are entitled to no more than I am entitled to. Feminism has nothing to do with that
That shows a lack of historical awareness that is really almost scary. Did you ever wonder who Susan B. Anthony was, and why she was on the silver dollars in your pocket? Your agreement with the idea that women have the right to vote has everything to do with feminism. As I said: it’s been a very, very successful revolution.
And you cannot honestly claim that feminism has not resulted in brainwashing, death, or harm to people.
*blinks* Actually, I can. Name me the massacres perpetrated by feminists on non-feminists or on different branches of feminism. Find me examples of feminists killing non-feminists or anti-feminists. Show me examples of feminists brainwashing people into agreement with them.
Then I’ll match each example you come up with, with massacres, killings, brainwashing, and other harm done by Christians.
Richard Bellamy Writes: You forget that you are writing from a “majority” position, as women are the majority of DV victims. If, at any given time, there are 30 battered women in an area looking for a shelter, and 3 battered men, it doesn’t make sense to cut off a small minority, and say “Go do it yourself.”
And again, Richard – what have you done to support male victims of domestic violence, that you feel free to berate others for not doing enough?
Or maybe this is a fine thing to say:
Wow, could you have come up with a more pointless analogy if you tried?
Wookie, you seem to be treating “feminist” as an all-male category, and MRA as an all-female category. That’s not true; there are male feminists, and female MRAs.
Most DV shelters feel that they can’t take in men because they can’t both allow in men and provide for the security of their female clients. Asking DV shelters to compromise on security is totally unfair – not that the average MRA appears to give a damn about the well-being of battered women, of course.
Some DV shelters have hotel vouchers or other such programs to help men; some don’t. I really think that if the MRAs would approach DV shelters with a spirit of cooperation – “we’d like you to have a hotel voucher program to help battered men, and we’re going to do the extra fundraising to make it happen, so that helping battered men doesn’t mean taking resources away from battered women” – they’d get a better response.
However, most MRAs have an attitude towards DV shelters and the people who work there which can kindly be described as belligerent. Most DV shelters are already turning away battered women and making due with insufficient staff due to lack of resources; into that situation comes stumbling some MRA folks who know nothing about DV shelters, who say, in essence, “You lying feminist bitches owe us help, and we don’t give a damn what it costs your current clients.” Is it any surprise that no fruitful relationships have resulted? It’ll take a lot of work to heal the disrespect and anger that MRAs have gone out of their way to create.
Despite this, as I said, many DV shelters do have voucher programs to help the rare battered man who needs help – because despite the constant accusations of MRAs, most feminists aren’t man-hating monsters. But that there is DV help for men available is no credit to MRAs. Nor has any MRA organization, that I know of, made a point of seeking out those DV shelters that do help men and helping them with fundraising or other needs.
Ironically, if the MRAs were right – if there were as great a need for battered men’s shelters as there is for battered women’s shelters – then I think it would be a viable idea for MRAs to build their own shelter network, modeled on the work that feminists did building DV shelters. Fortunately, however, men aren’t that bad off, and in most areas of the country men’s shelters would die out for lack of men needing their services.
For that reason – and here I disagree with many other feminists here – I think helping battered men is going to have to be something added on to what already existing DV agencies do. There simply isn’t enough “business” for a separate men’s network to be viable, and it’s morally necessary to help the (relatively rare) male victims, just as it is to help female victims.
But it’s not fair to demand that DV shelters divert already insufficient resources from battered women. If MRAs want existing DV shelters to expand what they’re doing to help men, then they’ll have to start working with existing DV workers in a respectful, reasonable fashion, including working on establishing grants to allow existing DV shelters to add on help for men. And I haven’t seen any sign that MRAs would be willing to do that.
And again, Richard – what have you done to support male victims of domestic violence, that you feel free to berate others for not doing enough?
Generally, I do what most people do. I contribute to charities.
Since I’m in Philadelphia, I contribute financially to Women Organized Against Rape (www.woar.org), which is a local counseling/support group that openly assists both male and female/ adult and children victims of sexual assault. I don’t know how many adult men they help in a given month, but since they are physically located right in the middle of the primary gay neighborhood of Philadelphia, I would guess more than most.
The counselors help navigate the criminal justice stuff, and recommend various services (like shelters) if needed.
I had assumed that, since they say they provide these services to both male and female victims, they would have recommendations for both of them about where to go. I don’t know anything about specific shelters in the Philadelphia region, or which ones take men and which ones take women. I assumed there were at least some that took men, or that had some alternative procedure in place. I leave the details to the WOAR experts, who are trained to know this stuff.
I was merely reacting to your assertion that a DV group had no obligation to help men, and that it’s up to “men” as a group to take care of a particularly marginalized group of men who likely don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of a dominant male culture.
In any event, I certainly wouldn’t contribute to a shelter that didn’t at least have an alternative arrangement in place for male victims.
Just as a historical note, feminism did not start in the 1800s. There were feminists in the Roman Republic, so you’re looking at least 2400 years back. The political movement has a discontinuity in it (political feminism requires a level of widely-distributed economic and cultural wealth that, broadly, disappeared with the Republic, and did not reappear until modern capitalism) but the ideas are a lot older than that.
As I understand it, it is generally illegal for a governmental agency to discriminate in providing protection of law based on suspect categories such as race or gender. As I understand it, it is generally legal for a private entity to do so. So private DV shelters may discriminate on any basis they choose, but public ones may not discriminate on the basis of a suspect category unless the policy is narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate governmental purpose.
Maximizing the benefits of finite resources seems like a legit. gov. purpose. So if a shelter allocated resources to the people with the greatest need, then I don’t see any violation of the Equal Protection clause even if all the people with the greatest need were women.
But may a public DV shelter exclude men simply on the basis that the majority of the shelter’s traumatized clients do not wish to associate with men? Legally, that’s tough. This would seem to make a public institution the instrument of private discrimination.
I don’t believe that women in DV shelters generally have cause to fear all men (any more than the rest of us do), just as I don’t believe that soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder have cause to fear all loud noises. But I would not be surprised to learn that they do. And it might be naive to design programs for their benefit that ignored this dynamic, no matter how irrational the dynamic might be.
Alas, loudness is not a suspect category for Equal Protection analysis; gender is. To get out of this box, I guess we have to argue that the practice of excluding all men is a narrowly-tailored policy to promote the legit. gov. purpose of helping the majority of DV victims. That the therapeutic benefits of being men-free are crucial to achieving this purpose, and that resource limits do not permit any other remedy. This may well be true, but it seems like a tough case to me.
Government housing is not discriminatory when it meets a distinctive population need and a defined public purpose. As a developer, you can get (increasingly shrinking) government funding to build affordable housing for the elderly. Just because I earn over 80% of area median income or am under 62 (or whatever the guidelines are) does not mean I am discriminated against if I am refused a unit. Likewise, emergency shelter for homeless persons is very often based on age and/or family structure. I would not be admitted into our local shelter for runaway or homeless teens, even if I am homeless. Why would I (being well north of 21)? Likewise, why would I complain about not being admitted into our local Union Mission for homeless men, not as long as there are beds at the shelter for homeless women. What’s the beef?
My experience has been that our local dv organizations provide services to anyone who asks. They are just not in the position to provide co-ed shelters. Understand that right now, most shelters are having to turn away women on a routine basis. So it is a little strange to ask shelters to expand the populations they serve (persons made homeless by domestic violence) when there is little to no money for expanding the facilities they have. Especially when shelter workers have often described the problems that would accrue, such as abusers trying to gain access to their victims.
The problem is, for all the talk about men being battered by their wives and girlfriends (and there are probably some, I would never say never), they just don’t even register in terms of persons made HOMELESS by dv. Apart from the gender politics of dv, I have never seen one study of homelessness where dv was identified as a cause of homelessness for men. By contrast, it is a major cause of homelessness for women.
I have been a grantwriter for 15 years, and I have written grants for homeless shelters. On one blog, just to make a point during one of these discussions with the MRA types, I offered my services, GRATIS, if they were interested in doing a HUD Continuum of Care application. Not one taker. Wasn’t surprised. None of them had any interest in rolling up their sleeves and actually getting a men’s shelter going, even with free help. On the other hand, there is a persistent and consistent desire to “shut down” the women’s shelters, either through nuisance law suits or threats to shut down major sources of funding, such as VAWA. I think that pretty much sums up the agenda. There is no real concern for dv or any abused person, much less all these men who are supposedly in need of shelter. This an abuser’s agenda, not a reformer’s agenda.
Likewise when I point out the major causes of homelessness among men (apart from stagnant wages and skyrocketing housing costs, especially in our major cities), namely the cutbacks in mental health services and drug/alcohol addiction services, there’s a big yawn. Absolutely no interest in advocating for the homeless men right under their nose, but they somehow whip up a lot of hysteria for a population so small that it doesn’t register on the radar (men made homeless by dv).
Another thing. For all the discrimination accusations against VAWA, programs like Continuum of Care are just as “sexist”, though more subtly. The HUD funding priority is what they call the “chronic” homeless: SINGLE persons who have been homeless for extended and/or multiple periods of time. As it turns out, this is mostly men. Women are more often homeless with children and for economic/dv reasons which tend not to fit the definitions of “chronic.” With that in mind, do you see feminists demanding that Continuum of Care funds be slashed? On the contrary, I know lots of women who work in the homelessness field, many of them feminists, and all agree that the money is totally inadequate.
That’s the difference between abusers and reformers.
it really is very hard for me as (what i consider to be) an ardent male feminist to admit that there are significant female privileges in american culture. it’s hard to admit, because i’d be afraid that i was just giving ammunition to those who would deny the obvious (to me) structural advantages that men have, and portray them as victims.
but there are some ways in which i feel that my life is harder because i’m a man.
because i am a responsible man, i feel the need to behave in a respectable way towards my fellow humans. what that meant practically when i was a 16-23-year-old virgin was that it was impermissible for me to express sexual interest in a woman for fear of being considered a creep. i think a lot of young men feel their sexuality oppressed in this way. it’s not worse than the slut/mother dichotomy, mind you, but it is real and significant for men involved.
almost every day, i feel less able to do my job than some of my female colleagues. i teach in a coed high school. female teachers (over, let’s say, 40 years old) feel perfectly free to hug and touch their students, male and female, and don’t think twice about it. i avoid all contact beyond pats on a shoulder, handshakes, and high-fives (all of which i do with both bys and girls). if i started hugging kids, it would look (again) creepy. but it keeps me at a distance from the kids i teach compared with my female colleagues.
so…there…i said it. i think there are a few ways that men are disadvantaged by the social structure in the US. let me reiterate that there are many more ways that women are disadvantaged. but i only bring it up because some people asked for examples, and i think those are legitimate ones.
Cathy wrote:
I object to the way you’ve phrased this, Cathy, because putting it the way you do – as a matter of what feminists are “trying to” do – takes the debate away from being an empirical question, and into being about what feminists intentions are.
Here’s what Mary Haviland, of the Family Violence Project, wrote in a letter to the New York Times:
That’s pretty typical of feminist criticisms of mandatory arrest laws I’ve read. If we assume that Ms. Haviland and other feminists are telling the truth, then I’m correct and you’re mistaken: feminists are trying to avoid false arrests, not trying to ensure that female abusers aren’t punished.
For Ms. Haviland and other feminist critics to be “trying to ensure that women who use violence are presumptively treated as victims whether they are or not,” you’d have to assume that when they say what they’re trying to do is prevent mistaken arrests, they’re lying. I don’t think that assumption is fair-minded or in any way justified.
Now, you could argue that the empirical effect of Ms. Haviland’s policies, if carried out, would be that women and men would be treated differently. I’d still disagree with you, but at least that argument would be empirical, which I think is a more appropriate and fair way to hold the debate.
The sample size of single workers with MBAs used in a study you recently cited was 138, which you presumably feel is large enough, or you wouldn’t have cited that study. In contrast, the sample size of gays and lesbians in the NVAW study was 144. I think you were right the first time – a sample size in that range isn’t too small for conclusions to be drawn, especially if the sampling design is good.
144 is large enough for standard tests of statistical significance, at least regarding the particular issue we’re discussing. According to the NVAW researchers, the “differences between same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants are statistically significant” (page 29).
Plus, sample size isn’t the only issue when evaluating how good a study design is. It’s generally accepted that representative, random sampling is ideal, and should be used whenever possible and appropriate. You don’t say what studies you’re referring to, but I suspect they either don’t have a much larger sample size, or theydon’t use representative random sampling and so are not as reliable.
You’re shifting your case. At first you were talking about dictionary definitions; when I pointed out that you were mistaken about that, you shifted to “most commonly used meaning.”
Among feminists, at least in my experience, a very commonly used meaning of “anti-feminist” is to refer to folks like yourself, Christina Hoff Sommers, Wendy McElroy, Katie Roiphe, Warren Farrell, the IWF, and so on – the group that might more keenly be called the “anti-feminist feminists.” I don’t think that’s because me and other feminists have misunderstood your views; I think it’s because we correctly understand that you are strongly biased against feminists and feminism.
And to use the term “anti-feminist” to mean “strongly biased against feminists and feminism” is hardly a strange or counter-intuitive use of the term.
Robert Writes: Just as a historical note, feminism did not start in the 1800s.
The modern feminist movement is generally considered to begin in the late 1700s, in fact: Olympe de Gouges’s ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen, 1791: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792: from then on, it is possible to trace a clear line of descent.
Obviously, ideas do not spring from nowhere, and ideas and concepts that we might today recognise as feminist have been around long before the 18th century and in other places than Europe and North America. But the feminist revolution of today, recognisable as a political movement, has been rolling along since the late 18th century.
Polymath,
Although I’m not a guy, I had observed similar phenomena as well–that male sexuality is stigmatized as “creepy” and that males cannot have physical contact with others–as you described with children (pedophilia assumptions), but also arguably with other men (sexuality assumptions), and even women (weakness.)
So, anyways, it is nice to hear that another feminist worries about these issues as well. It’s also good to hear from someone who has had the experience, because as a woman I can only guess how men are treated unless I observe it or a man tells me about it.
Richard; I had assumed that, since they say they provide these services to both male and female victims, they would have recommendations for both of them about where to go. I don’t know anything about specific shelters in the Philadelphia region, or which ones take men and which ones take women. I assumed there were at least some that took men, or that had some alternative procedure in place. I leave the details to the WOAR experts, who are trained to know this stuff.
It’s entirely possible that there are arrangements made for male victims of domestic violence in the Philadelphia Region. If you’ve never troubled yourself to find out what, though, you’re not in a position to complain if it’s not enough.
I was merely reacting to your assertion that a DV group had no obligation to help men, and that it’s up to “men” as a group to take care of a particularly marginalized group of men who likely don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of a dominant male culture.
I don’t see why you think it’s up to women to take care of male victims of domestic violence if men are unwilling to do anything positive to help male victims of domestic violence. Why should taking care of men be seen by men as women’s responsibility?
As others have observed, domestic violence shelters and programs are generally strapped for cash and short of volunteer or paid worker hours. If someone complains about the services these shelters and programs provide, it’s always fair to ask exactly what that person has provided to such shelters and programs themselves.
Or at least, how they’d propose to remedy the problem. For instance, offhand I think it would be reasonable for MRAs to propose that governments make grants available for DV shelters to use for staff and services to help underserved male victims of DV.
Oh, the “only men fight and die” trope. Well, that is becoming less and less true, since support troops are taking significant hits in Iraq, and by law, that is where the women are allowed. You are still dead if the enemy blows you up, whether you were firing a tank or merely fueling it up. That tank ain’t moving unless someone comes into the combat zone and refuels it, and those “someones” are support troops, not combat troops.
I find it curious that in this day and age, men who claim anti-male discrimination point to the military, without also considering the class issues. I’d say the current situation works against poor young men (and women) with poor public schooling, no college money even for a community college, and living in a lousy job market. The volunteer, and even the conscription, military system works just great for the wealthy and well-connected men. Our pResident W got a cushy stateside gig to avoid the draft, and didn’t even stick out the whole obligation. Our Vice pResident got 5 deferments. Our Secy of Defence has never served and undoubtedly got some deferments. Most of the Republican senators of the Vietnam era never served, with the notable exception of McCain. Children of senators and congressmen are not currently serving on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan, and truth to tell, never did serve on the front lines in conscription wars, unless the eminent offspring raised holy hell and insisted on it.
Oh, and only non-combatant men suffer by being war victims? Uh, rape, followed by evisceration if already pregnant, killing if rapist wants an extra kick, or leaving alive if the rapist needs a spare fuck or wants to send the woman back to her community to taunt it.
Donna:
I’m sure that there are many things about the rest of the world of which I’m ignorant. However you have not shown this. Every single one of the points you make below I was aware of, to some degree. Many of them I could discuss in considerably more detail. Indeed, had I set out to map the contours of sexist injustice against women, as you have done, I would certainly have started with female infaticide, and gone on from there to discuss honour killings, wholesale sex slavery practiced in various parts of the word, rape as a war crime, and the general low status of women throughout the non-western world. I would also have mentioned FGM, ‘voluntary’ prostitution in so far as its not voluntary at all, but a product of economic necessity, domestic violence, etc. The list does indeed go on and on and on.
What this does, is support the point that I’ve already made that the pile of sexist injustice suffered by women is mind-boggling huge. But it can’t support the claim that it’s bigger than another pile until you look at the other pile to see how big it is..
Here I would, as I already have, start out with forced labour and conscription, before going on mention blood feuds (such as happen in Albania, where men are exclusively targetted. Women sometimes participate, but are protected from retaliation by the code of honour) The gender-selective murder of non-combatent men as a war crime, for example in Ruanda and the former Yugoslavia. (When the women were being sent to the rape camps, where do you think the men were been sent to?) , the vast numbers of non-dangerous men incarcerated (and the sexual slavery that takes place behind prison walls) ‘voluntary’ enlistment into the military so far as its not voluntary at all, but a product of economic necessity (or the only way to avoid being a victim of war)
Why did you not mention these things? Were you not aware of them? If you weren’t, why not? You seem to be well informed about feminist issues. Why didn’t feminism inform you about these issues? How can you trust feminism’s verdict that the female pile is bigger, if it ignores relevent data?
If you did know about these things, the question stands. Why did you mention them? Or to put it another way: “When will your posts acknowledge that [wo]men aren’t the only people in the world with problems?”
And why didn’t Ampersand ask that question of you?
Ismone:
I didn’t know what to do when I read Polymath’s post. So poignently, so painfully does it describe my own feelings, that I didn’t, and still don’t feel able to reply to it directly. Thank you for giving me an oportunity to thank him in the third person for expressing what I could not.
But it can’t support the claim that it’s bigger than another pile until you look at the other pile to see how big it is.
And having looked at the two piles?
Daran,
I’m not disregarding that men suffer injustices due to their sex, but to claim that men suffer more than women because of their sex and only using the argument of war to back it up is extremely weak and again, ignorant.
First of all, women suffer at the hands just as much as men. Rape is a tool of war. While women do not actively participate as soldiers in war, rape is used against them, their homes and villages/towns are destroyed. Think of Somalia, where in the early 90s, hundreds of thousands of people died from starvation (women, children, and men) because the government would not give them any food. Women are incarcerated along side men. What do you think happened in Vietnam? Women were incarcerated all the time and accused of consorting with the enemy. As an example, I give you Le Ly Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman who was incarcerated along with other women during the Vietnam War. All of this is against their will. War does not solely affect men.
You talk about the Code of Honour, but codes, like laws, are not always followed. You don’t honestly believe that women are not affected or harmed because they have such a thing? To say yes would be incredibly naive. It would be like saying that every Iraqi captured by American troops is not tortured because International Law says it’s illegal.
You have not laid any argument to prove your case, Daran. Stating that men are conscripted/drafted (which is actually ILLEGAL in some countries) and/or coerced into becoming soldiers and actively participating in war is not a good argument because like I said, war affects everyone. War is not good period, and no one, male or female, benefits from it.
(And just as a side note, there are some countries, like Israel, that have mandatory military service for both men and women.)
I try to be well informed on global feminism because one of the problems I have with Western feminism is that it IS Western, and the prejudice and discrimination that goes on here is not at all anything that goes on in a global scale. While in countries like Canada, the United States, and Europe (most of Europe, anyway), women have, for the most part, equality with men within the law, if not in practice. The rest of the world is a different place, and women are not protected by the law; they do not have rights period, whereas men are protected because of their sex.
I know that there are prejudices against men. However, those prejudices are more often the result of stereotypes than they are written in the law. From a human rights perspective, it is not men who suffer the most. It is women and children. Read articles from Amnesty International, which is a gender neutral organization, or from the United Nations (UNIFEM and Women Watch), an organization I’m not particularly fond of but they do occasionally have some interesting stuff.
