Men aren't worse off.

[Avenio]

Man, discussions on feminism bring out the absolute stupidest in people around here.

That, and summer is getting longer, and longer.

It's one of the most heinous side-effects of global warming.

[Conformal Veal Theory]

But it is a challenging argument. 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?

[Socialdemokraterne]

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.

See: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/Janu ... g-018.html

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

[Genivaria]

There's probably more [obscure and specific fetish] porn in existence now that there was porn of any sort in the 50s. That alone proves that we're better off now than then.

I don't know about porn in general, but my favorite erotic novel was written in the '50s.

Atlas Shrugged?

[Ethel mermania]

sure they are, its acting. You think most women cum irl, they way they do in porn?

I'm sure they do as much acting in real life as they do on camera.

God willing, you are right. Unfortunately you are wrong. Which has nothing to do with the point. Film porn is as much fiction as an erotic novel, only more people are getting paid.

[Conformal Veal Theory]

Atlas Shrugged?

He didn't say he was a teenager or a spoiled rich white college kid, did he?

[Socialdemokraterne]

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?

Well, one of the most important problems I can spot is that synthesis of gametes wouldn't necessarily be a process which was immediately accessible worldwide. You'd make human reproduction reliant upon the resources to synthesize gametes artificially, which can pose a very serious threat to the sustainability of a population whose resources are tightly limited. Eradication of males in the impoverished portions of the globe would be even more insane than eradicating them in the wealthier parts.

A second practical problem would be that while it's all well and good to say that through eugenics and social engineering we could suppress heterosexuality and induce asexuality and homosexuality, it's quite another thing entirely to actually get such a program off the ground. At the very least in nations which have conducted and since abandoned eugenics programs the reintroduction of said programs will likely be quite a tricky piece of work. I expect that Germany wouldn't even let the proposal hit the parliamentary floor and that any politician who made the proposal would quickly find themselves out of a career. Furthermore, deeply-rooted social institutions which have staunch anti-homosexual stances are unlikely to simply sit idly by as one works toward the eventual eradication of heterosexuality, and whether we like it or not they're important political players.

In short? Society is going to push back against the sort of programs I mentioned before very hard. I'd be helping push back against such programs myself.

[Tahar Joblis]

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.

See: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/Janu ... g-018.html

It ultimately is more of a symbolic victory than a victory in reforming the legal system. I'm aware of this.

The new definition is exactly what feminists have been pushing for in legal enforcement, and will still continue to push for; most of the major feminist organizations endorsed something similar quite some time ago, and most of them put out news releases applauding the FBI's definition change uncritically. After all, it was precisely what most groups had asked for.

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.

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.

Patriarchy is not defined as a system which commits sexist oppression on men, and I have no idea who gave you that definition.

Avenio said patriarchy was responsible for male rape victims going unrecognized and underreported. Choronzon concurred.

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.

"Uneven power structures with men in the lead" is pretty vague.

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.

Which they believe to be any system extant.

By a similarly loose definition, however, I could easily describe the field of gender studies itself as being under the sway of the matriarchy, or I could describe the Democratic National Convention as a matriarchy on the grounds that Democratic voters are substantially majority female. I could even describe our modern society as such, depending on the assertions I make about who really has the power.

But that description would tell us jack and shit.

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.

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.

First off, source the claim that females make up the majority of child molesters.

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:

• 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.

The last two bullets are relevant because of the second bullet.

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.

Second, anti-sex feminists do not represent the whole of feminism but are rather one of many branches.

Yes. The politically strong branch that can reach across the aisle to social conservatives and pull off shit.

Dworkin and MacKinnon had a fuck of a lot more influence over policy than Califia.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The organizations are. For example, here's one of the ones that has been involved in filing amicus briefs against lawsuits: CWLC.

(b) Why did the organization decline to cooperate?

Reasons offered for feminist organizations, plural, to oppose providing domestic violence services to men are:

• [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.

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.

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.

(c) Does this sort of incident represent a general trend?

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.

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.

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.

[Avenio]

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.

[Tahar Joblis]

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.

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.

[Socialdemokraterne]

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.

I'm not against the notion of explicitly adding forced penetration to the definition of rape, so I don't think you and I will be able to stir up a very interesting debate in that regard.

"Uneven power structures with men in the lead" is pretty vague.

A deeper exploration of the meaning of "patriarchy" in a feminist context is available here: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/jou ... 7921a.html

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:

• 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.

The last two bullets are relevant because of the second bullet.

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.

I asked you to produce evidence and that's just what you did. Thanks much. Furthermore, your hypothetical reasoning regarding child molestation seems solid enough.

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.

I can't deny that the concept of patriarchy has been misused before.

