I wonder how long it will take for a possible thread of this post to turn into a “oh, wah, you’re forgetting about the violence and abuses men suffer,” flame war. Though this post is about violence against women and the “uniqueness” and seriousness of this problem. We do live in a culture and face a legal and political system that puts women and girls at a disadvantage, and regard our civil rights to be easily compromised when certain politicians view them to be too much of an inconvenience to preserve. But it’s really difficult to discuss the subject of violence against women, as it almost always–when it’s brought up by women–turns into an accusation against those women for “being sexist,” and an embarrassing placation to certain men in the audience. Why do we have to make sure we don’t “hurt men’s feelings” or “offend them” when talking about violence against women just so we can even discuss it to begin with?
Raising awarenss about violence against women and girls–specifically in the home–and taking steps to prevent it, forces us to confront the misogyny and male privilege within our culture, and our legal and political system’s patriarchal tendancies. Gosh, and why dare cite, question, and criticize those little realities? It’s never a pretty site when confronting and acknowledging how our culture and society perpetuates violence against women through its treatment of us, and our calls for more awareness and prevention are often dismissed as “female hysteria.” Especially when you point out that most of this violence is committed by men and is condoned by the “boys will be boys” mentality of our culture. Oh no, then you’re called a man-hater, a bigot, and a sexist for pointing that out! Best of all the whole problem is often minimalized when some people make statements such as, “oh, domestic violence happens to men too,” (though on a lower scale), as an attempt to derail the entire issue–if not, completely suppress it. As with women being its focal point and this specifically effecting us, why even bother addressing this problem and the social factors that contribute to it at all? Or you could, and just marginalize it, so you can get away with ignoring the real issue all together.
Here’s V-Day: Until the Violence Stops with more on the issue of violence being directed specifically against women and girls, and some sources and statistics.
Violence Against Women Statistics
The fact that numerous studies and reports are done on violence against women and have resulted in equally numerous statistics emphasizes that violence against women is a serious problem plaguing the world’s women and girls. Some statistics are more relevant, reliable or telling than others and similar statistics from different studies or reports can seem to conflict with one another. This is because there are several variables that affect the collection of data and the formulation of statistics: the size of a study’s sample, the duration of the study, how recent the study is, the location of the study, the words used in the questions, the definitions of key terms, among many others factors. So, when using any statistics, cite them accurately, use them in the appropriate context, and be aware of their vulnerabilities.
Following are a selection of the best web sites at which to find and verify violence against women statistics:
World Health Organization
Department of Justice
Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Office
Department of Justice’s On-line Resources
RAINN
Feminist.com
Family Violence Prevention Fund
*Great* post! Just wanted to draw attention to another part of the v-day site which I found oddly moving:
When the violence stops, women and girls will be:
Allowed to be born in China, India And Korea
Swimming in Iran
Safe in their beds at home in the United States, Europe and Asia
Eating ice cream in Afghanistan
Keeping their clitorises in Africa and Asia
Wearing blue jeans in Italy
Voting in Kuwait
Walking in the park at night in the United States
Openly flirting in Jordan
Safe at parties on college campuses
Playing with toys and not being sold as them in Asia, the United States, Europe and Eastern Europe
Driving cars in Saudi Arabia
Wearing trousers in Swaziland
Safely walking home from work in Juarez, Mexico
Enjoying sex
Celebrating their desires
Loving their bodies
Running the world
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/vworld
Because, don’t you know? It’s not important unless it happens to a man. It’s so much worse when it happens to a man—because it’s not supposed to happen to men, you know. The unspoken other half of that statement must be that violence against women is normal, if it’s abnormal to happen to men.
Funny thing about those guys that need to be placated, though. They never want to talk about male violence against other men, because it’s not like male violence isn’t common. Nope. They only want to talk about female violence against men.
Exceptionists have another dirty little secret, too, and it’s so obvious it gets missed. Being the exception makes them simple. Being the exception gets them patted and cooed at and makes them the center of attention.
People who bitch about violence against men, too, never seem to get off their asses and do anything about it. I find that mentioning that shuts them up. They try and say that women should do it because women commited the crime, but men didn’t fund womens’ shelters, why should the opposite apply?
I just warn people and ban them if they persist. This, of course, leads to the popular tactic of charging that feminists stifle dissent.
If these people devoted half as much time to solving these problems as they do to avoiding them, we’d have all the shelters we need. Instead the stark numbers of what’s actually going on make them so uncomfortable, that by God reality must be dismissed so little pookums feels better. Thousands of women may be affected by that, but pookums is more important.
Then they tell you that male privelege doesn’t exist. They don’t feel priveleged, they say. And they’ll argue they’re not priveleged till the original topic is forgotten or until you ban them.
I give it ten comments before someone tries it, perhaps literally in the case of ‘someone.’
I think it might be appropriate to link to an earlier post of Amp’s on guilt associated with male privelege. But I’m on my way out the door and don’t have time to find it… anyone else have a few minutes?
Did you mean this one?
Ginmar: stifiling dissent would be keeping them from publishing what they want where they want. You can’t do that, so you can’t stifle dissent.
As for violence against men, what I want to know is, if these mens rights asstivists, uh, activists are so concerned with violence against men, why aren’t they joining up with the gay community, which sadly has too much experience in the area?
I can think of two good answers: one, they hate fags, two, they’re really just trying to bash feminism, and this is a convenient excuse.
What they want, I guess, is to dissent with other people on their turf on their terms about their subjects. Which isn’t a sign of being spoiled rotten at all.
I looked around for days to find a shelter for this one guy. I found lots of MRAs, including that guy who appeared in Time magazine. It took him two days to get back to me, even though I left three phone numbers, told him it was an emergency, and then finally had to call back before I could talk to him. He had no idea. He just wasn’t interested in this guy I wasn’t trying to help. Not at all.
Yeah, it’s kind of a glaring hole in their arguments.
Jeez, where are the old Roman virtues? A tandem of cranks whine and you folks act like the words “violence against women” have been put on some Index of Proscribed Phrases. Ignore these assholes!! You are under no obligation to “be nice” to men. It would, however, be awfully cricket to recognize that the number of our friends who demand this are very small indeed and act accordingly. We are in a struggle because we have enemies. Would it were otherwise, but it ain’t and complaining of some obligation to coddle men’s feelings—an obligation I find more putative than substantative—is counterproductive, even if reassuring.
Well, hey, it shouldn’t bother any of us now that that’s been taken care of.
But… but not only do us guys sometimes suffer from violence, we can’t always get laid when we want to! It’s awful!
Check out this lovely rhetoric.
There seems to be a kind of statistical dyslexia that people get when feminists start talking about male violence. The statement “Most violent crimes are committed by men”? is often misheard as “most men are violent,”? or even with a kind of gender dyslexia, as “women are never violent.”?
Jennie Ruby squarely addresses one of the more annoying knee-jerk responses in coining “male-pattern violence.” Like “male-pattern baldness,” it can occur in both genders, but the archetype is gendered and its the gender roles that must be challenged.
I’m assuming DP in SF lives in the lovely City by the Bay, where you don’t have to deal with the thousands of “regular folks” who believe that “feminists have won” and “men are under attack.” Perhaps they all moved to the supposedly liberal Midwestern city I live in.
I have a question for Pseudo-Adrienne (and Amp)
From Jennie Ruby’s article, on steps we can take to reframe this issue
4. Wherever possible, present statistics about violence in ways that clearly indicate the gender of the perpetrator, not just of the victim: Instead of “Every 15 minutes a woman is raped,”? which makes rape seem like a female problem, try “Every 15 minutes, a man rapes a woman.”? Or better: “Every 15 minutes, a man commits a rape.”
I’d love to see a thread about why the press always discusses rape using the passive voice, ie a person was raped rather than someone committed a rape (particularly since most journalism classes teach you to avoid using the passive voice wherever possible). I’m not quite sure where the proper place would be to start this conversation, though, given that the rape culture thread was closed. amp, Pseudo-Adrienne, any ideas? I’d also love to see a thread that addresses the notion that “very few men commit rape”, which cropped up over and over again in the other thread. If it’s true that 80% plus of rapes involve people who know each other then it seems unlikely that a small number of perps could be committing all of them, and if that’s true then mathmatically speaking there must actually be a very large number of men who rape. Why then do we see the idea that only a very small percentage of men rape repeated so often? It would seem to me that if about 1 in 4 women are raped, then surely there must be a similar number of men who comit rape?
I know that the last thread got bogged down with diversions, but maybe it’s worth opening a new one?
Jesse K
Unfortunately even in our lovely city by the bay we have our share of anti-feminists. Glen Sacks and Michael Savage both broadcast from here. Not a great advertisment for our city at all.
Thanks BritGirlSF for the idea. That does sound a bit more progressive in the ways of raising awareness for violence against women, as most of it is perpetrated by men. Of course anti-feminist (and even some liberal/progressive) men would shit a brick about it because–gasp–it calls for a little male responsibility! Even though violence against women is mostly committed by men, never dare to point that out, nor call for any ways to educate men and young guys on why it’s wrong to commit acts of violence against women (or other men and guys in general). And yes, since most this violence is committed by a mere, small fraction of the male population, these crimes are committed by the same group of guys over and over again. I’ll think about a possible thread of this “passive voice” usage whenever discussing violence against women and girls. Thanks again, BritGirlSF.
“I’d love to see a thread about why the press always discusses rape using the passive voice, ie a person was raped rather than someone committed a rape”
It happens in domestic violence too – women are always being abused by ‘living in a violent home’ rather than by an abusive male partner.
Britgirl wrote:
I’m too tired to respond thoughtfully right now (it’s 4am), but I can answer this question, at least.
The most commonly reported statistic that says “1 in 4” is the figure from Mary Koss’ seminal study of rape prevalence, which found that 1 in 4 women experience rape or attempted rape by the time they’re in college. (For completed rape alone, Koss’ statistic is about 1 in 8).
Koss also found that about 4.5% of men admitted to having committed actions that amounted to rape (although very few of those men considered what they had done to be rape).
Whether 4.5% is a large number or not is a matter of opinion, I guess. Although the post is imperfect in many ways, I wrote a bit about this question here.
You know, what’s awful about that is that either there are lots of guys who aren’t even close to admitting it, or we have a nation of rapists, because these guys must be doing this more than once.
One thing that kind of bugs me about the “how many men are rapists” argument is that sexual assault can also be devastating. I’ve never been raped (because no penetration), but I’ve been stripped and pinned down while a guy got his rocks off using my body. Mr. Generous didn’t want to “steal my virginity.” I still went into a form of shock that lasted four days, when I was completely unable to make decisions or choices for myself, then I spent the next year and a half crying quite literally every day, and initially all day. And I am not much of a cry-er; I normally cried once and sometimes twice a year. I continued to mourn and cry on the anniversary of the event for over a decade (not by choice – hubby initially noticed the connection before I consciously realized why I was so depressed), and still get a little quirky around that time of year now, nearly two decades later.
I wonder how many of the women MRAs condemn for being “over emotional” and “poor workers” because they’re “always on the phone” or going to their doctors are actually women dealing with the after-effects of a rape or sexual assault. Because you bet I was not working up to my usual standards for a few years after that.
I was also sexually assaulted as a kid, and managed to escape that before it became rape, but again, those boys would not be “caught” in a survey on guys who raped unless they did something worse to someone later. While I try to report Koss’ results accurately (one in 4 raped or fought off a rape), there is a sense where I think the “one in four raped” is true, in that dealing with an attempted rape is often pretty darn traumatic in and of itself. While science needs to define things in order to study them, the distinction between rape and sexual assault can be, and often is, used to downplay women’s pain. Many women who have not actually been raped have still been pretty seriously traumatized by the rape culture.
But in a culture that okays marital rape, a woman who has been forcibly stripped and mauled, or whose partner does as he pleases despite her protests, leaving her with bruised breasts that ache days later, “doesn’t really count.” Considering how many women I’ve known who were raped who “accept” the fact that “it was their fault,” I wonder if most of the women who’ve endured these more minor assaults even talk about them. And I wonder how many guys who scoff at the idea that we’re in a rape culture have done this sort of thing, but don’t consider it wrong. Those sorts of assaults aren’t rape, but they definitely contribute to the rape culture many women live in, where it seems like no man is trustworthy and no woman has rights over her own body.
I agree with Shiloh.
I believe many men have done something that may not have met the legal definition of rape, but was still wrong, and they knew it, and one way or another, try to deny it.
Being kinda numbers-oriented, I went the U.S. Census statistical brief. As of 2003:
290,810,000 was the official resident population
143,037,000 (49%) were men
147,773,000 (51%) were women
104,623,000 (36%) were 18 years old and older
Just for argument, then, and rounding a bit, using the statistics described above and assuming only legal adults are involved:
2,306,938 (4.5%) men admitted to behavior that could be classified as rape
13,339,433 (25%) women were raped or almost raped
So we have a small group of men committing an average of 6 or 7 rapes or almost-rapes each? (If you can call over 2 million guys a small group.) Yeah, right.
Whoops. I made a significant error in my post. I grabbed the wrong number for the 18-and-over population. This should read:
217,766,000 (75%) 18 years old and older
4,801,741 (4.5%) of men admitted to behavior that amounts to rape
27,765,165 (25%) of women were raped or almost raped
Looks even worse this way.
That is the scariest statistic I’ve ever seen, with the numbers involved. Somehow, it makes the “men get raped” too argument look rather self-involved and asshatish. You have less of chance of getting raped, it’s not even a threat to you (provided you don’t go to jail).
Ginmar
Did you ever pass on the story about the battered man you tried to help to any of the MRA sites (I’m thinking of Men’s News Daily in particular)? I’m sure that many of them wouldn’t listen, but it might be an eye-opener to some of the guys who are new to the movement and haven’t yet drunk the cool-aid.
Amp
I take your point about the college study, but 1 in 8 is still not what I’d call a very small percentage (12.5%). The way you usually hear this discussed you would think that a tiny roving band of deranged psychos were somehow managing to rape 1 in 8 women. My point was that the numbers don’t add up, and I wanted to question why we use the whole “a really tiny minority of men” terminology even amongst ourselves. If we can’t talk about this honestly here, where can we talk about it? Also, I’d argue that pretending that rape is only committed by a very tiny number of men doesn’t really help us in understanding why it happens so often or how to change that.
Given the way your rape culture thread was derailed I can understand your caution. I just think that we need to look at this problem more honestly if we’re to have any real hope of coming up with solutions.
Shiloh, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. My guess is that the difference between the number of men who say they have committed rape and the number of women who have been raped is due not to our fictional band of roving psychos, but to the fact that most men somehow rationalise what they personally did as not being rape. I remember reading somewhere (don’t have a link unfortunately) that 70% of college men said yes when asked if they thought it was OK to use force to get a woman to have sex with them (again bear in mind that I’m paraphrasing, and I’m not sure if this was the same study Amp was referring to). If that’s true, then you have the idea that somehow they think that using force to get a woman to sleep with you is not rape. Not very logical, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard some variation of that argument. It does make you wonder exactly what they thing IS rape.
Brian – Yep. I think that might be the reason why so many men “shit bricks” as PA put it whenever this topic comes up.
Lee – Yep again, back to the roving gang of psychos theory. Which is particularly hard to swallow when you factor in the common belief that about 75-80% of rapes involve people who know each other. That 4.5% of guys who admit to having committed rape must be awfully busy.
And Antigone – asshattish indeed. You know, I can think of about a dozen women I know who have been raped (and those are just then ones who told me about it, I’m willing to bet there are more I don’t know about) and one guy. One. Not that I didn’t feel terrible for him (and try to get him into counselling) but seriously, where does the real problem lie here?
It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes before someone shows up and starts calling me and every other woman on this thread a man-hating lesbian/castrating bitch. Which doesn’t mean that they’re right, obviously, just that we’re touching on ground that makes people uncomfortable.
Oh, and Spicy – I do love the “living in a violent home” meme. What, do they think that the house itself is beating people up? Attacking the residents with its ambulatory towel racks? Poltergeists perhaps? God forbid anyone should point out who’s actually doing the beating…
apologies for the very long posting, too much coffee
I very much agree!
However, I disagree with you that the numbers don’t add up. It’s not at all unbelievable to me that 4.5% of men might rape 12.5% of women. Is there any reason to think that date rapists wouldn’t repeat their behavior with multiple women?
Nor does 4.5% strike me as a small percentage, in this context. As I wrote in this post:
4.5% is not a small number.
It’s not the same study. However, Koss’ study did find that virtually none of that 4.5% of men who said they had used force or threat of force to make a woman have sex when she didn’t want to, considered what they did rape. So that fits in perfectly with what you’re arguing here.
“If you take every doctor and nurse in the United States; and you added them to every librarian, every cashier, every cop, every postal clerk, and every bank teller in the whole country; you still wouldn’t have as many people as the number of rapists in the United States.”
My god.
Amp, I agree that 4.5% is not a small number. I’m still not convinced that the real number isn’t higher though. If you’re taking the 4.5% from the number of men who admit to having forced a woman into sex, how many are there that lied (ie did use force or threat of force but did not admit this when questioned)?
Even if the 4.5% as the actual number, I’m not convinced that those 4.5% are responsible for the 12.5% of women who are actually raped. It’s possible, but I don’t think we can assume it. Since you seem to be more up on the studies than me, do you know if any of them asked either the men who admitted rape (even though they didn’t actually call it rape) or the women who were raped if this had happened on multiple occasions or with multiple “partners” ?(I hate using that word but can’t think of a better one right now)
If that info existed it might give us a better idea whether the numbers do in fact add up. Either way I think the issue warrants more discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I hope that the lower number is correct (even though 4.5% is indeed still too high), I’m just not quite convinced that it is.
BRitgirlsf—Yeah, the violent home thing serves to cushion men from the reality of what their brethren are dong. But it’s not at all uncommon, either. Is this why some guys react to any feminist thought with, “You man-hating bitch! You just hate men because you’re ugly and couldn’t get one!’ Men are so cushioned by the society they create and control that the slightest bit of critique makes them freak out.
” ‘You just hate men because you’re ugly and couldn’t get one!’ ”
[snicker] Yep. If lack of conventional physical attractiveness bars one from having any substantive opinions, I look forward to all the MRA’s submitting 8″ X 10″ color glossies for our collective approval before they can come over here and spout any more nonsense. Or am I supposed to assume that they –in direct defiance of the law of averages– all resemble Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe. ?
Oh, and extra posts are allowed if they look really good in a metallic thong. [snort.] Okay, I’ll stop. It’s all just too easy.
But you know, Alsis, you can’t possibly expect them to live up to the standards they have for us, right? How unfair!
BritGirlSF,
I don’t remember any studies on it, but there is anecdotal evidence that acquaintance rapists are repeat rapists – women talking about their rape only to discover the guy had done it to other women they know, or other women their friends know. If all acquaintance rapists are multiple rapists then it’s credible that “only” 4.5 percent of the male population rapes.
OTOH, when they started looking into the problems with CTS studies, researchers discovered that men are particularly prone to under-reporting their own violence (women under-report as well, memory serves, but not by such a large margin). If men under-report their own questionable actions when it comes to domestic violence, I think it quite likely they under-report their rapes.
There’ve been a number of studies indicating that a depressingly large percentage of college males would rape under some circumstances. If you ask, “Would you rape?” the grand majority will say no. If you ask, “Would you use force for sex?” the percentage shoots up – the lowest number I’ve ever seen is 30% of guys say “yes”; around 50% is more common. It’s been a while, but I think the 70% is guys who answer “yes” to “would you use force for sex if you knew for sure you souldn’t get caught.” Or maybe it was “if you knew for sure she’d never tell anyone.”
In other words, there is *some* social pressure on guys not to use force. If they think the girl will talk and word might get back to their friends or (more likely) family or the authorities in their lives, they’re less likely to rape. But they aren’t resisting rape because they think it’s wrong; they’re avoiding rape because they don’t want to get caught. *sigh*
Which says volumes about what the average male in these studies thinks of women as a whole.
I’d love it if the older studies showed a higher percentage and the more recent ones lower, but at least when I was reading up on it in the late ’90’s this wasn’t the case. The variation was due to the phrasing of the questions, not the time the tests were done.
“But you know, Alsis, you can’t possibly expect them to live up to the standards they have for us, right?”
Sigh. Yes, ginmar. You’re right. Now the only question is: How am I going to break it to my partner that he’s shacked up with one a’ them there ugleee feminists. Tsk. Oh, the paiiiiiiiiin !!!!
Ginmar and Alsis
I would say that the less enlightened of our male brethren seem to have an attitude that could be summed up as “opinions, the world’s worst beauty product” to which the appropriate response is “stupidity, the world’s worst cologne”.
I actually do enjoy pointing out the absurdity of comments about unattractiveness coming from anti-feminist men. I can remember a time when Rush Limbaugh got a flea up his ass about Naomi Wolff for some reason and kept talking about her as an “ugly feminist” on the air. Now, I don’t approve of fat bashing, but if we’re talking Limbaugh via Wolff who do you think wins that beauty contest? Or how about Howard Stern? I’m always a bit surprised that none of his guests point out that he looks like Joey Ramone’s ugly kid brother. Not to pick on the Ramones, whom I love – Joey had talent, which is not the case with Mr Stern, and didn’t make a career about judging other people on their looks.