I doubt I will get through to you. I’ve never actually known anyone or heard anyone (even from misogynists, anti-feminists, or chauvanists) make a unfounded assertion that women are not the marginalized group in the world – that it’s men. I’m absolutely flabbergasted to say the least.
You can stop with the “what about the men” attitude. Feminism is not just about women. Just because it is a discourse that focuses on women does not mean it sidelines men. I am not ignorant of the issues you mentioned, and please do not make blind accusations about feminism if you cannot prove that it has actually done something wrong. Just because you have a preconceived notion of feminism and its purposes does not mean that it has failed. It just means you have misunderstood.
Ampersand writes: Or at least, how they’d propose to remedy the problem. For instance, offhand I think it would be reasonable for MRAs to propose that governments make grants available for DV shelters to use for staff and services to help underserved male victims of DV.
When you assume that people who advocate support for male victims do nothing because you are not falling over results, you imply more than you probably intend. It took several years for the first DV shelter for men in Britain to open. And when it did, the response from feminists was one of intense disagreement. Proposals only work if there is enough political pressure to accept them. Eventually persistence does pay off, but imagine how much sooner the shelter would have been made available had feminists not consistently impeded those proposals.
Amp:
That is exactly what I was interested in. I fall somewhere between the radical ideology and the ifeminist veiw of things, and I was beginning to get the idea that it was an “either, or” proposition with no middle ground.
I often find myself inbetween the extremes of ideologies. I’m not sure why that is, but it has always been that way for me. But, I’m glad to know that I can still call myself a feminist even if I modify it with the word “moderate”.
Jesurgislac, none of us who work to bring aid, support and services to male victims think women should take care of male victims. I am not really sure where any feminist gets this perception outside of the assumption that male support must come at the expense of female support. I cannot speak for others, but personally I do not want feminists to do anything for me. If anything, I would like you to stop being a hindrance when issues about male victims are raised, like trying to turn it into a gender-centric argument of who has it worse when these issues are brought in front of local congresses.
Of all the support services provided to male victims that I know of, the funding often comes out of the pockets of the providers, their friends and family, co-workers, friends and family of survivors, and often straight out of the pockets of the survivors themselves. Certainly if you have no interest in this area then you would never see this. Again, I am not sure where this notion of taking money from women’s shelters comes from because no one I know has ever suggested it.
My definition of feminism
Feminism (n): women’s particularism.
That’s it. That’s all. That simple. And it is true.
All the definitions of feminism that refer to equality of the sexes might have been originally intended to be true, but in the course of history they became factually false.
There is a slang phrase in Poland that you use when you want to say that you don’t give a damn about something: “To mnie obchodzi tyle, co Magdalene Srode rak prostaty”, which translates roughly to “About this I care as much as Magdalena Sroda cares for prostate cancer”. Magdalena Sroda used to be the Government’s Mandatary on Equal Status of Women and Men. She must be credited for demonstrating to Polish society what feminists mean when they say “gender equality”. Her idea of “equal status” was to have a “Women’s health” section on her office’s website, but not a “Men’s health” section, despite women outlive men by 9 years in Poland, the chance to die within one year is higher for men in all age groups, etc. Now, there might be feminists who really care about equality, but the public image of feminism is shaped by those feminists who are politically active. Thus, Polish society ended up identifying feminism with female particularism and with utter disregard for the condition of men.
I don’t have a problem with particularisms. What I have problem with is one specific particularism having a special status over other particularisms. I don’t think feminism should be completely done away with, but I do think it should be driven down from the moral high ground it currently illegitimately occupies, and treated as any other particularism within the social conflict management framework known as democracy.
Would you like examples of MRA’s filing lawsuits against women’s shelters? Is that not a massive drain on their resources?
One example: Blumhorst vs. Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles. Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men et al v Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. There are examples from other states as well.
Frankly, I think it is nothing but a well-coordinated campaign of harassment by basically abusive individuals who don’t want anyone, male or female, to get services.
I just don’t see that feminists are the aggressors here. It’s the MRA’s who’ve embarked on campaigns of legal harassment and have advocated for funding elimination by obliterating VAWA.
I will assume that you’re responding to me.
This is a strawman. I have never said that only men fight and die. It is overwhelmingly men who fight and die in battle, overwhelmingly men who are conscripted (i.e. forced) to fight, or left with little economic chice but to fight. And where there is gender-selective targetting for murder during war, it is overwhelmingly men who are targetted.
Of course there is often indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatents during which women are slaughtered along with the men, but in so far as this is not a “current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages” one or other of the sexes, it hardly seems pertinent to the discussion.
On the other hand, during the two Iraqi wars, the allied attack have been far less indiscriminate than in other conflagrations. Consequently a much greater proportion of the total casualties were confined to the Iraqi Army, which was overwhelmingly conscripted, and almost exclusively if not exclusively male. I have no figures, but I would expect that the ratio of male to female casualties was higher in each of the Iraqi wars than, say, WWII, where there were more civilian casualties than military.
I agree with all this, of course. Wealthy powerful men rarely suffer in wars. If feminism “believed that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages people who are not wealthy powerful men.” then I would be a feminist. But that is not where feminism draws the line. And by not drawing the line to include disadvantaged men, it further disadvantages them.
Another strawman. What I said is that where there is gender-selective murder, it is overwhelmingly men who are targetted.
That’s a horendous attrocity. Rape is, by it’s nature, a gender selective crime, and while males can be raped, and even targetted for rape, overwhelmingly its females who are raped in war. Sometimes they are raped and murdered. What does not happen is that females are murdered as a war attrocity while males are left alive. If anyone can cite an incident where this happened, I’d be very interested. However there are any number of cases where the males are massacred.
We stopped moving when we heard automatic weapon fire. We turned our heads to see what was happening, but it was impossible to see the men. We saw the ten-to-fourteen-year-olds [boys] running in our direction; when they got to us we asked them what was happening. They were very upset; no one could talk. One of them finally told us: “They released us but the others are finished.” We stayed in the same place for some twenty minutes. Everyone was crying. The automatic weapon fire went on non-stop for a few minutes; after that we heard short, irregular bursts of fire for some ten minutes or so. My father, my uncle and my cousin were among the men killed. Kajtaz Rexha and Qazim Rexhepi were also killed, as were many other members of the Bajraj, Bajrami, Rexhepi, and Aliu families. Then ten Serbs caught up with us. They said lots of obscenities and again told us: “Now you must leave for Albania — don’t stop, just go.” We had to leave. … My father had given me his jacket because I had been wearing another jacket that said “American Sport” on it and he was afraid; he wanted to cover that up. Because I was pushing the wheelbarrow and wearing a man’s jacket, they thought I was a man. They told me to stop and then to come over to them, but I was too afraid. It was the scariest moment of my life. Then they shined a flashlight in my face and saw that I was a woman. One of them said, “Let her go.” (Human Rights Watch, “Witness to Izbica Killings Speaks: Possibly Largest Massacre of Kosovo War,” Kosovo Human Rights Flash #39, May 19 1999.)
Seguing from war attrocities into infaticide, you have the opposite situation. Here it is the females who are massacred while the males are left alive. Not always, some boys are killed along with the girls, and some boys are targetted for being boys. But this is the exception rather than the rule.
It would be dishonest of me to suggest that Donna said that only girls were the victims of infaticide. She did not. Equally dishonest would be to use the fact that some boys are murdered to deny or diminish the inherent misogyny of the practice. It is overwhelmingly female babies who are murdered.
Ampersand asks “”When will [Daran’s] posts acknowledge that men aren’t the only people in the world with problems?” I’ve never done anything else. I’ve never denied or trivialised the real problems and disadvanges faced by women because they are women the world over.
I don’t object to the list of examples of disadvantages suffered by women Donna raised in her post. I even added a few to them. I don’t even object to her silence about disadvantages suffered by men. What I object to, is her silence in a post which is about the balance between the two. And I object to Ampersand’s silence about Donna’s silence.
This isn’t personal. This isn’t about Amperand or Donna, and I hope I haven’t upset or offended them. It’s about feminism. They (and you) just exemplify it.
Barry, popping back in here for a minute:
Thanks for bringing the gay/lesbian battering numbers from the NWSA to my attention. I still think that when you have a sample of 8,000 people of whom only 144 are gays and lesbians (the total size of the NWSA sample was 8,000, right?), conclusions in comparing heterosexuals and gays should be drawn carefully.
I am familiar with two studies that show high numbers for lesbian battering:
Lie, GY and Gentlewarrior, S. “Intimate Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Discussion of Survey Findings and Practice Implications,” Journal of Social Service Research, v. 15 (1991), pp. 41-59. A survey of more than 1,000 lesbians which found that 52% had experienced violence from a partner and the same percentage had inflicted violence on a partner. However, I’m not sure about the design of this study — the summary I read (in Donald Dutton’s “Patriarchy and Wife Abuse”) says only that it was a “non-random sample.”
Lie, GY et al., “Lesbians in Currently Aggressive Relationships: How Frequently Do They Report Aggressive Past Relationships?” Violence and Victims, v. 6(2), 1991, pp. 121-135. In a sample of 350 lesbians, 46% reported having been physically assaulted by a female partner. (78% of those women had previously been in at least one heterosexual relationship, and of those, 32% reported having been physically abused by a male partner.)
I agree that more research is needed on this subject and we don’t currently have enough evidence to make well-founded conclusions about violence in gay and lesbian relationships.
I should also add that the NWSA differs from many other DV studies because the respondents were asked about their experiences of intimate violence in the context of a survey about “personal safety.” So, if someone had experienced minor violence that did not make them fear for their safety, they might be less likely to think of it in the context of that survey. It’s likely that both women and men perceive male violence as more threatening, both due to cultural attitudes and due to actual differences in physical size and strength.
Do I doubt the claims of the Family Violence Project? In a word: Yes. Because in my research, I have seen too many instances of battered women’s advocacy groups explaining away clear instances of female aggression as defensive. (Among other things, it is somehow presumed that the women are always telling the truth.) I discuss this at some length in my book. I have records on an actual case here in New Jersey in which a woman who was arrested and thrown out of her home after attacking her estranged husband in a family counselor’s office received housing and legal assistance from a battered women’s shelter. This is how a shelter staffer described the circumstances in a letter to an attorney on the woman’s behalf:
“Mrs. C. grabbed Mr. C. by his necktie [and] he pushed her away. Mrs. C. then punched his face and her nail cut his neck.”
This is characterized as an instance of “physical abuse by the husband.” I would say that there are some serious double standards going on here.
I see that there’s some discussion going on of “female privilege,” and I’d like to throw out one scenario (a real-life story) as an example of how conventional feminist analysis can be inadequate in understanding gender and privilege.
Jack is a classical musician who gives piano lessons and occasional recitals while working toward a career as a peormer; his live-in girlriend Jill is a ceramics painter who works as a secretary on the side. Jill gets pregnant and announces to Jack that while she would like to have the baby, she’ll get an abortion unless he gets a “real job” that will allow her to quit her secretarial job. Jack gives up music, enrolls in a computer course and gets a well-paying job in a bank which he asbolutely loathes (both because it bores him out of his skull and because he has ideological objections to it as a leftist). Two years later, Jill gets pregnant again and insists on having another child even though Jack has serious misgivings about it. After the second child, Jack pretty much accepts the fact that he might as well give up on being a musician (despite the fact that he is widely regarded as a very talented pianist) and continues to slog along in his hated bank job (which also leaves him constantly deprived of the time he’d like to have with his children). Jill, meanwhile, is greatly enjoying being a stay-at-home mom (her own mother, who runs a day-care center, has offered to her discounted day care if she wants to go back to work, but she has refused) while continuing to paint and having her works displayed in exhibitions here and there.
Now, according to conventional feminist analysis, Jack is the one in a position of greater privilege because he makes a lot more money than Jill does. I would say that in real life, if one of them is “oppressed,” it’s definitely not Jill. And by the way, if they get divorced, the fact that he worked full-time is going to be held against him while her staying home will be treated as a “sacrifice” for the children.
I don’t want to go the Warren Farrell route and argue that the male breadwinner/female homemaker arrangement virtually always involves male self-sacrifice and female exercise of free choice. I think there is real power in being the one with the paycheck, and I could also cite a case I know of personally in which a woman who loved her career was emotionally bullied by her husband into quitting because he believes children need a full-time mother until they’re out of high school.
But let’s not pretend that these other cases don’t exist and that the Jills of this world are not beneficiaries of female privilege.
Read Peggy Orenstein’s Flux (I doubt that anyone would ever call Peggy Orenstein an anti-feminist) — you’ll find interviews with young women who quite consciously say that they want it to be their option to scale back or temporarily give up their careers when they have children, and that they don’t want their future husbands to have this option.
Finally, about the term “anti-feminist”: I would suggest that if that’s the most commonly used label in feminist circles for critics of the feminist movement who espouse many basic feminist tenets, this may reflect primarily an unwillingness to truly engage these critics’ arguments as having any relevance to feminism.
Without commenting one way or the other on the subtantive issues, I want to respectfully remind you that there are probably a hundred reader comments a day – sometimes a few hundred – on “Alas.” And there are many time-consuming tasks involved in blogging aside from answering reader comments – it would be easy for me to never get around to posting new posts, if I allow myself to spend hours answering comments. And I have a life apart from blogging.
Frankly, I’m amazed I even have time to read all the comments (and sometimes I fail even at that). To criticize me for failing to reply to any particular comment suggests that you don’t have a realistic appreciation of the practical limits to how much time I can spend on comments (or of how slow a writer I am! :-P ).
P.S. That said, I appreciate your posts on this thread, and especially your civility. Your response to my response to you is one of the comments I regret not having found time to respond to. (Yet).
Daran,
I apologize if you feel that I’m not being inclusive, and I really don’t like turning this into a “who has it worst” exchange because that really solves nothing (even though it has already turned into that). Regardless, I think that saying I have been “silent” on issues is like beating a dead horse because I could make the same argument vice versa. However, that is pointless, and I don’t particularly feel like derailing the thread.
I don’t want to come off the wrong way, particularly because I haven’t been commenting here for very long, and I respect your opinion even if I don’t agree with you.
However, I think there are some serious holes in your argument, and you still haven’t explained to me how oppression affects men more on a global scale than it does women, which was where this whole thing began. My initial comment was in rebuttal to that argument. At least give me something more than war because the fact that men are more often than not the ones fighting them is not the fault of feminism. From my understanding, feminists haven’t had an impact on drafting or coercing men into going to war. Most feminists, including myself, do not believe in forced participation in war, nor do many believe that the military should be a sexist institution.
Women should be able to have the same military opportunities as men, and the fact that the military still marginalizes women and prevents them from fully participating is, again, not the fault of feminism or feminists. The fact that there are more male casualties in war than females is a reflection of that sexism. Feminists are not to blame for the fact that sexism that prevents both men and women from equal participation in matters of military and war. It is a system that feminists are attempting to dismantle.
Ampersand:
I did, before making that comment, verify that you had posted at least once to the thread after Donna, thus had had an opportunity to read it (which you’ve not denied having done). You certainly have now, and have had the post drawn to your attention. It’s not through lack of time that you’ve not addressed the substantive issue, it’s because you haven’t made it a priority.
I don’t blame you for that. I merely observe it, and that you did make it a priority to ask the following question of me, despite having what are likely to have been similar calls on your time.
Ampersand (in the earlier post):
When will your posts hold feminists to the standard that you hold me? And if you judge that question to be prejudicial, do you recognise that it is no more so than yours?
Daran, I respond to the posts that catch my eye at the moment, using the time I have available at that moment. I didn’t have the time or impulse to respond to Donna at the moment I read her post, and I did when I responded to your post; that’s a molehill that you’re determined to turn into a mountain.
There are plenty of times I’ve disagreed with other feminists, including times that I’ve argued that patriarchy hurts men too. But I don’t respond to every single feminist comment which doesn’t acknowlege that men suffer – any more than I respond to every single MRA comment which doesn’t acknowlege that women suffer. It’s unreasonable of you to seemingly expect me to.
If you really think it’s essential that I comment on a particular post, try asking me politely (rather than in a “gotcha!” high-handed manner, as you’ve done so far), and including the post number so that I don’t have to go back and reread the thread to figure out what you’re talking about.
Daran,
On feminism meaning “believed that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages people who are not wealthy powerful men”–read MacKinnon. She is a feminist-marxist. And that’s a pretty good nutshell of one of the many things she says. Because she is a feminist marxist, she focuses on how hierarchies place powerful men over other men and women, etc, and how men and women both are harmed by this.
Also, there’s a bit of pot-calling-the-kettle black here, considering that you still haven’t responded to my post 64, although you have commented on a subsequent post of mine. A lot of it is exposition and some concessions, but the rest is focused on areas where women are still not equal TO MEN. You still haven’t answered the poverty point, the education point, etc. And we haven’t even gotten into human trafficking.
Is it true that men are sometimes targeted because they are men, for war crimes, etc.? Absolutely. But women are targeted for being women even when there is not a war on. That’s kind of disturbing. If the rules have already broken down and there is chaos, they target you. If the rules are still working, the rules target women.
Libertarians tend to believe in the absense of informal discrimination, and in blind meritocracy, ie, that if government was minimized, the talent rising to the top would be predominantly white hetero male upper-middle-class-upbringing because those individuals must be naturally smarter and harder-working than all others of different gender, sexuality, color, or economic origin..
Actually, most libertarians probably don’t really care. Their feeling is, if the talent is mostly white males, so be it. If not, so be it.
My thoughts (I am paleoconservative with libertarian tendencies) on each category:
(1) The talent would be mostly hetero unless gays are very disproportionately talented, because there are far more heteros than homos or bis.
(2) The talent would almost certainly be disproportionately Jewish, and likely Asian as well. Current evidence suggests that in business and intellectual fields, non-Hispanic whites on average do have an advantage over blacks and Hispanics. I see no reason why we have to assume that the entire reason is “institutional racism.”
(3) Men tend to occupy more of the highest level of success than women. I tend to think that part of the reason is that men tend to vary more than women in a number of categories (e.g. more male geniuses, but also more male idiots). This is because biologically men are more expendable than women so “nature can take more chances” with men.
(4) The talent would likely from the upper-middle class, because to the extent that talent is heritable (from genes or from upbringing), those who initially manage to achieve the upper-middle class status are probably disproportionately talented to begin with and so their children are more likely to inherit talent.
Actually, most libertarians probably don’t really care. Their feeling is, if the talent is mostly white males, so be it. If not, so be it.
My impression is that libertarians mostly are middle-class white men – they’re a group so unthinking in their privilege, and indeed generally so blind to their own privilege, that they honestly believe it’s talent alone that has got them where they are. They are also usually those who complain loudest at any intervention that removes any of the privilege granted to middle-class white men, as to them, their privilege is their entitlement, granted on merit.
Hi, Cathy. Thanks for taking the time to write your response.
Cathy, with all due respect, I don’t think your objection holds any water. What does the proportion of gays and lesbians to heterosexuals have to do with anything? Would a study comparing 144 gays and lesbians to 144 heterosexuals somehow be more valid? There’s a widely-accepted, non-idealogical method of testing for statistical significance; why should this standard method not count in this instance?
It’s the nature of random, representative sampling that there will be more majority folks interviewed than minority folks (apart from special designs like oversampling). That doesn’t make the study less reliable, and it doesn’t change the fact that for making these kinds of comparisons of prevalence a random sample is better than a non-random sample.
If I recall correctly, the researchers surveyed lesbians attending the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. It was important, groundbreaking research – hardly anyone had researched IPV among lesbians in 1991 – but it doesn’t tell us anything about the relative prevalence of intimate violence in same-sex and cross-sex relationships.
I agree that we should be careful about what research says (although you must admit that you didn’t use such cautious language in post 65). It’s always possible to do new, better studies – for instance, maybe the next round of the NVAW could oversample people living in same-sex partnerships. On the other hand, the always-existing chance that future, better research will change our mind, shouldn’t prevent us from drawing inferences from the best of the currently existing research.
For the purpose of comparing prevalences of same-sex and opposite-sex partner violence, the NVAW is obviously better than studies that use non-random samples, that have definitions of “abuse” that make cross-study comparisons problematic (for instance, non-violent emotional abuse is counted in some studies, not counted in others), and that often don’t even survey heterosexual women. The NVAW – while not perfect – is the only research currently existing that uses an appropriate methodology for comparing prevalences. The research you’re relying on – while excellent in many ways – is simply not appropriate for the comparisons you want to draw.
Continuing my response to Cathy, and regarding the story of Jack and Jill, I think it’s important to understand that feminist analysis applies to men and women as a class, and obviously doesn’t tell us much about every individual person or couple.
All else being equal, there’s a lot of reasons to think that men are advantaged in our society (although I think it’s also clear that sexism harms men, as well). For instance, outside of prison, women are more likely to be victims of rape than men. However, there are individual married couples in which the husband is a survivor of rape, but the wife is not. The fact that there are individual exceptions to overall averages doesn’t make all analysis based on the overall picture illegitimate.