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.

If I ever become more deeply involved with a feminist organization I will certainly try to reverse that trend if I find it to be present.

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.

To be fair to me, you didn't actually specify what sort of funding you were talking about. It was very easy to infer from what you'd written that you were talking about organizational funding, not federal funding.

The organizations are. For example, here's one of the ones that has been involved in filing amicus briefs against lawsuits: CWLC.

Presumably these were suits regarding VAWA and federal funding distribution? Is there a specific case of interest here?

Reasons offered for feminist organizations, plural, to oppose providing domestic violence services to men are:

• [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.

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.

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.

I'm not actually seeing any names, neither of individuals or of organizations, to which these sorts of statements may be attributed. It isn't that I don't feel you've done your homework on the subject or that you're making things up, but I'd sooner have something to run on besides your promise that these sorts of statements are representative of the whole.

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.

Thus increasing the importance of crime statistics so that these groups' activities can be more accurately coordinated with societal trends. Got it.

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.

I'll keep what you've said in mind and reevaluate. Thank you for your reply.

[Forsher]

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.

Bit in bold... Daddy Day Care said it better. About a minute in.

Now, elsewhere I provided some definitions for patriarchy (may be the other thread, could be this one) and I had to make a note that how feminists use the word on NSG doesn't really tally with the definitions.

[SD_Film Artists]

Generally men face less discrimination in society, though it is well documented that there are some areas where they are at a disadvantage- such as in child custody rulings.

[The God-Realm]

There, I'm now a woman.

I just need to do the paperwork and the surgery.

[Smartass alcoholics]

There, I'm now a woman.

I just need to do the paperwork and the surgery.

This trickery has not gone unnoticed!

[The God-Realm]

There, I'm now a woman.

I just need to do the paperwork and the surgery.

This trickery has not gone unnoticed!

I'm not screwing with you guys, I'm going to become a woman.

Because frankly there is no use for my thing anymore.

[Quintium]

There is absolutely no level playing field where I live - the Netherlands, one of the countries affected most by modern-day entitlement feminism.

• In our constitution, the first article forbids discrimination based on sex. However, since there is no constitutional court, our government can violate the constitution in any way it wants to. Although discrimination based on sex is forbidden, the government has introduced and funded female-only classes for natural science and technology. There are several schemes to introduce girls to natural science and technology, even if boys are put at a disadvantage as a result.
• Police fitness tests are easier for women. On one test I've looked at, a woman aged 20 needed 'approximately the physical condition of a man aged 60'. Women are given equal pay and equal rights, but slightly-easier conditions, including an extra minute on a running course before they fail their fitness test.
• The police also once had a job opening. It stated, in slightly less offensive wording, "white men need not apply". Only women and non-European foreigners were allowed to run for that position.
• Have you ever wondered about those boardroom quotes the European Union wants to introduce? If you need at least 40% women in boardrooms, that means you'll have to start discriminating against men regardless of competence at a point where 60% of boardroom members happens to have a penis.
• Speaking of boardroom quotas, it's hard for me to ignore the thought that it's pretty selective. Recycling services, sewer cleaning teams, oil rig teams and construction crews have a male-to-female ratio a lot higher than boardroom teams. So when will the European Union require at least 40% of all sewer cleaners and construction workers to have a vagina?
• There is, of course, the issue of maternity leave. Some employers I've spoken to really dislike these issues. Sometimes, they can't escape hiring a young woman for fear of legal prosecution or complaints of discrimination. Yet they know that woman will spend part of her first year on paid leave. It's just another redistributive tax when you hire a young woman who happens to be in a relationship.
• Finally, for now, think about this. Criminal justice favours women. I once made a calculation for another forum. If capital punishment was applied equally under equal conditions regardless of sex, about one hundred and eighty more female murderers serving prison terms in the United States would have been executed since 1976. Adding to that, women get lighter sentences and even have some legal bargaining tools based on what they have in their trousers.

As is customary in a society like ours, it's an uphill battle for many men, and they're blamed for losing as if they were fighting in a meadow.

[Nova Nacio]

@OP: Women and minorities (like myself, because I'm black) definitely are!

...And that pisses me off.

[Lessnt]

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.

[Quintium]

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.

Pretty much what my views boil down to. Thank your for the excellent summary.

[Ethel mermania]

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.

i can write my name in the snow. show me a woman who can do that.

[Jinos]

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.

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."

[Lessnt]

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.

Depends on the name and language.

[Raeyh]

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."

I thought patriarchy is when you have to listen to whatever your father or grandfather has to say and that he has some sort of control over the women in the family and who can marry into it.

[Quintium]

Patriarchy, if any political group but feminists used it, would be dismissed as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory.