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by Conformal Veal Theory » Wed Oct 03, 2012 12:47 pm
by Socialdemokraterne » Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:13 pm
Tahar Joblis wrote:This is nominally gender-neutral language - see, no "woman," and no archaic euphemism for penis-in-vagina sex. This means that now the FBI can count any sex act a man performs on a victim as rape. And yet, if a woman ties a man to a table, drugs him to the gills, and rides him at gunpoint, after he took out a restraining order on her and put into writing that he would not wish to have sex with her even if it meant being dipped in a pit of bees by a meat hook - just to make that perfectly clear no consent at all is present - it's still not rape by the FBI's new definition.
The estimated 1.3 million men annually "made to penetrate" someone don't count, because they weren't being penetrated. If "patriarchy" is defined as the system which commits sexist oppression on men, then as a plain cold matter of fact, feminist groups have not been working to destroy patriarchy; they've been working selectively to break little bits of it off.
Reference to the patriarchy is generally lazy thinking at best, and a paranoid conspiracy theory at worst. A great many things attributed to patriarchy have absolutely nothing to do with males being the leaders [patriarchs] of family/clan units - and a number of sexist problems have actually been generated or worsened by the actions of the feminist movement.
Take pedophile panic. Pedophile panic is a modern phenomenon, brought to us courtesy of a devil's alliance between MacKinnon, Dworkin, and the rest of the anti-sex feminists with social conservatives. It's targeted nearly exclusively at men, in spite of the fact that women abuse children more than men do; we're just less likely to class it as sexual, even if it's the exact same act, and it's much less likely to be reported or come to criminal charges. Pedophile panic is not a product of "the patriarchy," it's a product of vilifying men as predatory rape-monsters.
"It's the patriarchy!!!" is not an excuse for selectively failing to act when you don't see women benefiting from addressing a problem. It's not an excuse for ignoring the ways in which sexism harms men; the sorts of things that can be classed as male disadvantages or female privileges is a class of things which the feminist movement has not done anything to improve.
Oh, there are some areas that feminists have worked on - for example, paternity leave, seen as beneficial to women, since there's usually a woman involved somewhere when there's a baby. But then there are areas where feminists have been actively opposing equality, such as support for male victims of domestic violence, because they figure that doing so harms women [limited available funding]. Feminist groups act for women. It's what their donors are interested in, their volunteers are passionate about, et cetera.
by Ethel mermania » Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:46 pm
by Conformal Veal Theory » Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:49 pm
Genivaria wrote:Atlas Shrugged?
by Socialdemokraterne » Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:53 pm
Conformal Veal Theory wrote:If, in the future, all reproductive capacities of the male sex are technologically replaced, and if all tasks requiring immense physical strength are mechanized, and if in addition it can be shown that men and women are of roughly equivalent intellect, then wouldn't such a social context imply that women were superior to men? Wouldn't such a context imply that women could function completely as a society without any men at all? This would seem to imply that males are "vestigial," or at least approaching that point. If that becomes the case, what would be the point of male infants at all? At best, they wouldn't be as good as having female infants, and at worst they would be detrimental because males are more violent.
Now, the reasoning of this argument is airtight, so either the conclusion is true or at least one of the premises must be false. I don't like the conclusion of the argument, but I'm unaware of which premise, if any, is actually false. Anybody else care to try?
by Tahar Joblis » Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:51 pm
Socialdemokraterne wrote:Tahar Joblis wrote:This is nominally gender-neutral language - see, no "woman," and no archaic euphemism for penis-in-vagina sex. This means that now the FBI can count any sex act a man performs on a victim as rape. And yet, if a woman ties a man to a table, drugs him to the gills, and rides him at gunpoint, after he took out a restraining order on her and put into writing that he would not wish to have sex with her even if it meant being dipped in a pit of bees by a meat hook - just to make that perfectly clear no consent at all is present - it's still not rape by the FBI's new definition.
The point of expanding the Dept. of Justice's Uniform Crime Report's definition of rape was to broaden the statistical base. The Dept. of Justice had this to say on the subject of the definition revision (with my emphasis):The revised definition includes any gender of victim or perpetrator, and includes instances in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity, including due to the influence of drugs or alcohol or because of age. The ability of the victim to give consent must be determined in accordance with state statute. Physical resistance from the victim is not required to demonstrate lack of consent. The new definition does not change federal or state criminal codes or impact charging and prosecution on the local level.
While it could be argued that one could simply say that in such a case as you describe the requisite penetration has occurred, but the word "victim" would instead mean the male in question, at the same time I could understand the desire for a revision to explicitly include cases where the victim is also doing the penetrating. Completely accurate crime statistics are required to coordinate an effective enforcement campaign and to spot weak points in the current efforts. At the same time, you're bellowing as though the sort of thing you just described wouldn't be considered rape at all and therefore not be prosecuted as such, and that's not what the DOJ did.
Patriarchy is not defined as a system which commits sexist oppression on men, and I have no idea who gave you that definition.
In feminist theory patriarchy is an unjust social system which unduly oppresses women. There is acknowledgement that patriarchal values can hurt men, but the system itself is still defined by its uneven power structures with men in the lead.
First of all, that's not the definition of patriarchy that feminists are talking about. They're talking about any social organizational structure wherein men hold a disproportionately large amount of power.
Hypotheses that patriarchal organizational patterns result in a given social effect can ultimately turn out to be falsified just like any other hypothesis, but that does not mean that every single instance (or even most instances) where patriarchal organizational patterns are thought to have either directly or indirectly resulted in any sort of social effect is just another example of "lazy thinking" doomed to be proven wrong by the data.
First off, source the claim that females make up the majority of child molesters.
Second, anti-sex feminists do not represent the whole of feminism but are rather one of many branches.
Third, even if these feminists do attribute the occurrence of pedophilia to patriarchal systems that still doesn't make every single instance where patriarchy is said to be responsible (whether in part or as a whole, whether directly or indirectly) for a given social effect equally implausible. That's a hasty generalization.
You keep talking about feminists as though they're a unified block operating on a single rulebook. They're not, and the movement is actually composed of many differing groups with sometimes outright contradictory goals.
Also, organizations limiting the scope of their operations as a consequence of funding being finite strikes you as sexism in action, does it? Have feminist organizations outright refused to cooperate with organizations trying to help male victims of domestic abuse, or have they simply said they can't attack the whole of society's problems by themselves because they can't afford to take on that many initiatives? The former would be actively opposing equality, the latter is a reality of operating an organization.
Finally, and more importantly, even if you have an example of a feminist organization actively refusing to cooperate with an organization seeking to diminish male domestic abuse, there are three questions which must be answered:
(a) Is the organization which declined to cooperate representative?
(b) Why did the organization decline to cooperate?
(c) Does this sort of incident represent a general trend?
Simply coming up with an example of a feminist organization that declined to cooperate with an organization working to diminish male domestic abuse is insufficient. You must show that the feminist organization is representative of feminists in general, that there was no good reason to decline on cooperation, and that such rejections occur regularly.
by Avenio » Thu Oct 04, 2012 12:15 am
Socialdemokraterne wrote:Patriarchy is not defined as a system which commits sexist oppression on men, and I have no idea who gave you that definition. In feminist theory patriarchy is an unjust social system which unduly oppresses women. There is acknowledgement that patriarchal values can hurt men, but the system itself is still defined by its uneven power structures with men in the lead.
by Tahar Joblis » Thu Oct 04, 2012 12:34 am
Avenio wrote:Socialdemokraterne wrote:Patriarchy is not defined as a system which commits sexist oppression on men, and I have no idea who gave you that definition. In feminist theory patriarchy is an unjust social system which unduly oppresses women. There is acknowledgement that patriarchal values can hurt men, but the system itself is still defined by its uneven power structures with men in the lead.
To clarify the bit Tahar Joblis quoted, I was under the impression that patriarchy was defined merely as a system of gender relations where defined gender roles for both males and females have created highly-unequal social relations between the genders. So while females are relegated to a role of subservience and of particular behaviours, males are also shunted into a very particular gender role and behavioural set put out for them by the patriarchal system - in our case in the West, this means stoic, unemotional behaviour and a heavy bias towards physical strength and 'masculinity' in general. That, of course, leads to problems when males don't conform to that expectation, whether that be because of their sexuality, their choice in interests or traumatic events like rape, as there is extreme social pressure on those individuals - thus leading to things like the underreporting of male rapes, bullying targeted at 'effeminate' behaviours in males and the generally more visceral negative reaction towards male homosexuality/transsexuality amongst the Usual Suspects than towards female homosexuality/transsexuality.
by Socialdemokraterne » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:12 am
Tahar Joblis wrote:The DOJ would not consider it rape, and nor would pretty much any state or local prosecutor's office. The CDC likewise follows a similar definition in their report, and therefore classes men forced to penetrate someone as not having been raped.
"Uneven power structures with men in the lead" is pretty vague.
That's not the problem. "Being doomed to be proven wrong by the data" isn't what we're dealing with here.
The problem is that assigning blame to the patriarchy is generally a non-falsifiable hypothesis. There is no data that can prove this assertion wrong. "The patriarchy" simply becomes more subtle and nebulous, the method by which men hold power more indirect. This isn't scientific thinking; this is ideological dogma.
I didn't say that females make up the majority of child molesters. Not quite. They might; they might not. Let me lay you out the facts that we actually have on hand, empirically speaking:The last two bullets are relevant because of the second bullet.
- Women make up the majority of child abusers, period, and commit the majority of child abuse. HHS.gov.
- Women abuse more male than female children. See above.
- Abuse by a woman will be viewed as non-sexual in circumstances in which abuse by a man would be viewed as sexual with the exact same acts. [See, for example, the recent flap about spanking students in Texas.]
- Victims of abuse by women are less likely to report being abused, or be recognized as having been abused.
- Victims of sexual misbehavior by women are less likely to report their mistreatment, or be recognized as having been mistreated.
- Male victims of abuse are less likely to speak up, or be recognized as having been abused.
- Male victims of sexual misbehavior are less likely to report their mistreatment, or be recognized as having been mistreated.
So. We know that there's a perfect storm of biases in play. The limited studies making a serious effort to identify the percentage of child molesters who are female and compensate for those biases can't rule out the proposition that women either make up a majority or minority of child molesters. See here - currently, Wiki has a pretty nice overview of a spread of literature on the topic, showing the sort of wildly variable figures that people come up with using different methods.
It's a little like how, based on FBI figures, ninety percent of rape victims are female and ninety percent of male victims are raped by a male perpetrator; but surveys that actually ask men about their experiences without using the word "rape" reveal that men are not appreciably less likely - more likely, actually, in that survey - to be raped, and that a very large majority of perpetrators victimizing men, about eighty percent, were female. Provided we define rape sensibly and don't exclude the cases typical of female-on-male sexual coercion by definition.
This is a class that supposedly made up a vanishingly small minority of rapes; but multiple biases stack against it. I suspect that in the end, if we ever get a good handle on it, we'll find that women commit a little bit more child sexual abuse than men, in line with the level of non-sexual abuse, both of which can be explained by their superior levels of access rather than women being special and different from men; but I don't know that for sure.
It's a very non hasty generalization. Saying "because PATRIARCHY!!!" is a non-falsifiable hypothesis in practice. After everything I posted above about how both men and women commit child abuse, the claim that pedophilia is the result of patriarchy is still as tenable as ever; you just need to come up with an explanation involving oppressed women transmitting that oppression on the next generation as crushed servants of the patriarchy.
This is where "the patriarchy" starts to approach a conspiracy theory. You have a vague malevolent social entity - not even necessarily one whose operatives need to be conscious of how they're doing its bidding - which can be used to explain anything, up to and including a woman chopping off her husband's penis and throwing it in the garbage disposal.
Strangely, I already believed that the movement was composed of many differing groups with sometimes outright contradictory goals. I pointed out that one branch of feminists worked against making statutory rape laws gender-neutral; another branch worked for it, as is much better known. The movement as a whole, however, has slacked off when it comes to getting the law enforced equally. Liberal feminists were generally satisfied by the nominal equality in the law; radical feminists were generally appeased by the failure of governments to use the new laws to prosecute women. So both groups gave it a rest, with the exception of the few crossing over into the LGBT movement working on making same-sex statutory rape laws treat all sex the same as heterosexual sex.
I'm aware of this. And it's the movement as a whole that I'm indicting as not caring about men. Individual feminists will sometimes stir themselves over a men's issue. Feminist groups, much more rarely. The movement as a whole - multiple groups - almost never.
They have fought against those seeking to allow state funding to go to male-specific domestic violence shelters, and fought against those seeking to compel the existence of support for male victims of domestic violence.
VAWA sends a lot of federal funding towards domestic violence support. The interpretation favored by feminists is that none of this money can or should be spend on programs that don't serve women at least as much as they do men; so most of the funding goes to female-specific support programs and shelters, and a small minority goes to the very progressive programs that seek to help both male and female victims, but only if they make sure to serve more female than male victims.
This is not talking about the limited funding of private female-oriented groups; this is feminists defending the limited pool of federal funding against being "siphoned off" to provide support services to male victims.
The organizations are. For example, here's one of the ones that has been involved in filing amicus briefs against lawsuits: CWLC.
Reasons offered for feminist organizations, plural, to oppose providing domestic violence services to men are:This list is not exhaustive. In a few cases, the arguments have some merit; but against the backdrop that women are more likely to initiate domestic violence, twice as likely to engage in completely non-reciprocal domestic violence, and on the whole are similarly likely to be abusive and dangerous as men, it makes an argument in favor of men-only services being offered on a "separate but equal" basis; which is then roundly opposed by other feminist groups.
- [Lawsuits related to female-only support organizations]. Organizations that serve female victims - shelters, helplines, hotlines, and legal defense initiatives - work on a narrow margin of viability and cannot afford to spend the resources to serve male victims, e.g., by employing men in their call centers.
- [Lawsuits related to female-only support organizations]. Female victims of domestic violence will be uncomfortable requesting help from an organization that also helps male victims of domestic violence, and will be too terrified of men to be feel safe in an environment where men are present.
- [Opposing funding directed to male-only shelters]. Men are rarely the real victims of domestic violence [this is a false statement, but it gets made anyway].
- [Opposing funding directed to male-only shelters]. This will reduce the amount of money available to women's shelters!
- [Opposing funding directed to male-only shelters]. VAWA has "women" in the title of the legislation. If you care about it so much, you can go raise funds for men's shelters privately or get some other program passed to help men.
- [Opposing funding directed to male-only shelters]. Male victims don't need shelters because they don't need to worry about children.
- [Opposing funding directed to male-only shelters]. Male victims don't need shelters because they have all the financial resources in a relationship and can afford to shelter themselves.
There are several different pieces of turf involved; the same feminist groups do not necessarily defend every single piece of turf, but the movement as a whole has been staunchly opposed to providing domestic violence services for men.
Very much so; see above. In fact, it is more visible as detrimental to men when viewed as a general movement-level trend than on the actions of individual groups; the action of individual groups in isolation is much more defensible than the action of the movement in aggregate.
Relatively few individual feminists actually think that male victims of domestic violence don't exist and don't deserve to be helped. However, the view that it's rare and unimportant is very common as a position of feminist groups, and groups often oppose one or more specific methods of reforming the system [e.g., amending VAWA to allow funding men's shelters without dramatically increasing the total pot of available funding]; and on the movement level, different feminist groups cover between them most of the avenues of creating programs to help male victims of domestic violence.
The result is that progress has been glacial.
It's the disorganized nature of the movement that really allows feminism as a whole to commit anti-male acts without individual feminists really realizing that's what they're supporting.
For example, in education. For every program or field which appears to favor males over females - majority-male fields of study, for example - feminist groups support individual measures to even the playing field. So we have programs designed to support women entering STEM fields, for example. Any instructional technique viewed as biased against women will be attacked by feminists as such; feminists used to attack standardized testing a lot, back when women often scored lower on standardized tests than men.
On the other hand, what happens when things are the other way? For example, the teaching field favors women. Feminists don't act to create programs encouraging men into teaching; and in fact reflexively oppose men's groups who advocate for increasing the number of male teachers. Some feminists even oppose encouraging male teachers, based on pedophile panic. When an existing program or field is biased in favor of women, feminists turn a blind eye, but dig in their heels whenever someone attacks it.
We can even view defending the jobs of female teachers against male invaders as favoring equality; after all, women earn on the whole less than men do, and teaching is actually one of the higher-paying jobs women hold. If we reduce the number of female teachers working, then the income gap will increase.
The result of decades of feminists trying to increase equality in ways that reduce disadvantages for men in diverse ways aggregate to an educational system where men make up a shrinking minority of college students.
by Forsher » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:48 am
Tahar Joblis wrote:Avenio wrote:
To clarify the bit Tahar Joblis quoted, I was under the impression that patriarchy was defined merely as a system of gender relations where defined gender roles for both males and females have created highly-unequal social relations between the genders. So while females are relegated to a role of subservience and of particular behaviours, males are also shunted into a very particular gender role and behavioural set put out for them by the patriarchal system - in our case in the West, this means stoic, unemotional behaviour and a heavy bias towards physical strength and 'masculinity' in general. That, of course, leads to problems when males don't conform to that expectation, whether that be because of their sexuality, their choice in interests or traumatic events like rape, as there is extreme social pressure on those individuals - thus leading to things like the underreporting of male rapes, bullying targeted at 'effeminate' behaviours in males and the generally more visceral negative reaction towards male homosexuality/transsexuality amongst the Usual Suspects than towards female homosexuality/transsexuality.
To paraphrase Gloria Steinem, we have at this point [as a society] learned that women can do what men can; but not that men can do what women can do.