In the example of Jack and Jill, I myself wouldn’t apply the alleged “conventional feminist analysis” to their case, and I’m not sure I believe that most feminists would. Feminists are not, by and large, idiots; we realize that general theories aren’t always applicable to all individuals. (You have a tendency, in your ultra-harsh judgments of feminists, to find isolated examples – sometimes from obviously dubious sources like student newspapers – and treat them as if they represent the norm).
And I certainly agree that the conventional, sexist gender roles have hurt men like Jack – and, for that matter, men like me. But I think that for all its flaws, feminism is the movement that’s doing the most to fight those conventional, sexist gender roles.
I didn’t say “most commonly used label.” And, obviously, there are many critics of feminism who “espouse many basic feminist tenents” who are not widely perceived as anti-feminist – Naomi Wolf, for example. Or Catherine MacKinnon, for that matter (non-feminists tend to forget that a huge portion of MacKinnon’s writings are critiques of feminist thought).
What you don’t seem to be willing to admit is that there’s a real and important difference between criticizing feminism and simply being against feminism in all its current forms. It’s the latter that makes you anti-feminist. However, I don’t think it’s true that because (IMO) you’re anti-feminist, I am therefore unwilling to take your critiques seriously; that’s an assumption that you’re making without any warrant.
Directly from the outbacks of the world. A speedy, and probably lousy translation. However you are welcome to comment if you like.
***
In Sweden, there is an organisation called Anti-feminist community. The main ambition is to be against feminism as such, but not against equality. The reason I’ve always found that ‘anti-feminism’ is a bad choice of word, is mainly because it implicates being against equality, whatever one otherwise claims. It also rests on a one-eyed assumption of what constitutes feminism. As if there is only one kind of feminism. It’s understandable from the view point that a majority of the feminist movement can be claimed to have been hegemonized of typically left-wing views and such analytic grounds. It is this tendency of hegemony that has led to a strange placement of (classic) liberal and individualistic feminism, whetever they are attacked from (classic liberal) right or left.
Feminism an sich is not in opposition to classic liberal and individualistic ideas. This usually greatly surprises individuals who regard themselves as classic liberals, libertarians and individualists. It is as if feminism can’t constitute anything else than the popular vote, and thus a left-wing idea and ideological base. This means that classic liberal and individualistic feminism are attacked – from the right – with arguments that often aren’t relevant. The same is the case as a large part of the left-wing is consumed with the ever tiresome and selfproclaimed interpretation of feminism. Too often debates of feminism ends in suspicion of individualistfeminists being anti-feminists [as have happened to Cathy Young here] even though the arguments are valid through a classic liberal and individualistfeminist perspective. The odd thing is that even though that a legitimate and a valid feministic approach exists, individualistic feminism are treated variably and dependingly from where the attack comes from, either as:
1) as critical to main stream/contemporary (left wing) feminism, and thus as anti-feminism.
2) as contemporary feminism (left wing), and thus as incompatible with classic liberalism.
Neither is correct.
Related link tip: Cathy Young [etc]
***
There, Cathy – the Swedes support you! :-)
Thank you for providing the translation, Louise!
“…Jill gets pregnant….Jill gets pregnant again….”
Mm-hm.
Feminists are not to blame for the fact that sexism that prevents both men and women from equal participation in matters of military and war.
I attended a lecture on male violence and the male lecturer mentioned he thought the difference between “just wars” and “unjust wars.” was that in just wars every man, woman and child that is able to pick up anything they have to defend themselves by any means necessary does so to defend themselves. If war is only supposed to be justified as a last resort by people defending themselves and that’s not merely an excuse for imperlialism, then what you see is everyone in the community pulling together everything they have to stave off attackers.
In “unjust wars” it is mostly trained, armed men conscripted by wealthier men who do the fighting. Imperialism, racism and sexism are intertwined oppressions.
>>Jack is a classical musician who gives piano lessons and occasional recitals while working toward a career as a peormer; his live-in girlriend Jill is a ceramics painter who works as a secretary on the side. Jill gets pregnant and announces to Jack that while she would like to have the baby, she’ll get an abortion unless he gets a “real job” that will allow her to quit her secretarial job.>>
So Jack’s girlfriend says she will get an abortion and keep working if Jack wants to continue being a classical musician giving piano lessons. He apparently wants to be a father, so he decides to quit his vocation and get a paying job so that he can support his kids and the parent who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.
That bitch!
Daran: if you cannot envision why women would claim a need for greater equality without also envisioning that this said equality would subtract from men’s quality of life, then I believe you have wholly underscored that indeed there is a vast inequality for women. Men would have nothing to lose if women were trully equal. Your re-hashing of the social risks that men face is sophmoric in its blatent denial of who created and who currently maintains those risks. If you don’t like the draft, fight that; don’t bitch at feminists because they want greater social equality.
He apparently wants to be a father, so he decides to quit his vocation and get a paying job so that he can support his kids and the parent who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.
Actually, the scenario states that she’s giving up her secretarial job, not her ceramics painting. Seems like she hasn’t given up her art career.
[snort] Ron, take it from me. “Art” and “career” are frequently mutually exclusive, at least in this country. You can paint ceramics until your basement is six feet deep with post-Fiestaware. It does not follow that monied folk will beat a path to your door automatically.
You know better than that, so stop playing games.
“And I object to Ampersand’s silence about Donna’s silence.”
Hey, Amp, I was a sysop back in the day. My general attitude was, “If you don’t like it, try another board.” Not nearly as tactful as your replies, but sometimes brevity serves multiple purposes. I happen to think you’ve got a hell of a blog here; despite obvious disagreements between me and a number of the posters, the discourse is generally civil and informative. Seems to me that many of the tenets of feminism can be summarized as “No one has a right to demand something of you that you don’t want to give.” For any reason. I’d apply that right here. You are under no obligation to post, to respond to a post. Anyone who demands otherwise is being rude.
alsis39, I didn’t mean to imply that she was making a bunch of money off of the artwork. It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art. Whereas the scenario makes it clear that she did nothing of the sort. To say “who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.” is in direct variance with the stated scenario, where she continues to make ceramics and exhibit them.
And hey – if the ceramics painting DIDN’T pay, why couldn’t she have quit the ceramics painting and taken that time to do some kind of part-time work? Perhaps she could have taken more secretarial hours? I think this is the kind of question that the scenario was put forward to consider.
RonF: It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art
You’ve obviously never looked after a small child!
if Jill’s staying home to look after the baby, she has given up ceramics painting – for at least a year, if not longer. Looking after a small child is a full time, and exhausting, job.
“You’ve obviously never looked after a small child!”
I’ve taken care of kids. We’ve had two of our own. My wife and I both held down full-time jobs the entire time. We were quite lucky in that her place of employment had child care available. And I work with several women who have kids of various ages with various day-care arrangements. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who has given up work for a year or more after they’ve had a child; usually, they get the 6 weeks or whatever it is and then back to work. I work with one woman who has just had a child and is coming back part-time; she also has 3-year old triplets.
“if Jill’s staying home to look after the baby, she has given up ceramics painting – for at least a year, if not longer.”
Not according to the scenario:
Jill, meanwhile, is greatly enjoying being a stay-at-home mom (her own mother, who runs a day-care center, has offered to her discounted day care if she wants to go back to work, but she has refused) while continuing to paint and having her works displayed in exhibitions here and there.
Now, you want to argue with the plausibility of the scenario, go ahead. But don’t directly contradict it without saying so.
This is a strawman and possibly an hom. I’ve said nothing whatsoever about the effect of demands for equality upon men’s quality of life. To the extent that your remark is predicated upon the notion that I’m partizan in favour of men, it’s an ad hom.
My argument hasn’t been fully developed, but it is essentially that in order to sustain the claim that “current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism […] on balance disadvantages women”, feminism must deny, dismiss, and trivialise current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which disadvantages men; that feminism does deny, dismiss, and trivialise this; that this is offensive; and that it is counter-productive.
Women would have nothing t fear if the inequality and sexism which disadvantages men was recognised as such.
Another criticism I have of feminism is that it equates “(in)equality” with “(in)justice”, which leads (some) feminists into such grotesque positions as advocating the extension of the draft to women.
But that isn’t the argument I’ve been making up till now.
The risks are created by the same forces that create all other social structures. Each group and subgroup acts to organise society to it’s own benefit. There are other factors, most notably inertia. Social structures
However not all groups are equally powerful. The group of very rich, very powerful men dominate to such an extent that the rest of us are oppressed by it.
Do you agree with that? If so, where have I “blantently denied” it?
As I said before, I try to deal whatever part of the shitpile is within my reach. Right now, I seem to have a small audience. Some of that audience appear to be in favour of extending liability to any draft to women. That I haven’t addressed this point is solely due to the fact that I have too astonished and flabbergasted to summon up a response. Conscription is process whereby rich powerful men enslave poor powerless men for the purpose of oppressing other men and women. Now in the name of equality, some feminists here would like that extended to women? Equal opportunity to be enslaved? Equal opportunity to be forced to oppress others?? Equal opportunity to be forced to oppress other women??? ARE YOU MAD???
I believe that the hypothetical “Jack and Jill” that was posited stated that the woman who gave up her job did have showings at local galleries. That is the mark of a carreer.
Having said that Ron was correct in his quotation of the original posited hypothetical, I will say that the story is nice but not very realistic. I would love to quit my job and pursue my education full time. For financial reasons that isn’t feasible. My union job provides better benefits than my husband’s employment, and it takes both of our incomes to have enough left over to save for retirement.
In the real world Jill would likely go back to work when her baby was older. But the reality is that the situation would breed resentment between Jack and Jill, and a divorce would be the most probable outcome. And that begets an entire new set of realities for Jill and Jack.
Samantha:
With regards to the lecture you attended, your lecturer put forward his own definitions of what he thinks what “just” and “unjust” wars are. The statements “in just wars every man, woman and child that is able to pick up anything they have to defend themselves by any means necessary does so to defend themselves.” and “what you see is everyone in the community pulling together everything they have to stave off attackers.” conjure up a picture of an unorganized rabble trying to fight off an organized, well-armed invader. Is that a good thing? It appears that he believes that we should not maintain a standing army, one that is composed of “trained, armed men”? Does he think that having such and using it to defend our country is unjust?
I wonder what he thinks of our current military. It’s composed of trained and armed men and women, not just men. Additionally, it’s all volunteer, with no conscripts whatsoever. Is it just, or unjust? Set aside how it’s currently being used; that can be argued, I’ll concede.