The wierd thing is that I get guys like that (sexist, arrogant, not too bright, bizzarely convinced of their own attractiveness despite all evidence to the contrary) trying to pick me up all the time (although they usually describe it as “hitting on” someone, which is a freudian slip if ever I heard one). The look on their faces when you call them on their shit is priceless. It’s like it never occurred to them that pretty girls can talk. At which point they start in with the “you must be a lesbian”.
I think that a little collective shaming of the other side is actually long overdue. I’d rather not start it if they’re being polite, but if they bring out the “ugly man-hating feminist” card I see no good reason not to fight back. I mean really…Limbaugh, James Dobson, Neal Horsley…not exactly pin-up material.
Shiloh
You’re talking about the same study I was. The 70% who’d do it if they thought they could get away with it was the really scary number for me, and I’ve seen a survey of high school students where the numbers were even worse.
This is why I think that reframing is in order. We need to stop using the passive voice to describe crimes committed by men. There also needs to be some kind of public conversation about what DV is, what rape is etc, because I’m beginning to think that what the average woman thinks constitutes these things and what the average man thinks are very different. I think that somehow it needs to be made clear that, you know that time when you held that girl down and told her that you’d hit her if she didn’t stop yelling, and then went ahead and had sex with her even though she was crying? That was rape.
I have no idea how to go about it though, other than talking to the people in your own circle. Matybe some kind of naming and shaming policy might work, something like what the City of Oakland is experimenting with for johns.
Can any women give me a straight, honest answer about the following:
What is the definition of a “real woman?
What is the definition of a “feminist”
There is no trick here or intended slur or anything like that. I would really just like to know what women think of themselves. For the record I think women are the most fascinating creatures on the planet.
Swannie, sweetie, think about it. I mean, seriously. Do you really so no slur there? Come on. This is called being disingenous.
We’re not fascinating. We’re human. Cope with it, would you?
Christ, one more guy going on about fascinating womanhood. Yeah, menstruate for a while, then get back to me, okay?
Britgirl, about helping the guy—I’m the antichrist to lots of these anti-fem types. They’d see my name and assume the worse.
Swannie: “For the record I think women are the most fascinating creatures on the planet.”
ginmar: “Swannie, sweetie, think about it. I mean, seriously. Do you really so no slur there? Come on. This is called being disingenous. We’re not fascinating. We’re human. Cope with it, would you?
Christ, one more guy going on about fascinating womanhood. Yeah, menstruate for a while, then get back to me, okay? ”
Lovin’ it, ginmar :-) I also love it when guys refer to women as “creatures.” /rolls eyes/
Yeah, creatures. —Like, from the uterus, instead of the black lagoon. Guys who say they love women never mention what they mean is in quantity. I don’t love women at all. But that doesn’t mean I think they shouldn’t have equal rights. One guy doesn’t get laid and suddenly the whole speicies are evil.
Argh. I don’t love women as a whole. Hell, my family has the same genes and the same upbringing and we can’t agree on a fucking pizza topping. Swannie thinks women are cut from whole cloth.
Yeah, dude, come visit me. My family wants to discuss pepperoni with your sorry sexist ass. Then you get to discuss women.
Ginmar – any chance you could get someone else to contact the MRAs for you and ask for help on this guy’s behalf, ie without using your name? I’d offer to do it myself but I’m in California so I’m not sure how much help I could be.
Of course they’ll probably just blow you off regardless of whose name you use, but it’s worth a shot.
Swannie – if you want a definition of feminist use a dictionary. If you want a definition of “real woman” you’re talking to the wrong people. Feminists have these wierd ideas about just letting people be whoever they are without trying to force them into neatly labelled little boxes, you see…
Honestly, the only circumstance in which I can even imagine this being relevant is if we were talking about a transsexual, and even then I’d assume that it’s really none of my business how someone wants to define themselves.
PA – The “creatures” thing is right up there with white men who constantly approach Asian women with the words “you people have such a beautiful culture”. A friend of mine gets this all the time, even though she keeps reminding them that she’s from Ohio.
Also, Swannie, I personally think that sharks are the most fascinating creatures on the planet, but I don’t think I’d really want to have dinner with one.