That is to say, we have done a great deal to liberalize the feminine gender role and expand it into many of the areas deemed formerly "unfeminine," but we've done very little to fix masculinity. The feminist movement spent a great deal of collective effort on the former, but little to none on the latter.
Hence the problem we face now; the stay-at-home husband is thirty years behind the working wife in acceptance, traditionally female occupations remain difficult for men to enter, and the churn of supply and demand - with female occupations remaining female and men required to still work - limit further progress with women in the workplace, as well.
by SD_Film Artists » Thu Oct 04, 2012 2:07 am
by The God-Realm » Thu Oct 04, 2012 8:47 am
by Smartass alcoholics » Thu Oct 04, 2012 8:58 am
by The God-Realm » Thu Oct 04, 2012 9:04 am
by Quintium » Thu Oct 04, 2012 9:52 am
by Nova Nacio » Thu Oct 04, 2012 9:55 am
by Lessnt » Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:14 am
Conformal Veal Theory wrote:http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/10/01/the-myth-of-male-decline/
Interesting discussion there. The article itself asserts that the idea that men are worse off now than they used to be is largely a myth. Any circumstances where they actually are worse off are explained solely by greater competition with women.
The comments section is even more interesting. There is a very heated discussion there about whether or not men are obsolete.
So what do you think? Are men really worse off compared to the 50's or is this a myth? On a related note, will improvements in reproductive technology make men obsolete, or is this a paranoid fantasy?
Interesting and strange stuff one can find on the internet.
by Quintium » Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:18 am
Lessnt wrote:Men are worse off.
In a multitude of ways.
We still have to sign up for drafts.
We have to share more.
We have more responsibility.
We carry more burdens.
While living in a world that is still far more likely to kill us.
by Ethel mermania » Thu Oct 04, 2012 12:35 pm
Lessnt wrote:Conformal Veal Theory wrote:http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/10/01/the-myth-of-male-decline/
Interesting discussion there. The article itself asserts that the idea that men are worse off now than they used to be is largely a myth. Any circumstances where they actually are worse off are explained solely by greater competition with women.
The comments section is even more interesting. There is a very heated discussion there about whether or not men are obsolete.
So what do you think? Are men really worse off compared to the 50's or is this a myth? On a related note, will improvements in reproductive technology make men obsolete, or is this a paranoid fantasy?
Interesting and strange stuff one can find on the internet.
Men are worse off.
In a multitude of ways.
We still have to sign up for drafts.
We have to share more.
We have more responsibility.
We carry more burdens.
While living in a world that is still far more likely to kill us.
by Jinos » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:29 pm
Avenio wrote:Socialdemokraterne wrote:Patriarchy is not defined as a system which commits sexist oppression on men, and I have no idea who gave you that definition. In feminist theory patriarchy is an unjust social system which unduly oppresses women. There is acknowledgement that patriarchal values can hurt men, but the system itself is still defined by its uneven power structures with men in the lead.
To clarify the bit Tahar Joblis quoted, I was under the impression that patriarchy was defined merely as a system of gender relations where defined gender roles for both males and females have created highly-unequal social relations between the genders. So while females are relegated to a role of subservience and of particular behaviours, males are also shunted into a very particular gender role and behavioural set put out for them by the patriarchal system - in our case in the West, this means stoic, unemotional behaviour and a heavy bias towards physical strength and 'masculinity' in general. That, of course, leads to problems when males don't conform to that expectation, whether that be because of their sexuality, their choice in interests or traumatic events like rape, as there is extreme social pressure on those individuals - thus leading to things like the underreporting of male rapes, bullying targeted at 'effeminate' behaviours in males and the generally more visceral negative reaction towards male homosexuality/transsexuality amongst the Usual Suspects than towards female homosexuality/transsexuality.
by Lessnt » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:32 pm
Ethel mermania wrote:Lessnt wrote:Men are worse off.
In a multitude of ways.
We still have to sign up for drafts.
We have to share more.
We have more responsibility.
We carry more burdens.
While living in a world that is still far more likely to kill us.
i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.
by Raeyh » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:40 pm
Jinos wrote:Ah, "Patriarchy" the social system which endows males with the 'privilege' of being treated more poorly than their female peers for defying gender norms.
The term "Patriarchy" as used by Feminists is highly oxymoronic, as it is used to suggest that men are "benefiting" from some sort of cultural value system which simultaneously hurts them.
Why do men deny that "Patriarchy" exists? Because they don't benefit from it. Gender roles hurt both genders, neither benefits from it, and gender roles/values don't constitute "Patriarchy."
by Quintium » Thu Oct 04, 2012 1:45 pm
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