Is there no justification for extending one’s army across one’s borders? According to the above definition, WW II was unjustified and imperialist, since Germany never invaded the United States. Should we not have gone to war and assisted France and Britian? Should we have waited until they invaded the United States to start arming?
Let’s look at a real-world scenario, one that’s currently playing out.
Iran is a formal theocracy. The religion they proseltyze forbids separation of Church and State. The government believes that their religion requires them to foment an “Islamic revolution” across the planet. The President of Iran has called for the destruction of Israel. Not a withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, but a complete wipe-out of Israel and it’s inhabitants. As expressed by that government, their religion permits the killing of any Jew, Christian, or any non-Moslem that does not accept their civil and spiritual authority. They are working very hard to create atomic weapons, and are using every diplomatic method to stave off any international efforts to make them stop until the question is moot. They are suspected to helping to fund terrorism world-wide, and the insurgent and terrorist activities in Iraq in particular.
What do you think Iran’s intent is?
What do you think Israel should do?
Men would have nothing to lose if women were truly equal.
Just thought it was something that would bear repeating. Of course, some men would lose something; those that couldn’t handle the competition for jobs, etc.
silverside, you failed to mention in your post the reason why those shelters were sued: they refused to admit male victims of domestic violence.
Daran:
Conscription is [a] process whereby rich powerful men enslave poor powerless men for the purpose of oppressing other men and women.
Conscription is a process whereby, with due process of law, citizens are required to give service in a way defined by the state. The purpose to which that service is put is entirely separate from the process.
BTW, slaves don’t get paid, don’t serve a fixed term and leave service, and don’t get bonuses to get encouraged to stay when they can otherwise leave. Conscripts, on the other hand, have a fixed term to their service. Slaves can’t vote, either.
What do you think would have happened if we’d tried to fight WW II without conscription? Do you think that the purpose of WW II was to oppress other men and women? Or was it to stop the oppression of other men and women?
Actually, I think that conscription might not be a bad idea. And I say this as someone who during the Vietnam War gleefully used his “2S” his first two years in college and his high draft number the last two years. But I’d change it a bit. To start, and this isn’t meant to be fully formed:
1) Everyone goes. Everyone. Male, female, married, single, hale, disabled, everything else. At age 18, everyone goes.
2) An array of different service opportunities are provided. Military, security, the Peace Corps, the old CCC, feeding the homeless, emptying out bedpans, teaching, building public works, etc. You only go in the military if you so choose.
Everyone puts in 2 or 3 years. Imagine what could be built. Imagine what we could all do for each other.
Then there’s the universal service option in “Starship Troopers”. There’s no conscription. But if you go into service (for purposes of this discussion, as above not necessarily the military), you’re a citizen. If you don’t, you’re a subject. The latter have all the rights of the former, with two exceptions; the rights to vote and to hold public office. No other laws can make a distinction between the two groups. That’s an interesting concept. Maybe too much subjugation of people to the State?
Daran: paint me confused. I thought above you were complaining that men had such heavy social risks as the draft… and somehow that should make the feminists all shut the hell up. As if men’s social risks automatically dismiss the need to address women’s risks and inequalities. You don’t make much sense.
Further, if I cannot fight for my country either through combat or worse case scenario, the draft, how fully equal am I to my male compatriots? If half the population views me as something to be protected (insert rollyeyes here), then accordingly laws, judicial processes, restrictions on physical and personal freedoms, all play out against me. As is the current case in the US (and pretty much everywhere else). You seem more horrified that we potentially want to be cannon fodder for the powerful white man, while all the while ignoring that fact that we *are* fucking cannon fodder already for all men. Men are raping women; men are beating women; men are killing women. There might be a very small percentage of women who do this to other women, but the numbers play out every freaking time: men brutalize women. And then men like you are horrified that we think we should be part of the draft process.
Me personally, I want every women in the US to know how to load, aim, and shoot a gun. And that every spineless misogynistic male out there knew that we have this knowledge. And not get all hyperbolic about the grotesqueness of our wanting to join in the battle. We’re already in the battle; it’s called the status quo.
>>alsis39, I didn’t mean to imply that she was making a bunch of money off of the artwork. It simply seemed to me that the poster I was responding to presumed that post-partum, Jill would be giving up her art. Whereas the scenario makes it clear that she did nothing of the sort. To say “who, we may assume, has given up her art career to parent their child.” is in direct variance with the stated scenario, where she continues to make ceramics and exhibit them.>>
…Which is yet another place where his scenario takes a detour from reality. I sincerely doubt the man knows a damn thing about maintaining a studio, exhibiting art, health restrictions during pregnancy (hint: heavy metals in pigments), or trying to mother a small child (or two) and create art on a professional basis at the same time–especially if the art in question is as labor-intensive as ceramic art. A woman in Jill’s situation would very likely face the same creative roadblocks as Jack; the only reason “the scenario” doesn’t mention that is that the guy who wrote the scenario is extremely biased.
>>Now, you want to argue with the plausibility of the scenario, go ahead. But don’t directly contradict it without saying so. >>
Okay: the scenario is completely implausible. Most people cannot make or market art and run around after children at the same time. Most people cannot run around after children and expect to have the energy to create when your spouse gets home. Don’t even get me started on the “grandma, who lives locally and just happens to run a daycare center, would be overjoyed to care for the kids for free.” Since it would be an insult to Daran’s intelligence to pretend that Jill’s continued ability to do art has anything to do with reality, I chose to go with the much more sane premise that a full-time mom has no more opportunity to fire pots than a full-time banker has opportunity to strum guitars.
>>And hey – if the ceramics painting DIDN’T pay, why couldn’t she have quit the ceramics painting and taken that time to do some kind of part-time work? Perhaps she could have taken more secretarial hours? I think this is the kind of question that the scenario was put forward to consider. >>
Because she was taking care of the kids, is why. That’s her job in this story. Jack clearly never considered staying home to watch his children himself (see how annoying that kind of reasoning is? “It’s not covered in the poorly-written scenario, therefore it’s not worth commenting on”). There are many implausibilities around this whole setup, but it doesn’t assist with the “What to do about supporting a family?” question by ignoring most of the choices available to Jack, and arguing as though all of this has simply happened to him.
It doesn’t pay, generally speaking. Most people who sincerely love art and do art do not make money off of creating it. Given the amount of money you have to pump into an art form like ceramics, Jill would be lucky to break even. And with two children, it is extremely unlikely that Jill would have been able to continue making art–especially this kind of art–on the basis described in the scenario; it would have been the equivalent of coming back to work without putting your children in daycare.
Jaketk you’re being dishonest again. Those guys wanted access to women’s shelters when they could have formed thier own or gone to gay men’s shelters. Their purpose was to harass women. Try again.
ginmar, why do i sense you did not read the article? it is illegal to discriminate against a person because of his gender, particularly when it comes to publicly-funded facilities. the shelters even defended their discrimination against males; they jumped from denial to admission, and rather quickly at that. it is not harrassment to sue when denied access to public health services due to bias against one’s gender. unless you support such discrimination, i cannot see how i am dishonest. try again.
Conscription is a process whereby, with due process of law, citizens are required to give service in a way defined by the state. The purpose to which that service is put is entirely separate from the process.
BTW, slaves don’t get paid, don’t serve a fixed term and leave service, and don’t get bonuses to get encouraged to stay when they can otherwise leave. Conscripts, on the other hand, have a fixed term to their service. Slaves can’t vote, either.
It is still involuntary servitude. The mark of conscription is that people are forced against their will to serve. It is a statement that the state owns you, and has the right to demand service from you.
And by the way “slaves don’t get paid” refers to a very limited concept of slavery. What defines slavery is that someone else has total control over your life, not that you get no pay.
what is the provenance of ifeminist? and is it too late to suggest a change for the better in common usage?
all of these cutely-prefixed terms (especially those that begin with e or i) have a very limited shelf-life. in general, they faded with the close of the late nineties internet boom.
Thanks for the translation of the Swedish article, Louise — I was going to ask a Swedish correspondent to translate it for me, but you’ve saved me the trouble.
Barry, I’ve looked at the NVAW study you reference; actually, the tables on p. 29 and 30 say that some of the numbers pertatining to abuse in same-sex couples are statistically significant and other are not (with a standard error rate of 30%). Clearly more studies on this subject are needed.
As for the “Jack and Jill” example: I find it amusing that while most people here presumably think there’s nothing wrong with mothers with young children working outside the home, now we’re seeing arguments that a woman can’t possibly take care of a small child and paint at home. Maybe you didn’t notice that I said that before they had a baby, “Jill” worked as a secretary while painting? (I have another friend who has a full-time office job and also paints and has occasional showings.) Now she takes care of children while painting. It’s not really a “career” — she makes maybe $500 a year selling her stuff. And who says that “Jack” never considered staying home? My experience is that today, most men under 35 are at least aware that that’s an option. To have him stay home was not an option TO “JILL.” By the way, I also didn’t say that grandma had offered to take care of the children “for free,” I said that she offered discounted day care. (And if someone thinks it’s implausible that a woman with kids would live close to her mother who runs a day care center… all I can say is, my former next-door neighbor had her two kids in a preschool run by her sister.) The point is — “Jill” is leading exactly the kind of life she wants, while “Jack” is not.
And no, of course I’m not saying that that’s true of all male breadwinner/female homemaker families. I myself, in the same comment where I described the “Jack and Jill” situation, described another situation I know of in which it’s clearly the husband’s preference and not the wife for the wife to stay home.
daran,
i guess…thanks for your praise and for letting me know that i’m right in my intuition that i’m not the only one who was hurt by the stud/”nice guy” dichotomy. it is particularly cruel to a young man who just wants to be respectful. i was probably 25 before i realized that showing sexual interest in an appropriate (in age, relative social position, etc.) woman can be done in a way that does not necessarily consitute harrassment. i really believed that was impossible, and i really believed that admitting my sexual interest to female friends would probably cost me friendships that i highly valued.
on the other hand, daran…sorry buddy…but i think you’re wrong about the whole “men have it worse because of war” thing. i don’t think white, heterosexual men (and you may or may not be in either of those categories, i know) can really fathom what it’s like to be on the daily (that’s the key word) receiving end of system oppression. the rage, the helplessness, the loss of self-worth…unimaginable.
and that’s why the whole men’s rights idea is so crazy to me. it’s like when the christians claim to be persecuted by the secular left. you can’t be persecuted when your, hello, president actively courts your votes and professes your beliefs. the men’s rights groups are IMHO clearly just men thrashing around in fear of losing control to a situation of (hopefully) equity with women. in fact, their very thrashing is evidence to me of how bad systemic oppression is. as soon as they lose just a little of their privilege, they’re all up in arms about it. so how can we blame women for organizing a movement of their own when they’re told they can’t vote/drive/holdajob/controltheirbodies/befreefromrape?
i know a lot of smart, caring, non-manipulative women. they tell me systemic oppression is bad. not out of a desire to gain power…just out of telling the truth. who am i to disbelieve them?
Cathy, I don’t disagree. But let’s be accurate: specifically, exhibit 8 (on page 29) says that the “differences between same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants are statistically significant” for the catagories of phyiscal assault by a intimate partner, and total victimization by a intimate partner. In other words, for exactly the thing we’re discussing – the differences in rates of abuse between same-sex and opposite sex cohabitants – the numbers are statistically significant.
In other areas – such as the exact percentage of lesbians raped in their lifetime – the standard error rate is 30%. I think that future surveys could improve on that by oversampling lesbian and gay subjects, and that would make for a better survey. But just because not every result in the NVAW is statistically significant, isn’t a reason to throw away the results which are.
What bothers me is, based on a non-random sample based on handing out surveys at a radical feminist music festival, you said with great certainty that it was a “fact” that abuse is as high among lesbian couples as it is among straight couples. But when faced with a study that has clearly superior methodology, and which is statistically significant for that exact comparison, you’re suddenly switching positions and saying we can’t draw any conclusions. I don’t think that’s very logical.
ummm…so those italics should just have been for the word “president”. whoops.
[Don’t worry, I fixed it. –Amp]
I think it stands for “individualist feminism.”
That would be up to Wendy McElroy, who coined the word and (I think) owns the ifeminist website. She’s been using the word for years now, though, so I doubt she’d be eager to change it.
I don’t think that debating the specifics of Jack and Jill’s case makes much sense. Cathy’s point, if I understood it, is that there are individual couples for whom the standard gender roles end up benefiting the woman while being negative for the man.
Regardless of the details of Cathy’s example, surely the general point she’s making is correct. There are individual women who love nothing more than being home and raising children (yes, it’s hard work, but some people find it immensely rewarding); and there are individual men who hate their jobs and feel stuck in a life they don’t like due to their “family breadwinner” responsibilities.
Assuming that at least some of the former women and latter men have gotten married and started families – which seems like a pretty damn safe assumption to me – the general point Cathy was making with Jack and Jill – that in some individual cases, women benefit and men get screwed by patriarchal family roles – is true.
And it’s also true, as Cathy points out, that the reverse (hubbies doing well, wives getting screwed over) also happens.
Barry: actually, the statistically significant comparisons on p. 29 are the ones showing that both women and men who have been (or currently are) in same-sex relationships have higher lifetime rates of partner abuse than those who have been in heterosexual relationships only. The “catch” is that a further breakdown shows that the lesbian and bisexual women in the study were much more likely to have been abused by a male partner than a female one — but those numbers are the ones that have a high error rate. At least that’s how I’m reading the tables — am I wrong?
In any case, I’ll concede your point. I had not seen the NVAW figures before (the two NVAW-based reports I had read did not analyze the numbers of same-sex intimate violence) and I had repeatedly seen, in highly reputable sources, the assertion that gay and lesbian couples have rates of abuse similar to heterosexual couples. So yes, I was too categorical in asserting the latter as fact, and I was too defensive about disputing the NVAW figures. I don’t think the NVAWS is the last word (and I think you agree with me), so it would be accurate to say that we don’t konw what the facts are at this point.
piny:
I haven’t made any comment on this branch of the discussion. It must have been someone else’s intelligence getting insulted. :-)
Cathy: Okay, that’s certainly reasonable.
Regarding the “anti-feminist feminist” thing, I haven’t been persuaded that it’s an unfair or inaccurate term.
However, clearly you disagree, and I don’t want to be uncivil. I’ll try to avoid using the term in reference to you from now on.
Barry, thanks. I appreciate it.
And by the way, I’ll grant that I’ve sometimes made overly sweeping statements about “feminists”/”feminism” — I’ll try to be more careful with that too.
Many misconceptions about history and conscription here:
Daran:
It’s not that simple. I am a Finn. There is (male-only) conscription in Finland. It is also rather popular (IIRC, 87% of Finns support the current system, with men being more in favor of conscription than women). Reason for the support is (historically justified) fear of Russia (again) deciding an attempt to conquer Finland. Almost no one would support any offensive war here (oppressing other men and women). Of course, that risk has greatly lessened since WW2, but many still remember the Winter War.
That said, I still agree that on a theoretical,moral field consciption is wrong (check post 164 by Glaivester, for those reasons). In short, conscription here exist as a safeguard against oppression, but it arguably is oppression in itself. The question is whether it is the lesser evil (I would be biased toward thinking that) or not (I see the point in thinking that, too).
RonF:
The “rabble” can get organized. There is no rule against that. Remember that the British Redcoats were more professional than the ragtag Continental Army, and look what happened. It’s damn hard to fight a people that are unified and fighting for their homes and freedom. The “just” side has great advantage in terms of morale and finding new recruits. They are also less likely to care about economic disadvantages of fighting a long war.
I don’t think anyone argued that the defending side must stay firmly inside their borders. It bears remembering that technically Germany started the war against the U. S, Hitler declared war after Pearl Harbor (which must have been very convenient for FDR). Of course, the U. S was already veryinvolved indirectly in the war (economic aid to Britain, Lend-lease to the Soviet Union etc.).
Okay, I went way off-topic here…
And of course, on the waiting for Germany to invade the United States: Very unlikely. More likely is a scenario in which the Soviet Counteroffensive would not only take whole Eastern Europe and and East Germany, but the whole Europe (save Great Britain, perhaps). The Nazi’s future was bleak even before United States joined (because of the Eastern Front). But that also means that you probably saved Western Europe from Stalin.
I don’t know how much of my life story to tell, in response to this.
I never dated a girl until I was twenty one. She was a year older. We used to cuddle a lot and kiss, but she made it explicitly clear that I was not to be sexually aroused while we were making out, that I was never ever to put my hands inside her clothing, never ever to touch her breasts outside her clothing, never ever to see her naked. Of course, we would never have sex. She could put her hands inside my shirt, and on a few occasions she got sexually aroused, but would shortly stop me from doing whatever it was that was pushing her button (rubbing her back, mostly, which seems a strange place to find an erogenous zone, but there you go). If ever I got aroused, I had to disengage instantly. There were also a whole lot of other ‘rules’ that had to be obeyed with her, that didn’t related to the relationship side of things, but were still utterly oppressive. The rules relaxed a little towards the end (I could touch her breasts outside her clothing provided I didn’t grope in an overt way, I was still not permitted to get aroused.)
That relationship continued for several years. When we rowed (are you surprised?) sometimes she’d beat me. I never lifted a finger against her, nor even moved to protect myself. The relationship It ended more or less when I was twenty six, After I was detained in a mental hospital. She told me she couldn’t stand my behaviour any longer.
I lost my job, and my home, while I was in hospital. The hospital itself was abusive, and the trauma of that left me unable to work. That was fifteen years ago. I haven’t worked properly since.
When I was twenty-eight, and in an employment rehabilitation program, I started dating a young woman of nineteen. She made the first contact, via a go-between. I didn’t believe the go-between to start with. I thought she was taking the piss. When we dated I carried on as if the rules of the earlier relationship were still in force It never occured to me that there might be some other way to behave with a girlfriend.
There was no distinct ending to that relationship. We sort of drifted apart. I guess she got fed up with waiting for me to make a move.
My thirty-third year was a good one, on the relationship front. I took a young woman to dinner after a martial arts practice session. We ended up making out in an otherwise deserted hotel restaurant. Eventually, I got round to putting my hand up the back of her cardigan. No bra. (She’d definitely been wearing one earlier. You don’t do martial arts without one, if you’re female). Quite how I got to do that, I have no idea. Eventually I tried moving my hands round to the front, but careful not to touch anything. She let me do that too. Finally I wised up. Unfortunately, it had taken me all evening to get that far, and they wanted to shut the place up. It still didn’t occur to me that we could carry on back at her place (not at mine, because at that time I had moved back in with my parents.) Didn’t occur to her either, or maybe it did, but she never said anything. Never went back to practice either. Probably thought that was easier than having to deal with the guy who turned out to be such a tosspot on the date.
Still, I got to feel a woman’s bare breasts for the first time in my life.
This is turning into an epic, which wasn’t what I intended. I try to be more brief.
Later that year, I lost my virginity, in the most technical of technical senses, in a on-night stand. She picked me up. (There was still no way that I would approach anyone). Said she was twenty.
It was nearly impossible to get hard. I barely penetrated the once before losing it, and ended up bringing her off orally and digitally. I tried to contact her again, but she didn’t respond.
Still I got to touch a woman’s genitals for the first time, and I was no longer a virgin. Sorta. I still felt like one.
Later that year. (Hey, I was on a roll) I got into a relationship with an older woman. Again she made the first actual move. That relationship, consisted basically of us fucking like rabbits at every possible opportunity. That obviously met a need in her. (I had had no idea that women had needs like that). It certainly met a need in me. Despite the sense of manic urgency, I still struggled to get a hard-on or ejaculate inside her, or even in her presence. I used to have her leave the bedroom, so that I could masturbate almost to orgasm, then call her back in in a deparate rush to ‘get it in’ before it was too late.
It was two years, before I could come inside her, and I remember the first time. Thirty four years old, and for the first time in my life, I felt like a man.
That relationship ended three years ago – my doing. It had run its course. She was disappointed and inevitably hurt, though I did my best to end it properly with her, and not just dump her. We remained friends. I have no regrets over that relationship: Not with having it, not with ending it, not with how it ended. I do, however, miss the sex. I’ve not had a relationship since then.
White, heterosexual, British.
can really fathom what it’s like to be on the daily (that’s the key word) receiving end of system oppression. the rage, the helplessness, the loss of self-worth…unimaginable.
I remember when I was a teen, walking the street, head bowed, arms clasped about me, mouthing the word “cunt” over and over and over again to myself, because that was what I felt I was. (Cue feminist discussion about how a word for the female genitals is such at term of opprobrium when applied to a person).
So pardon me, but I do know about rage, helplessness, loss of self-worth, and so on.