BritGirl wrote:
“I mean really…Limbaugh, James Dobson, Neal Horsley…not exactly pin-up material.”
Heh heh. But Ralph Reed and David Duke are oh-so-drrreeeeeamyyy !!
Sorry.
I know that one of the worst things that you can do in these sorts of discussions is legitimize the nonsensical truisms of sexists by pondering them too deeply. Still, the “ugly” acusation just cracks me up every time. Not just for the reasons you mentioned, BritGirl. But also for the strangeness of these yutzes being outraged that a woman might want more from life than just an eternity of self-flagellationfor not being genetically engineered to look like one of Charlie’s Angels. If not feminism, what’s supposed to provide the alternative ? Canasta ? A bag over one’s head ? Pope Ratzinger’s autograph ? Never mind. Wouldn’t want to put ideas in their oh-so-roomy heads. :/
Also, their attitude is rather a backhanded slap at the “beautiful” woman they pretend to admire. Sure, no young, tall, slender blonde with nice cheekbones anywhere on the planet wants to read feminist lit or listen to feminist music. (Yeah, right.) After all, “beauty” to these guys implies lack of depth and lack of any ambition other than that of luring men. Hey, what more could she want ?
It’s also funny because these guys are ageist as well as sexist. Thirty years from now, they’ll still be beating off to pictures of Liu, Diaz & Barrymore when they made those stoopid films. But they won’t be able to look at 2035 pictures of those “beauties” or any other woman of such an advanced age without withering and shrivelling like vampires splashed with garlic soup. How convenient for the idiot squad for us all to spend our lives pursuing a single goal that is by its very nature perishable. Not so convenient for us, though.
Alsis,
Apparently it is a fundamental belief of anti-feminist men that if a man ever touches a non-beautiful woman his dick will fall off.
Actually, if we’re going to get deep about it, I think that what they’re really afraid of is that if feminism were to become too widespread women would just dispense with them completely. Like some kind of Ursula Le Guin novel. They really seem to believe that all women could possibly want them for is their wallets and their dicks. Wow, sucks to be them.
“Apparently it is a fundamental belief of anti-feminist men that if a man ever touches a non-beautiful woman his dick will fall off.”
Damn. You mean to tell me that I’ve been going about it the difficult way all these years ?
I move that we immediately organize an “ugly girl” squad to follow these buffoons around and dupe them into touching us ! You know, under cover of Charlie’s Angels masks and strategic foundation garments, we could catch them coming out of MusicLand with their Eminem DVD’s. Then we’d hand them flyers for a nonexistent trendy new strip club opening down the street and the minute their temporarily non-dragging knuckles brushed ours –THUD ! Nothing left to do after that, except to ask the poor saps how they plan to do a household budget now that they’ll be making 28 cents less an hour for the rest of their sad li’l lives… oh, and to have some yard-debris bags handy for the lost phalluses (phalli ?).
Yup, alsis, what were you thinking? It’s so much easier if you try to see these things from their point of view.
Actually I’m fairly sure that those guys think that the “ugly girl squad” already exists and is COMING TO GET THEM!
alsis:
“Or am I supposed to assume that they ““in direct defiance of the law of averages”“ all resemble Tom Cruise or Russell Crowe. ?”
And that proves their non-ugliness how exactly? :p Sorry, I think you probably just picked the wrong week to use those 2 names.
I never understood that stupid-but-pretty-oppinionless thing. I mean, physical attractiveness is WAY low on my list of requirements for a mate, and for that matter, so is money. I WANT a guy to have oppinions, even if I don’t have the same ones, and I want them to be able to defend them and willing to carry on intelligent debates. Seriously, what is it with this “eye-candy fucktoy” type mates these guys want? There’d be no substance whatsoever. To me, a stupid, docile, but beautiful man would be the absolute LAST male I’d pick (well, maybe not last…but pretty low on the list.
And speaking of phalli dropping off (and major thread drift) what is it with that organ being the association of manhood? Every guy in the universe I’ve met flinches when they hear that, and talk about what an evil bitch she was. Nobody cares that she was beaten and raped by the same guy. She’s in jail, he’s a porn star. Funny how that works.
But you know, guys who profess to be feminists are just trying to get laid (sorry Amp, had to throw in that common slur :).
“Sorry, I think you probably just picked the wrong week to use those 2 names.”