Let me tell you about my friend S. She’s a single working mother. Unsurprisingly she struggles, and I give her as much practical help with her life as I can. I’m an emergency baby-sitter, an emergency driver. I lent her my car when hers was smashed up, fix her computer when it crashes. help her with money management and with dealing with officialdom. I do a lot of stuff for her, and there’s not a lot practically she can do for me. (She cuts my hair every couple of months. And that’s it.) But that’s OK. I don’t want practical help from her. What I’d like is sex and affection and friendship. Well, I get the friendship. I did try to take it further (which was a terrifying thing to try to do) but got slapped right down.
We have another mutual friend. He’s a great Guy, but as far as I can see, he doesn’t help her much. They’re not dating or anything, but she lavishes him with physical attention. Right in front of me. My need for love and sex and attention is not being met, and she rubs my nose in it daily, systematically, oppressively.
(Cue feminist argument that men don’t need sex.)
She’s not a bad person, and she certainly doesn’t intend to upset me. It’s hard to convey emotion in a text post, but I’m sitting here in tears, and I’ve had to stop several times just to be able to get through this.
Bullshit.
Your, hello, president is about as far from my beliefs as it is possible to be, and my hello Prime Minister has his tongue so far up your hello president’s arse that you can see it flapping around his tonsils. Tony Blair can court all he likes, he will never ever ever get my vote.
What the hell has any of this got to do with anything I’ve said?
I’m telling you that systematic oppression is bad, and I can’t get you to believe me, because I’ve got a white skin, and I’m male.
Sometimes, people that we like don’t like us back. Sometimes, they even like other people. That’s not oppression; that’s just a fact of human existance.
Jaketk, why should I read an article from a guy who’s previously exhibited troll-like behavior and who now asserts how wrong and unfair it is that male ‘victims’–in reality MRAs—-can’t shut down womens’ shelters?
I’ve worked with and helped victims of domestic violence, both male and female. I’ve found repeatedly that MRAs have absolutely no interest in helping male victims. None. Your experience is different? I have only your credibility here to judge you on, and you still haven’t responded to what I said. Could it be you’re trying to avoid dealing with that?
I’m sorry everyone. I never intended for this to be about me, and it’s too painful.
Thanks to you all for receiving me so graciously, and I’m sorry that I was able to respond to so little of what I wanted. Thank you, Ampersand, for providing this blog.
Goodbye.
“The ‘rabble’ can get organized. There is no rule against that. Remember that the British Redcoats were more professional than the ragtag Continental Army, and look what happened.”
Yeah, they would have lost big time without assistance from France, both on land and on sea.
Warfare has changed in the last 200 years. A lot. Communications, armaments, transportation.
“It’s damn hard to fight a people that are unified and fighting for their homes and freedom.”
Back in 1775, the American farmer and the British soldier had essentially the same personal arms. But these days, you’d have a rabble with maybe some hunting rifles, shotguns and handguns facing soldiers with AK-47s or M-16s and body armor. That’s a lot more uneven. Add in .50 arms, tanks, gunships and other aerial support, medical support, etc., and the rabble has to quickly fall back on guerilla tactics.
“The ‘just’ side has great advantage in terms of morale and finding new recruits. They are also less likely to care about economic disadvantages of fighting a long war.”
That’s presuming that they’ll be in for a long war. Plus, these days, the “unjust” side likely sees themselves as God’s army and figure that getting killed is an express-train trip to Heaven. That’s a pretty good morale builder.
Not that I expect that a foreign army would have an easy time overrunning the U.S. even if the U.S. did not have a standing army. Unlike Iraq, most Americans would be in favor of retaining their present form of government. But the existence of a standing army greatly discourages anyone from trying it and would also greatly reduce the number of casualities (especially civilian ones) if it was tried. Depending on unorganized, untrained civilians to defend the U.S. is a strategy calculated to maximize the likelihood of someone trying to attack us and maximize the number of deaths should such an attack be tried.
Q Grrl wrote:
“Me personally, I want every women in the US to know how to load, aim, and shoot a gun.”
Hear, hear! Great idea. Make sure they know how to maintain them, too (especially cleaning). I’m all for people being justified in using deadly force to defend against rape.
Shooting can be fun. I’ve fired black-powder muzzle loaders and .22 rifles at targets, but the most fun was shooting skeet. Check for a local shooting club and I’ll bet that you’ll find they have shooting classes specifically for novices. I have heard of classes specifically for women; apparently some women prefer that, and I have read that there are some issues with upper body strength and shoulder width that need to be paid attention to during instruction that instructors who have generally dealt with men are not always aware of.
So, Q Grrl, where are you on concealed carry? Gonna be hard to deal with a rapist in that fashion if you don’t have your gun with you. I’m “shall-issue”, myself.
Amp, I haven’t read all the posts here in detail, but you were the first person to use “MRA” in a post and I haven’t seen what that acronym stands for.
Daran, thank you for sharing your story. Sincerely.
RonF, “MRA” stands for “men’s rights activist.”
RonF:
Well, such “strategy” is not advocated by anyone with IQ superior to an amoeba, so I’m not sure why you needed to tell me that…
Also, I have to wonder: Does the word guerilla, and/or the concept of guerilla warfare carry a negative stigma in the US? Lot of training I received as a conscript were on guerilla tactics and fighting in less than optimal conditions.
I’d have some objections to some of the other stuff you wrote (except the French [good point!], and that warfare has changed in 200 years [doh!]), like whether it is a benefit or a liability to have soldiers who are eager to get themselves killed, etc.) But I’m not sure if this is the right place for that. Thanks for the well-written response, but I’m afraid I’ll bow out on those subjects.
As for gun for defense against rape: It would be hard to prove that the man intented to rape, no? But I suppose it might scare some of the rapist assholes into not raping…
I’d like to know something about this statement:
Is it feminist or anti-feminist?
I personally would call that statement, taken in isolation, a feminist statement.
The statement argues that women are not entitled to lifetime support upon marriage, but NOW lobbies state legislatures for exactly that – alimony without end.
Is NOW an anti-feminist organization?
Daran: >>I haven’t made any comment on this branch of the discussion. It must have been someone else’s intelligence getting insulted. :-) >>
Whoops. Sorry. _Cathy Young_ is the person who posited the scenario involving two people sharing a marriage and two children but not the same plane of existence.
No, it is not, in my opinion.
What’s your point?
I believe that Cathy Young agrees with the statement I quoted, which you admit is feminist. Yet NOW disagrees with it, and has in fact denounced it. Yet you say Cathy is anti-feminist and NOW is feminist.
It seems to me that there are currently many types of feminism, and it’s not really proper for people who adhere to one type to denounce those who adhere to other types as “anti-feminist.”
The statement in question was, of course, part of NOW’s Statement of Principles from its founding in 1966. Most of that statement has been repudiated by NOW’s current leadership, but it’s still accepted by people like Cathy and Wendy who seem to get current feminist leadership very angry. The rejection of these principles of equality in favor of principles of permanent entitlement has caused many to reject the feminist label, and for others to argue with the leadership of contemporary “feminist” organizations.
All organizations and movements that are not intentionally and specifically right-wing will drift politically leftwards over time. It’s not surprising that NOW obeys this iron law of political deterioration. ;)
I do tend to agree that there is a lot of “you can’t be a feminist because…” going on. That purity-purge is part and parcel of a leftward drift.
Richard, feminism isn’t a light switch. It’s not black or white. Nor is it monolithic and uniform. It’s possible to have two statements that disagree with one another and have both of them be feminist statements.
—Myca
Richard, out of curiosity, could you please provide me a link of NOW denoucing that statement? I’d be interested to read it.
I’ve never said that feminists can’t disagree, or that merely criticizing a statement made by a feminist makes one an anti-feminist. If I had ever said such a thing, then you would indeed have caught me in a contradiction; but since I’ve never said anything of the sort, you don’t even have a shadow of a logical case here.
NOW, at both of the points in time you’re talking about, would agree with the statement that “there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism which on balance disadvantages women.” In my view, you have to agree with that statement to be a feminist.
NOW can agree with that statement; therefore I consider NOW a feminist group. However, neither Cathy nor Wendy would agree with that statement. Therefore, I personally don’t consider Cathy and Wendy feminists.
Myca, tell that to Barry, he’s the one branding heretics as “anti-feminist”, not me.
I would venture to say that the bulk* of fathers’ rights advocates agree with the statement I quoted, and that they are in fact the true heirs of NOW circa 1966.
*excluding religious nutters like the Fathers’ Manifesto crowd who have no involvement in the political system.
Robert wrote: I do tend to agree that there is a lot of “you can’t be a feminist because…” going on. That purity-purge is part and parcel of a leftward drift.
It’s interesting that neither you, nor Cathy, nor any other critic of me here has repsonded to this from my post, even though I made it clear in my post that this was an important matter:
You seem to be saying that if I think feminism has any meaning at all, then I’m performing a “purge.” That’s bullshit, Robert. And the standard you’re using is one that you’d never dream of applying to any group you considered yourself a member of.
Barry, the last time I checked NOW had a statement on their web site to the effect that the 1966 document was “historical” and did not represent the views of NOW any longer.
The trouble with this discussion is that feminism is first and foremost a philosophy or set of principles, and only secondarily an analysis of current events. Whenever people want to discuss the principles in order to criticize the direction of some of these organizations, they’re immediately met with a wall of assertions about the state of the world and have to drop the philosophical discussion in favor of endless minutiae about the methodologies in particular studies and what not.
This tactic has the effect of shutting down the discussion of philosophy and limits the discourse to the small elite that subscribes to Nexis or a similar academic search service, and it does very little to advance the discussion. Certainly there are areas in which men are advantaged and there are areas in which women are advantaged. But science can’t tell us exactly what they are because it can’t define the desirable state of each man and each woman. That’s where the philosophy comes in.
There was an editorial and a book a few years ago contrasting the approaches taken by the US feminist movement and the French feminist movement which argued, more or less, that the French wanted to improve the lives of typical working mothers and did so through the creation of a “mommy track” in employment. US feminists have by and large rejected the “mommy track” in favor of an effort to increase the number of female CEOs and law partners.
“Mommy track” improves the lives of many women, but the “CEO track” improves the lives of very few. This is the sort of debate that should be possible within the confines of feminist philosophy without anybody getting labeled “anti-feminist”.
Richard, the use of langauge like “heretic” – not to mention using it in the third person, in a contempt-filled tone – is both rude and needlessly inflammatory. Please refrain from using such language to refer to me on my blog, in the future.
If you’re unable to do that, or if you lack the perception necessary to tell insulting language apart from non-insulting language, then please stop posting to my blog. You have your own blog in which you can post about me in whatever language you wish.