D’oh !! [slaps forehead] Maybe you could substitute Peter Garrett or those Flaming Lips guys ?
I think that what they’re really afraid of is that if feminism were to become too widespread women would just dispense with them completely.
Bingo. They’re utterly convinced that the only way women will want men is if we have no other choice – viz William Raspberry mourning for the gold old days before black women could earn their own living. They assume mutual hatred reined in by necessity is the natural and proper relationship between men and women. (Of course, this doesn’t keep them from resenting women because men need them.)
Bingo. They’re utterly convinced that the only way women will want men is if we have no other choice
I think they also believe that no woman would get pregnant if given a choice because they know they sure as hell wouldn’t. So eliminating women’s reproductive rights and limiting women’s choices is their way of tyring to make sure that women stay home and have their babies.
Every guy in the universe I’ve met flinches when they hear that, and talk about what an evil bitch she was.
Lorena Bobbitt? Sure, I’d flinch if someone brought up castration out of the blue — and there’s a difference between the phallus and the penis, by the way — but my sympathy’s always been with Lorena Bobbitt.
Yeah, Lorena Bobbit. Sorry, thinking about two things and typing one.
violence is violence and the reasons women are victims of it more than men are (men being hit and abused by women) is that most women are physically weaker than most men, it is easier for a man to beat a woman and not be hurt by her in return even if she tries to defend herself (barring a gun/knife which has it’s own repucusions in society that denies a woman to defend herself in that way against her mate).
it really is sad tho about what many of the survey respondents consider rape, and yes we still live in a society of boys will be boys, as a way to say it is okay for them to do what they want to woman.
when I was growing up my brothers could do no wrong, it seems like no matter what choices they made in life my parents supported them and helped them out, but if I needed help i was on my own. I was supposed to obey the rules, (well it seemed that way to me, as a kid that was the impression I got, whether it was accurate or not, can’t say for 100 percent sure).
you see it in the movies and series where a woman is raped or abused and she is ostrasized in the show by society and the boy is backed up against her eronous charges, the woman in court is harassed and victimized by the lawyers and such and treated like they asked for it and deserved it or egged it on, no wonder so many rapes go unreported, who wants to be exposed that way?
and let’s not even start with the husband raping the wife that would be even harder to prove and get help for, as you owe your husband that, as far as they are concerned.or it is just a lovers spat or dissagreement, whatever.
violence is wrong whether you know the person or not, if a stranger rapes you then that is different if it is someone you know, but violence is violence regardless of who commits it to whom and why.
it really is sad that anyone has to live in fear of people they know or live in the same household, and they have no way to escape it, because no one will help out, as far as teh government or courts, but as soon as the abused fights back finally and kills the abuser they want to put that person in jail for teh rest of their lives.
something is wrong with this picture.
RR
Mythago
You’re right. This is what psychologists refer to as projection – you take your own issues and ascribe them to someone else. So, if thee despise women, it makes snese to them to assume that the feeling is mutual. The stereotype of the “man hating feminist/lesbian” makes a lot more sense if you look at it from that perspective.
The funny thing is that most of the truly nasty comments I’ve ever heard from women talking about men (that they’re grubby, incompetent morons ruled by their penises) have come from very conservative, anti-feminist women. In a way you could say that the anti-feminist women and the sexist men are a perfect match. Who was it again that said that the definition of love was one set of neuroses finding it’s perfect complement?
Antigone – I’ve never understood why anyone wants a gorgeous idiot either. I did actually date one when I was young and shallow (I was 18 and not exactly looking for a meaningful relationship). The man looked like a god, but it doesn’t take long to get tireed of someone who’s pretty but boring. I dumped him one day when I realised that he’d been talking to me for about half an hour and I literally hadn’t taken in a single word he said. Which is shallow but forgiveable when you’re 18, but to see people continuing the same pattern into their thirties and forties is a bit depressing.
Another aspect of this topic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/13/AR2005061301642.html
This article in today’s Washington Post talks about sexual assaults on school buses becoming an increasing problem.
The boys learn it from their fathers; the kids learn in school that’s it’s still boys will be boys, and it’s girls’ fault; the girls learn–a la Lakewood, and any number of other cases—that they just don’t matter—and then the boys grow up to become men who, what, exactly? I’m sure they make find husbands and fathers–just like their dads.
Amp – Thanks for fixing that link. For some reason, I could get it pasted but not linkable.
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